Schiller, (Johann Christoph) Friedrich (von) 1759-1805
German dramatist, poet and historian

He was born in Marbach on the Neckar. His father was an army surgeon in the service of the Duke of W�rttemberg. He was educated in Ludwigsburg, and was intended for the Church, but at the age of 13 was obliged to attend the duke's military academy. He studied law instead of theology, but finally qualified as a surgeon (1780) and was posted to a regiment in Stuttgart. Although conforming outwardly to army life he preferred reading and eventually writing Sturm und Drang ('Storm and stress') verse and plays. His first play, the apparently anarchical and revolutionary Die R�uber (1781, Eng trans The Robbers, 1792), published at his own expense, was an instant success when it reached the stage at Mannheim (1782). Schiller absconded from his regiment to attend the performance and was arrested. In hiding at Bauerbach, he finished the plays, Fiesko (1783, Eng trans Fiesco; or, The Genoese Conspiracy, 1796) and Kabale und Liebe (1783, Eng trans Cabal and Love, 1795). For a few months he was dramatist to the Mannheim theatre, and in 1784 he began a theatrical journal, Die rheinische Thalia, in which were first printed most of his play Don Carlos, many of his best poems, and the stories Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre (1786, Eng trans The Dishonoured Irreclaimable, 1826) and Der Geisterseher (1787-88, Eng trans The Ghost-Seer, or Apparitionist, 1795). In 1785 he was invited to Leipzig, and in Dresden, where Karl Theodor K�rner was living, he found rest from emotional excitement and financial worries. Here he finished Don Carlos (1787), which was written in blank verse, not prose, and was his first mature play. Among the results of his discussions with K�rner and his circle are the poems An die Freude (c.1788, 'Ode to Joy'), later set to music by Beethoven in the last movement of his choral symphony, and Die K�nstler (1858, 'The Artists'). After two years in Dresden he went to Weimar, where he studied Kant, met his future wife, Charlotte von Lengefeld, and began his history of the revolt of the Netherlands. In 1788 he was appointed honorary Professor of History at Jena, and married, but his health broke down from overwork. He had been writing a history of the Thirty Years War, the letters on aesthetic education (1795) and the famous �ber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795-96, Eng trans On Simple and Sentimental Poetry, 1884), in which he distinguishes ancient from modern poetry by their different approaches to nature. His short-lived literary magazine, Die Horen (1795-97), was followed by the celebrated Xenien (1797, 'Epigrams'); these were a collection of satirical epigrams against philistinism and mediocrity in the arts, in which his newly-found friendship with Goethe found mutual expression. This inspired the great ballads (1797-98), Der Taucher ('The Diver'), Der Ring des Polykrates ('The Ring of Polykrates'), Die Kraniche des Ibykus ('The Cranes of Ibycus'), the famous Das Lied von der Glocke (completed in 1799, 'Song of the Bell') and, under the influence of Shakespeare, the dramatic trilogy Wallenstein (1796-99), comprising Wallensteins Lager, Die Piccolomini and Wallensteins Tod, which is considered the greatest historical drama in the German language. This was followed by Maria Stuart (1800, translated by Stephen Spender, 1957), a psychological study of the two queens, Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, in which Mary by her death gains a moral victory. He again alters history in Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801, Eng trans The Bride of Messina, 1837) portrays the relentless feud between two hostile brothers; and the half-legend of Wilhelm Tell (1804, Eng trans William Tell, 1825) is made by Schiller the basis of a dramatic manifesto for political freedom.

Bibliography: W Witte, K C F Schiller (1949)