The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller by Calvin Thomas

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The experience of Schiller at Mannheim illustrates the higher uses of
adversity. Had he been well and happy, he might have written his third
play, won the good will of Dalberg and then stuck fast for years in the
Palatinate; which would have been a misfortune for him and for German
letters. As it was, Mannheim gradually became odious to him. He had no
buoyancy of spirit. 'God knows I have not been happy here', he wrote to
Reinwald in May, 1784. His life was full of petty worries and
distractions which weighted his imagination as with lead. As his year
drew to an end he imagined that he had but to say the word to have his
contract with the Mannheim theater renewed, but it was not so; Dalberg
had quietly decided to get rid of him. From _his_ point of view his poet
had been a bad investment. Schiller had not kept his contract in the
matter of the new play; he had done nothing but procrastinate and make
excuses. 'Don Carlos' had not even been begun. There seemed to be no
excuse for such dawdling, when a man like Iffland could always be relied
upon to turn out a fairly acceptable play in a few weeks. No great
wonder, therefore, that Dalberg lost faith in Schiller and concluded
that he had exhausted his vein. Through a friend he suggested a return
to medicine.

Curiously enough Schiller grasped at the idea, professing that a medical
career was the one thing nearest his heart. He had long feared, so he
wrote, that his inspiration would forsake him if he relied upon
literature for his living; but if he could devote himself to it in the
intervals of medical practice, good things might be hoped for. He
accordingly proposed a renewal of the contract for another year, with
the understanding that he devote himself principally to his medical
studies to the end of qualifying for the doctor's degree; in the mean
time he would undertake to produce one 'great play' and also to edit a
dramatic journal. To this amazing proposal Dalberg paid no attention;
and when the 1st of September arrived Schiller's connection with the
Mannheim theater came to an end.

It was a troublous, harassing time for him, that summer of 1784, and the
more since the woes of the distracted lover were added to those of the
disappointed playwright and the impecunious debtor. A German savant
observes that Schiller was not, like Goethe, a virtuoso in love. And so
it certainly looks, albeit the difference might perhaps appear a little
less conspicuous if he had lived to a ripe old age and dressed up his
recollections of youth in an autobiographical romance. He did not lack
the data of experience, but without the charm of the retrospective
poetic treatment his early love-affairs are not profoundly interesting.
In the midst of his troubles it came over him that marriage might be the
right thing for him; and so, one day in June, 1784, he offered himself
to Frau von Wolzogen for a son-in-law. Nothing came of the suggestion;
it was only a passing tribute to the abstract goodness of matrimony.
About a year later he made, with similar results, an argumentative bid
for the hand of Margarete Schwan. On the aforementioned visit to
Frankfurt he met Sophie Albrecht, a melancholy poetess who had sought
relief from the tameness of her married life by going upon the stage. Of
her he wrote shortly afterwards:

In the very first hours a firm and warm attachment sprang up between
us; our souls understood each other. I am glad and proud that she
loves me and that acquaintance with me may perhaps make her happy. A
heart fashioned altogether for sympathy, far above the pettiness of
ordinary social circles, full of noble, pure feeling for truth and
virtue, and admirable even where her sex is not usually so. I
promise myself divine days in her immediate society.[61]

But all these palpitations were as water unto wine in comparison with
his unwholesome passion for Charlotte von Kalb, whom he also met first
in the spring of 1784. This lady, after a lonely and loveless girlhood,
in which she had been tossed about as an unwelcome incumbrance from one
relation to another, had lately married a Baron von Kalb. Her heart had
no part in the marriage, which was arranged by her guardian. In the
pursuit of his career her husband left her much to herself. She was an
introspective creature, very changeable in her moods and passionately
fond of music and poetry. In Schiller she found her affinity. He acted
first as her guide about Mannheim, then as her mentor in matters of
literature. They saw much of each other; became intimately confidential
and soon were treading a dangerous path,--though not so dangerous,
peradventure, as has sometimes been inferred from the two poems,
'Radicalism of Passion' and 'Resignation', which belong to this period.

In the first of these poems our old friend, the lover of Laura, who is
supposed to have married another man in the year 1782, resolves to fight
no longer the 'giant-battle of duty'. He apostrophizes Virtue and bids
her take back the oath that she has extorted from him in a moment of
weakness. He will no longer respect the scruples that restrained him
when the pitying Laura was ready to give all. Her marriage vow was
itself sinful, and the god of Virtue is a detestable tyrant. In the
other poem, which is a sort of antidote to the first, we hear of a poet,
born in Arcadia, who surrendered his claim to earthly bliss on the
promise of a reward in heaven. He gave up his all, even his Laura, to
Virtue, though mockers called him a fool for believing in gods and
immortality. At last he appears before the heavenly throne to claim his
guerdon, but is told by an invisible genius that two flowers bloom for
humanity,--Hope and Enjoyment. Who has the one must renounce the other.
The high Faith that sustained him on earth was his sufficient reward and
the fulfillment of Eternity's pledge.

Wer dieser Blumen eine brach, begehre
Die andre Schwester nicht.
Geniesze wer nicht glauben kann. Die Lehre
Ist ewig wie die Welt. Wer glauben kann entbehre.
Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht.[62]

When these poems were published, in 1786, their author saw fit to
caution the public in a foot-note not to mistake an ebullition of
passion for a system of philosophy, or the despair of an imaginary lover
for the poet's confession of faith. Thus warned one should not be too
curious about the reality which is half revealed and half concealed by
the verses. Enough that it was not altogether a calm, Platonic
sentiment, and that the torment of it was a factor in that uneasiness
which finally became a burning desire to escape from Mannheim. And the
fates were preparing a way.

One day in June, when all was looking dark, Schiller received a packet
containing an epistolary greeting, an embroidered letter-case and four
portrait sketches. The letter was anonymous, but he presently discovered
that it came from Gottfried Koerner, a young privat-docent in Leipzig,
who had united with three friends in sending this token of regard to a
Suabian poet whom they had found reason to like. Schiller did not answer
immediately and the skies grew darker still. His relations with the
Mannheim theater were presently strained to the point of disgust by the
production of a farce in which he was satirized. He was in terrible
straits for money. To have something to do, after he was set adrift by
Dalberg, he decided to go ahead with his project of a dramatic journal.
An attractive prospectus for the _Rhenish Thalia_ was issued, and he
began to prepare for the first number, which was to contain an
installment of 'Don Carlos'. The advance subscriptions fell far short of
his sanguine hopes. In these occupations the time passed until December.
Then one day he penned an answer to the Leipzig letter. It was a
turning-point in his destiny. A correspondence sprang up which presently
convinced him that where these people were, there he must be.

Toward the end of the year there came another glint of good-will from
the north. The Duke of Weimar happened to be visiting at the neighboring
Darmstadt, and through Frau von Kalb Schiller procured an introduction
and an invitation to read the beginning of 'Don Carlos'. The result was
the title of Weimar Councillor. This was very pleasant indeed; for while
it put no florins in his purse, it gave him an honorable status in the
German world. He had been cast off by a prince of the barbarians to be
taken up by _the_ prince of the Greeks! Henceforth he was in a sense the
colleague of Goethe and Wieland. He began to speak of the Duke of Weimar
as _his_ duke, and to indulge in day-dreams concerning the little city
of the Muses in Thueringen. For the rest there was an element of fate's
amusing irony in the new title, seeing that he had just announced
himself, in the prospectus of the _Rhenish Thalia_, as a literary
free-lance who served no prince, but only the public. The announcement
contained a sketch of his life and a confession of his sins,--which he
laid at the door of the Stuttgart Academy. 'The Robbers', he declared,
had cost him home and country; but now he was free, and his heart
swelled at the thought of wearing no other fetter than the verdict of
the public, and appealing to no other throne than the human soul.

Owing to various delays the first number of the new journal did not
appear until the spring of 1785, and by that time Schiller was all ready
for his flight northward. Matters had continued to go badly with him. On
the 22nd of February he wrote to Korner, 'in a nameless oppression of
the heart', as follows:

I can stay no longer in Mannheim. For twelve days I have carried the
decision about with me like a resolution to leave the world. People,
circumstances, earth and sky, are repulsive to me. I have not a soul
to fill the void in my heart--not a friend, man or woman; and what
might be dear to me is separated from me by conventions and
circumstances.... Oh, my soul is athirst for new nourishment, for
better people, for friendship, affection and love. I must come to
you; must learn, in your immediate society and in intimate relations
with you, once more to enjoy my own heart, and to bring my whole
being to a livelier buoyancy. My poetic vein is stagnant; my heart
has dried up toward my associations here. You must warm it again.
With you I shall be doubly, trebly, what I have been hitherto; and
more than all that, my dearest friends, I shall be happy. I have
never been so yet. Weep for me that I must make this confession. I
have not been happy; for fame and admiration and all the other
concomitants of authorship do not weigh as much as one moment of
love and friendship. They starve the heart.

To the worldly-wise such a perfervid sight-draft upon the bank of love,
made after a few weeks of epistolary acquaintance, will no doubt seem a
little risky. One is reminded of Goethe's Tasso, impulsively offering
his friendship to a cooler man and getting the reply:

In Einem Augenblicke forderst du
Was wohlbedaechtig nur die Zeit gewaehrt.[63]

But this time Schiller's instinct had guided him aright. Koerner was no
Antonio, and he did not recoil even when he learned that his new friend
was very much in need of money and would not be able to leave Mannheim,
unless a Leipzig publisher could be found who would take over his
magazine and advance a few pounds upon its uncertain prospects. This was
easily arranged, for Korner was well-to-do and had himself lately
acquired an interest in the publishing business of Goeschen at Leipzig.
Goeschen took the _Thalia_ (dropping the 'Rhenish'), Schiller paid his
more pressing debts, and early in April was on his way to Leipzig,
panting for the new friends as the hart panteth after the water-brooks.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 57:

A talent forms itself in solitude,
A character in the flowing tide of life.
--_Goethes 'Tasso'.]

[Footnote 58: Letter of May 5, 1784.]

[Footnote 59: But this performance was not the first in order of time.
'Cabal and Love' had already been played on the 13th of April by
Grossmann's company at Frankfurt. Grossmann was an intelligent
theatrical man, who had conceived a liking for Schiller; only he wished
that the 'dear fiery man' would be a little more considerate of stage
limitations.]

[Footnote 60: Moritz's critique is reprinted in J. Braun's "Schiller und
Goethe im Urteile ihrer Zeitgenossen", I, 103.]

[Footnote 61: From the letter of May 5, quoted above.]

[Footnote 62: In Bulwer's translation:

"He who has plucked the one, resigned must see
The sister's forfeit bloom:
Let Unbelief enjoy--Belief must be
All to the chooser;--the world's history
Is the world's judgment doom."]

[Footnote 63:

Thou askest in a single moment that
Which only time can give with cautious hand.]

CHAPTER VIII

The Boon of Friendship

Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen,
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein,...
Mische seinen Jubel ein.
--'_Song to Joy_'.

Gottfried Koerner, father of the more famous Theodor, was some three
years older than Schiller and belonged to an opulent and distinguished
family. His father was a high church dignitary, his mother the daughter
of a well-to-do Leipzig merchant. The boy had grown up under austere
religious influences and then drifted far in the direction of
liberalism. After a university career devoted at first to the humanities
and then to law, he had travelled extensively in foreign countries, and
then returned to Leipzig, full of ambition but undecided as to his
future course. Here, in 1778, he became acquainted with Minna Stock, the
daughter of an engraver who had once been the teacher of Goethe. Stock
died in 1773, leaving a widow and two daughters to battle with poverty.
The elder daughter, Dora, inherited something of her father's vivacious
humor and artistic talent, while the younger and handsomer, Minna, was
of a more domestic temper. When Koerner fell in love with the amiable
Minna and wished to marry her, he met with opposition in his own family,
who thought that the 'engraver's mamsell' was not good enough for him.
This little touch of adversity converted him from a gentleman of leisure
and a browsing philosopher into a man with a purpose in life. He set
about making himself independent of the family wealth. To this end he
offered himself as a privat-docent in law at the Leipzig university.
When this expedient failed him through lack of students, he began to
practice and soon received an appointment which took him to Dresden.
This in 1783. Dresden now became his official residence, but he made
frequent visits to his betrothed in Leipzig, and during one of these his
memorable letter to Schiller was indited.

The other member of the quartette was Ludwig Huber, at that time the
accepted lover of Dora Stock. Huber was three years younger than
Schiller,--an impressionable youth, of some linguistic talent, who had
his occasional promptings of literary ambition. But his soarings were
mere grasshopper flights; steady effort was not his affair and he lacked
solid ability. A doting mother had watched and coddled him until in
practical affairs he was comically helpless. As the futility of his
character became more apparent with the lapse of time, he lost the
esteem of his friends, and the engagement with Dora Stock was broken
off. So far as Schiller is concerned, the friendship of Huber was a
passing episode of no particular importance.

Early in the year 1785 Koerner lost both his parents and found himself
the possessor of a considerable fortune. There was now no further
obstacle to his marriage; so the time was fixed for the wedding and he
set about preparing a home for his bride. Thus it came about that when
Schiller arrived in Leipzig, on the 17th of April, 1785,--mud, snow and
inundations had made the journey desperately tedious,--he did not at
once meet the man whom he most cared to know. Huber and the two ladies,
who seem to have expected a wild, dishevelled genius, were astonished to
see a mild-eyed, bashful man, who bore little resemblance to Karl Moor
and needed time to thaw up. But the stranger soon felt at home. He had
explained to Huber minutely how he wished to live. He would no longer
keep his own establishment,--he could manage an entire dramatic
conspiracy more easily than his own housekeeping. At the same time he
did not wish to live alone.

I need for my inward happiness [he wrote] a right, true friend who
is always at hand like my angel; to whom I can communicate my
budding ideas and emotions in the moment of their birth, without
writing letters or making visits. Even the trivial circumstance that
my friend lives outside my four walls; that I must go through the
street to reach him, that I must change my dress, or the like, kills
the enjoyment of the moment. My train of thought is liable to be
rent in pieces before I can get to him.... I cannot live parterre,
nor in the attic, and I should not like to look out upon a
churchyard. I love men and the thronging crowd. If I cannot arrange
it so that we (I mean the five-parted clover-leaf) may eat together,
then I might resort to the table d'hote of an inn, for I had rather
fast than not dine in company.[64]

It is clear that, notwithstanding experiences which might have
embittered a less genial nature, Schiller was in no danger of becoming a
misanthrope. For him the throng upon the street was not the madding
crowd of the English poet, nor the 'cursed race' of Frederick the Great,
but an inspiration; a spectacle to keep the heart warm and foster the
sense of brotherhood. He felt the need of men, however shabbily they
might treat him. And men enough were at hand; for the Leipzig fair was
then on, and the town was full of strangers who were eager to gape at
the author of 'The Robbers', to be introduced to him, to invite him here
and there. So for a week he floated with the current of casual
dissipation and then, caught for an hour by a refluent eddy of
lonesomeness,--four parts of the pentamerous clover-leaf were paired
lovers,--he penned a missive which might have changed much in his future
career: He sent to Christian Schwan a formal proposal for the hand of
Margarete. With characteristic optimism he urged that fortune had at
last turned favorably. He had good prospects. He proposed to work hard
upon 'Don Carlos' and the _Thalia_, and meanwhile quietly to return to
medicine. Wherefore he now made bold to express a hope that he had long
cherished but had not dared to utter.

The sequelae of this wooing have never been cleared up in detail.
Schiller's letter as preserved bears a marginal note by Schwan to the
effect that Laura in the poem 'Resignation' was no other than his eldest
daughter. 'I gave her this letter to read', the note says, 'and told
Schiller to apply directly to her. Why nothing came of the affair has
remained a riddle to me. Happy my daughter would not have been with
Schiller.' The annotation is not dated. The identification of Laura with
Margarete is obviously wrong. Was Schwan's memory also at fault? Did he
imagine, long after the fact, that he had actually taken what must have
seemed to him, when Schiller had become a famous poet, the reasonable
course to have pursued? Did he withhold the letter too long and then
show it? Or was Margarete herself disinclined,--piqued perhaps by
Schiller's neglect of her, or by his passion for Charlotte von Kalb? Or
did Schiller's own courage fail him after he had received a hint of
favor? A letter to Koerner, written May 7, tells of pleasant news from
Mannheim, and shortly afterward a rumor was in circulation that Schiller
was about to marry a rich wife. The probability is that neither party
was more than half inclined to the match. The blue flame perished
naturally for lack of fuel.

Early in May, following the custom of well-to-do Leipzigers, Schiller
sought refuge from the incipient summer heat of the city by taking
rooms in the suburban village (such it was then) of Gohlis. Here, in a
little second-story chamber, which was provided with an infinitesimal
bed-room, he lived some four months,--happy months, in the main, even
If the famous 'Song to Joy', which local tradition ascribes to this
time and place, was in fact written a little later in Dresden. Various
friends were at hand. Besides Huber there was Goeschen, with whom he was
soon on terms of intimacy. The Stock sisters,--'our dear girls', as he
calls them in a letter to the absent Korner,--had likewise quartered
themselves in Gohlis; and so had Dr. Albrecht and his wife, Sophie, the
actress. These with one or two others were enough for converse and for
jollity; and there were merry evenings, with wine and talk, and cards
and skittles and nonsense. Though ordinarily he 'joked wi' difficulty',
Schiller could be jovial enough in a company of congenial spirits.
Nevertheless there was but little of the bohemian about him. That
dignified seriousness which pervades all his later writings, and gave
to Goethe the impression of a man dwelling habitually above the plane
of vulgar things, was beginning even now to characterize him as a
social being.

While living at Gohlis he received a visit from Moritz, the man who had
written so savagely of 'Cabal and Love'. If ever an author has been
justified in giving the cut direct to a pestilent reviewer, this was the
occasion. But Schiller received his visitor with suave courtesy; an
interchange of views followed and the two men parted with embraces and
protestations of friendly esteem. Schiller was not a good hater, except
of hate. His nature craved love and friendship. He was eager to learn of
his critics and could not long cherish resentment over an honest
expression of opinion. Besides this he had now come to feel that his
early writings were anything but invulnerable.

Notwithstanding his promise of steady industry, Schiller accomplished
but little during his sojourn at Gohlis. It was the old story: There
were too many distractions, too many confusing images of what might be
done. The scheme of an antidote to 'The Robbers', in the shape of a
moral sequel, gradually dropped out of view, along with the medical
studies. The _Thalia_, originally planned with reference to the public
at Mannheim, refused to bear transplanting to another soil without a
season of wilting. Instead of manuscript for the second number, Goeschen
was obliged to content himself for several months with excuses for
postponement. And as for 'Don Carlos', the conception had so changed
with the lapse of time that its author felt at a loss how to manage It.
The play, with its wonderful pair of dreamers, was waiting for the
inspiration of a real friendship at Dresden.

Long before they met in the body Schiller and Koerner had given
expression to their mutual trust in language of romantic enthusiasm. On
the 2nd of May Koerner wrote at length of his own life, character and
aspirations. The letter reveals a noble nature conscious of an
exceptional indebtedness to fortune and eager to pay the debt by solid
work for mankind, but lacking the ability to decide and execute. Koerner
evidently felt that he was in some danger of becoming an intellectual
Sybarite, and he hoped that Schiller's example would save him from this
danger by spurring him to literary effort. In his reply Schiller
expresses his admiration of a character to whom fortune's favor means
not, as for most men, the opportunity of enjoyment, but the duty of more
strenuous living; then he sends a jubilant Godspeed to the 'dear
wanderer who wishes to accompany him in such faithful, brotherly fashion
on his romantic journey to truth, fame and happiness.' The letter
continues:

I now feel realized in us what as poet I but prophetically imagined.
Brotherhood of spirits is the most infallible key to wisdom.
Separately we can do nothing.... Do not fear from this time forth
for the endless duration of our friendship. Its materials are the
fundamental impulses of the human soul. Its territory is eternity;
its _non plus ultra_ the Godhead.

Then, as if momentarily abashed by his own extravagance of expression,
he protests that his _Schwaermerei_, if such it be, is nothing but a
'joyful paroxysm anticipating our future greatness'. For his part, he
would not 'exchange one such moment for the highest triumph of cold
reason'. Enthusiasm, he declares, is the greatest thing in life.

The two men did not see each other until July, when a meeting was
arranged at an interjacent village, to which Schiller rode out with the
Leipzig friends. The next day he wrote a letter to Koerner, who had
returned to Dresden, describing an incident of the return journey,--a
letter so full of instruction with regard to the Schiller of this period
that it deserves to be quoted at some length:

Somehow we came to speak of plans for the future. My heart grew
warm. It was not idle dreaming. I had a solid philosophic assurance
of that which I saw lying before me in the glorious perspective of
time. In a melting mood of shame, such as does not depress but
rouses to manly effort, I looked back into the past, which I had
misused through the most unfortunate waste of energy. I felt that
nature had endowed me with powers on a bold plan, and that her
intention with me (perhaps a great intention) had so far been
defeated. Half of this failure was due to the insane method of my
education, and the adverse humor of fate; the other and larger half,
however, to myself. Deeply, my best of friends, did I feel all that,
and in the general fiery ferment of my emotions, head and heart
united in a Herculean vow to make good the past and begin anew the
noble race to the highest goal. My feeling became eloquent and
imparted itself to the others with electric power. O how beautiful,
how divine, is the contact of two souls that meet on the way to
divinity! Thus far not a syllable had been spoken of you, but I read
your name in Huber's eyes and involuntarily it came to my lips. Our
eyes met and our holy purpose fused with our holy friendship. It was
a mute hand-clasp--to remain faithful to the resolution of this
moment; to spur each other on to the goal, to admonish and
encourage, and not to halt save at the bourne where human greatness
ends.... Our conversation had taken this turn when we got out for
breakfast. We found wine in the inn, and your health was drunk. We
looked at each other silently; our mood was that of solemn worship
and each one of us had tears in his eyes, which he tried to keep
back.... I thought of the beginning of the eucharist: 'Do this as
often as ye drink in memory of me.' I heard the organ and stood
before the altar. Suddenly I remembered that, it was your birthday.
Unwittingly we had celebrated it with a holy rite. Dearest friend,
had you seen your glorification in our faces, heard it in our
tear-choked voices, at that moment you would have forgotten even
your betrothed; you would have envied no happy mortal under the sun.
Heaven has strangely brought us together, but in our friendship it
shall have wrought a miracle. Dim foreboding led me to expect much,
very much of you, when I first decided to come to Leipzig; but
Providence has more than fulfilled the promise, and has vouchsafed
to me in your arms a happiness of which I could not form an image.

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