The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller by Calvin Thomas

C >> Calvin Thomas >> The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31

The removal of the court to Ludwigsburg took place in 1764, three years
before the Schiller family found a home there. From the first a purely
artificial creation, the little city had been going backwards, but it
now leaped into short-lived glory as the residence of a prodigal prince
who was bent on amusing himself magnificently. The existing ducal palace
was enlarged to huge dimensions and lavishly decorated. Great parks and
gardens were laid out, the market-place was surrounded with arcades, and
an opera-house was built, with a stage that could be extended into the
open air so as to permit the spectacular evolution of real troops.
Everything about the place was new and pretentious. The roomy streets
and the would-be gorgeous palaces, flaunting their fresh coats of yellow
and white stucco, teemed with officers in uniform, with blazing little
potentates of the court and with high-born ladies in the puffs and
frills of the rococo age. Here Karl Eugen gave himself up to his dream
of glory, which was to rival the splendors of Versailles. He maintained
a costly opera, procuring for it the most famous singers and dancers in
Europe, and squandered immense sums upon 'Venetian nights' and other
gorgeous spectacles. For all this barbaric ostentation the people of
Wuerttemberg were expected to foot the bills. 'Fatherland!' said his
Highness, when a protest was raised on behalf of the country, 'Bah! I am
the fatherland.'

Here it was, then, that the young Friedrich Schiller got his first
childish impressions of the great world; of sovereignty exercised that a
few might strut in gay plumage while the many toiled to keep them in
funds; of state policies determined by wretched court intrigues; of
natural rights trampled upon at the caprice of a prince or a prince's
favorite. There is no record that the boy was troubled by these things
at the time, or looked upon them as anything else than a part of the
world's natural order. It is a long way yet to President von Walter.

The house occupied by Captain Schiller at Ludwigsburg was situated close
by the theater, to which the duke's officers had free admission. As a
reward of industry little Fritz was allowed an occasional evening in
front of the 'boards that signify the world'. The performances, to be
sure, were French and Italian operas, wherein the ballet-master, the
machinist and the decorator vied with one another for the production of
amazing spectacular effects. People went to stare and gasp--the language
was of no importance. It was not exactly dramatic art, but from the
boy's point of view it was no doubt magnificent. At any rate it made him
at home in the dream-world of the imagination, filled his mind with
grandiose pictures and gave him his first rudimentary notions of stage
effect. We are not surprised to learn, therefore, that in his home
amusements playing theater now took the place of playing church. Sister
Christophine was a faithful helper. A stage could be made of big books,
and actors out of paper. When the puppet-show was outgrown, the young
dramatist took to framing plays for living performers of his own
age,--with a row of chairs for an audience, and himself as manager and
protagonist.

Christophine relates that her brother's fondness for this sort of
diversion lasted until he was thirteen years old. In the mean time,
however, his chosen career was kept steadily in view. He was sent to the
Latin school, from which, if his marks should be good, he might hope to
advance in about five years to one of the so-called convent schools of
Wuerttemberg. After this his theological education would proceed for
about nine years more at the expense of the state. The Ludwigsburg
school was a place in which the language of Cicero and the religion of
Luther were thumped into the memory of boys by means of sticks applied
to the skin; Fritz Schiller was a capable scholar, though none of his
teachers ever called him, as in the case of the boy Lessing at Meissen,
a horse that needed double fodder. The ordinary ration sufficed him, but
he memorized his catechism and his hymns diligently, fussed faithfully
over his Latin longs and shorts, and took his occasional thrashings with
becoming fortitude. On one occasion we hear that he was flogged by
mistake and disdained to report the incident at home. Religious
instruction consisted of mechanical repetition insisted on with brutal
severity,--a mode of presenting divine things that must have contrasted
painfully, for the sensitive boy, with his mother's simple religion of
the heart. When it is added that he was often nagged and punished by a
too exacting father, we get a not very sunny picture of our poet's
boyhood. It is told,[5] and it may well be true, that he was subject to
fits of moodiness, in which he would complain of his lot and brood
gloomily over his prospects. Nevertheless a schoolmate[6] has left it on
record that Schiller as a lad was normally high-spirited, a leader in
sports as well as in study, and very steadfast in his friendships.

While at Ludwigsburg he read from the prescribed Latin authors,
making the acquaintance of Ovid, Vergil and Horace, and in time won
praise for his facility in writing Latin verses. Some of his school
exercises have chanced to be preserved. The earliest, dated Jan. 1,
1769, is a Latin translation in prose of some verses which seem to have
been supplied by his teacher for the purpose. The handwriting and the
Latin tell of faithful juvenile toil and moderate success--nothing more.
Nor can we extract much biographic interest from the later distichs and
_carmina_ which he turned out at school festivals. Such things have
flowed easily from the pen of many a bright schoolboy whom the bees of
Hymettus failed to visit.

According, to Schiller's own testimony[7] his earliest attempt at German
verse was made on the occasion of his confirmation, in April, 1772. On
the day before the solemn ceremony he was playing about with his
comrades in what seemed to his mother an all too worldly frame of mind.
She rebuked him for his unseasonable levity, whereat the youngster went
into himself, as the Germans say, and poured out his supposed feelings
in a string of verses so tender and soulful as to draw from his amazed
father the exclamation: 'Fritz, are you going crazy?'

After such a beginning we are not surprised to learn that German poetry
made its first strong appeal to him through the pious muse of Klopstock.
His earliest more ambitious note is heard in a 'Hymn to the Sun',
written in his fourteenth year. It is the note of supernal religious
pathos. In rimeless lines of unequal length he celebrates the glory of
God in the firmament, soars into celestial space and winds up with a
vision of the last great cataclysm. All this is sufficiently
Klopstockian, as is also the boyish dream of an epic about Moses, and of
a tragedy to be called 'The Christians'.

But the time came when our young psalmodist of Zion was to be pulled out
of his predetermined course and made to sing another song. Were the
overruling powers malign or benevolent? Who shall say, remembering the
Greek proverb that a man is not educated save by flaying? Let us not
pause to speculate; but proceed as quickly as may be across the interval
that separates these innocent religious effusions from the opening of a
great literary career with the cannon-shot of 'The Robbers'.

About the year 1770 Duke Karl began to undergo a change of heart.
Wearying at last of life's vanities and frivolities, the middle-aged
sinner took up virtue and philanthropy, as if to show mankind that he
too could be a benevolent father to his people. The new departure was
due in part to the political success of the Estates in curbing his
extravagance, but rather more, no doubt, to the personal influence of
his mistress, Franziska von Hohenheim. This lady, whose maiden name was
Bernerdin, had been given in marriage as a girl of sixteen to a
worthless Baron von Leutrum, who misused her. Escaping from him with
thoughts of divorce in her mind, she went to visit friends in
Ludwigsburg. Here the inflammable duke fell in love with her, and, after
a not very tedious resistance, carried her away to his castle. This was
in 1772. Her divorce followed soon after, and she remained at court as
the duke's favorite mistress. He presently procured for her an imperial
title, that of Countess Hohenheim, and after the death of his duchess,
in 1780, he married her. She was not beautiful or talented, but she
possessed amiable qualities that made and kept her the object of Karl's
honest affection. She knew how to humor his whims without crossing his
stubborn will, and she chose to exert her influence in promoting humane
enterprises and leading her liege lord in the paths of virtuous
frugality. On the whole, the people of Wuerttemberg, who had suffered
much from mistresses of a different ilk, had reason to bless their
ruler's fondness for his amiable 'Franzele'. She was not unworthy to sit
for the portrait of Lady Milford.

An educational project, the founding of a school which later came to be
known as the Karlschule, marks the beginning of the duke's career in
his new role. He began very modestly in the year 1770 by gathering a
few boys, the sons of officers, at his castle called Solitude, and
undertaking to provide for their instruction in gardening and forestry.
This Castle Solitude was itself an outcome of the same lordly mood that
had led to the removal of the court to Ludwigsburg. It was situated on
a wooded height some six miles west of Stuttgart. Here, by means of
forced labor and at enormous expense,--and this was only one of many
similar building enterprises,--he had cleared a site in the forest and
erected a huge palace which, according to the inscription over the
door, was to be 'devoted to tranquillity'. But how was a prince to
enjoy tranquillity without the necessaries of life? In a short time a
score of other buildings, including an opera-house and a barracks, had
sprung up about the castle in the woods, while an immense outlying
tract had been converted into a park with exotic attractions in the
style of the time. Here, then, was need of expert forestry--whence the
opening of the school as aforesaid. Once started, it became the duke's
special pet and pride. His immense energy had found a new fad--that of
the schoolmaster. He was bent on having a model training-school for the
public service. In his own house, under his own eye, he proposed to
mould the future servants of the state like potter's clay. In this way
he would have them as he wanted them. To provide the clay for his
experiment he began to look around for promising boys, and thus his eye
fell on Friedrich Schiller. Summoning the father and making some
gracious inquiries, he offered to provide for the boy's education at
the new school. The anxious captain, knowing that divinity was not to
be on the program at Castle Solitude, sought to evade his sovereign's
kindness by pleading that Fritz had set his heart upon the service of
the church. The reply was that something else, law for example, would
no doubt do as well. Resistance to the earthly Providence was not to be
thought of by a man in Captain Schiller's position; and so the step was
taken which deprived some Suabian flock of a shepherd and gave the
world instead a great poet.

It was on the 17th of January, 1773, that schoolboy Schiller, with
disappointment in his heart, said farewell to his tearful mother and
took his cold way up the long avenue which led from Ludwigsburg to
Castle Solitude. According to the official record he arrived there with
a chillblain, an eruption of the scalp, fourteen Latin books, and
forty-three kreutzers in money. Soon afterwards his father signed a
document whereby he renounced all control of the boy and left him in the
hands of his prince.

The school at Solitude had now come to be known as the Military
Academy, and well it deserved its name. The duke himself was the
supreme authority in large matters and in small. The nominal head,
called the intendant, was a high military officer who had a sufficient
detail of majors, captains and lower officers to assist him in
maintaining discipline. Under the eye of these military potentates the
_eleves_, as they were called,--for the official language of the school
was French,--lived and moved in accordance with a rigid routine. They
rose at six and marched to the breakfast-room, where an overseer gave
them their orders to pray, to eat, to pray again, and then to march
back. Then there were lessons until one o'clock, when they prepared for
the solemn function of dinner. Dressed in the prescribed uniform,--a
blue coat with white breeches and waistcoat, a leather stock and a
three-cornered hat, with pendent queue and at each temple four little
puffs,--they marched to the dining-room and countermarched to their
places. When his Highness gave the command, _Dinez, messieurs_, they
fell to and ate. From two to four there were lessons again, then
exercise and study hours. At nine they were required to go to bed.
There were no vacations and few holidays. Visits to and from parents
were prohibited, and letters sent or received had to be submitted to
the Intendant. Books of a stirring character were proscribed, along
with tobacco and toothsome edibles, and quarters were often searched
for contraband articles. Whoso transgressed received a 'billet', which
he took to headquarters. Punishments were numerous, if not very severe,
and were sometimes administered by his Highness in person. The duke
wished his proteges to regard him as their father, but his system
tended to the encouragement not so much of honest gratitude as
of rank sycophancy. On occasion he could be very gracious and
condescending,--would take the youngsters into his carriage, give
them fatherly counsel, box their ears, suggest subjects for essays,
offer himself as opponent at their disputations, and so forth. He
was very proud of showing off the school to visitors. His birthday
and Franziska's were festal occasions, at which he would distribute
the prizes in person and allow the winners, if of gentle birth, to
kiss his hand; if commoners, to kiss the hem of his garment.

A modern reader will be very ready with his criticism of these
educational arrangements. The constant and petty surveillance, the
deliberate alienation of boys from all ties of home and kindred, the
systematic training in duplicity and adulation, were certainly not well
calculated for a school of manhood. Schiller himself, after his escape
from the academy, was wont to speak very bitterly of the education that
he had received there. Nevertheless the school had its good points,
especially after the removal to Stuttgart, in 1775. Here it became a
combination of university (minus the theological faculty) with a school
of art, a school of technology and a military academy proper. Several of
the professors were inspiring teachers who made friends of their
students. The fame of the institution brought together promising young
men from all parts of Germany and from foreign parts; and several of
them besides Schiller attained distinction in after-life.[8] There was
thus intellectual comradeship of the very best kind. And there was much
freedom in the choice of studies.

But the solid merits of the academy were the growth of time; in the
beginning it was, for Schiller at least, mere chaos and misery. The boy
grew rapidly into a lank, awkward youngster for whom the military
discipline was a great hardship; he never got entirely rid of the stiff
gait and ungainly bearing which resulted from these early struggles with
the unattainable. Frequent illness led to a bad record on the books of
the faculty. In 'conduite' he made but a poor showing, and he was
several times billeted for untidiness. In Latin and religion he got
along fairly well, and in Greek he actually took a prize toward the end
of the year 1773. But the Greek which procured him this distinction
hardly went beyond the rudiments and was mostly brought with him from
Ludwigsburg. For mathematics he had but little talent. His bitterest
trial, however, came with the law studies which he was obliged to take
up in his second year. A dry subject, a dull teacher and an immature,
reluctant pupil made a hopeless combination. And so he got the name of a
dullard. During the whole of the year 1775 it is recorded that he was at
the foot of his class.

Two bits of writing have come down to give us a glimpse of the boy's
mind during these two years of helpless floundering. A detestable
practice of the school authorities required the pupils to criticise one
another in moral disquisitions. On one occasion the duke gave out the
theme: 'Who is the meanest among you?' Schiller did his task in Latin
distichs which have been preserved. They show a healthy feeling for the
odiousness of the business, but he cleverly shifts the responsibility to
_Dux serenissimus_, who must of course know what is good for him. Then
he proceeds to depict one Karl Kempff as the worst boy in
school,--_defraudans socios, rudis ignarusque_,--but he hopes that the
wretched sinner will yet mend his ways and become worthy of his gracious
prince's favor.

In a much longer prose document he portrays the characters of some two
score schoolmates and finally his own. He begins modestly with a
deprecatory address to his most gracious sovereign, without whose wise
order he would never think of setting himself up as a judge of his
fellows. The portraits are amusingly ponderous in style, but their
substance is very creditable to their author's head and heart. Toward
the end he burns more incense to the duke: 'This prince who has enabled
my parents to do well by me; this prince through whom God will attain
his ends with me; this father who wishes to make me happy, is and must
be much more estimable to me than parents who depend upon his favor.' He
frankly confesses his own shortcomings: 'You will find me', he writes,
'often overhasty, often frivolous. You will hear that I am obstinate,
passionate and impatient; but you will also hear of my sincerity, my
fidelity and my good heart.' He owns that he has not thus far made the
best use of his gifts, but he pleads illness in excuse. His gracious
prince knows how eagerly he has taken up the study of the law and how
happy he will be some day to enter the service of his country. But, he
ventures to insinuate, he would be very much happier still if he could
serve his country as a teacher of religion.

The divinity was out of the question, but relief was at hand. Toward the
end of 1775, having come to terms with the Stuttgart people, Duke Karl
transferred his academy to more commodious quarters in the city. A
department of medicine was added and Schiller gladly availed himself of
the duke's permission to enroll in the new faculty. His professional
studies were now more to his taste and he applied himself to them with
sufficient zeal to make henceforth a decent though never a brilliant
record. His heart was already elsewhere. For some time past he had been
nourishing his soul on forbidden fruit,--books that had to be smuggled
in and were of course all the more seductive for that very reason. With
a few intimates--Scharffenstein, the Von Hovens and Petersen--he formed
a sort of literary club which read and discussed things. What they read
spurred them to imitation and to mutual criticism. Presently they
commenced sending their productions to the magazines. Schiller began to
indulge in pleasing dreams of literary fame; and with this new-born
confidence in himself there came, as his health improved, a firmer step,
a more erect bearing and an increased energy of character. To be a poet
by grace of God was better than the favor of princes.

For some time, however, the youth's effusions gave little evidence of a
divine call. His first poem to get into print was the one entitled
'Evening', which appeared in Haug's _Suabian Magazine_ in the autumn of
1776. In irregular rimed verses--the rimes often very Suabian--we hear
of sunset glories producing in the bard a divine ecstasy that carries
him away through space. Then he returns to earth and hears in the voices
of evening a general symphony of praise. It is still the Klopstockian
strain of magniloquent religiosity, tempered somewhat by the influence
of Haller. In 'The Conqueror', a poem published in 1777, the
Klopstockian note is still more audible. The form is a pseudo-antique
strophe such as Klopstock often used; the substance a rhetorical
denunciation of military ambition. The most awful curses are imprecated
upon the head of the ruthless 'conqueror', whose badness is portrayed in
lurid images and wild syntax that fairly rack the German language.[9] No
wonder that editor Haug cautioned the young poet against nonsense,
obscurity and exaggerated metatheses.

Nor is there much more of promise in the few occasional poems that have
come down from Schiller's salad days in the academy. One of them was
inspired by a visit of the emperor Joseph, whom our poet glorifies in
strains almost too fervid for utterance.[10] The other two are birthday
greetings to Franziska von Hohenheim--effusions of 'gratitude', as it is
called. The gratitude purports to come, in one of the poems, from the
_ecole des demoiselles_, which Franziska had founded as a feminine
pendant to the academy. Schiller's verses, truth to tell, sound like
rank fustian. The duke's mistress is glorified as a paragon of virtue.
'Her sweet name flies high on the wings of glory, her very glance
promises immortality. Her life is the loveliest harmony, irradiated by a
thousand virtuous deeds.' And so on. As poetic spokesman of the girls he
pours out those 'Elysian feelings' which he supposes them to cherish
toward their kind and virtuous 'mother'.

There are two or three extant school orations which likewise exhibit
him in the role of a fervid eulogist. The rhetoric of them is very
highfalutin, and the flattery would be nauseating if one did not
remember that it was largely a matter of fashion. Custom required that
a prince be addressed in the language of adulation, and nothing in that
line was too extravagant for the taste of the time. As for Schiller, he
had got the reputation of an orator and he only did what was expected
of him as the public representative of the school. Nor should we think
too harshly of the duke for encouraging the foolishness, since he too
only conformed to the custom of the Old Regime. At the same time it is
a pleasure to learn from certain well authenticated anecdotes that he
and his _eleves_ did not always live in a fool's paradise of
sycophancy. There is a story, vouched for by Weltrich, to the effect
that Schiller, who had acquired fame as a mimic, was one day asked by
the duke, with Franziska on his arm, to give an impromptu specimen of
his powers by imitating his sovereign. The youth hesitated, but after
some urging borrowed the duke's cane and proceeded to examine him. As
his Highness did not answer well, Schiller exclaimed: 'Oh, you are an
ass!' Then he took Franziska's arm and began to walk away with her.
Serenissimus looked on with mixed emotions, but only said: 'Come now,
leave Franzele to me!'

The young Schiller was nothing if not intense. When an emotion took
possession of him it set him on fire, and the expression of it was like
the eruption of a volcano. Toward the end of his course at the academy
he had a misunderstanding with his dear friend Scharffenstein, with whom
he had sworn eternal brotherhood. The result was a long letter of wild
expostulation in this vein:

What was the bond of our friendship? Was it selfishness? Was it
frivolity? Was it folly? Was it an earthly, vulgar, or a higher,
immortal, celestial bond? Speak! Speak! Oh, a friendship erected
like ours might have endured through eternity.... If you or I had
died ten times, death should not have filched from us a single hour!
What a friendship that might have been! And now! Now! What has
become of it?... Hear, Scharffenstein! God is there! God hears me
and thee, and may God judge!

And so on for six mortal pages, octavo print. The modern cynic will
smile at this ecstatic cultus of friendship, but let him at the same
time recall the saying of Goethe that what makes the poet is a heart
completely filled with one emotion.[11]

It is now time to glance at the really important phase of Schiller's
youthful development--his reading. While his native Suabia, just then
rather backward in literary matters, was still chewing the cud of pious
conventionality, a prodigious ferment had begun in the outside world.
What is called the 'Storm and Stress' was under way. The spirit of
revolt, which in France was preparing a political upheaval, was abroad
in Germany, where it found expression in stormy or sentimental plays and
novels,--works composed on the principle that everything is permissible
except the tame and the conventional. The productions of these young
innovators differed widely from one another, but they had a common note
in their vehement would-be naturalism. There were over-wrought pictures
of daring sin and terrible punishment; novels and plays laying bare the
_misere_ of the social conflict; tragedies of insurgent passion at war
with conventional ideas; of true love crossed and done to death by the
prejudice of caste. And so forth.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31