Schiller and Our Times
GA 51
5 March 1905, Berlin
VIII. What Can the Present Learn from Schiller
We must not overlook the fact that the relationship of the general public to Schiller was bound to become something quite different in the second half of the Nineteenth Century from what it had been in the first: if only because of those facts which I have mentioned. Schiller's feeling towards Truth was expressed by his saying that “through the dawn of the beautiful you may pass into the land of knowledge.” To him truth was the beautiful; a work of art was to give form to the idea, the idea by which the world as a whole is to be imagined as being permeated. It was an idealist view of the world, a fine and subtle view which can only be grasped by a man who can rise to subtle spiritual heights. To understand Schiller requires very definite conditions.
For this reason, there is something less intense in the second half of the century, in the honour done to Schiller; the growing natural science produced a cooler attitude in men. Truth was now seen only in what was tangible: which is what Schiller never did. His ideal was always truth, but truth on a spiritual basis. We can no longer grasp as true reality what lived at the time in men's feelings. Schiller had grown up out of the greatness and breadth of his spiritual horizons: the world of Goethe, Lessing, Herder and Winckelmann. When external reality thrust forward its harsh demands, there was no real relationship left between the true and the beautiful.
A man like Ludwig Büchner has been able to build up a purely materialistic philosophy on the basis of natural science; but Schiller is not for a materialistic age, and if we appeal to his views in such an age, we are only playing with words. Thus Schiller dropped into the background. Goethe could still mean something to the second half of the century because in him the artistic can be separated from a world conception (Weltanschauung): even Herman Grimm concentrates his eulogy on Goethe as the artist. True, if we are dealing exactly with Goethe, we shall see that in his case also it will not do to separate the Weltanschauung from the man; still a purely aesthetic view is possible with him, whereas with Schiller it is not. Nowadays art is regarded as something that deals with the realm of phantasy. That, in itself, is a rejection of the world-conception, Weltanschauung.
A gulf has grown up between the spirit of the age in which Schiller lived and that of our own age:—indeed a recent biographer of Schiller, Otto Brahm, could begin his book with the words: “In my youth I hated Schiller.” He only fought his way to an understanding of Schiller by his learning and the increase of knowledge. Schiller has had many learned biographers, but the feeling of the age has become a stranger to the truly Schillerian problems; nor can it understand how what we nowadays call knowledge can be brought into harmony with what Schiller stands for. As I said, the artists of an earlier age, a Raphael or Michelangelo, grew up out of the life of their time. That was no longer the case after Goethe's death. An artist, for instance, like Peter Cornelius, creates wholly out of his thoughts, being no longer in any relation to the spiritual content of his time. He felt himself especially a stranger in Berlin; attracted towards Catholicism in which he believed that he saw the basis for his artistic ideal, he stood face to face with the life of his time, unable to take any part in it.
The gulf between life and art becomes ever greater. And so Schiller becomes more and more a stranger to the life of the Nineteenth Century. Men like Jacob Minor may write large tomes about his youth, but everything shows really how Schiller's views have become out of touch with our times.
What we recognise as true nowadays, has grown up out of the attitude of natural science. Aesthetics also have passed from an idealist to a realist attitude. Indeed, this revolution was so violent that Vischer could not make up his mind to publish a second edition of his Aesthetics which he had written from an idealist standpoint:—the very views he had formerly supported had become unintelligible to him. The ideas of the first half of the century had become so foreign to the leading thinkers of the second half that we find men criticising themselves like that.
After such a development we shall understand how Schiller stands in the present. E. du Bois Reymond, for instance, who after all derived his diction wholly from Schiller, was able to say in a speech about Goethe's “Faust,” that it was really a failure, and that really Faust ought to have married Gretchen, made some valuable discoveries and led a useful existence. The real significance of “Faust” was thus unintelligible to an important thinker of the Nineteenth Century.
This attitude was the dominant one, and no one dared to oppose it or to emphasise the rights of the ideal. Even art called itself realist. Any idealist tinge failed to find approval with the public. It was only honest for men to admit that they felt no liking for Schiller. It was no longer admitted that the beautiful was an expression of the true; for the truth was regarded as that which can be seen by the eye or touched by the hand. Schiller had never believed that; he had always found the truth in great ideal laws. Art was for him the representation of the spiritual hidden in the actual, not of the everyday things. The true which Schiller sought is recognised nowadays neither by science nor by art; no one understands nowadays what Schiller understood by the true. Hence comes that opposition; for we understand by the true what Schiller called the indigence of the sense-world. It was in the harmony between the spiritual and the poverty of the sense-world that Schiller looked for the ideal of Freedom. What we call “artistic” nowadays can never be called so in the sense in which Schiller talked of it.
There is a further gulf between present-day views and those of Schiller. Our age has lost the intense passion to penetrate into the world's inner core. This deep seriousness which broods over all Schiller's views no longer exists. Hence in our times we try to compare, quite superficially, two so fundamentally different men as Tolstoi and Nietzsche.
Materialism has become a world philosophy, a gospel, an integral element of our times. Particularly, it is the great masses of people who think like that and admit no other philosophy; they will only admit as true what natural science allows them to call so. Let me tell you a little story to illustrate what that leads to: It was the last time when a philosophy appeared, which though pessimistic, had an ideal colouring; Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious. The book was attacked a good deal; and there was one particularly effective criticism under the title of The Unconscious from the point of view of the theory of descent and of Darwinism. This book was anonymously published. The scientists welcomed it as the best refutation of Hartmann's work. In the second edition the author's name was given: it was Eduard v. Hartmann. He wanted to show that it is easy to drag oneself down to the materialistic view when one has reached a higher view. Men at a higher level can understand a lower level, but not vice versa. You will always find that men whose standpoint is that of idealism are ready to admit the materialistic view to a considerable extent. A man whose standpoint is that of Schiller can judge modern art in its materialist view, but the materialist cannot, contrariwise, understand the idealist.
Schiller was a believer in the ideal. There is a deep saying of his: “What religion do I subscribe to? None of all those that you name. And why none of them? Because of religion.” That is the greatness in the man, that his aesthetic creed is also his religious and that his artistic creation was his form of religious worship. The fact that his ideal lived in this way within him is part of his greatness. We should not ask if Schiller can mean anything to us nowadays; on the contrary he must come to mean something for us again, because we have forgotten how to understand what goes beyond the purely material. Then we again shall be able to understand an art which seeks to unveil the secrets of existence.
But there is a new ideal of freedom we can learn to understand through him. We hear a good deal of talk just now about freedom, and we all want to be free from political and economic bonds. Schiller looked at freedom in a different way. How can man become free in himself? How is he to become free from his lower desires, free from the necessities of logic and reason? Schiller—who wrote about the State and life in society—found a new aim and a hint of new ideals, which still he in the future. If we want to claim with justice, at the present time, that the individual should develop freely, we must understand harmony in Schiller's sense, het us measure the demands of today with Schiller's; let us compare what we expect nowadays with what Schiller demanded; take two instances, Max Stirner and Schiller. What could be more unlike, more diametrically opposed than Stirner's The Individual and his Property and Schiller's Aesthetic Letters: When Schiller's influence was declining, Stirner's was increasing. Stirner had remained neglected all the time until he was re-discovered in the 1890's and his work became the foundation of what buzzes about as individualism. There is a good deal of justification in this attitude of today, but the particular form which it takes must strike us as immoderate. In Schiller's Aesthetic Letters the demand for the liberation of human personality is put forward still more radically. Schiller's ideal was much less provincial than Stirner's. The ideal of men working together who have become inwardly free, appears to others as an exhortation. When men live in such freedom there are no laws and commandments.
Nowadays we seem to think that chaos must result where men are not hemmed in by police regulations; yet we must remember that an enormous proportion of things goes on without laws. Every day you can see how men make way for each other in the most crowded streets without our having to have a law about it. Ninety-eight per cent, of our life goes on without laws; and someday it will be possible to get on completely without law and force. But for that man must be inwardly free. The ideal which Schiller puts before us is one of infinite sublimity. Art is to lead man to freedom. Art, growing out of the substance of our culture, is to become the great educator of the world. Artists are not to provide us with photographs of the external world, but to be the heralds of a higher spiritual reality. Then artists will once more create, as they did formerly, from, out of the ideal. Schiller wanted to lead men through art to a new comprehension of reality; and he meant it very seriously.
If this age of ours is to understand Schiller properly, it must unite all that it has won of knowledge, into a higher idealism which shall in time raise that knowledge to spiritual reality. Then there will be men who can speak in the spirit of Schiller from the depths of their hearts. It is of little use to open the theatres in Schiller's honour if the people who sit in them have no understanding for him. Only when we have attained to such an understanding of Schiller will there be men, who, like Herman Grimm about Goethe, will be able to speak about Schiller from the depth of the heart.
Was kann die Gegenwart von Schiller lernen?
Man darf nicht verkennen, daß das Verhältnis des Publikums in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts zu Schiller ein ganz anderes werden mußte als in der ersten; schon durch die Erscheinungen war das bedingt, die ich Ihnen angedeutet habe. Schiller stand zur Wahrheit so, daß er sagen konnte: «Durch das Morgenrot des Schönen trittst du in der Erkenntnis Land.» Ihm war die Wahrheit das Schöne. Das Kunstwerk sollte sein eine Gestaltung der Idee; der Idee, von der man sich das Weltall durchflutet dachte. Es war eine ideale Weltanschauung, eine feine, subtile, die nur erfassen kann, wer sich zu subtilen, geistigen Höhen aufzuschwingen vermag. Die Grundlage für Schillers Verständnis bedingt etwas, was bedeutende Anforderungen stellt. Deshalb liegt in der zweiten Hälfte des Jahrhunderts in der Schiller-Verehrung etwas weniger Intensives; durch die heraufkommende Naturwissenschaft war ein kühleres Verhältnis bedingt. Man sah nun das Wahre nur in dem, was sinnlich ist. Das hat Schiller nie getan. Die Ideale Schillers waren immer Wahrheit, aber Wahrheiten auf geistiger Grundlage. Was dazumal den Leuten im Gefühl saß, ist heute nicht mehr greifbare Wirklichkeit. Die Größe und Weite des geistigen Horizonts war es, aus der Schiller herausgewachsen ist: es ist die Welt Goethes, Lessings, Herders und Winckelmanns. Als die äußere Wirklichkeit drängte mit ihren derberen Anforderungen, gab es zwischen dem Schönen und Wahren keinen rechten Zusammenhang mehr. Auf Grundlage der naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse konnte ein Ludwig Büchner eine rein materialistische Weltanschauung konstruieren. Schiller aber ist nicht für ein materialistisches Zeitalter; es wird zur Phrase, wenn man sich in einem solchen auf seine Anschauungen beruft. So kam es, daß Schiller etwas in den Hintergrund trat. Goethe konnte für die zweite Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts noch etwas sein, weil sich in ihm das Künstlerische abtrennen läßt von der Weltanschauung. Selbst bei Herman Grimm tönt alles aus in einen Panegyrikus auf Goethe, den Künstler. Zwar für den, der sich ganz genau mit Goethe beschäftigt, ist es fraglos, daß es auch bei ihm nicht angängig ist, ihn von seiner Weltanschauung zu trennen. Immerhin ist bei Goethe eine rein ästhetische Betrachtung möglich; bei Schiller ist ein solcher Standpunkt nicht möglich. Heute wird die Kunst betrachtet als etwas, was sich mit dem Gebiete der Phantasie beschäftigt. Darin liegt schon eine Ablehnung der Weltanschauung.
So hat sich eine Kluft gebildet zwischen dem Geiste der Zeit, in der Schiller lebte, und dem der unsrigen, aus der heraus es möglich war, daß ein neuer Schiller-Biograph, Otto Brahm, der aus der Scherer-Schule hervorgegangen ist, sein Buch mit den Worten beginnen konnte: «Ich war in meiner Jugend ein Schillerhasser.» Er hat sich erst nach und nach durch Gelehrsamkeit, durch Erkenntnis, zu einer Verehrung Schillers hindurchgerungen. Schiller hat gelehrte Biographen gefunden, aber das Fühlen der Zeit ist schon fremd geworden den eigentlich Schillerschen Aufgaben. Es kann nicht verstehen, wie man das, was man heute Erkenntnis nennt, in Einklang bringen kann mit dem, was Schiller vertritt. Wie schon gesagt, die Künstler einer früheren Zeit, ein Raffael, ein Michelangelo, sie sind herausgewachsen aus dem Leben ihrer Epoche. So war es nicht mehr nach Goethes Tode. Wir sehen, wie ein Künstler, wie Peter Cornelius, ganz aus dem Gedanken heraus schafft; er stand nicht mehr in irgendeinem Zusammenhange mit der geistigen Substanz seiner Zeit. Er fühlte sich besonders in Berlin immer fremd; hingezogen zu dem Katholizismus, in dem er sein Kunstideal gegründet glaubte, stand er dem Leben seiner Zeit teilnahmslos gegenüber.
So wird die Kluft zwischen Leben und Kunst immer größer. Wie fremd steht daher Schiller in dem Leben des 19. Jahrhunderts. Wohl hat Jakob Minor dicke Bände über Schillers Jugend geschrieben, aber alles weist darauf hin, wie fremd geworden Schillers Anschauungen unserer Zeit sind. Was man heute als wahr erkennt, ist aus der naturwissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung herausgewachsen. So ist auch die Ästhetik aus einer idealistischen in eine realistische Richtung hineingekommen. Dieser Umschwung war ein so starker, daß sich Vischer nicht zu einer zweiten Auflage seiner «Ästhetik» entschließen konnte, die in idealistischem Sinne geschrieben war; jetzt war er irre geworden an dem, was er bisher vertreten. So fremd waren für führende Geister die Empfindungen der ersten Hälfte des Jahrhunderts geworden, daß ein solcher Mann sich in dieser Weise selbst kritisiert.
Nach dieser Entwickelung werden wir verstehen, wie Schiller in unserer Gegenwart steht. So war es möglich, daß ein Mann wie E. Dw« Bois-Reymond, der doch selbst ganz in Schillers Diktion wurzelte, in einer Rede über Goethes «Faust» sagen konnte, «Faust» sei eigentlich ein verfehltes Werk, von Rechts wegen müsse Faust Gretchen heiraten, bedeutende Erfindungen machen, und so ein nützliches Dasein führen — und so weiter. Alles, was den Faust ausmacht, verstand ein bedeutender Mann des 19. Jahrhunderts nicht mehr.
Diese Richtung war ausschlaggebend geworden. Keiner wagt ihr zu widersprechen, niemand wagt das Recht des Idealen zu betonen. Selbst die Kunst nennt sich realistisch. Eine idealistische Deutung findet wenig Anklang bei dem Publikum. Ehrlich sind diejenigen, die gestehen, daß Schiller ihnen nicht sympathisch ist. Daß das Schöne eine Ausprägung des Wahren sei, gilt nicht mehr. Das Wahre wird genannt, was mit Augen gesehen, mit Händen getastet werden kann. Das Alltägliche wird das Wahre genannt. So war es nicht für Schiller; ihm lag das Wahre in den großen, ideellen Gesetzen. Die Kunst war für ihn die Wiedergabe des im Wirklichen verborgenen Geistigen, nicht des Alltäglichen. Das Wahre, das Schiller suchte, wird heute weder von der Wissenschaft noch von der Kunst anerkannt; niemand versteht heute, was Schiller unter dem Wahren verstand. Deshalb dieser Gegensatz. Man versteht heute unter dem Wahren das, was Schiller das Sinnlich-Notdürftige nannte. In der Harmonie zwischen dem Geistigen und dem Sinnlich-Notwendigen sucht Schiller das Freiheitsideal. Was man heute das Künstlerische nennt, kann man nimmermehr im Sinne Schillers das Künstlerische nennen. Noch eine Kluft liegt zwischen den heutigen und Schillers Anschauungen. Unsere Zeit hat nicht mehr den tiefen intensiven Drang nach einem Eindringen in den inneren Kern der Welt. Dieser tiefe Ernst, der wie ein Duft über Schillers Anschauungen liegt, dieser tiefe Ernst ist nirgends mehr vorhanden.
So versucht unsere Zeit, große Geister von so grundsätzlicher Verschiedenheit wie Tolstoi und Nietzsche in ganz oberflächlicher Weise nebeneinander zu stellen. Der Materialismus ist zur Weltanschauung geworden, er ist ein Evangelium geworden, ein integrierender Bestandteil unserer Zeit. Besonders die großen Massen stehen auf rein materialistischer Grundlage, sie wollen keine andere Weltanschauung gelten lassen. Wahr gilt ihnen nur, was die Naturwissenschaft erlaubt, wirklich zu nennen. Zu welchen Vorkommnissen das führt, dafür eine kleine Episode. Es war zum letztenmal, da eine idealistisch gefärbte, wenn auch pessimistische Weltanschauung auf die Welt wirkte: Eduard von Hartmanns «Philosophie des Unbewußten».
Die Schrift erfuhr zahlreiche Angriffe. So erschien auch eine scharfe Kritik unter dem Titel: «Das Unbewußte vom Standpunkte der Deszendenztheorie und des Darwinismus.» Das Buch trug keinen Verfassernamen. Von seiten der Naturwissenschafter wurde es als beste Widerlegung der Schrift E. von Hartmanns bezeichnet. Bei der zweiten Auflage nannte sich der Verfasser: er war E. von Hartmann selbst. Er hatte zeigen wollen, daß es leicht ist, sich zu dem materialistischen Standpunkt herunter zu schrauben, wenn man einen höheren erklommen hat. Die auf einem höheren Standpunkt stehen, können einen niedrigeren, die auf niederem nicht den höheren verstehen. Es ist durchaus so, daß derjenige, der auf idealistischem Standpunkte steht, ganz bereit ist, in gewisser Weise den materialistischen anzuerkennen. Derjenige, der auf dem Standpunkt Schillers steht, kann Büchner, kann die moderne Kunst in ihrer materialistischen Anschauung beurteilen, nicht aber kann umgekehrt der Materialist den Idealisten durchschauen.
Schiller war ein Gläubiger des Ideals. Ein tiefer Spruch von ihm lautet: «Welche Religion ich bekenne? Keine von allen, die du mir nennst. — Und warum keine? — Aus Religion.»
Das ist das Große an ihm, daß sein ästhetisches Bekenntnis zugleich sein religiöses, daß sein künstlerisches Schaffen sein Kultus war. Daß so sein Ideal in ihm lebte, das ist ein Bestandteil seiner Größe. Und so fragen wir nicht: «Kann uns Schiller heute etwas sein?» Im Gegenteil, er muß uns wieder etwas werden, darum, weil wir verlernt haben, das über das rein materielle Hinausgehende zu verstehen. Man wird dann eine Kunst wieder verstehen, welche die Geheimnisse des Daseins enthüllen will.
Aber auch ein neues Freiheitsideal werden wir durch ihn verstehen lernen. Heute hört man viel von Freiheit reden, frei von staatlichen, von ökonomischen Fesseln wünscht man zu sein. Schiller hat die Freiheit anders aufgefaßt. Wie wird der Mensch in sich selber frei? Wie wird er frei von seinen niedrigen Begierden, frei von dem Zwange der Logik und Vernunft? Schiller, der über den Staat und das Leben in der Gesellschaft geschrieben hat, kommt da zu einem neuen Ziele, zu einem Hinweis auf Zukunftsideale. Wenn man in unserer Zeit mit Recht fordern will, daß das Individuum sich frei entfalten könne, muß man die Harmonie im Sinne Schillers auffassen. Messen wir, was man heute verlangt, an dem was Schiller gefordert hat. Zwei Erscheinungen wollen wir ins Auge fassen: Max Stirner und Schiller. Was kann unähnlicher, entgegengesetzter erscheinen, als Stirners «Der Einzige und sein Eigentum» und Schillers «Ästhetische Briefe». In der Zeit, als Schillers Einfluß in den Hintergrund trat, kam Stirners Einfluß herauf. Stirner, der unberücksichtigt geblieben war die ganze Zeit hindurch, wurde in den neunziger Jahren neu entdeckt, sein Werk bildete die Grundlage dessen, was als Individualismus herumschwirrt. Diese Empfindung unserer Zeit hat etwas Berechtigtes, muß aber, wie sie jetzt erscheint, als etwas Ungezügeltes erscheinen. In Schillers «Ästhetischen Briefen» wird die Forderung der Befreiung der menschlichen Persönlichkeit fast noch radikaler erhoben. Weniger spießbürgerlich als Stirner hat Schiller dieses Ideal aufgestellt. Das Ideal des Zusammenwirkens der Menschen, die innerlich frei geworden sind, tritt für andere Menschen als eine Mahnung auf. Gebote, Zwangsvorschriften, gibt es nicht, wo Menschen so leben. Heute scheint man zu glauben, es müsse alles in Unordnung geraten, wenn die Menschen nicht von Polizeimaßregeln eingeengt sind. Und doch muß man sich klar sein: Unzähliges in der Weltgeschichte geht ohne Gesetze. Täglich kann man beobachten, wie ganz von selbst in den belebtesten Straßen die Menschen einander ausweichen, ohne daß eine Vorschrift darüber besteht. Achtundneunzig Prozent unseres Lebens gehen ohne Gesetze vor sich. Und es wird einst möglich sein, ganz ohne Gesetze, ohne Zwang auszukommen. Dazu aber muß der Mensch innerlich frei geworden sein.
Ein Ideal von unermeßlicher Größe ist es, das Schiller vor uns hinstellt. Die Kunst soll den Menschen zur Freiheit führen. Die Kunst, herausgewachsen aus der Kultursubstanz, soll zur großen Welterzieherin werden. Nicht Photographien der äußeren Welt sollten die Künstler liefern: sie sollten Boten sein einer höheren geistigen Wirklichkeit. Dann werden die Künstler wieder schaffen wie früher, aus dem Ideal heraus. Durch die Kunst hindurch zu einer neuen Erfassung der Wirklichkeit wollte Schiller leiten; er meinte es ernst damit.
Wenn unsere Zeit Schiller recht verstehen will, muß sie zusammenfassen, was sie errungen hat an Erkenntnissen, zu einem höheren Idealismus, der sie emporhebt zu der geistigen Wirklichkeit. Dann werden auch diejenigen kommen, die wieder aus der Tiefe ihres Herzens aus Schillers Geiste heraus sprechen können.
Wenig nützt es, zu Schillers Ehren die Theater zu öffnen, wenn die Leute, die darinnen sitzen, kein Verständnis für Schiller haben. Erst wenn wir uns so zum Verständnis Schillers erheben, werden auch Leute da sein, die, wie Herman Grimm über Goethe, so aus tiefstem Herzen über Schiller sprechen können.
What can the present learn from Schiller?
It should not be overlooked that the public's relationship to Schiller in the second half of the 19th century had to be very different from that in the first half; this was already conditioned by the phenomena I have indicated to you. Schiller's attitude toward truth was such that he could say: “Through the dawn of beauty, you enter the land of knowledge.” For him, truth was beauty. The work of art was to be a manifestation of the idea; the idea that permeated the universe. It was an ideal worldview, a refined, subtle one that could only be grasped by those capable of rising to subtle, spiritual heights. The basis for Schiller's understanding requires something that makes significant demands. That is why the veneration of Schiller was somewhat less intense in the second half of the century; the emergence of natural science led to a cooler relationship. People now saw truth only in what was sensual. Schiller never did that. Schiller's ideals were always truth, but truths based on the spiritual. What people felt back then is no longer a tangible reality today. It was the greatness and breadth of the spiritual horizon that Schiller grew out of: it is the world of Goethe, Lessing, Herder, and Winckelmann. When external reality pressed in with its cruder demands, there was no longer any real connection between beauty and truth. On the basis of scientific knowledge, Ludwig Büchner was able to construct a purely materialistic worldview. But Schiller is not for a materialistic age; it becomes a cliché to refer to his views in such an age. Thus it came about that Schiller receded somewhat into the background. Goethe was still able to be something for the second half of the 19th century because the artistic in him can be separated from his worldview. Even with Herman Grimm, everything sounds like a panegyric to Goethe, the artist. Admittedly, for those who study Goethe in great detail, it is unquestionable that it is not possible to separate him from his worldview. Nevertheless, a purely aesthetic view is possible with Goethe; with Schiller, such a point of view is not possible. Today, art is regarded as something that deals with the realm of imagination. This in itself implies a rejection of the worldview.
Thus, a gap has formed between the spirit of the time in which Schiller lived and that of our own, from which it was possible for a new Schiller biographer, Otto Brahm, who emerged from the Scherer school, to begin his book with the words: “In my youth, I was a Schiller hater.” Only gradually, through scholarship and insight, did he come to revere Schiller. Schiller has found learned biographers, but the spirit of the age has become alien to Schiller's actual tasks. It cannot understand how what we today call knowledge can be reconciled with what Schiller stands for. As already mentioned, the artists of an earlier time, such as Raphael and Michelangelo, grew out of the life of their era. This was no longer the case after Goethe's death. We see how an artist like Peter Cornelius creates entirely from his own ideas; he no longer had any connection with the intellectual substance of his time. He always felt particularly alienated in Berlin; attracted to Catholicism, in which he believed his artistic ideal was founded, he was indifferent to the life of his time.
Thus, the gap between life and art grows ever wider. How alien Schiller seems in the life of the 19th century. Jakob Minor may have written thick volumes about Schiller's youth, but everything points to how alien Schiller's views have become to our time. What we recognize as true today has grown out of the scientific worldview. Aesthetics, too, has moved from an idealistic to a realistic direction. This shift was so powerful that Vischer could not bring himself to publish a second edition of his “Aesthetics,” which was written in an idealistic spirit; he had now lost faith in what he had previously advocated. The sentiments of the first half of the century had become so foreign to leading minds that such a man criticized himself in this way.
After this development, we will understand how Schiller stands in our present. Thus it was possible for a man like E. de Bois-Reymond, who was himself deeply rooted in Schiller's diction, to say in a speech on Goethe's Faust that Faust was actually a failed work, that Faust should rightly marry Gretchen, make important inventions, and thus lead a useful life—and so on. Everything that defines Faust was no longer understood by an important man of the 19th century.
This direction had become decisive. No one dares to contradict it, no one dares to emphasize the right of the ideal. Even art calls itself realistic. An idealistic interpretation finds little resonance with the public. Those who admit that they do not like Schiller are honest. The idea that beauty is an expression of truth no longer applies. Truth is defined as that which can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands. The everyday is called truth. This was not the case for Schiller; for him, truth lay in the great, ideal laws. For him, art was the reproduction of the spiritual hidden in reality, not of the everyday. The truth that Schiller sought is recognized today neither by science nor by art; no one today understands what Schiller meant by truth. Hence this contradiction. Today, what is understood as the true is what Schiller called the sensual and the necessary. Schiller seeks the ideal of freedom in the harmony between the spiritual and the sensual and necessary. What is called artistic today can no longer be called artistic in Schiller's sense. There is another gap between today's views and Schiller's. Our time no longer has the deep, intense urge to penetrate the inner core of the world. This deep seriousness, which hangs like a fragrance over Schiller's views, this deep seriousness is nowhere to be found anymore.
Thus, our time attempts to juxtapose great minds as fundamentally different as Tolstoy and Nietzsche in a very superficial way. Materialism has become a worldview, it has become a gospel, an integral part of our time. The masses in particular stand on a purely materialistic basis; they do not want to accept any other worldview. For them, only what science allows to be called real is true. A small episode illustrates the consequences of this. It was the last time that an idealistic, albeit pessimistic, worldview had an impact on the world: Eduard von Hartmann's “Philosophy of the Unconscious.”
The work was subjected to numerous attacks. A sharp critique appeared under the title: “The Unconscious from the Standpoint of Descent Theory and Darwinism.” The book did not bear the author's name. Natural scientists described it as the best refutation of E. von Hartmann's work. In the second edition, the author revealed himself: it was E. von Hartmann himself. He had wanted to show that it is easy to descend to the materialistic point of view once one has climbed to a higher one. Those who stand on a higher standpoint can understand a lower one, but those on a lower standpoint cannot understand the higher one. It is certainly true that those who stand on an idealistic standpoint are quite ready to acknowledge the materialistic one in a certain way. Those who stand on Schiller's standpoint can judge Büchner and modern art in their materialistic view, but conversely, the materialist cannot see through the idealist.
Schiller was a believer in the ideal. One of his profound sayings is: "Which religion do I profess? None of those you mention. — And why none? — Because of religion."
The great thing about him is that his aesthetic commitment was also his religious commitment, that his artistic work was his cult. The fact that his ideal lived within him is part of his greatness. And so we do not ask: “Can Schiller mean anything to us today?” On the contrary, he must mean something to us again, because we have forgotten how to understand anything beyond the purely material. We will then once again understand an art that seeks to reveal the mysteries of existence.
But through him we will also learn to understand a new ideal of freedom. Today we hear a lot of talk about freedom; people want to be free from state and economic constraints. Schiller understood freedom differently. How does a person become free within themselves? How do they become free from their base desires, free from the constraints of logic and reason? Schiller, who wrote about the state and life in society, arrives at a new goal, a reference to future ideals. If we want to rightly demand that individuals be able to develop freely in our time, we must understand harmony in Schiller's sense. Let us measure what is demanded today against what Schiller demanded. Let us consider two phenomena: Max Stirner and Schiller. What could appear more dissimilar, more opposed, than Stirner's “The Ego and Its Own” and Schiller's “Aesthetic Letters.” At a time when Schiller's influence was receding into the background, Stirner's influence was on the rise. Stirner, who had been ignored throughout this period, was rediscovered in the 1890s, and his work formed the basis of what is now referred to as individualism. This sentiment of our time has some justification, but as it appears now, it must seem unrestrained. In Schiller's “Aesthetic Letters,” the demand for the liberation of the human personality is raised in an even more radical way. Schiller established this ideal in a less bourgeois manner than Stirner. The ideal of cooperation between people who have become inwardly free serves as a warning to others. There are no commandments or coercive regulations where people live in this way. Today, people seem to believe that everything must fall into disorder if people are not restricted by police measures. And yet we must be clear: countless things in world history happen without laws. Every day, we can observe how people automatically avoid each other on the busiest streets without there being any rules about it. Ninety-eight percent of our lives go on without laws. And one day it will be possible to get by without laws or coercion at all. But for that to happen, people must have become free within themselves.
Schiller presents us with an ideal of immeasurable greatness. Art should lead people to freedom. Art, grown out of the substance of culture, should become the great educator of the world. Artists should not provide photographs of the outer world: they should be messengers of a higher spiritual reality. Then artists will create again as they did in the past, out of the ideal. Schiller wanted to lead us to a new understanding of reality through art; he was serious about this.
If our time wants to understand Schiller correctly, it must summarize what it has achieved in terms of knowledge into a higher idealism that elevates it to spiritual reality. Then there will also be those who can speak again from the depths of their hearts in the spirit of Schiller.
It is of little use to open the theaters in Schiller's honor if the people sitting in them have no understanding of Schiller. Only when we rise to an understanding of Schiller will there be people who, like Herman Grimm about Goethe, can speak about Schiller from the bottom of their hearts.