Schiller and Our Times
GA 51
21 January 1905, Berlin
I. Schiller's Life and Characteristic Quality
It will be a hundred years on 9th May, 1905, since Schiller died, and the educated world in Germany will certainly celebrate the memory of this event. Three generations lie between Schiller and us; and so our first task would appear to be to survey the meaning of Schiller to us today. The last great Schiller festival took place in 1859, but with quite a different significance from what ours can have today. Times have changed enormously. The pictures, problems and thoughts which occupy our contemporaries are quite different. The celebration held in 1859 was something which penetrated deep into the heart of the German people.
In 1859 there were still men who themselves lived wholly in the ideas which had been brought out by Schiller's poetic power. It may be that this year we shall see more exuberant festivities; but no such participation from the depths of the soul is any longer possible.
The question therefore forces itself on us, what has happened since then? and how can Schiller still mean anything to us? The grand pictures (and ideas) of the Goethe-Schiller period have vanished. In 1859 these ideas were still incorporated in individuals with whom the older among us became acquainted when we were young. These leading spirits, who were rooted completely in the traditions of the time, are now with the dead. The youngest among us have no longer any knowledge of them.
In the person of my teacher Schröer, who put the Goethe period before us in enthusiastic fashion, I had been privileged to know a man who was rooted wholly in that period. In Herman Grimm the last example died of those whose souls were completely at one with that period. today, all that is past history. Other problems concern us. Political and social questions have become so pressing that we no longer understand that intimate artistic attitude.
Men of that period would have a strange effect on us; we have lost their deep, “soulful” attitude to art. That is no reproach; our times have become hard. Let us take three leading thinkers of the present and see how differently they talk of the movements of their time.
First, Ibsen: we see how he deals comprehensively with the problems of our modern culture, how he has found the most penetrating melody to suit the modern heart and a civilisation which is passing into chaos. Then, Zola: What is to be the relation at the present between our art and a life which is threatening to explode in social struggles—that is the question he thrusts upon us. That life appears to us rigid and impenetrable, decided by quite other forces than our fantasy and soul. Lastly, Tolstoi, who started from art, and only later became a preacher and social reformer. today such a purely aesthetic culture as Schröer depicted to us for the Goethe-Schiller period seems quite impossible.
At that period the decisive problem of life was what we might call the aesthetic conscience. Beauty, taste and artistic sensitivity were regarded as problems quite as serious and pressing as politics and freedom are today. Art was regarded as something which must have its part in the machinery of culture. But today, Tolstoi, who has created masterpieces in the sphere of art, deserts his art and looks for other means of speaking to the sensibility of his contemporaries.
Schiller therefore is not to be judged in our times as he was in the Eighteenth Century. But what has remained, is the impressive depths of his “Weltanschauung” (worldview). Quantities of questions receive a wholly new light as a result of Schiller's view of the world. Our business in these lectures is to try to look at them from this standpoint.
In dealing with the various problems of our times and our culture, in science as in artistic effort, there is nowadays great confusion and obscurity. Every youthful author thinks it his business to establish a new philosophy; literature is choked with books on questions which have been long ago solved. Questions are unfolded which, in the form we see, reach no conclusion because those who are trying to solve them have not really occupied themselves with the problems. Often indeed, the questions are not even asked properly, so that the problem really lies in the way in which the questions are put.
There are two currents out of which we can see the personality of Schiller growing up:—on the one side the growth of materialism, on the other the longing for the assertion of the personality. What we call “Illumination” Aufklärung has its roots in these two currents.
Age-old traditions were tottering during the Eighteenth Century. In the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries the deepest questions of the human spirit were solved on the basis of tradition; and no shocks were dealt to man's fundamental relationship with the world and its deepest foundations.
Now came a difference; it was impossible to solve the basic problems dealing with the human life of the spirit in the same sense as had been done for centuries. In France, stimulated by English “Sensationalism,” a rationalistic, materialistic philosophy was growing up. The soul was beginning to be deduced from material conditions; everything was to be explained out of the physical. The Encyclopaedists made spirit originate in matter. The ups and downs in the world around us were a whirl of atomic movement. “Man is a machine”—that was more or less the form in which La Mettrie formulated his materialistic creed. Goethe already complained, when he grew acquainted with the writings of these French materialists (Holbach's Système de la Nature), and was indignant at men's presumption in trying to explain the whole world by a few barren ideas.
By the side of this was a second stream which derived from Rousseau. Rousseau's writings made an enormous impression on the most important men of the time. There is a story about Kant, who was a great pedant, and took his daily walk so punctually that the inhabitants of Königsberg could set their clocks by him. But there was one occasion when to the astonishment of the inhabitants the philosopher did not appear for some days: he had been reading Rousseau, whose writings had gripped him so hard that he had forgotten his daily walk.
The foundations of a whole civilisation had been shaken by Rousseau. He put the question whether mankind had risen as a consequence of civilisation; and his answer was a negative. In his view men were happier at a stage of nature than at their present stage when they allowed their personality to decay in itself.
In times when men, basing themselves on tradition, still believed they knew something of the relationships of the world, they were not so intent on the personality. Now, when the personality had cut asunder the bonds between itself and the world, men began to ask how that personality was to establish itself firmly in the world.
They believed that it was impossible to know anything about the deepest foundations of the world and the soul. But if, as a result, there was nothing any longer secure in the world, the longing towards better material conditions was bound to increase in everyone. The revolutionary efforts of the Eighteenth Century had their origin here; connected with the materialistic current. A good Christian of the Seventeenth Century could not have spoken thus of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. This striving after liberty (freedom) must be regarded as the fundamental current of the time.
Schiller was young when these ideas of freedom were ripening. Rousseau's ideas had, as we have just said, a colossal influence on the most important men in Germany, like Kant, Herder and Wieland. The young Schiller was also fascinated; and we find him, even at the Karlsschule, engaged in reading Rousseau, Voltaire, etc.
The age had reached a dead end. The upper classes had lost all moral soundness. An external tyranny dominated in school as well. In Schiller there was a peculiar depth of temperament which appeared, even in boyhood, as a tendency towards religion. For that reason he had, moreover, originally intended to study theology; his whole disposition urged him to the deepest problems of existence. The peculiar form taken in Germany by this striving for freedom was in the union of piety with an infinite longing for emancipation. The urge towards the freedom of personality, and not merely religion, is also the atmosphere of Klopstock's Messiah: it is in his religious feeling that the German wants to be free. The Messiah made a great impression on Schiller.
Schiller chose the faculty of medicine; and the way in which he tackled the subject, is related to the questions which were particularly occupying him. He tried to reach some conclusion on these questions by a serious study of nature. The teaching in the Karlsschule was to have a deeply comprehensive and all-round effect on him. The weaknesses to be seen in modern secondary education did not exist in that school. The natural sciences were studied thoroughly; and the centre of study was philosophy. Deepest questions of metaphysics and logic were discussed.
Thus Schiller entered on his medical studies with a philosophic spirit. The way in which he took them is important and significant for his life. We cannot understand Schiller wholly if we do not read the two dissertations which he wrote after finishing his studies. They deal with the questions:
What is the relation between spirit and matter?
What are the relations of the animal and spiritual natures in man?
Of the first only little survives. In the second Schiller puts to himself the question how we have to understand the working of the material in the human body.
For Schiller, even the material body has something spiritual. There are men who see in the body only something low and animal. There is no depth of content in a view which thus lowers and abominates the body; nor was it the view of the young Schiller. For Schiller the body is the temple of the spirit, built by wisdom, and not to no purpose possessing influence on the spirit.
What is the significance of the body for the soul? that is the question which Schiller, who felt the physical also to be holy, sought to solve. He describes, for example, how the quality of soul expresses itself in gesture and in feeling. He seeks to explain to himself, in fine and illuminating fashion, what remains permanently of the movement of soul thus expressed. He says at the close of his dissertation:—
Matter breaks up again, at death, into its ultimate elements, which henceforward wander through the kingdoms of nature in other forms and relationships, to serve other purposes. The soul departs, to exercise its power of thought in other spheres and to observe the universe from other sides. We may say, of course, that it has by no means exhausted the possibilities of this sphere, that it might have left this sphere more perfect; but do we know that this sphere is lost to it? We lay aside many a book which we do not understand, but which we may perhaps understand better some years hence.
This is how Schiller tries to make clear to himself the eternal of the spirit in its relation to physical nature—without however under-estimating the physical. That remained the central problem for all Schiller's life: How is man born from out the physical and how does his soul and the freedom of his personality stand towards the world? How is the soul to find its centre now that the old traditions have gone?
After having in the dramas of his youth thundered forth all his passion for emancipation, and won over the heart of his people, he busied himself with history and philosophy, and we touch the deepest problems of the history of civilisation or cultural history when we study the dramas of Schiller. Everyone had a piece of Marquis Posa in himself, and so Schiller's problem took on a new feature. The deepest questions in relation to the human soul and the meaning of life were discussed. He saw how little had been achievable on the external plane. In Germany the effort was being made to solve the problem of freedom in an artistic way; and that resulted in what we may call the “aesthetic conscience.” Schiller, too, had put the question to himself in this way; and he was sure that the artist could give man of the highest. He dealt with this problem in later years. In his “Letters on the aesthetic Education of Man” he says: Man acts unfreely in the external world from necessity; in the world of reason he is subject to necessity, to logic. Man is thus hedged in by the real world and by his ideal of reason. But there is another, middle condition between reason and the sense world, the aesthetic. Anyone who has artistic sensibility, appreciates the spirit in the sensible; he sees spirit enwoven in nature. Nature is to him a beauty-filled picture of the spiritual. The sense world is therefore only the expression of the spirit; in a work of art the sensible is ennobled by the spirit. The spirit is removed from the kingdom of necessity. In beauty man Eves as in freedom. Art is thus the intermediary between the senses and reason in the realm of freedom.
Goethe felt the same in presence of the works of art in Italy. In the beautiful the impulse of mankind towards freedom finds its satisfaction; here he is raised above iron necessity. Not by force or state-laws. In aesthetic enjoyment Schiller saw an education into harmony. As man, he feels himself free through art; and so he would like to transform the whole world into a work of art.
Here we see the difference between that time and our own. today, art is kept in a corner; then, Schiller wanted to give life an immediate impression through art. today Tolstoi has to condemn art, while Ibsen, in his art, becomes the critic of social life. At that time Schiller wanted to interfere direct on life by means of art. When he wrote his pamphlet on “The Stage as a moral Institution,” during the period when he was acting as reporter at the Mannheim theatre, he did it because he wanted to give a direct impulse to civilisation by means of art.
I. Schillers Leben und Eigenart
Hundert Jahre sind am 9. Mai 1905 seit Schillers Tode dahingegangen. Die deutsche gebildete Welt wird ohne Zweifel die Erinnerung an dieses Ereignis in festlicher Weise begehen.
Drei Generationen trennen uns von Schillers Tode. Da erscheint es notwendig, Umschau zu halten, was uns heute Schiller ist. Im Jahre 1859 fand die letzte große Schillerfeier statt in ganz anderer Weise, als es heute sein kann. Die Zeiten haben sich seitdem unermeßlich geändert: andere Bilder, Fragen, Gedanken sind es, die heute die Gemüter der Zeitgenossen beschäftigen. Als im Jahre 1859 die Schillerfeier stattfand, war sie etwas, was tief eingriff in die Herzen des deutschen Volkes. Damals gab es noch Persönlichkeiten, die selbst ganz in den Vorstellungen lebten, die durch Schillers dichterische Kraft hervorgebracht waren. Es ist möglich, daß diesmal rauschendere Festlichkeiten veranstaltet werden; eine solche Anteilnahme aus der Tiefe der Seele kann es nicht mehr geben. Die Frage drängt sich uns auf: Was ist seitdem vorgegangen und wie kann Schiller uns noch etwas sein? Der Schiller-Goethe-Zeit große Bilder sind dahingeschwunden. Damals waren jene Anschauungen noch verkörpert in Persönlichkeiten, die die älteren von uns in ihrer Jugendzeit kennengelernt haben. Diese führenden Geister, die ganz in den Traditionen jener Zeit wurzelten, sie gehören heute zu den Toten. Die Jüngsten kennen sie nicht mehr. In der Person meines Lehrers Schröer, der in begeisterter Weise uns die Goethezeit darstellte, war es mir vergönnt gewesen, einen Menschen kennenzulernen, der ganz wurzelte in den Traditionen jener Zeit. In Herman Grimm ist der letzte gestorben von denen, deren Seelen ganz verbunden waren mit jener Zeit.
Heute ist das alles Geschichte geworden. Andere Fragen beschäftigen uns heute. Politische Fragen, soziale Fragen sind so brennend geworden, daß wir jene intime Kunstbetrachtung nicht mehr verstehen. Sonderbar müßten uns die Schiller-Goethe-Zeitmenschen erscheinen. Verlorengegangen ist uns die intime seelenvolle Betrachtung der Kunst. Das soll kein Tadel sein; hart ist unsere Zeit geworden.
Sehen wir uns drei führende Geister der Gegenwart an: wie anders sprechen sie über das, was die Zeit bewegt. Zunächst Ibsen: Wir sehen ihn, wie er in umfassender Art die Kulturprobleme der Gegenwart schildert, er, der die eindringlichsten Töne gefunden hat, gerade für das Herz der Gegenwart, für eine ins Chaotische gehende Zivilisation. Dann Zola: Wie soll sich die heutige Kunst zum Leben verhalten, das in sozialen Kämpfen emporlodert —, das ist die Frage, die er aufwirft. Dieses Leben erscheint uns so fest, so undurchdringlich, von ganz anderen Mächten bestimmt, als es unsere Phantasie und Seele sind. Endlich Tolstoi: Er, der ausgegangen ist von der Kunst und hieraus erst geworden ist zum Prediger und Sozialreformator. Unmöglich erscheint heute eine rein ästhetische Kultur, wie Schröer für die Schiller-Goethe-Zeit sie uns charakterisierte. Dazumal war das, was wir das ästhetische Gewissen nennen können, zur maßgebenden Lebensfrage geworden. Man nahm Schönheit, Geschmack, künstlerisches Empfinden für so ernste und wichtige Fragen, wie heute die Politik und die Freiheit. Man betrachtete die Kunst als etwas, das eingreifen sollte in das Räderwerk der Kultur. Heute ist das anders: Tolstoi, der auf dem Gebiete der Kunst selbst ein höchstes geleistet hat, verläßt die Kunst und sucht nach anderen Mitteln, um zu dem Empfinden seiner Zeitgenossen zu sprechen.
Schiller ist daher für unsere Zeit nicht zu würdigen in der Weise, wie es im 18. Jahrhundert geschah. Was aber geblieben ist, das ist die eindringlichste Tiefe seiner Weltanschauung. Wir sehen zahlreiche Fragen in ganz neue Beleuchtung gerückt durch Schillers Weltbetrachtung. Versuchen wir sie von diesem Standpunkt aus zu betrachten. Es soll dies die Aufgabe dieser Vorträge sein.
Bei der Behandlung der Tages- und Kulturfragen, in der Wissenschaft wie im künstlerischen Streben, herrscht heute vielfach Verwirrung und Unklarheit. Jeder junge Schriftsteller glaubt sich berufen, eine neue Weltanschauung zu begründen. Die Literatur wird erfüllt mit Büchern über Fragen, die längst gelöst sind. Probleme werden aufgerollt, die sich, so wie sie uns entgegentreten, unreif ausnehmen, weil diejenigen, die sie zu lösen versuchen, sich nicht wirklich mit den Fragen beschäftigt haben. Oft werden die Fragen überhaupt nicht richtig gestellt. Das Problem liegt in der Fragestellung.
Aus zwei Strömungen sehen wir die Persönlichkeit Schillers hervorwachsen. Es ist dies einerseits das Emporkommen des Materialismus, und andererseits die Sehnsucht nach der Behauptung der Persönlichkeit. Was wir Aufklärung nennen, wurzelt in diesen beiden Strömungen. Uralte Traditionen waren im 18. Jahrhundert ins Wanken gekommen. Im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert noch wurden die tiefsten Fragen des Menschengeistes aus der Tradition heraus gelöst. An dem Verhältnis des Menschen zur Welt, zum Urgrunde der Welt wurde nicht gerüttelt.
Jetzt wurde es anders. Über das menschliche Geistesleben die Grundwahrheiten in dem Sinne zu lösen, wie sie Jahrhunderte gelöst, war unmöglich geworden. In Frankreich, angeregt durch den englischen Sensualismus, kam eine rationalistisch, materialistische Anschauung auf. Man begann die Seele abzuleiten aus materiellen Bedingungen, aus dem Stofflichen; man versuchte alles Geistige aus dem Physischen zu erklären. Die Enzyklopädisten ließen den Geist aus der Materie hervorgehen. Wirbel von Atombewegungen waren das Um und Auf, das man in der Welt sah. «Der Mensch ist eine Maschine», so ungefähr formuliert Lamettrie sein materialistisches Glaubensbekenntnis. Schon Goethe klagt, als ihm die Schriften dieser französischen Materialisten Holbachs «Syst&me de la nature» — bekannt werden, sein Unbehagen über die Anmaßung, mit ein paar hingepfahlten Begriffen die ganze Welt erklären zu wollen.
Daneben gab es eine andere Strömung, diejenige, die von Rousseau ausging. Rousseaus Schriften machten den größten Eindruck auf die bedeutendsten Männer jener Zeit. Es wird von Kant erzählt, daß er, der ein großer Pedant war, mit einer solchen Pünktlichkeit seinen täglichen Spaziergang unternahm, daß die Bewohner Königsbergs ihre Uhren darnach stellen konnten. Einmal aber blieb, zum größten Erstaunen der Bürger, der Philosoph für einige Tage aus; er hatte Rousseaus Schriften gelesen. Sie hatten ihn so gefesselt, daß er den gewohnten Spaziergang darüber vergaß.
Die Grundlage der gesamten Kultur war in Zweifel gestellt durch Rousseau. Er hatte die Frage aufgeworfen, ob die Menschheit durch die Kultur höher gekommen sei, und er verneinte diese Frage. Seiner Ansicht nach waren die Menschen in dem Naturzustande glücklicher gewesen als jetzt, wo sie die Persönlichkeit in sich verkommen ließen. In den Zeiten, als der Mensch, in alten Traditionen fußend, noch etwas zu wissen glaubte von den Zusammenhängen der Welt, war er nicht so sehr auf die Persönlichkeit gestellt. Jetzt, wo die Persönlichkeit zerschnitten hatte die Verbindungsketten zwischen sich und der Welt, kam die Frage heran: Wie soll diese Persönlichkeit wieder feststehen in der Welt? Über den Urgrund der Welt und der Seele glaubte man nichts wissen zu können. Wenn aber so nichts fest stand in der Welt, mußte der Drang nach besseren Zuständen mächtig in allen Herzen werden. Das revolutionäre Streben des 18. Jahrhunderts ging von hier aus. Es hing zusammen mit der materialistischen Strömung. Ein guter Christ des 17. Jahrhunderts hätte nicht so von Freiheit, Gleichheit und Brüderlichkeit sprechen können. Dieses Freiheitsstreben muß als ureigenste Strömung jener Zeit gelten.
Schiller war jung in der Zeit, als die Gedanken der Freiheit reiften. Rousseaus Ideale übten, wie gesagt, einen gewaltigen Eindruck auf die hervorragendsten deutschen Männer aus, wie Kant, Herder, Wieland und so weiter. Auch der junge Schiller wurde ergriffen von dieser Strömung. Wir finden ihn schon auf der Karlsschule damit beschäftigt, Rousseau, Voltaire und andere zu lesen. Es war die Zeit damals auf einen toten Punkt gekommen; die höheren Schichten hatten allen moralischen Halt verloren; die äußere Tyrannis herrschte auch auf der Schule. Bei Schiller finden wir eine eigentümliche Tiefe der Gemütsanlage, die schon im Knaben als Neigung zur Religion hervortrat. Ursprünglich beabsichtigte er daher auch, das theologische Studium zu wählen, sein ganzes Gemüt drängte ihn zu den tiefsten Fragen des Daseins. Es war eine Form jenes Freiheitsstrebens, das gerade in Deutschland diese besondere Gestaltung annahm: Frömmigkeit vereinigte sich mit unendlicher Sehnsucht nach Emanzipation. Der Persönlichkeits-Freiheitsdrang, nicht nur Religion, ist es auch, was aus Klopstocks «Messias» spricht. Gerade in seinem religiösen Empfinden wollte der Deutsche frei sein. Der «Messias» machte auf Schiller einen ungeheuren Eindruck.
Schiller wählte das Studium der Medizin. Die Art, wie er die Medizin ergriff, hängt zusammen mit den Fragen, die ihn vor allem beschäftigten. Durch ernstes Naturstudium suchte er sich Aufschluß zu verschaffen über diese ihm vorliegenden Fragen. Der Unterricht in der Karlsschule sollte in ganz umfassender Weise auf ihn einwirken. Die Schäden, die dem heutigen Gymnasialunterricht vielfach anhaften, bestanden in der Karlsschule nicht. Physik, Naturwissenschaften wurden eingehend behandelt; im Mittelpunkte des Studiums stand die Philosophie. Ernste Fragen der Metaphysik, der Logik wurden erörtert. Schiller trat mit philosophischem Geist in das medizinische Studium ein. Die Art und Weise, wie er es erfaßte, ist wichtig und bedeutungsvoll für sein Leben. Man verstehrt Schiller nicht ganz, wenn man nicht seine beiden Dissertationen liest, die er nach Absolvierung seines Studiums schrieb. Sie behandeln die Fragen: «Welches ist der Zusammenhang zwischen Materie und Geist?» — «Über den Zusammenhang der tierischen und geistigen Natur des Menschen.»
Von der ersteren Dissertation ist uns wenig nur erhalten geblieben. In der zweiten stellt sich Schiller die Frage: Wie haben wir uns das Wirken des Stofflichen im menschlichen Körper zu deuten?
Für Schiller ist schon im materiellen Körper etwas Geistiges. Es gibt Menschen, die im Körper nur etwas Niedriges, Tierisches sehen. Es ist keine tiefe, gehaltvolle Weltanschauung, wenn man das Körperliche so erniedrigt und verabscheut. Es war nicht die Weltanschauung des jungen Schiller. Für Schiller ist der Körper der Tempel des Geistes, von Weisheit auferbaut, und hat nicht umsonst Einfluß auf das Geistige. Welche Bedeutung hat der Körper für das Seelische? — Diese Frage hat Schiller, dem das Physische auch heilig war, sich zu lösen gesucht. Er schildert zum Beispiel, wie im Affekt, in der Geste, sich das Seelische ausdrückt; er sucht sich das Bleibende der seelischen Bewegung im Ausdruck in feiner geistvoller Weise zu erklären. Er sagt am Schlusse seiner Abhandlung:
«Die Materie zerfällt (beim Tode) in ihre letzten Elemente wieder, die nun in anderen Formen und Verhältnissen, durch die Reiche der Natur wandern, anderen Absichten zu dienen. Die Seele fährt fort, in anderen Kreisen ihre Denkkraft zu üben und das Universum von anderen Seiten zu beschauen. Man kann freilich sagen, daß sie diese Sphäre im geringsten noch nicht erschöpft hat, daß sie solche vollkommener hätte verlassen können, aber weiß man denn, daß diese Sphäre für sie verloren ist? Wir legen jetzt manches Buch weg, das wir nicht verstehen, aber vielleicht verstehen wir es in einigen Jahren besser.»
So versucht sich Schiller das Ewige des Geistes im Verhältnis zur physischen Natur klarzulegen, ohne aber das Physische zu unterschätzen. Diese Frage blieb nun die Grund- und Kernfrage Schillers für das ganze Leben: «Wie ist der Mensch herausgeboren aus dem Physischen, und wie stellt sich seine Seele, die Freiheit seiner Persönlichkeit, zur Welt?» «Wie soll die Seele ihren Mittelpunkt finden, da die alten Traditionen dahin sind?»
Nachdem er in seinen Jugenddramen herausgebraust hat seinen ganzen Emanzipationsdrang, und damit das Herz des Volkes gewonnen hatte, vertiefte er sich in Geschichte und Philosophie, und wir berühren die tiefsten kulturgeschichtlichen Fragen, wenn wir die Schillerschen Dramen betrachten. Jeder Mensch hatte damals ein Stück Marquis Posa in sich. Dadurch gewann Schillers Problem ein neues Gesicht. Tiefe Fragen werden aufgerollt über die Menschenseele, über die Bedeutung des Lebens. Schiller sah, wie wenig auf dem äußeren Plane sich hatte erreichen lassen. Man versuchte nun in Deutschland das Problem der Freiheit auf künstlerische Art zu lösen, und das ergab die Bedeutung des «ästhetischen Gewissens». Auch Schiller hatte sich die Frage jetzt in diesem Sinne gestellt. Es war ihm klar, daß der Künstler den Menschen das Höchste zu bringen habe. Er hat dieses Problem in späteren Jahren behandelt. In seinen «Briefen über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen» sagt er: Der Mensch handelt unfrei in der Sinnenwelt aus Notwendigkeit; in der Vernunftwelt ist er unterworfen der Notwendigkeit der Logik. So ist der Mensch eingeschränkt von der Wirklichkeit und dem Vernunftideale. Es gibt aber einen anderen, mittleren Zustand zwischen Vernunft und Sinnenwelt, den ästhetischen. Derjenige, der künstlerisch empfindet, genießt den Geist im Sinnlichen; er sieht den Geist in die Natur hineinverwoben. Die Natur ist ihm ein schönheitsvolles Bild des Geistigen. Das Sinnliche ist dann nur der Abdruck des Geistes; im Kunstwerk ist das Sinnliche durch den Geist geadelt. Der Geist ist herabgeholt aus dem Reiche der Notwendigkeit. In der Schönheit lebt der Mensch als in der Freiheit. Die Kunst ist also die Vermittlerin zwischen dem Sinnlichen und dem Vernünftigen im Reiche der Freiheit.
Auch Goethe empfand so vor den Kunstwerken in Italien. Im Schönen fand der Freiheitsdrang dieser Menschen seine Befriedigung; hier ist er der ehernen Notwendigkeit enthoben. Nicht durch Zwang, durch staatliche Gesetze: im ästhetischen Genusse sah Schiller eine Erziehung zur Harmonie. Als Mensch fühlt er sich frei durch die Kunst: so möchte Schiller die ganze Welt in ein Kunstwerk umwandeln.
Wir sehen hier den Unterschied jener Zeit von der unseren. Heute steht die Kunst im Winkel; damals wollte Schiller dem Leben durch die Kunst einen unmittelbaren Eindruck geben. Tolstoi muß heute die Kunst verdammen, Ibsen wird in seiner Kunst zum Kritiker des gesellschaftlichen Lebens: Damals wollte Schiller durch seine Kunst eingreifen in das Leben selbst. Als er, während seiner Tätigkeit als Mannheimer Theaterreferent, seine Abhandlung über die «Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt» schrieb, geschah es, um durch die Kunst unmittelbar einen Kulturimpuls zu geben.
I. Schiller's Life and Character
On May 9, 1905, one hundred years will have passed since Schiller's death. The educated German world will undoubtedly commemorate this event in a festive manner.
Three generations separate us from Schiller's death. It therefore seems necessary to take stock of what Schiller means to us today. In 1859, the last great Schiller celebration took place in a very different way than it can be today. Times have changed immeasurably since then: different images, questions, and thoughts occupy the minds of our contemporaries today. When the Schiller celebration took place in 1859, it was something that touched the hearts of the German people deeply. At that time, there were still personalities who themselves lived entirely in the mental images that had been brought forth by Schiller's poetic power. It is possible that more lavish festivities will be organized this time; but such deep-seated soulful participation can no longer exist. The question arises: What has happened since then, and how can Schiller still be relevant to us? The great images of the Schiller-Goethe era have faded away. At that time, those ideas were still embodied in personalities whom the older among us knew in their youth. These leading minds, who were deeply rooted in the traditions of that time, are now dead. The youngest among us no longer know them. In the person of my teacher Schröer, who enthusiastically presented the Goethe era to us, I was fortunate enough to meet a person who was deeply rooted in the traditions of that time. With the death of Herman Grimm, the last of those whose souls were deeply connected to that era has passed away.
Today, all of that has become history. We are preoccupied with other issues today. Political and social issues have become so pressing that we no longer understand that intimate appreciation of art. The people of the Schiller-Goethe era must seem strange to us. We have lost that intimate, soulful appreciation of art. That is not meant as a criticism; our times have become harsh.
Let us look at three leading minds of the present: how differently they speak about what moves the times. First, Ibsen: we see him describing the cultural problems of the present in a comprehensive manner, he who has found the most urgent tones, precisely for the heart of the present, for a civilization descending into chaos. Then Zola: how should today's art relate to a life that is inflamed by social struggles—that is the question he raises. This life seems so solid, so impenetrable to us, determined by powers quite different from our imagination and soul. Finally, Tolstoy: he who started out in art and only then became a preacher and social reformer. A purely aesthetic culture, as Schröer characterized it for the Schiller-Goethe era, seems impossible today. At that time, what we might call aesthetic conscience had become the decisive question of life. Beauty, taste, and artistic sensibility were taken as seriously and as importantly as politics and freedom are today. Art was regarded as something that should intervene in the workings of culture. Today it is different: Tolstoy, who himself achieved the highest in the field of art, leaves art behind and seeks other means to speak to the sensibilities of his contemporaries.
Schiller cannot therefore be appreciated in our time in the same way as he was in the 18th century. What remains, however, is the most profound depth of his worldview. We see numerous questions cast in a whole new light by Schiller's view of the world. Let us try to look at them from this point of view. This will be the task of these lectures.
When dealing with current and cultural issues, in science as well as in artistic endeavors, there is often confusion and ambiguity today. Every young writer believes he has a calling to establish a new worldview. Literature is filled with books on questions that have long since been resolved. Problems are raised that seem immature as they confront us, because those who attempt to solve them have not really dealt with the questions. Often the questions are not asked correctly at all. The problem lies in the questioning.
We see Schiller's personality emerging from two currents. On the one hand, there is the rise of materialism, and on the other, the longing for the affirmation of personality. What we call the Enlightenment has its roots in these two currents. Ancient traditions had begun to falter in the 18th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the deepest questions of the human spirit were still resolved from tradition. The relationship of man to the world, to the origin of the world, was not shaken.
Now things changed. It had become impossible to resolve the fundamental truths of human spiritual life in the way they had been resolved for centuries. In France, inspired by English sensualism, a rationalistic, materialistic view emerged. People began to derive the soul from material conditions, from the material world; they tried to explain everything spiritual from the physical. The encyclopedists let the spirit emerge from matter. Whirls of atomic movements were the be-all and end-all that one saw in the world. “Man is a machine,” is how Lamettrie roughly formulated his materialistic creed. Even Goethe, when he became acquainted with the writings of these French materialists, Holbach's “Système de la nature,” complained about his discomfort with the presumption of wanting to explain the whole world with a few hastily cobbled together concepts.
There was also another movement, the one that originated with Rousseau. Rousseau's writings made the greatest impression on the most important men of that time. It is said of Kant, who was a great pedant, that he took his daily walk with such punctuality that the inhabitants of Königsberg could set their clocks by it. Once, however, to the great astonishment of the citizens, the philosopher stayed away for several days; he had been reading Rousseau's writings. They had captivated him so much that he forgot his usual walk.
Rousseau called into question the very foundations of culture. He raised the question of whether humanity had been elevated by culture, and he answered in the negative. In his view, people had been happier in the state of nature than they were now, when they allowed their personalities to degenerate. In the days when man, rooted in ancient traditions, still believed he knew something about the connections in the world, he was not so focused on personality. Now that the individual had severed the chains connecting him to the world, the question arose: How can the individual reestablish his place in the world? People believed that nothing could be known about the origins of the world and the soul. But if nothing in the world was certain, the urge for better conditions had to become powerful in all hearts. The revolutionary aspirations of the 18th century originated from here. It was connected with the materialistic trend. A good Christian of the 17th century would not have been able to speak of liberty, equality, and fraternity in this way. This striving for freedom must be regarded as the very essence of that era.
Schiller was young at the time when the ideas of freedom were maturing. As mentioned, Rousseau's ideals had a tremendous impact on the most outstanding German men, such as Kant, Herder, Wieland, and so on. The young Schiller was also caught up in this movement. We find him already busy reading Rousseau, Voltaire, and others at the Karlsschule. The time had come to a dead end; the upper classes had lost all moral footing; external tyranny also reigned at school. In Schiller, we find a peculiar depth of disposition, which already manifested itself in the boy as an inclination toward religion. Originally, he therefore intended to study theology, his whole mind urging him toward the deepest questions of existence. It was a form of that striving for freedom that took on this particular shape in Germany: piety was combined with an infinite longing for emancipation. It is the urge for personal freedom, not just religion, that speaks from Klopstock's “Messiah.” It was precisely in his religious sensibility that the German wanted to be free. Messiah made an enormous impression on Schiller.
Schiller chose to study medicine. The way he approached medicine was related to the questions that preoccupied him most. Through serious study of nature, he sought to gain insight into these questions. The teaching at the Karlsschule had a profound effect on him. The shortcomings that are often associated with today's high school education did not exist at the Karlsschule. Physics and natural sciences were taught in depth; philosophy was at the center of the curriculum. Serious questions of metaphysics and logic were discussed. Schiller entered medical school with a philosophical spirit. The way in which he approached it is important and significant for his life. It is impossible to fully understand Schiller without reading the two dissertations he wrote after completing his studies. They deal with the questions: “What is the connection between matter and spirit?” and “On the connection between the animal and spiritual nature of man.”
Little remains of the first dissertation. In the second, Schiller asks the question: How should we interpret the effect of matter on the human body?
For Schiller, there is already something spiritual in the material body. There are people who see only something base and animalistic in the body. It is not a deep, meaningful worldview to demean and despise the physical in this way. This was not the worldview of the young Schiller. For Schiller, the body is the temple of the spirit, built by wisdom, and it is not without reason that it influences the spiritual. What significance does the body have for the soul? Schiller, for whom the physical was also sacred, sought to resolve this question. For example, he describes how the soul expresses itself in emotion and gesture; he seeks to explain the permanence of the soul's movement in expression in a subtle and witty way. At the end of his treatise, he says:
"Matter (at death) disintegrates back into its ultimate elements, which now wander through the realms of nature in other forms and relationships to serve other purposes. The soul continues to exercise its power of thought in other circles and to view the universe from other sides. One can certainly say that it has not yet exhausted this sphere in the slightest, that it could have left it in a more perfect state, but do we know that this sphere is lost to it? We now put aside many books that we do not understand, but perhaps we will understand them better in a few years."
In this way, Schiller attempts to clarify the eternity of the spirit in relation to physical nature, without, however, underestimating the physical. This question remained Schiller's fundamental and core question for his entire life: “How is man born out of the physical, and how does his soul, the freedom of his personality, relate to the world?” “How can the soul find its center when the old traditions are gone?”
After expressing his entire desire for emancipation in his early dramas and winning the hearts of the people, he immersed himself in history and philosophy, and we touch on the deepest questions of cultural history when we consider Schiller's dramas. At that time, every person had a piece of Marquis Posa in them. This gave Schiller's problem a new dimension. Profound questions are raised about the human soul and the meaning of life. Schiller saw how little could be achieved on the external plane. In Germany, attempts were now being made to solve the problem of freedom in an artistic way, and this resulted in the importance of the “aesthetic conscience.” Schiller had also asked himself this question in this sense. It was clear to him that the artist had to bring people the highest good. He dealt with this problem in later years. In his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” he says: Man acts unfreely in the sensory world out of necessity; in the world of reason, he is subject to the necessity of logic. Thus, man is limited by reality and the ideal of reason. But there is another, middle state between reason and the sensory world, the aesthetic. Those who feel artistically enjoy the spirit in the sensual; they see the spirit woven into nature. Nature is for them a beautiful image of the spiritual. The sensual is then only the imprint of the spirit; in the work of art, the sensual is ennobled by the spirit. The spirit is brought down from the realm of necessity. In beauty, man lives as in freedom. Art is thus the mediator between the sensual and the rational in the realm of freedom.
Goethe also felt this way when viewing works of art in Italy. The desire for freedom of these people found satisfaction in beauty; here it is relieved of its iron necessity. Not through coercion, through state laws: Schiller saw aesthetic enjoyment as an education in harmony. As a human being, he feels free through art: Schiller would like to transform the whole world into a work of art.
Here we see the difference between that time and ours. Today, art is in the corner; back then, Schiller wanted to give life a direct impression through art. Tolstoy must condemn art today, Ibsen becomes a critic of social life in his art: back then, Schiller wanted to intervene in life itself through his art. When he wrote his treatise on “The Theater as a Moral Institution” during his time as theater consultant in Mannheim, he did so in order to give a direct cultural impulse through art.