Schiller and Our Times
GA 51
4 March 1905, Berlin
VII. Schiller's Influence During the 19th Century
I want to speak today of the way in which Schiller's influence was active during the Nineteenth Century and then to pass over to his significance for the present and finally to what he may yet be to the future. In my last lecture I will give a sort of summing-up of Schiller.
If we want to describe Schiller's place in the Nineteenth Century, we can certainly not go into details; and so we shall not pause over single incidents if they are not of symptomatic importance. Our business is with the whole cultural life of the century and Schiller's place within it. In general, it is very difficult to decide what is Schiller's influence on individual periods; we cannot follow each path in detail. Schiller's influence may be compared, in a way, to that of Herder at the beginning of the century when Goethe said in a conversation to Eckermann: “Who nowadays reads Herder's philosophical works? And yet everywhere we meet the ideas which he has sowed.” That is a more intense influence than one which is associated only with a name; and it is the case with Schiller also.
His influence cannot be separated from that of the great classical period. One thing we may emphasise, that his influence and the recognition expressed by the national celebration on 10th November 1859, did not come into being easily and unopposed. Schiller did not establish his position so smoothly. Much was necessary for the spirit of Schiller to have its effect, quite imperceptibly, on the young especially. Thus the Glocke (“Song of the Clock”) produced at first the most violent opposition in romantic circles. Caroline v. Schlegel, wife of W. v. Schlegel, called it the poem of a provincial Philistine.
But not only in those cases which we meet in the Xenien, but in general in the so-called romantic circles, we shall find active opposition to Schiller. The Romantics found their ideal in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and had raised Goethe to a pinnacle, at the cost of that friend of his, to whom Goethe had cried after his death:
Weit hinter ihm im wesenlosen Scheine
Lag, was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine.
Schiller's great gift, to be able to raise the moral and the ethical to such heights, found no sympathy with them. Hard words were uttered by the Romantics against Schiller, “the provincial moralist.” People who have grown up in an atmosphere of reverence for Schiller, will hardly understand remarks like that of Friedrich v. Schlegel in his essays on Goethe and Schiller. He called Schiller's Imagination disordered. Here there is no sign of the quality which attracted all hearts to Schiller. About the end of the 1820's there appeared the Goethe—Schiller correspondence, that memorial set up by Goethe to his friend and their friendship. We can learn much from it and its importance for the understanding of German art is immeasurable. Here also the Romantics were bitterly contemptuous and cold. We can gather how hard it was for Schiller to establish his fame when we realise the megalomania of the chief people who were his opponents. A. W. Schlegel, the excellent translator of Shakespeare, wrote a sonnet about himself, which shows what his own view was of his importance in German literature; he talks of his poetic significance with a pride which strikes us very strangely:
What name the future's lips shall give to him Is still unknown, this generation recognised him His name was August Wilhelm Schlegel.
Nor does he present a unique phenomenon; he is typical of the romantic theory; we can only understand him if we can understand what the romantic school was after. The Romantics aimed at a new art, a comprehensive view of all art. Their theory had as a matter of fact grown out of what Schiller had said in his aesthetic essays; but it was a caricature. Schiller's aphorism that man is only truly man when he is playing, became a sort of motto of theirs. This was the origin of their romantic irony which turned everything into the play of genius. People almost began to believe that it lay in the power of a man's will to turn himself into a genius.
But when Schiller called art play, he meant the word “play” in full seriousness. The true secret of a master lay, said Schiller, in the conquest of the material by the form; but the romantics despised the form and demanded of the matter in itself that it should have artistic effect. This attitude, which I am not criticising but only stating, was fundamentally opposed by Schiller. Hence the correspondence of Goethe and Schiller was regarded by them as very tiresome; the art-rules there discussed they took as naive. A. W. v. Schlegel, under the stimulus of the correspondence, wrote some bitter epigrams. Among themselves the Romantics thoroughly admired one another.
All this will show how in the first decades of last century Schiller's life-work was greeted with bitterest opposition. On the other hand, his personality was so powerful that even among these men he received his due of recognition and admiration: for instance, Ludwig Tieck wrote, with understanding and respect, of Schiller's Wallenstein. Schiller more and more acquired his influence and made a home for himself in the hearts of his people. Theodor Körner is the most important, though not the only, instance of a man who lived wholly in the spirit of Schiller:—and he died, moreover, a hero's death filled with the ideals planted in him by Schiller. He seemed dedicated to it by the personal friendship which united his family and Schiller's. A close friendship existed between Körner's father and Schiller, who was godfather to Theodor Körner and bought him the “Tyre” which accompanied Körner everywhere. Schiller made his way slowly but surely into the hearts of youth.
If we follow out the development of style in these opposing romantics, we find the influence of Schiller even in the words he had coined.
It was thanks to Schiller that there was formed what we may call the German culture of the first half of the Nineteenth Century. It was permeated by the special note that was given to the soul by Schiller. Things which had their origin in Herder and the other classicists, made their way into the people by the pictures and didactic applications of Schiller. However, much men might bristle at the heights of aesthetic culture, Schiller has established his position increasingly. His influence grew steadily, and on the centenary of his birth, it is the best men in the nation who honour him. The speeches made at the time have been collected, and among those who spoke we find famous names like those of Jacob Grimm, Th. F. Vischer, the great aesthetic thinker, Carl Gutzkow, Ernst Curtius, Moritz Carriere and many others. The seed had grown which Schiller had planted.
Nevertheless, the language held at the celebrations in 1859 was quite alien to the new ideas which were appearing at the time. To emphasise Schiller's ideals in 1859 fitted strangely in with the other ideas which saw the light that year. There are four things of special importance which I want to mention that appeared in them. In 1859 there appeared Darwin's Origin of Species; and secondly, Fechner's Prelude to Aesthetic. Fechner has acquired considerable influence on one of the lines of modern thought. He started from the ideas of Hegel, who had himself defended Schiller against the Romantics. Vischer, who had begun his work in the Goethe—Schiller period and whose aesthetic was of idealist type, found himself forced into opposition to his own earlier views; and Vischer's mode of thinking was completed by Fechner, who wrote a sort of aesthetic “from below,” whereas until then the ordinary aesthetic had been one “from above.” The attempt was now being made to grasp the essence of the beautiful from below, from the small symptoms.
The third work, which treated of space conditions, was in a sense opposed to Schiller's manner: he had spoken as follows in his epigram to the astronomers:
Do not chatter, I pray you, so much of nebulae and suns.
Is no greatness in nature, save that she gives you to count?
What you deal with, my friends, in space is truly sublimest;
But the sublime has not its dwelling in space.
This third work was the Spectral Analysis of Kirchhoff and Bunsen, by means of which the sun could be seen in its constituent elements, and an analysis of the most distant nebulae was made possible.
The fourth work was Marx's Critique of Political Economy. There was a marked contrast between the thoughts developed at the Schiller celebrations and the ideas which were germinating at the time. It was a unique standpoint which Schiller, and the classicists generally, held towards world culture. We cannot picture Raphael or Michelangelo out of relation to their own times, in which they were born and worked. In the same way Homeric art is in intimate contact with something that lived in everyone; Homer had only to give form to something which permeated all his contemporaries as feeling and thinking. But with the German classicists it was quite different. Homer, of whom did he tell? Of Greeks he spoke to Greeks. Similarly, Dante, Michelangelo, even Shakespeare, stood wholly within their times. But not so our classicists. Lessing was enthused by Winckelmann and formed his artistic ideas out of Winckelmann's essays; he also went back to Aristotle. Schiller and Goethe faithfully with Lessing studied Aristotle. Hence came that abstracted ideal of beauty, an art so cut off from the life of the times, particularly as the poets grew older. For Schiller's earlier plays, the Räuber, Kabale und Liebe are still connected with his own life. Goethe had developed particularly in Italy. Art had become an end in itself, abstract and isolated from everyday life. Goethe and Schiller had become neutral toward their subject matter: thus Schiller looks for his material all over the world, he has risen from the world around him and established himself on his own feet. Nothing describes Schiller's influence so well as the fact that he was followed by Romanticism which assimilated everything foreign. Translations from every sphere of world-literature are one of the chief services of the romantic school.
Schiller's attitude to art is something which had decisive influence on his relation to the Nineteenth Century.
VII. Schillers Wirkungen im 19. Jahrhundert
Ich möchte heute noch sprechen über die Art der Wirkung, die Schiller auf das 19. Jahrhundert gehabt hat, um dann überzugehen auf die Bedeutung Schillers für die Gegenwart, und auf das, was Schiller für die noch folgende Zukunft sein kann. Im Schlußvortrage will ich dann ein Gesamtbild Schillers geben. Wer Schillers Verhältnis zum 19. Jahrhundert schildern will, kann sich unmöglich auf Einzelheiten einlassen, deshalb wollen wir uns nicht mit einzelnen Begebenheiten besonders aufhalten, wenn sie nicht besondere symptomatische Bedeutung haben. Es handelt sich darum, zu zeigen, wie es sich mit dem ganzen Kulturleben des 19. Jahrhunderts verhält, und welche Stellung Schiller darin einnimmt.
Es ist im allgemeinen schwer zu sagen, wie groß der Einfluß Schillers auf die einzelnen Perioden ist; die Kanäle lassen sich nicht im einzelnen verfolgen. Schillers Einfluß läßt sich zum Teil vergleichen mit dem, welchen Herder im Anfange des Jahrhunderts ausübte, von dem Goethe zu Eckermann sagte: «Wer liest noch Herders philosophische Werke? aber überall begegnet man Ideen, die er gesät.» Es ist dies eine intensivere Wirkung als die mit dem Namen verknüpfte. Auch mit Schiller ist dies der Fall. Sein Wirken Jäßt sich nicht abtrennen von der Wirkung der großen klassischen Zeit. Eines aber läßt sich herausheben: diese Wirkung Schillers, die Anerkennung, von der das Nationalfest am 10. November 1859 Kunde gibt, kam keineswegs so leicht und widerspruchslos heraus. Schiller hat sich nicht so leicht durchgerungen. Es hat viel geschehen müssen, um namentlich in die Jugend hinein den Geist Schillers auf ganz imponderable Art fließen zu lassen. So hat das «Lied von der Glocke» zunächst in den Kreisen der Romantiker den heftigsten Widerspruch hervorgerufen. Caroline von Schlegel, die Gattin August Wilhelms von Schlegel, hat es ein spießbürgerliches philiströses Gedicht genannt.
Nicht nur in dem, was uns in den Xenien entgegentritt, sondern im allgemeinen in den Kreisen derer, die man die Romantiker nannte, finden wir lebhaften Widerspruch gegen Schiller. Die Romantiker sahen in Goethes «Wilhelm Meister» ihr Ideal und hatten Goethe, den treuen Freund, der Schiller die Worte nachgerufen:
Weit hinter ihm im wesenlosen Scheine
Lag, was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine ... .
auf den Schild gehoben auf Kosten Schillers. Was Schiller verstand, das Moralische, Ethische so hoch zu erheben, war ihnen etwas durchaus Unsympathisches. Harte Worte flossen von seiten der Romantiker gegen Schiller, den spießbürgerlichen Ethiker. Diejenigen, die heute in Schillerehrung aufgewachsen sind, werden schwer Worte verstehen können, wie sie zum Beispiel Friedrich von Schlegel über ihn fand in Besprechungen über Schiller und Goethe. Er nennt seine Einbildungskraft «zerrüttet». Da ist nichts zu merken von dem, was alle Herzen zu Schiller zog. Ungefähr gegen Ende der zwanziger Jahre erschien der Briefwechsel Goethes und Schillers, jenes Denkmal, das Goethe seinem Freunde und der Freundschaft setzte. Man kann unendlich viel daraus lernen, und seine Bedeutung für die deutsche Kunstbetrachtung ist gar nicht zu bemessen. Auch da verhielten sich die Romantiker durchaus ablehnend. Sie hatten bissigen Spott dafür. Wie schwer es war, für Schillers Ruhm festen Boden zu fassen, zeigt die Großmannssucht der Persönlichkeiten, die Schiller am heftigsten Opposition machten. A. W. Schlegel, der verdienstvolle Übersetzer Shakespeares, hat ein Sonett auf sich selbst gedichtet, in dem sich ausspricht, wie er sein eigenes Verhältnis zum deutschen Volke auffaßte; er spricht da mit einem Selbstgefühl von seiner dichterischen Bedeutung, das uns heute sonderbar anmutet. Es schließt:
Wie ihn der Mund der Zukunft nennen werde
Ist unbekannt, doch dies Geschlecht erkannte
Ihn bei dem Namen August Wilhelm Schlegel.
Der Mann stellt nicht bloß eine Einzelerscheinung dar, er stellt die romantische Theorie dar; ihn kann man nur verstehen, wenn man begreift, was die romantische Schule wollte. Die Romantiker wollten eine neue Kunst, eine Zusammenfassung alles Künstlerischen. Es war ihre Theorie eigentlich herausgewachsen aus dem, was Schiller in seinen ästhetischen Aufsätzen dargestellt hatte, aber sie war eine karikierte Auffassung. Das Wort Schillers: «Der Mensch ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt», wurde ihnen zu einer Art Motto. So entstand die romantische Ironie, die alles zu einem Spiele des Genies machte. Man hatte eine Auffassung, als ob es der Willkür des Menschen unterliege, ein Genie zu sein. Wenn Schiller die Kunst ein Spiel nannte, war es, weil er dem Spiel den ganzen vollen Ernst geben wollte. In der Besiegung des Stoffes durch die Form liegt das Kunstgeheimnis des Meisters, sagt Schiller, während die Romantiker die Form vernachlässigten und vom Stoffe selbst verlangten, daß er künstlerisch wirke. Eine solche Richtung war es, die ich nicht kritisieren, sondern charakterisieren will, welche Schiller grundsätzlich entgegenstand. Der Briefwechsel Goethes und Schillers wurde daher, wie gesagt, von ihnen aufgenommen als etwas, das sie störte. Die darin besprochenen Kunstregeln fanden sie hausbacken. A. W. von Schlegel schrieb unter dem Eindruck dieses Briefwechsels boshafte Epigramme. Untereinander betrachteten sich die Romantiker mit der größten Bewunderung. Dies alles zeigt, wie in den ersten Jahrzehnten Schillers Lebenswerk den heftigsten Widerspruch hervorrief. Andererseits war die Persönlichkeit Schillers so gewaltig, daß auch aus diesen Kreisen ihm Anerkennung und Bewunderung gezollt wurde. So schrieb Ludwig Tieck über Schillers «Wallenstein» in verständnisvoller und verehrungsvoller Art.
Wir sehen, daß Schiller immer mehr seinen Einfluß sich nach und nach erringt, daß er sich einnistet in die Herzen der Nation. So ist Theodor Körner zwar die bedeutendste, aber nicht einzige Erscheinung, die ganz im Geiste Schillers lebt, er, der auch den Heldentod stirbt, ganz erfüllt von den Idealen, die Schiller ihm eingepflanzt. Er schien dazu geweiht durch die persönliche Freundschaft, die seine Familie mit Schiller verband. Eine herzliche Freundschaft war es, die Körners Vater und Schiller verknüpfte; er war der Pate Theodor Körners, von ihm war die «Leier» gekauft, die Theodor Körner überall begleitete. Schiller hat sich langsam, aber ganz sicher in die Herzen der Jugend eingeschlichen.
Wer die Entwickelung des Schriftwesens bei den sich sträubenden Romantikern verfolgt, begegnet dem Einfluß Schillers selbst in den Wortformen, die er geprägt. Durch Schiller hat sich herausgebildet, was man in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts deutsche Bildung nennen kann: sie ist ganz wie durch Imponderabilien geformt durch das, was sich in das Gemüt einpflanzte von Schiller aus. Das, was von Herder und den anderen Klassikern ausging, ist durch die Bilder und didaktischen Wendungen Schillers in die Nation geflossen. Mochten auf der Höhe der ästhetischen Bildung sich einige auch sträuben, immer mehr hat Schiller sich eingebürgert. So wächst sein Einfluß fort und fort. Und wie der hundertjährige Geburtstag Schillers kommt, da sind es die Besten, die ihn feiern, die Besten der Nation. In einem Buch über Schiller sind die Reden gesammelt, die damals gehalten wurden. Und es waren bedeutende Männer, die jene Reden hielten: Jakob Grimm, Th. Vischer der große Ästhetiker, Karl Gutzkow, Ernst Curtius, Moriz Carriere und viele andere. Der Same war aufgegangen, den Schiller gesäet.
Und doch muß man sagen, daß die Sprache, die damals, 1859, gesprochen wurde, dem doch recht fremd gegenüberstand, was als erwas Neues in jener Zeit heraufkam. Die Betonung des Ideals im Jahre 1859 stimmt seltsam zu dem, was sonst in diesem Jahre ans Licht kam. Vier bedeutende Erscheinungen sind es vor allem, auf die ich hier hinweisen will: 1859 erschien Charles Darwins «Abstammung der Arten». Dann Fechners «Vorschule der Ästhetik». Fechner hat einen großen Einfluß auf eine Strömung der Gegenwart gewonnen: er ist ausgegangen von Hegel, der selbst Schiller gegen die Romantiker in Schutz genommen hatte. Vischer, der aus der Goethe-Schillerzeit stammte, der eine idealistische Ästhetik vertrat, sieht sich in Widerspruch versetzt zu dem, was er selbst bisher bekannt hatte; er sieht diese Richtung abgelöst durch Fechner. Es ist dies eine Ästhetik von unten, während es früher eine Ästhetik von oben war, die man vertrat. Von unten, aus kleinen Symptomen, wollte man jetzt das Wesen des Schönen erkennen. Das dritte Werk, welches Raumverhältnisse behandelte, steht in einem gewissen Gegensatz zu Schillers Art. Hatte sich doch dieser in einem seiner Epigramme an die Astronomen so gewendet:
«Schwartzet mir nicht so viel von Nebelflecken und Sonnen.
Ist die Natur nur groß, weil sie zu zählen euch gibt?
Euer Gegenstand ist der erhabendste freilich im Raume,
Aber, Freunde, im Raum wohnt das Erhabene nicht.»
Dieses dritte Werk war die von Kirchhoff und Bunsen gefundene «Spektralanalyse». Durch sie konnte die Sonne in ihren Bestandteilen erkannt werden, konnte eine Analyse der fernsten Nebelflecken unternommen werden.
Das vierte Werk war: Karl Marx «Kritik der politischen Ökonomie». Es war ein sonderbarer Kontrast zwischen dem, was man damals bei der Schillerfeier entwickelte und dem, was jene Zeit wirklich heraufbrachte.
Es war ein eigentümlicher Standpunkt, den Schiller, und unsere Klassiker überhaupt, zur Weltkultur einnahmen. Man kann sich Raffael, Michelangelo nicht denken ohne den Zusammenhang mit ihrer Zeit, aus der sie geboren waren, aus der heraus sie schufen. So ist die homerische Kunst im innigen Zusammenhang mit dem, was in allen lebte. Homer brauchte nur dem Form zu geben, was als Fühlen und Denken seine Zeitgenossen durchdrang. Ganz anders war es bei unseren Klassikern. Homer, von wem dichtete er? Von Griechen redete er zu Griechen. So waren noch Dante, noch Michelangelo, ja auch noch Shakespeare ganz hineingestellt in ihre Zeit. Anders war es bei unseren Klassikern. Lessing begeisterte sich für Winckelmann, aus seinen Darlegungen bildete er sich seine Kunstanschauungen. Auch ging Lessing zurück auf Aristoteles. Schiller und Goethe studierten mit Lessing in Gläubigkeit Aristoteles. Daher kam ein so abgesondertes Schönheitsideal, eine so vom Leben der Zeit abgesonderte Kunst, besonders im späteren Lebensalter der Dichter. Denn die Jugenddramen Schillers, «Die Räuber», «Kabale und Liebe» sind ja noch verbunden mit dem eigenen Leben. Goethe hatte sich besonders in Italien entwickelt. Die Kunst war Selbstzweck geworden, abstrakt abgezogen vom wirklichen Leben. Gleichgültig gegenüber den Stoffen waren Goethe und Schiller geworden. So sehen wir, daß Schiller jetzt seine Stoffe überall sucht in der Welt. Er hat sich herausgehoben aus der ihn umgebenden Welt, hat sich auf eigene Füße gestellt. Nichts charakterisiert Schillers Einfluß so, als daß auf ihn die Romantik folgt, die alles Fremdländische assimiliert. Übersetzungen aus allen Gebieten der Weltliteratur bilden ein Hauptverdienst der romantischen Schule. Schillers Stellung zur Kunst bildet etwas, was auf sein Verhältnis zum 19. Jahrhundert entscheidend wirkt.
VII. Schiller's influence in the 19th century
Today, I would like to talk about the kind of influence Schiller had on the 19th century, before moving on to Schiller's significance for the present day and what Schiller may mean for the future. In my concluding lecture, I will then give an overall picture of Schiller. Anyone who wants to describe Schiller's relationship to the 19th century cannot possibly go into detail, so we will not dwell on individual events unless they have particular symptomatic significance. The aim is to show how the whole of 19th-century cultural life was affected and what position Schiller occupies in it.
It is generally difficult to say how great Schiller's influence was on individual periods; the channels cannot be traced in detail. Schiller's influence can be compared in part to that exerted by Herder at the beginning of the century, of whom Goethe said to Eckermann: "Who still reads Herder's philosophical works? But everywhere one encounters ideas that he sowed. " This is a more intense effect than that associated with the name. This is also the case with Schiller. His influence cannot be separated from the influence of the great classical period. But one thing can be emphasized: Schiller's influence, the recognition of which is attested to by the national holiday on November 10, 1859, did not come about so easily and without opposition. Schiller did not win people over so easily. Much had to happen in order for Schiller's spirit to flow in a completely imponderable way, especially among young people. For example, the “Song of the Bell” initially provoked the most vehement opposition in Romantic circles. Caroline von Schlegel, the wife of August Wilhelm von Schlegel, called it a petty-bourgeois, philistine poem.
Not only in what we encounter in the Xenien, but in general in the circles of those who were called the Romantics, we find lively opposition to Schiller. The Romantics saw Goethe's “Wilhelm Meister” as their ideal and had Goethe, the faithful friend who had called out the words to Schiller:
Far behind him in insubstantial splendor
Lay what subjugates us all, the commonplace ...
raised on a shield at Schiller's expense. Schiller's understanding of how to elevate morality and ethics so highly was something they found thoroughly unsympathetic. Harsh words flowed from the Romantics against Schiller, the bourgeois ethicist. Those who have grown up honoring Schiller today will find it difficult to understand words such as those Friedrich von Schlegel used about him in discussions about Schiller and Goethe. He calls his imagination “disturbed.” There is no trace of what drew everyone's hearts to Schiller. Towards the end of the 1820s, the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller was published, a monument that Goethe erected to his friend and their friendship. There is an infinite amount to learn from it, and its significance for German art appreciation cannot be overstated. Here, too, the Romantics were thoroughly dismissive. They responded with biting sarcasm. The megalomania of the personalities who most vehemently opposed Schiller shows how difficult it was for his fame to gain a firm foothold. A. W. Schlegel, the meritorious translator of Shakespeare, wrote a sonnet about himself in which he expresses how he perceived his own relationship to the German people; he speaks with a sense of self-importance about his poetic significance that seems strange to us today. It concludes:
How the mouth of the future will name him
Is unknown, but this generation recognized
Him by the name August Wilhelm Schlegel.
The man is not merely an individual phenomenon, he represents Romantic theory; he can only be understood if one comprehends what the Romantic school wanted. The Romantics wanted a new art, a synthesis of everything artistic. Their theory had actually grown out of what Schiller had presented in his aesthetic essays, but it was a caricatured conception. Schiller's words, “Man is only truly human when he plays,” became a kind of motto for them. This gave rise to Romantic irony, which turned everything into a game of genius. The prevailing view was that being a genius was subject to human caprice. When Schiller called art a game, it was because he wanted to give the game its full seriousness. The secret of the master's art lies in the victory of form over substance, says Schiller, while the Romantics neglected form and demanded that the substance itself have an artistic effect. It was this direction, which I do not wish to criticize but rather to characterize, that Schiller fundamentally opposed. The correspondence between Goethe and Schiller was therefore, as I said, taken by them as something that disturbed them. They found the rules of art discussed in it homespun. A. W. von Schlegel wrote malicious epigrams under the impression of this correspondence. Among themselves, the Romantics regarded each other with the greatest admiration. All this shows how Schiller's life's work provoked the most vehement opposition in the first decades. On the other hand, Schiller's personality was so formidable that even these circles paid him tribute and admiration. Ludwig Tieck, for example, wrote about Schiller's “Wallenstein” in an understanding and reverential manner.
We see that Schiller is gradually gaining more and more influence, that he is nestling himself in the hearts of the nation. Thus, Theodor Körner is the most significant, but not the only figure who lives entirely in the spirit of Schiller, he who also dies a heroic death, completely filled with the ideals that Schiller instilled in him. He seemed predestined for this due to the personal friendship that connected his family with Schiller. It was a warm friendship that linked Körner's father and Schiller; he was Theodor Körner's godfather and bought him the “lyre” that accompanied Theodor Körner everywhere. Schiller slowly but surely crept into the hearts of young people.
Anyone who follows the development of writing among the rebellious Romantics will encounter Schiller's influence even in the forms of words he coined. Schiller shaped what can be called German education in the first half of the 19th century: it was formed, as if by imponderables, by what Schiller implanted in the mind. What emanated from Herder and the other classics flowed into the nation through Schiller's images and didactic turns of phrase. Although some may have resisted at the height of aesthetic education, Schiller became increasingly established. Thus his influence continues to grow. And as Schiller's hundredth birthday approaches, it is the best, the best of the nation, who celebrate him. A book about Schiller collects the speeches that were given at that time. And it was important men who gave those speeches: Jakob Grimm, Th. Vischer, the great aesthetician, Karl Gutzkow, Ernst Curtius, Moriz Carriere, and many others. The seed that Schiller had sown had sprouted.
And yet it must be said that the language spoken at that time, in 1859, was quite foreign to what was emerging as something new at that time. The emphasis on the ideal in 1859 strangely coincides with what else came to light that year. There are four significant events in particular that I would like to mention here: Charles Darwin's “On the Origin of Species” was published in 1859. Then there was Fechner's “Vorschule der Ästhetik” (Preliminary Course in Aesthetics). Fechner had a great influence on a contemporary movement: he took his cue from Hegel, who himself had defended Schiller against the Romantics. Vischer, who came from the Goethe-Schiller era and represented an idealistic aesthetic, found himself in contradiction to what he himself had previously known; he saw this direction replaced by Fechner. This is an aesthetic from below, whereas previously it was an aesthetic from above that was represented. From below, from small symptoms, one now wanted to recognize the essence of beauty. The third work, which dealt with spatial relationships, stands in a certain contrast to Schiller's style. In one of his epigrams, Schiller had addressed astronomers as follows:
"Don't talk to me so much about nebulae and suns.
Is nature only great because it gives you something to count?
Your subject is certainly the most sublime in space,
But, friends, the sublime does not dwell in space."
This third work was the “spectral analysis” discovered by Kirchhoff and Bunsen. It enabled the components of the sun to be identified and the most distant nebulae to be analyzed.
The fourth work was Karl Marx's “Critique of Political Economy.” There was a strange contrast between what was developed at the Schiller celebration at that time and what that era really brought forth.
It was a peculiar standpoint that Schiller, and our classics in general, took on world culture. One cannot imagine Raphael or Michelangelo without the context of their time, from which they were born and from which they created. Homer's art is intimately connected with what lived in everyone. Homer only had to give form to what permeated the feelings and thoughts of his contemporaries. It was quite different with our classics. Homer, who did he write about? He spoke of Greeks to Greeks. Dante, Michelangelo, and even Shakespeare were also completely immersed in their time. It was different with our classics. Lessing was enthusiastic about Winckelmann, and he formed his views on art from his explanations. Lessing also went back to Aristotle. Schiller and Goethe studied Aristotle with Lessing in faith. This resulted in such a separate ideal of beauty, an art so separate from the life of the time, especially in the later years of the poets' lives. For Schiller's early dramas, “The Robbers” and “Intrigue and Love,” are still connected to his own life. Goethe had developed particularly in Italy. Art had become an end in itself, abstracted from real life. Goethe and Schiller had become indifferent to their subjects. Thus we see that Schiller now seeks his subjects everywhere in the world. He has distanced himself from the world around him and stood on his own two feet. Nothing characterizes Schiller's influence more than the fact that he was followed by Romanticism, which assimilated everything foreign. Translations from all areas of world literature are one of the main achievements of the Romantic school. Schiller's position on art has a decisive influence on his relationship to the 19th century.