Just four years after Schiller Year 2005, which marked the 200th anniversary of the death of Friedrich von Schiller, yet another important Schiller anniversary will be celebrated on November 10: the 250th anniversary of the birth of the poet.

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This portrait of Schiller (1759-1827) is a print after the pastel by Ludovike Simanowiz in the Schiller National Museum in Marbach.

(© picture-alliance / akg-images)

Schiller, along with Goethe, is viewed as the most important representative of German Classicism.  He became renowned primarily for his historically inspired plays and lyrical works, but he also wrote historical and philosophical studies and worked as a journalist, editor, translator, and publisher.

He was born Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller in Marbach, Baden-Württemberg, on November 10, 1759.  The family lived in the city for only four years before moving to Lorch and ultimately to Ludwigsburg.  At the request of his father, who was a physician and military officer in the service of Duke Carl Eugen of Württemberg, Schiller enters the duke’s military academy, Carlsschule, at the age of 13 and remains there for eight years.  However, he perceives the military rigidity at the academy and the duke’s authoritarian teaching methods as a severe constraint on his personal freedom.  He is trained as a regimental doctor and begins working in Stuttgart in 1780.

During his military training, Schiller writes his first drama, The Robbers, which successfully premieres in Mannheim on January 13, 1782, and is viewed as a major work of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) period in German literature.  In The Robbers, Schiller takes up problems which he continues to address in his later works: the conflict between old and new social orders, between laws and freedom.

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The house of Schiller's birth in Marbach now serves as a memorial site and exhibition space.

(© picture-alliance/ dpa)

Shortly after Schiller's passion for theater is discovered, Duke Carl Eugen bans him from writing.  He flees to Mannheim in the same year, thus escaping the duke’s paternalism.  In the ensuing years, Schiller lives in various German cities under very precarious financial circumstances, earning his living from commissions for historical studies and by working as a playwright.  During this period, he writes numerous plays: Fiesco in 1784; Intrigue and Love in 1783; and Don Carlos, 1783-1787.  The famous hymn Ode to Joy (1785), which Beethoven later puts to music and which in more recent years was adopted as the official anthem of the European Union in 1985, emerges during this creative period.

Through the mediation of Goethe, who becomes acquainted with Schiller through the works The Robbers and Don Carlos, Schiller is offered an unpaid position as a history professor at Jena University, which he accepts.  His appointment as court counselor in 1790 and a pension paid by two patrons finally liberates him from his constant financial hardship.  On May 26, 1789, in Jena, he delivers his now famous inaugural lecture Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte? ("What is universal history and to what end does one study it?") before an audience of 500 students eager to hear the renowned author of the play The Robbers.

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This is Schiller's desk at his house in Weimar, where he most likely wrote “Wilhelm Tell.”

(© picture-alliance/ dpa)

Four weeks later, revolution breaks out in France, marking the first time a political effort is undertaken to abolish the feudal and absolutist state and to introduce civil liberties in the spirit of the ideals of the Enlightenment, ideals also reflected in Schiller’s works.  In 1792, Schiller is even made an honorary citizen of the French Republic, but he is later horrified when the Revolution evolves into a reign of terror.  To Schiller, freedom and morals are connected; human action is to be guided by reason; and humanity should be the aim of all human endeavor.  The experience of the French Revolution prompts Schiller to become intensively involved in the ideals of freedom put forth by the philosopher and Schiller’s contemporary Immanuel Kant in 1791.  His disappointment over the course of the Revolution is reflected in the work Über die ästethische Erziehung des Menschen (On the Aesthetic Education of Man).

In 1799, Schiller moves to the city of Weimar, where Goethe lives.  There, he pens his historical plays: Wallenstein in 1799, Mary Stuart in 1800, The Maid of Orleans in 1801, and William Tell in 1804.

By 1794, Schiller’s distant relationship to Goethe, whom Schiller sees as a beneficiary of fate in comparison with himself, begins to evolve into a real friendship, despite the two men’s very different views on life.  They find a common basis for friendship in their shared intellectual interests.  Goethe contributes articles to the journal Die Horen, which is published by Schiller, and presents his plays at the Court Theater in Weimar.

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Schiller spent the last three years of his life in this house in the center of Weimar. It now has a museum annex.

(© picture-alliance/ dpa/dpaweb)

Schiller is ennobled in 1802, but he dies in 1805 at only 46 years of age, from a lung infection which had plagued him since 1791.  He is initially buried at Jacob’s Cemetery, and in 1827 his remains are transferred to the Fürstengruft Cemetery in Weimar.  Goethe is shaken by the news of the death of his friend, who was 10 years younger, "I have lost a friend and therein half of my existence."

The German philosopher Rüdiger Safranski called Schiller an "enthusiast of freedom."  A life based on self-determination, revolt against paternalism, freedom of thought and conviction, the right to rise up against tyrannical rulers, the struggle against oppression, and triumph over the corporative state - these were Friedrich von Schiller’s ideals of freedom.

Schiller’s ideas about personal and political freedom have influenced many democratic movements and is relevant still today in the 21st century.  We should not forget this, especially in 2009, the year in which we are celebrating both a major Schiller anniversary and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to a united Germany and a free Europe.