Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (November 10, 1759 – May 9, 1805),

usually known as Friedrich Schiller, was a German poet, philosopher, historian,
and dramatist who became, along with his close friend Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, one of the influential figures in what would become known as the
classical movement in German literature. Like Goethe, Schiller was a true
embodiment of The Enlightenment, taking interest and making contributions
not only to literature and philosophy, but also to science, history, politics, and
the management of democratic societies. Schiller's views on liberty, equality,
and civil justice, expressed so poignantly in his poems and plays and put into
action in his philosophical and political writings, would have their influence on
generations of writers in the succeeding decades of European Romanticism, as
would his conception of the "beautiful soul." Schiller, living in one of the most
productive intellectual periods in human history, synthesized the thoughts and
sentiments of his generation and, while he is often criticized today as being too
idealistic, he is nevertheless one of the most important figures in late
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature
Overjoyed that he had finally found financial stability, Schiller wrote what is
perhaps his single most widely-known work in commemoration of Körner's
generosity, a short poem entitled An die Freude (Ode to Joy) that would later
famously be set to music by Ludwig van Beethoven in the finale of his 9th
Symphony. Schiller wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics.
He synthesized the thought of Immanuel Kant with the thought of Karl
Leonhard Reinhold. He developed the concept of the Schöne Seele or "beautiful
soul," a human being whose emotions have been educated by his reason, so
that Pflicht und Neigung ("duty and desire") are no longer in conflict with one
another. Thus "beauty," for Schiller, is not merely a sensual experience, but a
moral one as well: the good is, fundamentally, the beautiful. His philosophical
work was also particularly concerned with the question of human freedom, a
preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, such as The Thirty
Years' War and The Revolt of the Netherlands, also finding its way into his
dramas (the "Wallenstein" trilogy concerns the Thirty Years’ War, while "Don
Carlos" addresses the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain.) Schiller wrote
two important essays on the question of the sublime (das erhabene), entitled
"Vom Erhabenen" and "Über das Erhabene"; these essays address one aspect
of human freedom as the ability to defy or surmount one's animal instincts,
such as the drive for self-preservation, as in the case of someone who willingly
dies for a beautiful idea.
Quotations
 "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." — Maid of
Orleans
 "The voice of the majority is no proof of justice."
 "Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood than
in any truth that is taught in life."
Works

Plays
 Die Räuber (The Robbers) (1781)
 Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) (1784)
 Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien (Don Carlos) (1787)
 Wallenstein (1800) (translated from a manuscript copy into English
as The Piccolomini and Death of Wallenstein by Coleridge in 1800)
 Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans) (1801)
 Maria Stuart (Mary Stuart) (1801)
 Turandot (1802)
 Die Braut von Messina (1803)
 Wilhelm Tell (William Tell) (1804)
 Demetrius (unfinished at his death)