Schiller: National Poet--Poet of Nations: A Birmingham Symposium

345 Pages·2006·1.822 MB·English

by  Martin, Nicholas

Schiller:
National Poet – Poet of Nations
A M S T E R D A M E R B E I T R Ä G E 61 6
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G 0
Z U R N E U E R E N E R M A N I S T I K 2
Herausgegeben von
Gerd Labroisse
Gerhard P. Knapp
Norbert Otto Eke
Wissenschaftlicher Beirat:
Christopher Balme (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Lutz Danneberg (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Martha B. Helfer (Rutgers University New Brunswick)
Lothar Köhn (Westf. Wilhelms-Universität Münster)
Ian Wallace (University of Bath)
Schiller:
National Poet – Poet of Nations
A Birmingham Symposium
Herausgegeben von
Nicholas Martin
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006
Die 1972 gegründete Reihe erscheint seit 1977 in zwangloser Folge in der
Form von Thema-Bänden mit jeweils verantwortlichem Herausgeber.
Reihen-Herausgeber:
Prof. Dr. Gerd Labroisse
Sylter Str. 13A, 14199 Berlin, Deutschland
Tel./Fax: [phone] E-Mail: [email protected]
Prof. Dr. Gerhard P. Knapp
University of Utah
Dept. of Languages and Literature, 255 S. Central Campus Dr. Rm. 1400
Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Tel.: [phone], Fax [phone] (dienstl.)
bzw. Tel./Fax: [phone] (privat) E-Mail: [email protected]
Prof. Dr. Norbert Otto Eke
Universität Paderborn
Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften, Warburger Str. 100, D - 33098 Paderborn,
Deutschland, E-Mail: [email protected]
Friedrich Schiller, Hermenbüste von Johann Heinrich Dannecker, 1805.
Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar.
All titles in the Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik
(from 1999 onwards) are available online: See www.rodopi.nl
Electronic access is included in print subscriptions.
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN-10: 90-420-2003-2
ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2003-0
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2006
Printed in The Netherlands
Inhalt/Contents
Nicholas Martin:Introduction: Schiller After Two Centuries 7
T.J.Reed:Wie hat Schiller überlebt? 23
Lesley Sharpe: A National Repertoire: Schiller and the Theatre of
his Day 35
Norbert Oellers:Schiller, der “Heros”. Mit ergänzenden Bemerkungen
zu einigen seiner Dramen-Helden 53
Jochen Golz: Monumente zu Lebzeiten? – Schiller als Herausgeber
seiner Werke 73
K.F.Hilliard:“Nicht in Person sondern durch einen Repräsentanten”:
Problematik der Repräsentation bei Schiller 89
David Hill:Lenz and Schiller: All’s well that ends well 107
Steffan Davies: Schiller’s Egmont and the Beginnings of Weimar
Classicism 123
John Guthrie:Language and Gesture in Schiller’s Later Plays 139
Francis Lamport: Virgins, Bastards and Saviours of the Nation:
Reflections on Schiller’s Historical Dramas 159
Ritchie Robertson:Schiller and the Jesuits 179
Alexander Kosˇenina:Schiller’s Poetics of Crime 201
Jeffrey L.High:Schiller, “merely political Revolutions”, the personal
Drama of Occupation, and Wars of Liberation 219
Maike Oergel: The German Identity, the German Querelle and the
Ideal State: A Fresh Look at Schiller’s Fragment “Deutsche Größe” 241
David Pugh:Schiller and the Crisis of German Liberalism 257
Nicholas Martin:Images of Schiller in National Socialist Germany 275
Paul Bishop:The “Schillerbild” of Werner Deubel: Schiller as “Poet
of the Nation”? 301
Anhang/Appendix: Schillerjahr 2005. Selected Events and Publications 321
Personenregister/Index of Names 333
Register der Werke Schillers/Index of Schiller’s Works 339
6
Anschriften der Autorinnen und Autoren/List of Contributors
Prof. Dr. Paul Bishop Dr. Nicholas Martin
University of Glasgow, School of University of Birmingham, Dept. of
Modern Languages and Cultures German Studies
UK – Glasgow, G12 8QL UK – Birmingham, B15 2TT
Mr. Steffan Davies Prof. Dr. Norbert Oellers
University of Oxford, St. Hugh’s Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-
College Universität Bonn, Germanistisches
UK – Oxford, OX2 6LE Seminar
Am Hof 1d
Dr. Jochen Golz, Direktor
D – 53113 Bonn
Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv
Hans-Wahl-Straße 4 Dr. Maike Oergel
D – 99425 Weimar University of Nottingham, Dept. of
German
Dr. John Guthrie
UK – Nottingham, NG7 2RD
University of Cambridge, New Hall
UK – Cambridge, CB3 0DF Prof. Dr. David Pugh
Queen’s University, Dept. of German
Prof. Dr. Jeffrey L. High
Language & Literature
California State University,
Kingston
Long Beach
CA – Ontario, K7L 3N6
Dept. of Romance, German, Russian
Languages and Literatures Prof. T. J. Reed
USA – Long Beach, CA 90840 University of Oxford, The Queen’s
College
Prof. Dr. David Hill
UK – Oxford, OX1 4AW
University of Birmingham, Dept. of
German Studies Prof. Dr. Ritchie Robertson
UK – Birmingham, B15 2TT University of Oxford, St John’s
College
Dr. K. F. Hilliard
UK – Oxford, OX1 3JP
University of Oxford, St Peter’s
College Prof. Dr. Lesley Sharpe
UK – Oxford, OX1 2DL University of Exeter, Dept. of
German
Prof. Dr. Alexander Kosˇenina
UK – Exeter, EX4 4QH
University of Bristol, Dept. of German
UK – Bristol, BS8 1TE
Mr. Francis Lamport
University of Oxford, Worcester
College
UK – Oxford, OX1 2HB
Nicholas Martin
Introduction: Schiller After Two Centuries*
The third version of Goethe’s public lament for Schiller includes an emphatic
wish that posterity should celebrate Schiller and thereby not only fill the void
left by his untimely death but also in some sense complete his unfulfilled life:
“So feiert ihn! Denn was dem Mann das Leben / Nur halb erteilt, soll ganz die
Nachwelt geben”.1The wish was granted, though had Goethe known precisely
what posterity had in store for Schiller, he might perhaps have been more care-
ful in what he wished for. Even before the onset of the physical afflictions that
would eventually kill him, Schiller himself had commented in rather different
terms on the nature of his fame. In a letter to a friend in 1789 he wrote: “Wenn
mich je das Unglück oder Glück träfe, sehr berühmt zu werden […], so seyen
Sie mit Ihrer Freundschaft gegen mich vorsichtiger. Lesen Sie alsdann meine
Schriften, und lassen den Menschenübrigens laufen” (NA 25. 209).2By 1789
Schiller was already very famous, of course, and his fame was to increase
steadily until his death on 9 May 1805 at the age of forty-five. His posthumous
fame – the “Schiller legend” in the various guises it has assumed over the past two
hundred years – has dwarfed the fame he enjoyed during his relatively short
life. It is the nature of this posthumous fame that Schiller appears to be hinting
at in his remarks; for it is precisely in the elevation or mythologisation of the
man at the expense of his writings that Schiller’s reputation has suffered much
harm. Arguably, still more harm has been done over the years by the periodic
emphasis on alleged political and national(ist) messages in Schiller’s writings
to the near exclusion of reflections on his achievement as a dramatist and poet.
The two-hundredth anniversary of Schiller’s death was an important cultural
event yet it had to jostle for attention on a crowded stage, because 2005 was an
*Schiller’s texts are quoted from Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Ed. by Julius Petersen,
Gerhard Fricke et al. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf. 1943ff. Quotations from Schiller’s
verse plays are identified by line number, others by NA with volume and page numbers.
1Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Epilog zu Schillers “Glocke” [1805/10/15]. In: Goethes
Werke. Ed. by Erich Trunz. 14 vols. Munich: Beck 12th edn 1981. Vol. 1. Pp. 256–259.
Lines 95–96.
2To Caroline von Beulwitz. 25.2.1789. Schiller appears to have been in a particularly
despondent and self-critical mood that day, writing to another friend, Christian
Gottfried Körner: “[…] je mehr ich empfinde, wie viele und welche Talente oder
Erfodernisse mir fehlten, so überzeuge ich mich desto lebhafter von der Realität und
Stärke desjenigen Talents, welches, jenes Mangels ungeachtet, mich soweit gebracht
hat, als ich schon bin” (NA 25. 212).
8
unusually busy year for round anniversaries. It saw the one-hundredth birth-
days of Jean-Paul Sartre, Elias Canetti and Anthony Powell, the centenary of
the publication of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, and the quatercenten-
ary of the publication of the first part of Don Quijote. 12 August 2005 was the
fiftieth anniversary of Thomas Mann’s death, and the 150th anniversary of
Kierkegaard’s death was also commemorated in 2005. However, it was the
bicentenaries which seemed the most numerous. In addition to Schiller’s two-
hundredth “Todestag”, 2005 saw Hans Christian Andersen’s two-hundredth birth-
day, as well as the bicentenaries of the battles of Trafalgar (21 October) and
Austerlitz (2 December), and of the first performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio
(20 November). Anniversaries of Schiller’s birth or death have usually been
celebrated at fifty-year intervals.3The“Schillerjahr 2005” was the seventh of
these, after 1855, 1859, 1905, 1909, 1955 and 1959. In May 2005, the Austrian
public television channel Ö1 attempted to explain to its audience the signifi-
cance of the Schiller anniversary: “Jedes Jubiläum – ein runder Geburtstag
oder Todestag – wurde schon immer zum Anlass genommen, die jeweils aktuelle
Sicht auf Person oder Werk eines Künstlers in Publikationen aller Art zu ver-
breiten. Jetzt ist Friedrich Schiller dran”.4This is quite correct, of course, but
tells only half the story. As important as the views expressed on Schiller is what
these views tell us about the individuals and cultures expressing them. The
major“Schillerfeiern” of the past two hundred years offer not only a picture of
the vicissitudes of the poet’s fame but also revealing snapshots of German
intellectual, political and popular culture. In the context of the present volume,
it seems appropriate to provide a brief sketch of Schiller’s reception as seen
through the prism of these formal celebrations and commemorations.
The high tides in Schiller’s reputation since his death have occurred during
the Wars of Liberation of 1813–14, the ensuing period up to and including the
1848 revolutions, and the anniversaries of 1859 and 1905. Periods during
which Schiller has tended to be out of favour include the years immediately
following his death (1805–12), the “Gründerjahre” of the Wilhelmine Reich,
the disillusioned anniversary of 1909, the First World War, as well as much of
the second half of the twentieth century.5 For better or worse, the Schiller we
know today is still to some extent the product of the 1859 centenary celebra-
tions which set the tone for both the form and the rhetorical content of many
3A glaring exception to this rule was 1934, when the Nazis thought it politically expe-
dient to celebrate Schiller’s 175th birthday.
4Anschreiben gegen Klischees. Friedrich Schiller zum 200. Todestag. (cid:2)http:// oe1.orf.
at/highlights/36500.html(cid:3).
5An authoritative guide to the history of Schiller reception in Germany is Schiller –
Zeitgenosse aller Epochen. Dokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Schillers in
Deutschland. Ed. by Norbert Oellers. 2 vols. Frankfurt/M.: Athenäum 1970. Munich:
Beck 1976.
9
events in subsequent “Schillerjahre”. In 1859 countless “Festredner” became
unsolicited marketing men for a certain idea of Schiller. This idea had three
aspects: Schiller the spiritual and, above all, political idealist; Schiller the moral-
ist; and Schiller the patriot. Schiller’s humane cosmopolitanism was largely
ignored and this was to remain a feature of “Schillerjahre” until the 1950s.
Looking back, one commentator in 1959 observed: “Weil gewisse Richtungen
den Kosmopoliten nicht wollten, feierte man den nationalen Dichter der
Deutschen in Schiller”.6 Much of the rhetoric surrounding the extraordinary
celebrations of 1859, which tended to identify Schiller with not only a spirit of
national unity but also a particular self-image of the German “Bürgertum”,
helped to shape the image of Schiller as an idealised and politically malleable
figure. The Austrian writer Franz Grillparzer was one of very few at the time
to recognise the dangers of this approach: “Meine Herren! Lassen Sie uns
Schiller feiern als das, was er war: als großen Dichter, als ausgezeichneten
Schriftsteller und ihn nicht bloß zum Vorwand nehmen für weiß Gott was für
politische und staatliche Ideen”.7
By the time of the next major “Schillerjahr”, the centenary of his death in
1905, a change in attitudes appeared to have taken place. In the years leading
up to the centenary, two impressive editions were published: Fritz Jonas’s critical
edition of Schiller’s letters, which appeared between 1892 and 1896 and, on the
eve of the centenary, Eduard von der Hellen’s sixteen-volume “Säkularausgabe”
of Schiller’s works.8Monumental scholarly achievements though both editions
are, they reveal that by 1905 Schiller had become more of an object of
academic study than of popular enthusiasm or literary engagement, though
the “patriotic” Schiller was still very much in evidence. In the words of
Hans Mayer:
Das Schiller-Jahr 1905 stand weitgehend im Zeichen offizieller Feiern des wil-
helminischen Deutschland. Die literarischen Naturalisten und Impressionisten hiel-
ten sich zurück. […] Die Schiller-Feier von 1905 stand nach außen hin im Zeichen
der Behörden und der Universitätsprofessoren für neuere deutsche Philologie, nicht
der Schriftsteller.9
6Rudolf Hagelstange: Friedrich Schiller und die Deutschen. In: Schiller. Reden im
Gedenkjahr 1959. Ed. by Bernhard Zeller. Stuttgart: Klett 1961 (Veröffentlichungen
der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 24). Pp. 53–75, here p. 74.
7Franz Grillparzer: Sämtliche Werke. Ed. by Moritz Necker. 16 vols. Leipzig: Hesse
1903. Vol. 14. Pp. 79–80.
8Schillers Briefe. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Ed. by Fritz Jonas. 7 vols. Stuttgart –
Leipzig – Berlin – Vienna: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1892–96. Schillers Sämtliche
Werke. Säkular-Ausgabe. Ed. by Eduard von der Hellen. 16 vols. Stuttgart – Berlin:
Cotta 1904–05.
9Hans Mayer: Schillers Nachruhm. In: Etudes Germaniques14 (1959). Pp. 374–385,
here p. 383.