The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III | Page 2

the gorgeous ducal opera, where he got his
first notions of scenic illusion. The hope of his boyhood was to become
a preacher, but this pious aspiration was brought to naught by the offer
of free tuition in an academy which the duke had started at his Castle
Solitude near Stuttgart.
This academy was Schiller's world from his fourteenth to his
twenty-first year. It was an educational experiment conceived in a
rather liberal spirit as a training-school for public service. At first the
duke had the boys taught under his own eye at Castle Solitude, where
they were subjected to a strict military discipline. There being no
provision for the study of divinity, Schiller was put into law, with the
result that he floundered badly for two years. In 1775 the institution
was augmented by a faculty of medicine and transferred to Stuttgart,

where it was destined to a short-lived career under the name of the
Karlschule. Schiller gladly availed himself of the permission to change
from law to medicine, which he thought would be more in harmony
with his temperament and literary ambitions. And so it proved. As a
student of medicine he made himself at home in the doctrines and
practices of the day, and for several years after he left school he
thought now and then of returning to the profession of medicine.
For posterity the salient fact of his long connection with the Karlschule
is that he was there converted into a fiery radical and a banner-bearer of
the literary revolution. Just how it came about is hard to explain in
detail. The school was designed to produce docile and contented
members of the social order; in him it bred up a savage and relentless
critic of that order. The result may be ascribed partly, no doubt, to the
natural reaction of an ardent, liberty-loving temperament against a
system of rigid discipline and petty espionage. The _élèves_--French
was the official language of the school--were not supposed to read
dangerous books, and their rooms were often searched for contraband
literature. But they easily found ways to evade the rule and enjoy the
savor of forbidden fruit.
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER]
So it was with Schiller: he read Rousseau more or less, the early works
of Goethe, Lessing's Emilia Galotti, and plays by Klinger, Leisewitz,
Lenz and Wagner--all more or less revolutionary in spirit. He also
made the acquaintance of Shakespeare and steeped himself in the spirit
of antique heroism as he found it in Plutarch.
Perhaps this reading would have made a radical of him even if he had
just then been enjoying the normal freedom of a German university
student. Be that as it may, the time came--it was about 1777--when the
young Schiller, faithfully pursuing his medical course and doing loyal
birthday orations in praise of the duke or the duke's mistress, was not
exactly what he seemed to be. Underneath the calm exterior there was a
soul on fire with revolutionary passion.
It was mainly in 1780--his last year in the Karlschule--that Schiller
wrote The Robbers, altogether the loudest explosion of the Storm and
Stress. The hero, Karl Moor, was conceived as a "sublime criminal."
Deceived by the machinations of his villainous brother Franz, he
becomes the captain of a band of outlaws and attempts by murder,

arson and robbery to right the wrongs of the social order. For a while he
believes that he is doing a noble work. When he learns how he has been
deluded he gives himself up to the law. The effect of the play is that of
tremendous power unchecked by any of the restraints of art. The plot is
incredible, the language tense with turbulent passion, and the characters
are extravagantly overdrawn. But the genius of the born dramatist is
there. It is all vividly seen and powerfully bodied forth. What is more
important, the play marks the birth of a new type--the tragedy of
fanaticism. We are left at the end with a heightened feeling for the
mysterious tangle of human destiny which makes it possible for a really
noble nature such as Karl Moor to go thus disastrously wrong.
Toward the end of 1780 Schiller left the academy and was made doctor
to a regiment of soldiers consisting largely of invalids. He dosed them
with drastic medicines according to his light, but the service was
disagreeable and the pay very small. To make a stir in the world he
borrowed money and published The Robbers as a book for the reader,
with a preface in which he spoke rather slightingly of the theatre. The
book came out in the spring of 1781--with a rampant lion and the motto
in Tirannos on the title-page. Ere long it came to the attention of
Dalberg, director of the theatre at