The Rudolf Steiner Archive

18. Schiller's Life and Character

[ 1 ] On May 9, 1905, a hundred years will have passed since Schiller’s death. The educated German public will undoubtedly commemorate this event in a festive manner.

[ 2 ] Three generations separate us from Schiller’s death. It therefore seems necessary to take stock of what Schiller means to us today. In 1859, the last major Schiller celebration took place in a manner quite different from what is possible today. Times have changed immeasurably since then: today, it is different images, questions, and thoughts that occupy the minds of our contemporaries. When the Schiller celebration took place in 1859, it was an event that touched the hearts of the German people deeply. Back then, there were still individuals who themselves lived entirely within the worlds of imagination brought to life by Schiller’s poetic power. It is possible that more lavish festivities will be held this time; yet such deep, heartfelt participation can no longer exist. The question presses itself upon us: What has happened since then, and how can Schiller still mean anything to us? The grand visions of the Schiller-Goethe era have faded away. Back then, those ideals were still embodied in individuals whom the older among us had known in our youth. These leading minds, who were deeply rooted in the traditions of that time, are now among the dead. The youngest among us no longer know them. In the person of my teacher Schröer, who enthusiastically brought the Goethe era to life for us, I was fortunate enough to get to know a man who was deeply rooted in the traditions of that time. With the death of Herman Grimm, the last of those whose souls were wholly connected to that era has passed away.

[ 3 ] Today, all of that is history. We are preoccupied with other issues now. Political and social issues have become so pressing that we can no longer comprehend that intimate appreciation of art. People from the age of Schiller and Goethe must seem strange to us. We have lost that intimate, soulful appreciation of art. This is not meant as a criticism; our times have become harsh.

[ 4 ] Let’s take a look at three leading thinkers of our time: how differently they speak about the issues shaping our era. First, Ibsen: We see him comprehensively describing the cultural problems of the present—he who has found the most poignant tones, precisely for the very heart of the present, for a civilization descending into chaos. Then Zola: How should contemporary art relate to a life that is blazing with social struggles—that is the question he raises. This life seems to us so solid, so impenetrable, governed by forces entirely different from those of our imagination and soul. Finally, Tolstoy: He who began with art and only then became a preacher and social reformer. A purely aesthetic culture, as Schröer characterized it for the Schiller-Goethe era, seems impossible today. Back then, what we might call the aesthetic conscience had become the defining question of life. Beauty, taste, and artistic sensibility were regarded as matters as serious and important as politics and freedom are today. Art was viewed as something that should intervene in the workings of culture. Today, things are different: Tolstoy, who himself achieved the highest heights in the realm of art, turns away from art and seeks other means to speak to the sensibilities of his contemporaries.

[ 5 ] Schiller, therefore, cannot be appreciated in our time in the same way he was in the 18th century. What has remained, however, is the profound depth of his worldview. We see numerous questions cast in an entirely new light by Schiller’s view of the world. Let us try to examine them from this perspective. This will be the focus of these lectures.

[ 6 ] When it comes to addressing contemporary and cultural issues—in both scholarship and artistic endeavors—there is often confusion and ambiguity today. Every young writer believes he is called upon to establish a new worldview. Literature is flooded with books on questions that have long since been resolved. Problems are raised that, as they present themselves to us, seem immature because those who attempt to solve them have not truly engaged with the questions. Often, the questions are not even posed correctly. The problem lies in the way the questions are framed.

[ 7 ] We see Schiller’s personality emerging from two currents. On the one hand, there is the rise of materialism; on the other, the longing to assert one’s individuality. What we call the Enlightenment is rooted in these two currents. Ancient traditions had begun to falter in the 18th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the deepest questions of the human spirit were still resolved within the framework of tradition. The relationship between humanity and the world—and the very foundation of the world—remained unshaken.

[ 8 ] Now things had changed. It had become impossible to understand the fundamental truths of human spiritual life in the same way they had been understood for centuries. In France, inspired by English sensualism, a rationalist, materialist worldview emerged. People began to derive the soul from material conditions, from the physical world; they attempted to explain everything spiritual in terms of the physical. The Encyclopedists posited that the spirit arose from matter. Vortices of atomic movements were the be-all and end-all that one saw in the world. “Man is a machine”—this is roughly how Lamettrie formulated his materialist creed. Even Goethe, upon becoming acquainted with the writings of these French materialists—Holbach’s Système de la nature—lamented his unease at the presumption of wanting to explain the entire world with a few hastily cobbled-together concepts.

[ 9 ] In addition, there was another school of thought, the one that originated with Rousseau. Rousseau’s writings made the greatest impression on the most prominent figures of that time. It is said of Kant, who was a great stickler for detail, that he took his daily walk with such punctuality that the residents of Königsberg could set their clocks by it. Once, however, to the great astonishment of the citizens, the philosopher failed to appear for several days; he had been reading Rousseau’s writings. They had captivated him so completely that he forgot his usual walk.

[ 10 ] Rousseau called into question the very foundation of all culture. He had raised the question of whether humanity had advanced through culture, and he answered in the negative. In his view, people had been happier in the state of nature than they are now, having allowed their individuality to degenerate. In times when people, grounded in ancient traditions, still believed they knew something about the workings of the world, they were not so focused on the individual. Now that the individual had severed the bonds connecting it to the world, the question arose: How can this individual reestablish its place in the world? People believed they could know nothing about the origins of the world and the soul. But if nothing was certain in the world, the urge for better conditions was bound to grow powerful in all hearts. The revolutionary striving of the 18th century sprang from this. It was linked to the materialist current. A devout Christian of the 17th century could not have spoken in such terms of liberty, equality, and fraternity. This striving for liberty must be regarded as a current unique to that era.

[ 11 ] Schiller was young at a time when ideas of freedom were taking shape. As mentioned, Rousseau’s ideals made a profound impression on the most outstanding German thinkers, such as Kant, Herder, Wieland, and so on. The young Schiller, too, was swept up in this movement. We find him already at the Karlsschule engrossed in reading Rousseau, Voltaire, and others. Things had reached a dead end at that time; the upper classes had lost all moral grounding; external tyranny reigned even at the school. In Schiller we find a peculiar depth of character that manifested itself even as a boy in a inclination toward religion. Originally, therefore, he also intended to pursue theological studies; his whole being drew him toward the deepest questions of existence. It was a form of that striving for freedom which took on this particular shape in Germany: piety was united with an infinite longing for emancipation. It is this personal drive for freedom—not merely religion—that also speaks through Klopstock’s Messiah. It was precisely in his religious sensibility that the German sought to be free. The Messiah made an immense impression on Schiller.

[ 12 ] Schiller chose to study medicine. The way he approached medicine was closely tied to the questions that most preoccupied him. Through serious study of nature, he sought to gain insight into these questions that faced him. The instruction at the Karlsschule was to have a profound and comprehensive impact on him. The shortcomings that are often associated with today’s high school education did not exist at the Karlsschule. Physics and the natural sciences were covered in depth; philosophy was at the center of the curriculum. Serious questions of metaphysics and logic were discussed. Schiller entered his medical studies with a philosophical mindset. The way in which he approached his studies is important and significant for his life. One cannot fully understand Schiller without reading the two dissertations he wrote after completing his studies. They address the questions: “What is the relationship between matter and spirit?” — “On the relationship between the animal and spiritual nature of man.”

[ 13 ] Very little of the former dissertation has survived. In the second, Schiller asks himself: How are we to interpret the influence of the material on the human body?

[ 14 ] For Schiller, there is something spiritual even in the physical body. There are people who see only something base and animalistic in the body. It is not a profound, meaningful worldview to debase and despise the physical in this way. This was not the worldview of the young Schiller. For Schiller, the body is the temple of the spirit, built upon wisdom, and it exerts an influence on the spiritual realm for good reason. What significance does the body hold for the soul? — Schiller, for whom the physical realm was also sacred, sought to answer this question. He describes, for example, how the soul expresses itself in emotion and gesture; he seeks to explain, in a subtle and spiritual way, the enduring aspect of the soul’s movement as it is expressed. At the end of his treatise, he says:

[ 15 ] “Matter disintegrates (at death) back into its ultimate elements, which then wander through the realms of nature in other forms and relationships, serving other purposes. The soul continues to exercise its power of thought in other spheres and to contemplate the universe from other perspectives. One might, of course, say that it has by no means exhausted this sphere, that it could have left it more fully, but do we really know that this sphere is lost to it? We now set aside many a book that we do not understand, but perhaps we will understand it better in a few years.”

[ 16 ] In this way, Schiller attempts to clarify the eternal nature of the spirit in relation to physical nature, without, however, underestimating the physical. This question remained Schiller’s fundamental and central question throughout his life: “How is man born out of the physical world, and how does his soul—the freedom of his personality—relate to the world?” “How is the soul to find its center, now that the old traditions are gone?”

[ 17 ] After giving full vent to his urge for emancipation in his early plays—and thereby winning the hearts of the people—he immersed himself in history and philosophy, and we touch upon the deepest questions of cultural history when we consider Schiller’s dramas. Back then, every person had a bit of the Marquis Posa in them. This gave Schiller’s problem a new dimension. Profound questions are raised about the human soul and the meaning of life. Schiller saw how little had been achieved on the external plane. In Germany, people were now attempting to solve the problem of freedom through art, and this gave rise to the concept of the “aesthetic conscience.” Schiller, too, had now posed the question to himself in this sense. It was clear to him that the artist must bring the highest to humanity. He addressed this problem in his later years. In his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” he says: In the world of the senses, human beings act unfreely out of necessity; in the world of reason, they are subject to the necessity of logic. Thus, human beings are constrained by reality and the ideal of reason. But there is another, intermediate state between reason and the sensory world: the aesthetic. Those who perceive artistically enjoy the spirit within the sensory; they see the spirit woven into nature. Nature is for them a beautiful image of the spiritual. The sensory realm is then merely the imprint of the spirit; in the work of art, the sensory is ennobled by the spirit. The spirit is brought down from the realm of necessity. In beauty, human beings live as if in freedom. Art is thus the mediator between the sensory and the rational in the realm of freedom.

[ 18 ] Goethe, too, felt this way when viewing works of art in Italy. In beauty, these people’s yearning for freedom found its fulfillment; here, it is freed from ironclad necessity. Not through coercion or state laws: Schiller saw aesthetic enjoyment as an education in harmony. As a human being, he feels free through art: thus, Schiller would like to transform the entire world into a work of art.

[ 19 ] Here we see the difference between that era and our own. Today, art is relegated to the sidelines; back then, Schiller sought to give life a direct impact through art. Today, Tolstoy must condemn art, and Ibsen becomes a critic of social life through his art: Back then, Schiller wanted to intervene in life itself through his art. When he wrote his treatise on “The Theater as a Moral Institution” while serving as theater critic in Mannheim, his aim was to provide a direct cultural impetus through art.