SOURCE: “Karl Moor's Charisma,” in Friedrich von Schiller and the Drama of Human Existence, edited by Alexej Ugrinsky, Greenwood Press, 1988, pp. 57-61.

In the following essay, Leidner notes that Die Räuber, Schiller's hugely successful first play, was and is so popular because of the charisma of the protagonist, Karl Moor, and because of the emotional ritual created in a work where the audience takes vicarious pleasure in identifying with a murderer.

When Friedrich von Schiller, a twenty-two year old cadet at the Hohe Karlsschule in Stuttgart, went A.W.O.L. to attend the first performance of Die Räuber (1781), he could hardly have been disappointed with the response. “No play,” wrote one reviewer, “has ever had such an effect in the German theatre”¹; and another: “The theatre was like a madhouse, full of rolling eyes, clenched fists, stomping feet, and hoarse cries!”² There were, of course...