Born on November 10, 1759, a few months later than Robert Burns, he was a native of Marbach in Wuertemberg.  His father had been a surgeon in the army, and was now in the pay of the Duke of Wuertemberg; and the benevolence, integrity and devoutness of his parents were expanded and beautified in the character of their son.  His education was irregular; desiring at first to enter the clerical profession, he was put to the study of law and then of medicine; but he wrenched asunder his fetters with a force that was felt at the extremities of Europe.  In his nineteenth year he began the tragedy of the “Robbers,” and its publication forms an era in the literature of the world.

It is a work of tragic interest, bordering upon horror.  A grim, inexpiable Fate is made the ruling principle; it envelops and overshadows the whole; and under its souring influence, the fiercest efforts of human will appear but like flashes that illuminate the wild scene with a brief and terrible splendour, and are lost forever in the darkness.  The unsearchable abysses of man’s destiny are laid open before us, black and profound, and appalling, as they seem to the young mind when it first attempts to explore them.

Schiller had meanwhile become a surgeon in the Wuertemberg army; and the Duke, scandalised at the moral errors of the “Robbers,” and not less at its want of literary merit, forbade him to write more poetry.  Dalberg, superintendent of the Manheim theatre, put the play on the stage in 1781, and in October, 1782, Schiller decided his destiny by escaping secretly from Stuttgart beyond the frontier.  A generous lady, Madam von Wollzogen, invited him to her estate of Bauerbach, near Meiningen.

Here he resumed his poetical employments, and published, within a year, the tragedies “Verschwoerung des Fiesco” and “Kabale und Liebe.”  This “Conspiracy of Fiesco,” the story of the political and personal relations of the Genoese nobility, has the charm of a kind of colossal magnitude.  The chief incidents have a dazzling magnificence; the chief characters, an aspect of majesty and force.  The other play, “Court-intriguing and Love,” is a tragedy of domestic life; it shows the conflict of cold worldly wisdom with the pure impassioned movements of the young heart.  Now, in September, 1783, Schiller went to Manheim as poet to the theatre, a post of respectability and reasonable profit.  Here he undertook his “Thalia,” a periodical work devoted to poetry and the drama, in 1784.  Naturalised by law in his new country, surrounded by friends that honoured him, he was now exclusively a man of letters for the rest of his days.

From His Settlement at Manheim to His Settlement at Jena (1783-1790)

Schiller had his share of trials to encounter, but he was devoted with unchanging ardour to the cause he had embarked in.  Few men have been more resolutely diligent than he, and he was warmly seconded by the taste of the public.  For the Germans consider the stage as an organ for refining the hearts and minds of men, and the theatre of Manheim was one of the best in Germany.