Experiment about Schiller

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Attempt on Schiller On the 150th anniversary of the poet's death - dedicated to his memory with love is an essay by Thomas Mann , from which he gave the speeches on May 8, 1955 in Stuttgart ( FRG ) and on May 14, 1955 in Weimar ( GDR ) Schiller celebrations.

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Thomas Mann's laudation for the poet of the song from the bell begins with a depressing description of the burial in May 1805 in the Jacobsfriedhof in Weimar and ends with a haunting lament. The “raw, greedy” human race, not at all clever after two world wars, armed itself in the Cold War - with the hydrogen bomb . The text can be read as a legacy of Thomas Mann, who died in August 1955.

The essay is not just a song of thanks to the dead poet. It also contains polemics against “the cheeky romantics” who laughed at Schiller's pathos. Tieck is mentioned several times. Goethe's announcement on this, rattled down from Olympus: "I take the liberty to consider Schiller for a poet, and for a great one!"

The eulogy in memory of Schiller, the “most industrious of poets”, turns out to be a loving memory of Goethe on closer inspection . “Dear friend!” Schiller once wrote to Weimar. Goethe did not pick up the tone. But the aging poet thinks back to Schiller with quiet pain: “He was a great, strange person.” And: “Schiller's attraction was great, he held on to everyone who approached him.” Goethe thinks that the spirit “devoured Schiller , the idea of ​​freedom literally killed him ”:“ It is sad to see how such an extraordinarily talented person tormented himself with philosophical ways of thinking that could not help him ”(on November 14, 1823 to Eckermann ). Goethe probably created in a relatively casual way. On the one hand, he regrets that “in Schiller's presence, art sometimes became too serious a matter”. On the other hand, he scolds his daughter-in-law Ottilie , who Schiller finds boring: "You are all too poor and earthly for him."

Theobald von Oer : The Weimar Musenhof - Schiller reads in the Tiefurt Park in front of the court society and his two poet colleagues Wieland (far left, seated) and Goethe (standing right in front of the column).

Thomas Mann admires Schiller's drive, which made him “Hofrat von Schiller”, and he describes the path from the robbers to the Demetrius fragment. Thomas Mann celebrates the high point of the great Leipzig theater performance of the Jungfrau , which the poet himself witnessed in 1801; the Maid of Orléans , a work of art “that Goethe liked very much”. Thomas Mann never tires of quoting from the Wallenstein . "Should I keep quoting?" He asks the reader. “It's so tempting!” His selection encourages reading the Monstre work : “Because he stood next to me, like my youth” (Schiller, Wallenstein's Death , 5th act, 3rd appearance).

Schiller, who suffered from pulmonary consumption, did not have to travel to Switzerland to write Tell .

Not only the restless poet is remembered, but also the happiness that Schiller experienced in his marriage to Charlotte von Lengefeld , a “lovely, simple, affectionate, harmonious nature”.

After what has been said above, the incorrect impression could arise that Goethe was the greater one. We counter this with a “wonderful sentence” from Schiller, which says something about the secret of its far-reaching effect: “But I've actually formed my own drama based on my talent, which gives me a certain excellence in it, precisely because it's my own . ”Goethe also has a say in this point:“ The Germans argue about who is taller, Schiller or me. They should be glad they have two such guys to argue about. "

Goethe on Schiller

  • On December 16, 1828 to Eckermann: “The Germans cannot get rid of philistinism. They whine and argue about different distiches that are printed in Schiller and also with me, and they think it would be important to get out clearly which ones really belong to Schillers and which ones to me. As if something mattered, as if something were won with it, and as if it wasn't enough that the things are there! "
  • On February 23, 1829 to Eckermann: "You can see how Schiller was a great artist and how he also knew how to grasp the objective when it occurred to him as a tradition."
  • On March 1, 1830 to Friedrich von Müller : “Schiller was a completely different journeyman than I and always knew how to speak meaningfully and attractively in society. I, on the other hand, always had the stupid aversion to what interested me most at the time. "

testimony

Hermann Hesse on July 2, 1955: "... the experiment about Schiller , a great work of great love, full of meticulousness and at the same time full of splendid ideas, it is pure enjoyment."

expenditure

  • Thomas Mann: Speeches and essays. Volume 1, Frankfurt a. M. 1960, pp. 870-951, ISBN 3596103193 .
  • Thomas Mann: Experiment on Schiller. Frankfurt a. M. 2005, ISBN 9783100482822 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ An experiment on Schiller. Book . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-10-048282-2 ( dnb.de [accessed January 15, 2019]).