Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) was a German dramatist, historian, and philosopher. One of the most influential playwrights of German literature, he is best known for his historical plays.
Born in Marbach, Württemberg, Schiller started writing plays while still a student at a military academy. His first play Die Räuber (The Robbers, 1781) caused a sensation. It featured a nobleman who withdraws from society to join a band of criminals.
Schiller then turned to historical studies and, for the next ten years, wrote two major works, The Revolt of the Netherlands (1788) and A History of the Thirty Years War (1793.) He also wrote Wallenstein (1799,) his famed trilogy of dramas based loosely on actual historical events during the Thirty Years War. It consists of Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein’s Camp,) Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini,) and Wallensteins Tod (Wallenstein’s Death.)
In 1785, Schiller wrote the hymn “An die Freude” (“Ode to Joy,”) which Beethoven later used as the basis for the fourth movement for the choral movement of his Ninth Symphony. Beethoven’s tune (but not Schiller’s words) was adopted as the Anthem of Europe by the Council of Europe and later by the European Union.
During the next several years, Schiller produced his most mature works, including Maria Stuart (Mary Stuart, 1800,) Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans, 1801,) and Wilhelm Tell (William Tell, 1804.) William Tell sets the legendary hero against the backdrop of the Swiss War of Independence against the Austrians. A favorite in revolutionary situations, it was most memorably produced by the German Expressionist theater producer Leopold Jessner after World War I.
Schiller also published academic essays of great consequence about the theatre, including The Stage Regarded as a Moral Institution (1784.) This manuscript helped raise the theatre to an essential element in German culture.
As a philosopher, Schiller is remembered for his influential assertion of aesthetics. He was influenced by Immanuel Kant’s idealism. Schiller’s most important philosophical works are Briefeüber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (1794–95; Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind, 1844) and Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795; On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, 1861.)
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Honor to women! they twine and weave the roses of heaven into the life of man; it is they that unite us in the fascinating bonds of love; and, concealed in the modest veil of the graces, they cherish carefully the external fire of delicate feeling with holy hands.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Woman
Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Imitation, Being Ourselves
The world is governed by self-interest only.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Self-respect
There is no such thing as chance; and what seems to us the merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Chance, Destiny
Happy he who learns to bear what he cannot change.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Endurance, Happiness, Acceptance
What reason, like the careful ant, draws laboriously together, the wind of accident sometimes collects in a moment.
—Friedrich Schiller
Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Enthusiasm, Opposition, Dissent
Wine invents nothing; it only tattles. It lets out all secrets.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Wine
If you have never seen beauty in a moment of suffering, you have never seen beauty at all. If you have never seen joy in a beautiful face, you have never seen joy at all.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Beauty
It is rascally to steal a purse, daring to steal a million, and a proof of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Blame
Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Role models, Imitation
Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Beauty
Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Peace
Yes great people are always subject to persecution and always getting into straits.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Prejudice
Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Religion
A childlike mind, in its simplicity, practices that science of good to which the wise may be blind.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Simplicity
God helps the brave.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Courage
A brave man hazards life, but not his conscience.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Conscience
It is difficult to discriminate the voice of truth from amid the clamor raised by heated partisans.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Loyalty
Time consecrates and what is gray with age becomes religion.
—Friedrich Schiller
Every true genius is bound to be naive.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Genius, Ignorance
The strong man is strongest when alone.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: One liners, Solitude
What shall he fear that does not fear death.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Death
Great souls endure in silence.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Soul
The ridiculous rage for innovation, which only increases the weight of the chains it cannot break, shall never fire my blood!
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Innovation
Sorrow is brief but joy is endless
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Sorrow
Even the weak become strong when they are united.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Unity
The May of life blooms only once.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Opportunity
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.
—Friedrich Schiller
I follow my heart, for I can trust it.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Instincts
Historians are prophets with their face turned backward.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Historians, History
Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Purpose
Wise to resolve, patient to perform.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Effort, Patience, Performance
Speech is always bolder than action.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Speech, Conversation
Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Patience
It is wise to disclose what cannot be concealed.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Secrets
One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Advice
Who dares nothing, need hope for nothing.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Adventure, Courage, Risk, Perspective, Chance, Success
Of all the possessions of this life, fame is the noblest; when the body has sunk into the dust the great name still lives.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Fame
The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Morals, Morality
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