772 
SCHILLER. 
SCHILDBERG, a small town of the Austrian states, in 
Moravia; 34 miles north-west of Olmutz. 
SCHILDESCHE, a small town of Prussian Westphalia. 
Here is a convent for ladies of family, both Catholic and 
Protestant. Population 2000; 2 miles south-south-west of 
Minden. 
SCHILLER (Friedrich Johann Christoph), was bom at 
Marbach, a small town of Wurtemberg, on the banks of the 
Neckar, on the 18th Nov. 1759. His father, who had been 
a surgeon in the Bavarian army, and had served in the 
Netherlands during the succession war, obtained a captain’s 
commission from the Duke of Wurtemberg, and he was 
principally employed in laying out the pleasure grounds at 
Ludwigsburg and Solitude. 
Young Schiller received his earliest instructions from one 
Moser, pastor and schoolmaster in the village of Lorch, and 
he seems to have at this time taken up the idea of devoting 
himself to the clerical profession. He accordingly studied 
at Ludwigsburg in reference to this profession; and he 
underwent in four successive years the annual examination 
before the Stutgard commission, to which young aspirants to 
the church are subjected. 
The Duke of Wurtemberg having provided a free seminary 
at Stutgard, pressed Schiller’s father to avail himself of its 
advantages for his son. This offer embarrassed them ex¬ 
ceedingly; but, notwitstanding their previous determination, 
that young Schiller should be educated for the church, he 
was enrolled in the Stutgard school in 1773, for the purpose 
of following the profession of the law. The system of mili¬ 
tary drilling which prevailed in this school, and which gave 
formality to the amusements as well as to the studies of the 
pupils, accorded ill with the unconstrained freedom which 
Schiller had formerly enjoyed. Hence he was soon dis¬ 
gusted with his situation, and in 1775 he renounced for ever 
all views towards the profession of the law; but he passed 
only from the study of law to that of medicine, not as a more 
congenial pursuit, but as the means of detaching himself 
from one less attractive. He had begun to study in secret 
Plutarch, and Shakspeare, and Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, 
and Goethe. His admiration of the Messiah of Klopstock 
led him to compose, when he was only fourteen years old 
an epic poem called “ Moses.’’ His attention was next 
directed to the drama, by the great popularity of the 
Uglino of Gerstenberg, and the Gotz Von Berlichingen of 
Goethe; and he composed a tragedy called Cosmo Von 
Medicis, some fragments of which he inserted in his 
Robbers. 
When Schiller was in his 19th year he began his tragedy of 
the Robbers, the publication of which excited the greatest 
iuterest. Translations of it immediately appeared in almost 
all the languages of Europe, and were every where read with 
the mingled feelings of admiration and aversion. In Ger¬ 
many it was received with the most extraordinary enthu¬ 
siasm ; and though the general opinion was in its favour, 
yet the severest censures were passed on its moral tendency. 
He was accused of having injured the cause of morality, and 
of having excited the fiery temperaments of youth to pursue 
the fortunes of his abandoned hero. It has even been stated, 
that, under its pernicious influence, several students at 
Leipsig deserted their college, and resolved to form a troop 
of banditti in the Bohemian forest; but this and similar 
stories were entirely false, and had their origin in the circum¬ 
stance of a German nobleman having been driven to the 
highway by a long course of debauchery and extravagance. 
Nothing seems to have been more remote from Schiller’s 
intention than to produce any such effects; and he even 
speaks in his preface of the moral influence of his piece in 
terms which, while they do honour to his heart, evince at 
the same time his inexperience and ignorance of the world. 
Schiller had finished the original sketch of the Robbers in 
1778, but he had kept it secret till he had completed his me¬ 
dical studies. In 1778, he wrote a Latin essay on the 
Philosophy of Physiology, which was never printed ; and 
after pursuing his studies with assiduity, he was, in 1780, 
appointed surgeon to the regiment Auge in the Wurtemberg 
army. This promotion enabled him to print the Robbers 
at his own expense, as no bookseller could be found to un¬ 
dertake it. 
Although Schiller had, by the publication of this tragedy, 
forfeited the good opinion of the Grand Duke of Wurtem¬ 
berg, yet its great popularity gained him many new friends 
and correspondents. Among these was Freiherr Von Dal- 
berg, superintendent of the theatre of Manheim, under 
whose patronage Schiller remodelled the Robbers, and had 
it brought on the stage in 1781. Schiller went to Manheim 
in disguise, to see the first representation of his tragedy; but 
he was discovered, and put under arrest during a week for 
the offence. Having committed the same act a secoud time, 
he dreaded more rigorous measures, and he was therefore 
induced to quit Stutgard in October, 1782. Afraid of re¬ 
siding so near Stutgard or Manheim, he went to Franconia, 
and was living principally at Oggersheim under the name of 
Schmidt, when Madame Von Wollzogen, whose sons had 
been his fellow students at Stutgard, invited him to their 
country-house at Bauerbach, near Meinungen. Beneath her 
hospitable roof he resumed his poetical labours, and in the 
course of a year he brought out his tragedies of Verschwo- 
rung des Fiesco, (Conspiracy of Fiesco,) and Kabale und 
Liebe, (Court Intriguing and Love.) During his arrest at 
Stutgard he had begun Fiesco, which was published along 
with another piece in 1783, and soon after brought out on 
the Manheim stage. 
Schiller had long been ambitious of being appointed 
theatrical poet at Manheim; and his friend Dalberg was 
now able to assist him in procuring that appointment, which 
he obtained in Sept. 1783, and which, while it gave him a 
situation of respectability, held out to him the prospect of a 
seasonable remuneration. He was soon after elected a 
member of the German Society at Manheim, and acknow¬ 
ledged a subject of the Elector Palatine. 
Schiller now engaged himself in bringing out a periodical 
work devoted to the concerns of the stage, the main purpose 
of which was to advance the dramatic art. The first number 
of this work, entitled the Rheinische Thalia, enriched with 
three acts of his Don Carlos, appeared in 1785, and with 
the exception of one short interruption, was continued till 
1794. This work, besides his dramatic speculations and 
performances, contains several of his poems. 
About this period Schiller composed his Philosophical 
Letters, a short and unfinished fragment, which is interest¬ 
ing only as containing the speculations of its author on 
various metaphysical subjects, which must always possess a 
deep interest to every reflecting mind. 
The first number of his Thalia had obtained Schiller 
such favour from the Duke of Sachsan Weimar, that this 
prince transmitted to him the title of a counsellor, and about 
the same time he received from Leipsig four miniature 
portraits, two of which were of very beautiful young ladies, 
who had admired his writings, and had sent him this hidden 
mark of their esteem. This little incident is supposed to 
have induced him to remove to Leipsig, which he did in the 
end of March, 1785. In this city, however, he did not 
long remain, and having received pressing invitations to 
Dresden, he followed the new impulse, and went to that 
capital at the end of summer. Here he took up his resi¬ 
dence with the Apellationsrath Korner, who lived at Losch- 
witz, near Dresden; and he completed his Don Carlos, 
which was published in 1786. It is written in blank verse, 
and is the first of Schiller’s plays that bears the marks of 
matured genius. 
Schiller seems now to have taken a distaste to the drama, 
and to have occupied himself with the composition of 
various lyrical productions. Some of these have been men¬ 
tioned by his biographer as among the most finished efforts 
of his genius, viz., the Walk, the Song of the Bell, his 
Ritter Toggenburg, his Cranes of Ibycus, and his Hero 
and Leander. Another poem, written about this time, and 
entitled The Freethinking of Passion, is said to have origi- 
ginated 
