Schiller

Schiller, JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON, was born at Marbach in 1759. The reigning duke noticed the boy and adopted him, sending him to study first law and then medicine. Schiller, however, gave his best energies to the composition of Die Rauber, a play directed against the old order of things, and his patron cast him off. In 1783 he produced Fiesco and Kabale und Liebe at Mannheim. In 1790 he was appointed professor of history at Jena, and married Charlotte von Lengefeld. He now dropped poetry for a time and began his unfinished History of the Revolt of the Netherlands and History of the Thirty Years War. Latey, however, he contributed to periodicals some of his best ballads and lyrics. In 1799 he transferred his home to Weimar, chiefly for the sake of Goethe's society, and set to work upon the great dramas of Wallenstein's Camp, The Piccolomini, and Wallenstein's Death, which were all put on the stage within a few months. The Song of the Bell, Maria Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, The Bride of Messina, occupied him during the next four years, and he was engaged on Demetrius when he died on May 9, 1805. Schiller was most successful as a writer of ballads and lyrics, upon which he brought to bear his exquisite sense of beauty in diction and rhythm.