The Life of Friedrich Schiller

'With Father's return, the happy Mother conscientiously shared with him the difficult and important business of bringing up their Son; and both in union worked highly beneficially for his spiritual development. The practical and rigorous Father directed his chief aim to developing the Boy's intellect and character; the mild, pious, poetic-minded Mother, on the other hand, strove for the ennobling nurture of his temper and his imagination. It was almost exclusively owing to her that his religious feeling, his tender sense of all that was good and beautiful, his love of mankind, tolerance, and capability of self-sacrifice, in the circle of his Sisters and playmates, distinguished the Boy.

'On Sunday afternoons, when she went to walk with both the Children, she was wont to explain to them the Church-Gospel of the day. "Once," so stands it in Christophine's Memorials, "when we two, as children, had set out walking with dear Mamma to see our Grandparents, she took the way from Ludwigsburg to Marbach, which leads straight over the Hill, a walk of some four miles. It was a beautiful Easter Monday, and our Mother related to us the history of the two Disciples to whom, on their journey to Emmaus, Jesus had joined himself. Her speech and narrative grew ever more inspired; and when we got upon the Hill, we were all so much affected that we knelt down and prayed. This Hill became a Tabor to us."

'At other times she entertained the children with fairy-tales and magic histories. Already while in Lorch she had likewise led the Boy, so far as his power of comprehension and her own knowledge permitted, into the domains of German Poetry. Klopstock's Messias, Opitz's Poems, Paul Gerhard's and Gellert's pious Songs, were made known to him in this tender age, through his Mother; and were, for that reason, doubly dear. At one time also the artless Mother made an attempt on him with Hofmannswaldau;59 but the sugary and windy tone of him hurt the tender poet-feeling of the Boy. With smiling dislike he pushed the Book away; and afterwards was wont to remark, when, at the new year, rustic congratulants with their foolish rhymes would too liberally present themselves, "Mother, there is a new Hofmannswaldau at the door!" Thus did the excellent Mother guide forward the soul of her docile Boy, with Bible-passages and Church-symbols, with tales, histories and poems, into gradual form and stature. Never forgetting, withal, to awaken and nourish his sense for the beauties of Nature. Before long, Nature had become his dearest abode; and only love of that could sometimes tempt him to little abridgments of school-hours. Often, in the pretty region of Lorch, he wished the Sun goodnight in open song; or with childish pathos summoned Stuttgart's Painters to represent the wondrous formation and glorious colouring of the sunset clouds. If, in such a humour, a poor man met him, his overflowing little heart would impel him to the most active pity; and he liberally gave away whatever he had by him and thought he could dispense with. The Father, who, as above indicated, never could approve or even endure such unreasonable giving-up of one's feelings to effeminate impressions, was apt to intervene on these occasions, even with manual punishment,—unless the Mother were at hand to plead the little culprit off.

'But nothing did the Mother forward with more eagerness, by every opportunity, than the kindling inclination of her Son to become a Preacher; which even showed itself in his sports. Mother or Sister had to put a little cowl on his head, and pin round him by way of surplice a bit of black apron; then would he mount a chair and begin earnestly to preach; ranging together in his own way, not without some traces of coherency, all that he had retained from teaching and church-visiting in this kind, and interweaving it with verses of songs. The Mother, who listened attentively and with silent joy, put a higher meaning into this childish play; and, in thought, saw her Son already stand in the Pulpit, and work, rich in blessings, in a spiritual office. The spiritual profession was at that time greatly esteemed, and gave promise of an honourable existence. Add to this, that the course of studies settled for young Würtemberg Theologians not only offered important pecuniary furtherances and advantages, but also morally the fewest dangers. And thus the prudent and withal pious Father, too, saw no reason to object to this inclination of the Son and wish of the Mother.

'It had almost happened, however, that the Latin School, in Ludwigsburg (where our Fritz received the immediately preparatory teaching for his calling) had quite disgusted him with his destination for theology. The Teacher of Religion in the Institute, a narrow-minded, angry-tempered Pietist,' as we have seen, 'used the sad method of tormenting his scholars with continual rigorous, altogether soulless, drillings and trainings in matters of mere creed; nay he threatened often to whip them thoroughly, if, in the repetition of the catechism, a single word were wrong. And thus to the finely-sensitive Boy instruction was making hateful to him what domestic influences had made dear. Yet these latter did outweigh and overcome, in the end; and he remained faithful to his purpose of following a spiritual career.

'When young Schiller, after the completion of his course at the Latin School, 1777, was to be confirmed, his Mother and her Husband came across to Ludwigsburg the day before that solemn ceremony. Just on their arrival, she saw her Son wandering idle and unconcerned about the streets; and impressively represented to him how greatly his indifference to the highest and most solemn transaction of his young life troubled her. Struck and affected hereby, the Boy withdrew; and, after a few hours, handed to his Parents a German Poem, expressive of his feelings over the approaching renewal of his baptismal covenant. The Father, who either hadn't known the occasion of this, or had looked upon his Son's idling on the street with less severe eyes, was highly astonished, and received him mockingly with the question, "Hast thou lost thy senses, Fritz?" The Mother, on the other hand, was visibly rejoiced at that poetic outpouring, and with good cause. For, apart from all other views of the matter, she recognised in it how firmly her Son's inclination was fixed on the study of Theology.'—(This anecdote, if it were of any moment whatever, appears to be a little doubtful.)

'The painfuler, therefore, was it to the Mother's heart when her Son, at the inevitable entrance into the Karl's School, had to give-up Theology; and renounce withal, for a long time, if not forever, her farther guidance and influence. But she was too pious not to recognise by degrees, in this change also, a Higher Hand; and could trustfully expect the workings of the same. Besides, her Son clung so tenderly to her, that at least there was no separation of him from the Mother's heart to be dreaded. The heart-warm attachment of childish years to the creed taught him by his Mother might, and did, vanish; but not the attachment to his Mother herself whose dear image often enough charmed back the pious sounds and forms of early days, and for a time scared away doubts and unbelief.

'Years came and went; and Schiller, at last, about the end of 1780, stept out of the Academy, into the actual world, which he as yet knew only by hearsay. Delivered from that long unnatural constraint of body and spirit, he gave free course to his fettered inclinations; and sought, as in Poetry so also in Life, unlimited freedom! The tumults of passion and youthful buoyancy, after so long an imprisonment, had their sway; and embarrassments in money, their natural consequence, often brought him into very sad moods.

'In this season of time, so dangerous for the moral purity of the young man, his Mother again was his good Genius; a warning and request, in her soft tone of love sufficed to recall youthful levity within the barriers again, and restore the balance. She anxiously contrived, too, that the Son, often and willingly, visited his Father's house. Whenever Schiller had decided to give himself a good day, he wandered out with some friend as far as Solitüde.' (Only some four or five miles.) '"What a baking and a roasting then went on by that good soul," says one who witnessed it, "for the dear Prodigy of a Son and the comrade who had come with him; for whom the good Mother never could do enough! Never have I seen a better maternal heart, a more excellent, more domestic, more womanly woman."

'The admiring recognition which the Son had already found among his youthful friends, and in wider circles, was no less grateful to her heart than the gradual perception that his powerful soul, welling forth from the interior to the outward man, diffused itself into his very features, and by degrees even advantageously altered the curvatures and the form of his body. His face about this time got rid of its freckles and irregularities of skin; and strikingly improved, moreover, by the circumstance that the hitherto rather drooping nose gradually acquired its later aquiline form. And withal, the youthful Poet, with the growing consciousness of his strength and of his worth, assumed an imposing outward attitude; so that a witty Stuttgart Lady, whose house Schiller often walked past, said of him: "Regiment's Dr. Schiller steps out as if the Duke were one of his inferior servants!"

'The indescribable impression which the Robbers, the gigantic first-born of a Karl's Scholar, made in Stuttgart, communicated itself to the Mother too; innocently she gave herself up to the delight of seeing her Son's name wondered at and celebrated; and was, in her Mother-love, inventive enough to overcome all doubts and risks which threatened to dash her joy. By Christophine's mediations, and from the Son himself as well, she learned many a disquieting circumstance, which for the present had to be carefully concealed from her Husband; but nothing whatever could shake her belief in her Son and his talent. Without murmur, with faithful trust in God, she resigned herself even to the bitter necessity of losing for a long time her only Son; having once got to see, beyond disputing, that his purpose was firm to withdraw himself by flight from the Duke's despotic interference with his poetical activity as well as with his practical procedures; and that this purpose of his was rigorously demanded by the circumstances. Yet a sword went through her soul when Schiller, for the last time, appeared at Solitüde, secretly to take leave of her.' Her feelings on this tragic occasion have been described above; and may well be pictured as among the painfulest, tenderest and saddest that a Mother's heart could have to bear. Our Author continues:

'In reality, it was to the poor Mother a hard and lamentable time. Remembrance of the lately bright and safe-looking situation, now suddenly rent asunder and committed to the dubious unknown; anxiety about their own household and the fate of her Son; the Father's just anger, and perhaps some tacit self-reproach that she had favoured a dangerous game by keeping it concealed from her honest-hearted Husband,—lay like crushing burdens on her heart. And if many a thing did smooth itself, and many a thing, which at first was to be feared, did not take place, one thing remained fixed continually,—painful anxiety about her Son. To the afflicted Mother, in this heavy time, Frau von Wolzogen devoted the most sincere and beneficent sympathy; a Lady of singular goodness of heart, who, during Schiller's eight hidden months at Bauerbach, frequently went out to see his Family at Solitüde. By her oral reports about Schiller, whom she herself several times visited at Bauerbach, his Parents were more soothed than by his own somewhat excited Letters. With reference to this magnanimous service of friendship, Schiller wrote to her at Stuttgart in February 1783: "A Letter to my Parents is getting on its way; yet, much as I had to speak of you, I have said nothing whatever" (from prudent motives) "of your late appearance here, or of the joyful moments of our conversation together. You yourself still, therefore, have all that to tell, and you will presumably find a pair of attentive hearers." Frau von Wolzogen ventured also to apply to a high court lady, Countess von Hohenheim' (Duke's finale in the illicit way, whom he at length wedded), 'personally favourable to Schiller, and to direct her attention, before all, upon the heavy-laden Parents. Nor was this without effect. For the Countess's persuasion seems essentially to have contributed to the result that Duke Karl, out of respect for the deserving Father, left the evasion of his own Pupil unpunished.

'It must, therefore, have appeared to the still-agitated Mother, who reverenced the Frau von Wolzogen as her helpful guardian, a flagrant piece of ingratitude, when she learnt that her Son was allowing himself to be led into a passionate love for the blooming young Daughter of his Benefactress. She grieved and mourned in secret to see him exposed to new storms; foreseeing clearly, in this passion, a ready cause for his removal from Bauerbach. To such agitations her body was no longer equal; a creeping, eating misery undermined her health. She wrote to her Son at Mannheim, with a soft shadow of reproof, that in this year, since his absence, she had become ten years older in health and looks. Not long after, she had actually to take to bed, because of painful cramps, which, proceeding from the stomach, spread themselves over breast, head, back and loins. The medicines which the Son, upon express account of symptoms by the Father, prescribed for her, had no effect. By degrees, indeed, these cramps abated or left-off; but she tottered about in a state of sickness, years long: the suffering mind would not let the body come to strength. For though her true heart was filled with a pious love, which hopes all, believes and suffers all, yet she was neither blind to the faults of her Son, nor indifferent to the thought of seeing her Family's good repute and well-being threatened by his non-performances and financial confusions.

'With the repose and peace which the news of her Son's appointment to Jena, and intended marriage, had restored to his Family, there appeared also (beginning of 1790) an improvement to be taking place in the Mother's health. Learning this by a Letter from his Father, Schiller wrote back with lightened heart: "How welcome, dearest Father, was your last Letter to me, and how necessary! I had, the very day before, got from Christophine the sad news that my dearest Mother's state had grown so much worse; and what a blessed turn now has this weary sickness taken! If in the future regimen vitæ (diet arrangements) of my dearest Mother, there is strict care taken, her long and many sufferings, with the source of them, may be removed. Thanks to a merciful Providence, which saves and preserves for us the dear Mother of our youth. My soul is moved with tenderness and gratitude. I had to think of her as lost to us forever; and she has now been given back." In reference to his approaching marriage with Lottchen von Lengefeld, he adds, "How did it lacerate my heart to think that my dearest Mother might not live to see the happiness of her Son! Heaven bless you with thousandfold blessings, best Father, and grant to my dear Mother a cheerful and painless life!"

'Soon, however, his Mother again fell sick, and lay in great danger. Not till August following could the Father announce that she was saved, and from day to day growing stronger. The annexed history of the disorder seemed so remarkable to Schiller, that he thought of preparing it for the public; unless the Physician, Court-Doctor Consbruch, liked better to send it out in print himself. "On this point," says Schiller, "I will write to him by the first post; and give him my warmest thanks for the inestimable service he has done us all, by his masterly cure of our dear Mamma; and for his generous and friendly behaviour throughout." "How heartily, my dearest Parents," writes he farther, "did it rejoice us both" (this Letter is of 29th December; on the 20th February of that year he had been wedded to his Lotte), "this good news of the still-continuing improvement of our dearest Mother! With full soul we both of us join in the thanks which you give to gracious Heaven for this recovery; and our heart now gives way to the fairest hopes that Providence, which herein overtops our expectations, will surely yet prepare a joyful meeting for us all once more."

'Two years afterwards this hope passed into fulfilment. The Mother being now completely cured of her last disorder, there seized her so irresistible a longing for her Son, that even her hesitating Husband, anxious lest her very health should suffer, at last gave his consent to the far and difficult journey to Jena. On the 3d Sept. 1792, Schiller, in joyful humour, announces to his friend in Dresden, "Today I have received from home the very welcome tidings that my good Mother, with one of my Sisters, is to visit us here this month. Her arrival falls at a good time, when I hope to be free and loose from labour; and then we have ahead of us mere joyful undertakings." The Mother came in company with her youngest Daughter, bright little Nane, or Nanette; and surprised him two days sooner than, by the Letters from Solitüde, he had expected her. Unspeakable joy and sweet sorrow seized Mother and Son to feel themselves, after ten years of separation, once more in each other's arms. The long journey, bad weather and roads had done her no harm. "She has altered a little, in truth," writes he to Körner, "from what she was ten years ago; but after so many sicknesses and sorrows, she still has a healthy look. It rejoices me much that things have so come about, that I have her with me again, and can be a joy to her."

'The Mother likewise soon felt herself at home and happy in the trusted circle of her children; only too fast flew-by the beautiful and happy days, which seemed to her richly to make amends for so many years of sorrows and cares. Especially it did her heart good to see for herself what a beneficent influence the real and beautiful womanhood of her Daughter-in-law exercised upon her Son. Daily she learnt to know the great advantages of mind and heart in her; daily she more deeply thanked God that for her Son, who, on account even of his weak health, was not an altogether convenient Husband, there had been so tender-hearted and so finely-cultivated a Wife given him as life-companion. The conviction that the domestic happiness of her Son was secure contributed essentially also to alleviate the pain of departure.

'Still happier days fell to her when Schiller, stirred up by her visit, came the year after, with his Wife, to Swabia; and lived there from August 1793 till May 1794. It was a singular and as if providential circumstance, which did not escape the pious Mother, that Schiller, in the same month in which he had, eleven years ago, hurried and in danger, fled out of Stuttgart to Ludwigsburg, should now in peace and without obstruction come, from Heilbronn by the same Ludwigsburg, to the near neighbourhood of his Parents. With bitter tears of sorrow, her eye had then followed the fugitive, in his dark trouble and want of everything; with sweet tears of joy she now received her fame-crowned Son, whom God, through sufferings and mistakes and wanderings, had led to happiness and wisdom. The birth of the Grandson gave to her life a new charm, as if of youth returned. She felt herself highly favoured that God had spared her life to see her dear Son's first-born with her own eyes. It was a touching spectacle to see the Grandmother as she sat by the cradle of the little "Gold Son," and listened to every breath-drawing of the child; or when, with swelling heart, she watched the approaching steps of her Son, and observed his true paternal pleasure over his first-born.

'Well did the excellent Grandmother deserve such refreshment of heart; for all-too soon there came again upon her troublous and dark days. Schiller had found her stronger and cheerfuler than on her prior visit to Jena; and had quitted his Home-land with the soothing hope that his good Mother would reach a long and happy age. Nor could he have the least presentiment of the events which, three years later, burst-in, desolating and destroying, upon his family, and brought the health and life of his dear Mother again into peril. It is above stated, in our sketch of the Husband, in what extraordinary form the universal public misery, under which, in 1796, all South Germany was groaning, struck the Schiller Family at Solitüde. Already on the 21st March of this year, Schiller had written to his Father, "How grieved I am for our good dear Mother, on whom all manner of sorrows have stormed-down in this manner! But what a mercy of God it is, too, that she still has strength left not to sink under these circumstances, but to be able still to afford you so much help! Who would have thought, six or seven years ago, that she, who was so infirm and exhausted, would now be serving you all as support and nurse? In such traits I recognise a good Providence which watches over us; and my heart is touched by it to the core."

'Meanwhile the poor Mother's situation grew ever frightfuler from day to day; and it needed her extraordinary strength of religious faith to keep her from altogether sinking under the pains, sorrows and toils, which she had for so many weeks to bear all alone, with the help only of a hired maid. The news of such misery threw Schiller into the deepest grief. He saw only one way of sending comfort and help to his poor Mother, and immediately adopted it; writing to his eldest Sister in Meiningen, as follows:

"Thou too wilt have heard, dearest Sister, that Luise has fallen seriously ill; and that our poor dear Mother is thereby robbed of all consolation. If Luise's case were to grow worse, or our Father's even, our poor Mother would be left entirely forsaken. Such misery would be unspeakable. Canst thou make it possible, think'st thou, that thy strength could accomplish such a thing? If so, at once make the journey thither. What it costs I will pay with joy. Reinwald might accompany thee; or, if he did not like that, come over to me here, where I would brother-like take care of him.

"Consider, my dear Sister, that Parents, in such extremity of need, have the justest claim upon their children for help. O God, why am not I myself in such health as in my journey thither three years ago! Nothing should have hindered me from hastening to them; but that I have scarcely gone over the threshold for a year past makes me so weak that I either could not stand the journey, or should fall down into sickness myself in that afflicted house. Alas, I can do nothing for them but help with money; and, God knows, I do that with joy. Consider that our dear Mother, who has held up hitherto with an admirable courage, must at last break down under so many sorrows. I know thy childlike loving heart, I know the perfect fairness and equitable probity of my Brother-in-law. Both these facts will teach you better than I under the circumstances. Salute him cordially.—Thy faithful Brother,

Christophine failed not to go, as we saw above. 'From the time of her arrival there, no week passed without Schiller's writing home; and his Letters much contributed to strengthen and support the heavy-laden Mother. The assurance of being tenderly loved by such a Son was infinitely grateful to her; she considered him as a tried faithful friend, to whom one, without reluctance, yields his part in one's own sorrows. Schiller thus expressed himself on this matter in a Letter to Christophine of 9th May. "The last Letter of my dear good Mother has deeply affected me. Ah, how much has this good Mother already undergone; and with what patience and courage has she borne it! How touching is it that she opened her heart to me; and what woe was mine that I cannot immediately comfort and soothe her! Hadst thou not gone, I could not have stayed here. The situation of our dear ones was horrible; so solitary, without help from loving friends, and as if forsaken by their two children, living far away! I dare not think of it. What did not our good Mother do for her Parents; and how greatly has she deserved the like from us! Thou wilt comfort her, dear Sister; and me thou wilt find heartily ready for all that thou canst propose to me. Salute our dear Parents in the tenderest way, and tell them that their Son feels their sorrows."

'The excellent Christophine did her utmost in these days of sorrow. She comforted her Mother, and faithfully nursed her Father to his last breath; nay she saved him and the house, with great presence of mind, on a sudden inburst of French soldiers. Nor did she return to Meiningen till all tumult of affairs was past, and the Mother was again a little composed. And composure the Mother truly needed; for in a short space she had seen a hopeful Daughter and a faithful Husband laid in their graves; and by the death of her Husband a union severed which, originating in mutual affection, had for forty-seven years been blessed with the same mutual feeling. To all which in her position was now added the doubly-pressing care about her future days. Here, however, the Son so dear to her interposed with loving readiness, and the tender manner natural to him: