Stepping Out of Götz's Shadow: Jacob Maier, the Ritterstück, and the Historical Drama

Summary

IN MARCH 1798, TWO GIANTS of European letters devoted a few words of their ongoing correspondence to someone now almost entirely unknown to us. Writing to Goethe from Jena on March 13, Schiller comments on an “altes deutsches Ritterstück” (old German play of chivalry) that he has recently re-read. This play, he finds, clearly has its faults, but makes such an impression on him that it is worth mentioning to Goethe:

… Fust von Stromberg [ist] zwar überladen von historischen Zügen und oft gesuchten Anspielungen, und diese Gelehrsamkeit macht das Stück schwerfällig und oft kalt, aber der Eindruck ist höchst bestimmt und nachhaltig, und der Poet erzwingt wirklich die Stimmung die er geben will. Auch ist nicht zu leugnen, daß solche Kompositionen, sobald man ihnen die poetische Wirkung erläßt, eine andre allerdings sehr schätzbare leisten, denn keine noch so gut geschriebene Geschichte könnte so lebhaft und sinnlich in jene Zeit hinein führen, als dieses Stück es tut.

[Fust von Stromberg is indeed overladen with historical details and often contrived allusions, and this scholarliness makes the play labored and sometimes cold; but the impression left by it is most precise and durable and the poet really forces out the sensation that he wants to create. It also cannot be denied that, as soon as you waive any need for them to be effective as works of poetry, compositions like this have another certainly very valuable effect, for no history yet written so well could lead us into that time as vividly and as sensually as this play does.]

In calling Fust von Stromberg an old German Ritterstück, Schiller is referring to the age depicted within the play (the years immediately following the First Crusade, i.e., around 1100) as opposed to the age of the play itself, which was first performed at Mannheim's Nationaltheater on November 5, 1782 and published in Mannheim in the same year. Its author, the high-ranking statesman Jacob Maier of Mannheim, had only recently died, in 1784, at the age of 44 or 45. Notably, Schiller singles out this play as an example of one that uses historical sources to convey the spirit of the times and presents history in a lively manner.