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Schiller's Fiesco —A Republican Tragedy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Reginald H. Phelps
Reginald H. Phelps*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
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Abstract

Schiller's subtitle, “Ein republikanisches Trauerspiel,” creates serious difficulties of interpretation. His four principal historical sources give little basis for regarding the conspirators or the conspiracy as “republican” in the sense of “antimonarchical.” The play itself likewise disregards the republican motif. A study of the vocabulary shows that such politically emotional words as Republik, Freiheit, Burger, Volk are infrequently used and are likely to bear a neutral or negative-ironic meaning. Schiller's two later versions, the Mannheim stage version and the Leipzig/Dresden manuscript, show no conspicuous change in his use of such terms. The play belongs rather among contemporary dramas generalizing about freedom than to the category of sociopolitical Tendenzdrama, and concerns Republik in the older sense of res publica rather than in the modern meaning. Not Rousseau, but Plutarch as translated by G. B. von Schirach, most strongly influenced Schiller in theme, incidents, traits of character, and perhaps political attitude. The play appears as a conflict among three strong personalities—Fiesco, Verrina, and Andreas Doria—-for power within the state; and Doria, representing the essence of the state, may be the real “hero.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , May 1974 , pp. 442 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 451 The text of the Buchfassung (1783) used is Schiller, Sàmtliche fVerke (henceforth SW), ed. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert G. Gôpfert (Munchen: Hanser, 1958–59), i, 639–751.

Note 2 in page 451 The thesis that Fiesco reflects Schiller's views of contemporary Germany and that the later versions of the play, the Mannheim stage MS and the Leipzig/Dresden MS of 1785, show this with increasing clarity is argued by Ursula Wertheim, Schillers “Fiesko” und “Don Carlos”: Zu Problemen des historischen Stoffes, Beitrâge zur deutschen Klassik, No. 7, 2nd ed. (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1967), pp. 72–77, 80, 107, 123. See also Ursula Wertheim, Friedrich Schiller, Dichter der Nation (Berlin : Neues Leben, 1959), pp. 81–85.

Note 3 in page 451 This formulation, central to much of the perplexed discussion of Fiesco, appears strikingly in Jakob Minor, Schiller: Sein Leben und seine Werke, I (Berlin: Weidmann, 1890), 309, in a passage on Karl Moor's attitude in Die Rciuber: “Brutus oder Catilina! Aut Caesar aut nihil!—ist die Losung aller folgenden Helden Schillers.” See, among many discussions of Fiesco's power lust as his principal motive, the chapter “Brutus ou Catilina?” in René Cannae, Théâtre et révolte: Essai sur la jeunesse de Schiller (Paris: Payot, 1966), pp. 148–54, and Karl Wölfel, “Pathos und Problem: Ein Beitrag zur Stilanalyse von Schillers ‘Fiesko,‘ ” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, Neue

Folge 7 (1957), 234–36, with the view that the drama shows the conflict of one power with another, not a moral struggle of freedom with despotism. Hans H. Borcherdt varies the power theme slightly in his introduction to Friedrich Schiller: Theater-Fiesko (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1952), p. 8.

Note 4 in page 451 For the circumstances in which Fiesco was written, published, and produced, see, in addition to some 30 references in Schiller's letters between 1 April 1782 and 3 July 1784 (Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe —henceforth: NA), ed. Julius Petersen et al. (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1943-), xxiii (Briefwechsel 1772–1785, ed. Walter Müller-Seidel, 1956), passim, the following: Andreas Streicher, Schillers Flucht, ed. Paul Raabe (Stuttgart: Steinkopf, 1959), pp. 80, 94–96, 104, 110–27, 151–59, 184–92; Richard Weltrich, Schiller auf der Flucht, ed. Julius Petersen (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1923), passim; Eduard Boas, Schiller's Jugendjahre, ed. Wendelin von Maltzahn (Hannover: Rumpler, 1856), ii, 239–57; Ernst Muller, Derjunge Schiller (Tubingen and Stuttgart: Wunderlich, 1947), pp. 302–08.

Note 5 in page 451 The most thorough study of this subject is Richard Weltrich, “Schillers Fiesko und die geschichtliche Wahr-heit,” Veröffentlichungen des Schwâbischen Schillervereins, Marbacher Schillerbuch, iii, ed. Otto Guntter (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1909), 292–409.

Note 6 in page 451 Histoire de la conjuration du Comte Jean Louis de Fiesque, ed. Albert Leitzmann (Halle: Niemeyer, 1913), pp. 15, 19–20, 34–41, 45–55.

Note 7 in page 452 François-Joachim Duport du Tertre, Histoire générale des conjurations, conspirations et révolutions célèbres, nouvelle éd. (Paris: Duchesne, 1763), iii, 295–98, 304–08, 312–15.

Note 8 in page 452 Histoire de la république de Gênes (Paris: Denys Du Puis, 1696), ii, 122–37, 155–58.

Note 9 in page 452 Geschichte der Regierung Kaiser Karls des v, 8 Buch, trans. M. T. C. Mittelstedt and J. A. Remer (1779), in A. Leitzmann, pp. 59–71.

Note 10 in page 452 Duport du Tertre, iii, 307–08; Mailly, p. 136; de Retz, pp. 26, 31 ; Robertson, in A. Leitzmann, pp. 61–62.

Note 11 in page 452 Kuno Fischer, Schillers Jugend- und Wanderjahre in Selbstbekenntnissen (Heidélberg: Winter, 1891), pp. 176–78. William F. Mainland, Schiller and the Changing Past (London: Heinemann, 1957), p. 23, calls the Fiesco of the drama “a vastly magnified image of Schiller himself.”

Note 12 in page 452 The fable is commonly supposed to derive from that of Menenus in Shakespeare's Coriolanus (i.i). See Wertheim, Schillers “Fiesko,” pp. 92–93. Charlotte Craig suggests that the fable is “a key to his [Fiesco's] dichotomous personality” and “may qualify as the implied confession of a would-be tyrant” (“Fiesco's Fable: A Portrait in Political Dema-goguery,” Modern Language Notes, 86, 1971, 393–99).

Note 13 in page 452 “Der amerikanische Unabhàngigkeitskampf im Spiegel der zeitgenossischen deutschen Literatur,” Weimarer Beitrdge, 3 (1957), 466–67. She refers to Christian F. D. Schubart's use of the term in his periodical Deutsche Chronik.

Note 14 in page 452 The Mannheim version is to be found in Karl Goedeke, Schillers Sdmmtliche Schriften, in (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1868), ed. Wilhelm Vollmer, 185–352, with the changes in the Leipzig/Dresden version, and in several other versions of the text, given on each page. Hans H. Borcherdt issued the Leipzig/Dresden MS in Friedrich Schiller: Theater-Fiesko (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1952).

Note 15 in page 452 The problem of Fiesco's lust for power and its relation to the law has been frequently treated. Gerhard Fricke, Studien und Interpretationen (Frankfurt a. M.: Menck, 1956), pp. 89–90, sees this conflict as characteristic of Schiller's heroes, and speaks of Fiesco's obsession with the “Selbstgenuss der Macht” (p. 100). Gerhard Storz, Das Drama Friedrich Schillers (Frankfurt a. M.: Societâts-Verlag, 1938), pp, 87–92, holds that Fiesco believes neither in a republic nor in Tyrannis. See also Karl Wolfel, “Pathos und Problem,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, Neue Folge 7 (1957), 233; Benno von Wiese, Die deutsche Tragodie von Lessing bis Hebbel (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1948), i, 216–19; Adolf Beck, “Die Krisis des Menschen im Drama des jungen Schiller,” Euphorion, 49 (1955), 177; Borcherdt, Theater-Fiesko, p. 8; Walter Hinderer, “ ‘Ein Augenblick Fiïrst hat das Mark des ganzen Daseins verschlungen,‘ ” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 14 (1970), 230–74; Frank M. Fowler, “Schiller's Fiesko Re-examined,” Publications of the English Goethe Society, N.S. 40 (1970), 1–29.

Note 16 in page 452 Schillers Gesprdche, NA, XLII, ed. Dietrich Germann and Eberhard Haufe (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1967), 263, 606.

Note 17 in page 452 “The Structure of the Personality in Schiller's Tragic Poetry,” in Schiller, Bicentenary Lectures, ed. Frederick Norman, Institute of Germanic Languages and Literatures,

Publications No. 2 (London: Univ. of London, 1960), pp. 106–07.

Note 18 in page 452 Wertheim, Schillers “Fiesko,” pp. 94–101, devotes a fascinating, if not wholly convincing, chapter to Hassan as the plebeian at the bottom of the social ladder—mercenary and unreliable, yet representing, too, the justified resentment of the outcast, and withal a figure endowed with “Intelligenz, Scharfsinn und Witz, mit einer gewissen unwiderstehlichen Naivitat und einer nicht zu leugnenden Überlegenheit” (p. 96). See also Wertheim, Friedrich Schiller, p. 82. On the theme of slavery in some contemporary German dramas, see Sander L. Gilman, “The Image of Slavery in Two Eighteenth Century German Dramas,” Germanic Review, 45 (1970), 26–40.

Note 19 in page 452 Fricke, Studien, pp. 101–02, notes that Schiller concentrates on the victory of the idea: “metaphysische Frei-heit. . . iiberall unlôslich verkniipft mit dem politisch-geschichtlichen Macht- und Kraftfeld.” Emil Staiger puts the matter more sharply, “Stufen der Entwicklung Schillers bis zu seiner Freundschaft mit Goethe,” Goethe: Neue Folge desJbs. der Goethegesellschaft, 17 (1955), 24: “Wenn der junge Schiller in seinem eigenen Namen ‘Freiheit’ sagte, so meinte er immer Selbstbestimmung . . . eine durchaus anarchische Kraft.” In commenting on the vocabulary of Fiesco, Henry D. Garland writes (Schiller the Dramatic Writer, Oxford: Clarendon, 1969, p. 56): “The words of freedom in Fiesco are less common than those of tyranny, and the word frei is, moreover, frequently used in contempt. Schiller is here more concerned with the decay and destruction of freedom than with its espousal.”

Note 20 in page 452 Obviously, the caprice of rulers like Schiller's Duke Karl Eugen might vent itself cruelly in political cases, as the Duke's infamous treatment of C. D. F. Schubart shows; yet even Karl Eugen's government did not ban Die Rduber or Fiesco or Kabale und Liebe or Don Carlos as books, nor generally forbid their stage performance (though Kabale und Liebe was barred after one showing). See Minor, i, 409; ii, 213; Fischer, p. 149; Wilhelm Steffen, “Schillers Stellung zum Fürstentum,” Preussische Jahrbücher, 124 (1906), 485, 495, 501–03.

Note 21 in page 452 Wilhelm Schlüter, in Ferdinand Tönnies and W. Schlüter, “Schiller und das Verbrecherproblem,” Deutsch-land, 6 (1905), 174.

Note 22 in page 452 Les Drames de la jeunesse de Schiller (Paris: Leroux, 1899), p. 291.

Note 23 in page 452 NA, xxiii, 130–32. See also Joseph Wolter, Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Grossmann, Diss. Bonn 1901 (Köln: Wilhelm Hoster, 1901), pp. 44–46; Kontz, pp. 294–95, 349–50.

Note 24 in page 452 NA, xxiii, 137 (Schiller to Wilhelm Reinwald, 5 May 1784); Gertrud Rudloff-Hille, Schiller auf der deutschen Bühne seiner Zeit, Beiträge zur deutschen Klassik, No. 20 (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1969), p. 45; Kontz, pp. 349–50.

Note 25 in page 452 Wertheim, Schillers “Fiesko,” pp. 108–24; Rudloff-Hille, pp. 51–65; Herbert Stubenrauch, review of Borcherdt, Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 76, No. 3 (1955), 183–87; Fritz Lothar Büttner, “Schiller, die Fiesko -Aufführung Bondinis und der sogenannte Theater-Fiesko” Kleine Schriften der Gesellschaft fur Theatergeschichte, No. 20 (Berlin: Selbst-verlag der Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte, 1964), pp. 3–35.

Note 26 in page 453 Steffen pp. 493–94. The terms Republik, republikanisch, etc. do not appear frequently in Schiller, and he does not consistently use them in the modern meaning ; see references to Sparta as a Republik in “Die Gesetzgebung des Lykurgus und Solon” [1790] (SW, iv, 806, 811, 812, 814, 818); “Briefe iiber Don Carlos” [1788], e.g., Posa's “repub-likanische Tugend” (SW, II, 229), his “Ideal republikani-scher Freiheit” incarnated in Flanders (SW, II, 235), a concept quite in keeping with Posa and Don Carlos' program “einen Fiirsten aufzustellen, der das höchste mögliche Ideal bürgerlicher Glückseligkeit fur sein Zeitalter wirklich-machen sollte” (SW, II, 253). In the letters on Ästhetische Erziehung the terms seldom appear: cf. SW, v, 583, 597 (figurative use), 669. In “Über den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen” [1792] we find, in a discussion of ancient Corinth, the word republikanisch used evidently as equivalent to “patriotic” (SW, v, 368).

Note 27 in page 453 The 1st ed. of Adelung was in Schiller's library; see Alfred Meissner, “Die Bibliothek Friedrich von Schiller's,” Blatter für literarische Unterhaltung (1870), p. 654. Much evidence of the prevalence of republican ideas in Germany of this time is presented by Woldemar Wenck, Deutschland vor hundert Jahren (Leipzig: Grunow, 1887), i, 10–28 and by Jost Hermand, Von deutscher Republik 1775–1795, 2 vols. (Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 1968) and Von Mainz nach Weimar (1793–1919) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1969). Yet the relevant terms appear rather seldom in many familiar political-philosophical works of the later 18th century, including many presumably well known to Schiller, e.g., Adam Ferguson's Grundsatze der Moralphilosophie, trans. Christian Garve (Leipzig: Dyck, 1772), reputedly a favorite of Schiller. To be sure, terms concerning republicanism usually appear in such works in the modern sense; cf. Wolfgang Stammler, “Politische Schlagworte in der Zeit der Aufklärung” in Lebenskräfte in der abendländischen Geistesgeschichte, Festschrift Walter Goetz, ed. Bernhard Bischoff et al. (Marburg: Simons, 1948), pp. 228–31. But see, e.g., the articles “Republick” in Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses vollstdndiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissen-schaften und Kiinste, xxxi (Leipzig and Halle: J. H. Zedler, 1742), 656–65. Kant's definition of a true republic (“Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft”) does not exclude monarchical form, and Friedrich Schle-gel's “Versuch iiber den Begriff des Republikanismus” of 1796 (Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler, 1. Abt., vii, München: Schöningh, 1966, 20) contrasts republicanism with despotism, not with monarchy. In the 19th century, scholars still use the old definition; see the article “Republik” by H. K. Hofmann in the Rotteck-Welcker Staats-Lexikon, 3d ed. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1865), XII, 509–12, and the article “Republik und republikanische Ideen” in Johann Caspar Bluntschli and Karl Brater, Deutsches Staats-Wdrterbuch (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Expedition des Staats-Wörterbuchs, 1864), viii, 601–03.

Note 26 in page 453 The lack of active interest by young Schiller in the political events of the day is well attested; see Briefwechsel 1772–1785, NA, xxiii, passim; Schillers Gesprdche, NA, XLIII, passim; Boas, i, 168, 234–46. Richard Weltrich, Friedrich Schiller, I (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1899), 838–39, gives the comments of J. B. Abel, the philosophy teacher to whom Schiller dedicated Fiesco, indicating Schiller's chief con cern with psychology, moral philosophy, and literature. A fellow pupil, Wilhelm Petersen, noted Schiller's lack of interest in the American Revolution; cf. Julius Hartmann, Schillers Jugendfreunde (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1904), p. 208. My teacher John A. Walz, in an article on Schiller's editorship of the Stuttgart Nachrichten zum Nuzen und Vergniigen (1781), noted that, while the paper had a good deal on the American Revolution, the editorial tendency was at most somewhat pro-American: “for the most part, facts and rumors are given without comments” (“Three Swabian Journalists and the American Revolution: i: Friedrich Schiller,” Americana Germanica, 4, 1902, 100). Such evidence raises further questions about the highly political interpretations of Schiller's early works by Ursula Wertheim; Hagen Miiller-Stahl, “Brutus oder Katilina? iiber die Fassungen des ‘Fiesco’ von Friedrich Schiller,” Theater der Zeit, 8, No. 2 (1953), 7–10; Liselotte Blumen-thal, “Auffuhrungen der ‘Verschwôrung des Fiesko zu Genua’ zu Schillers Lebzeiten (1783–1805),” Goethe, N.F. 17 (1955), 60–90.

Note 29 in page 453 A few examples for many: Boas, i, 136; Heinrich Diintzer, Schillers Fiesko, Erlâuterungen zu den deutschen Klassikern, 3. Abt., No. 7–8 (Leipzig: Wartig, 1877), pp. 1–2; Weltrich, Friedrich Schiller, p. 518 ; Fischer, pp. 21–38 ; Wertheim, Schillers “Fiesko,” p. 89; Minor, ii, 117.

Note 30 in page 453 Schiller, Erinnerung (SW, i, 752). For arguments on the slightness of Rousseau's direct impact on young Schiller, see Minor, 1,165 ; Richard Fester, Rousseau und die deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie (Stuttgart: Goschen, 1890), pp. 88–91; and esp. Wolfgang Liepe, “Der junge Schiller und Rousseau,” Zeitschrift fiir deutsche Philologie, 51 (1926), 299–328, rpt. in Liepe, Beitrdge zur Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte, Kieler Studien zur deutschen Literatur-geschichte, No. 2 (Neumùnster: Wachholtz, 1963), pp. 29–64. There is little evidence, aside from Sturz's somewhat questionable statement, for Rousseau's interest in Fiesco; see Helfrich Peter Sturz, “Denkwurdigkeiten von Johann Jakob Rousseau” in Schriften (Leipzig: Weidmann und Reich, 1779–82), i, 145–46. When and where Rousseau made this statement is uncertain.

Note 31 in page 453 Friedrich von Schiller: Leben, 2nd ed. (Weimar: Hoffmann, 1824), p. 29; Minor, II, 475.

Note 32 in page 453 Boas, i, 136; Weltrich, i, 647. The ed. of Schirach I have used is Biographien des Plutarchs, 8 vols. (Wien and Prag: Haas, 1796). On Schirach, an important political and intellectual figure, see Max von Schirach, Geschichte der Familie von Schirach (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1939), pp. 58–134.

Note 33 in page 453 Neue Jahrbücher fiir das klassische Altertum, I (1898), 351–64, 418–31 ; see esp. 360–64. See also Minor, i, 347, on Brutus.

Note 34 in page 453 Fischer, p. 176; Gerhard Günther, “Der Cäsar und die Republik: Der politische Gehalt von Schillers ‘Fiesko,‘ ” Deutsches Volkstum, 11 (1929), 97.

Note 35 in page 453 Schirach, iii, 239–43 (Aristides); iv, 195, 203, 246, 251, 259 (Sulla); vi, 269, 345–54 (Caesar); viii, 63 (Demetrius), 87 (Antony); 298–99, 325–26, 350–51 (Brutus).

Note 36 in page 453 Schirach, vu, 220–21 (Tiberius Gracchus); viii, 278 (Dion).

Note 37 in page 453 Schirach, viii, 384; Fries, 362–64.

Note 38 in page 453 Schirach, viii, 410; Fries, 360–61.