Weimar Classicism
Encyclopedia
Cultural movement
A cultural movement is a change in the way a number of different disciplines approach their work. This embodies all art forms, the sciences, and philosophies. Historically, different nations or regions of the world have gone through their own independent sequence of movements in culture, but as...
and literary movement of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. Followers attempted to establish a new humanism by synthesizing Romantic, classical and Enlightenment ideas. The movement, from 1772 until 1805, involved Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.-Biography:...
, Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
and Christoph Martin Wieland
Christoph Martin Wieland
Christoph Martin Wieland was a German poet and writer.- Biography :He was born at Oberholzheim , which then belonged to the Free Imperial City of Biberach an der Riss in the south-east of the modern-day state of Baden-Württemberg...
, and often concentrated on Goethe and Schiller during the period 1788–1805.
Weimar Classicism's status as a "movement" and "classical" has been questioned by many scholars and historians, notably those outside Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Background
The German EnlightenmentAge of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, called “neo-classical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
”, burgeoned in the synthesis of Empiricism
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
and Rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
as developed by Christian Thomasius
Christian Thomasius
Christian Thomasius was a German jurist and philosopher.- Biography :He was born at Leipzig and was educated by his father, Jakob Thomasius , at that time head master of Thomasschule zu Leipzig...
(1655–1728) and Christian Wolff
Christian Wolff (philosopher)
Christian Wolff was a German philosopher.He was the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant...
(1679–1754). This philosophy, circulated widely in many magazines and journals, profoundly directed the subsequent expansion of German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
-speaking and European culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
.
The inability of this common-sense outlook convincingly to bridge “feeling” and “thought”, “body” and “mind”, led to Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
's epochal “critical” philosophy. Another, though not as abstract, approach to this problem was a governing concern with the problems of aesthetics. In his Aesthetica of 1750 (vol. II; 1758) Alexander Baumgarten (1714–62) defined “aesthetics”, which he coined earlier in 1735, with its current intention as the “science” of the “lower faculties” (i.e., feeling, sensation, imagination, memory, et al.), which earlier figures of the Enlightenment had neglected. (The term, however, gave way to misunderstandings due to Baumgarten’s use of the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
in accordance with the German renditions, and consequently this has often led many to falsely undervalue his accomplishment.) It was no inquiry into taste — into positive or negative appeals — nor sensations as such but rather a way of knowledge. Baumgarten's emphasis on the need for such “sensuous” knowledge was a major abetment to the “pre-Romanticism” known as Sturm und Drang
Sturm und Drang
Sturm und Drang is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism...
(1765), of which Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
and Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
were notable participants for a time.
These and other publications set the stage for the cultural struggle that would later be known as the historical period of Weimar Classicism. Education via art was used to reach a veritable relation between action and insight that revealed Goethe and Schiller's motion to produce a flourishing cultural milieu and innervate mankind to become whole in the process.This was particularly embodied in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters (into which Goethe later cast his fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily is a fairy tale by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1795 in Friedrich Schiller's German magazine Die Horen . It portrays in imaginative form Goethe's impressions of Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a series of Letters...
).
Cultural and historical context
Following Goethe's competition with and separation from Wieland and Herder, the movement Weimar Classicism is often described to have occurred only between Goethe's first stay in Rome (1786) and the death of Schiller (1805), his close friend and collaborator, underrating especially Wieland's influence on German intellectual and poetic life. Therefore, the Weimar Classicism could also be started with the arrival of Wieland (1772) and extended beyond Schiller's death until the death of Wieland (1813) or even of Goethe himself (1832).In Italy Goethe aimed to rediscover himself as a writer and to become an artist, through formal training in Rome, Europe's 'school of art'. While he failed as an artist, Italy appeared to have made him a better writer.
Schiller's evolution as a writer was following a similar path to Goethe's. He had begun as a writer of wild, violent, emotion-driven plays. In the late 1780s he turned to a more classical style. In 1794 Schiller and Goethe became friends and allies in a project to establish new standards for literature and the arts in Germany.
It was named in light of the four authors’ immense significance, and, more particularly, of Goethe's and Schiller's, both of whom resided in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar
Saxe-Weimar
Saxe-Weimar was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty in present-day Thuringia. The chief town and capital was Weimar.-Division of Leipzig:...
at this time, hence the toponymic “Weimar
Weimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
Classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
”. Responding to Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art...
’s (1717–1768) Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerie und Bildhauerkunst ("Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture"; 1755) and Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (History of the Art of Antiquity; 1764), Goethe and Schiller developed a literary pursuit and praxis of the imitation of ancient Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, classical models, a veritable undertaking of socio-cultural reformation through aesthetic conceptions and values, where organic wholeness and harmony (among other classical values, partly spurred on by the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
) were of central inspiration and importance.
By contrast the contemporaneous and efflorescing literary movement of German Romanticism
German Romanticism
For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...
was in opposition to Weimar and German Classicism, especially to Schiller. It is in this way both may be best understood, even to the degree in which Goethe continuously and stringently criticized it through much of his essays, such as “On Dilettantism”, on art and literature. After Schiller's death, the continuity of these objections partly elucidates the nature of Goethe's ideas in art and how they intermingled with his scientific thinking as well, inasmuch as it gives coherence to Goethe's work. Weimar Classicism may be seen as an attempt to reconcile—in “binary synthesis” — the vivid feeling emphasized by the Sturm und Drang
Sturm und Drang
Sturm und Drang is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism...
movement with the clear thought emphasized by the Enlightenment, thus implying Weimar Classicism is intrinsically un-Platonic
Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. In a narrower sense the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism...
. On this Goethe remarked:
Centrally, the conception of “harmony” (also “totality” or “wholeness”) — as it was earlier accepted as a fundamental element in Greek culture by German Classicism—profoundly embedded within Weimar Classicism, which developed during a period of social turmoil and upheaval
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, is neither an aim toward Platonic perfection nor, as promoted by the German Romantics, toward universality, which was systematized later by G. W. F. Hegel. In fact, it is the sole expression of a particular’s singular imperfect integrity.Similarly, Goethe held that the two polarities of classicism and romanticism may be employed in a work of art by means of excellence and discretion, and that the naïve and sentimental forms of poetry, which are displayed by classicism and romanticism, respectively, remain within a relation of mutual dependence according to which they are limited.
The Weimar movement was notable for its inclusion of women writers. Die Horen included works by several women, including a serially published novel, Agnes von Lilien, by Schiller's sister-in-law Caroline von Wolzogen
Caroline von Wolzogen
Caroline von Wolzogen, born Caroline von Lengefeld , was a German writer in the Weimar Classicism circle...
. Other women published by Schiller included Sophie Mereau, Friederike Brun
Friederike Brun
Friederike Brun, née Münther , was a Danish author and salonist.She was married to the affluent merchant Constantin Brun and during the Danish Golden Age of the first half of the 19th century she arranged literary salons at Sophienholm, their summer retreat north of Copenhagen.-Early...
, Amalie von Imhoff, Elisa von der Recke
Elisa von der Recke
Elisa von der Recke was a Baltic German writer and poet.-Family:Elisa von der Recke was born in Schönberg, Skaistkalne parish, Courland, the daughter of Reichsgraf Friedrich von Medem and his wife, Louise Dorothea von Korff. Her younger half-sister was Dorothea von Medem, for whom she carried out...
, and Louise Brachmann.
Between 1786 and Schiller's death in 1805 he and Goethe worked to recruit a network of writers, philosophers, scholars and artists to their cause. This alliance later became known as ‘Weimar Classicism’, and it came to form a part of the foundation of 19th-century Germany’s understanding of itself as a culture and the political unification of Germany
Unification of Germany
The formal unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871 at the Versailles Palace's Hall of Mirrors in France. Princes of the German states gathered there to proclaim Wilhelm of Prussia as Emperor Wilhelm of the German...
.
Aesthetic and philosophical principles
Similar to the binarity noted above is Schiller's treatment of Formtrieb (“formal drive”) and Stofftrieb (“material drive”) when the two, which were inspired by Kant's various critiques, via reciprocal coordination—in a “proto-Hegelian” dialecticDialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
al fashion—give birth to Spieltrieb (“ludic drive”), that is to say, the aesthetic par excellence. Schiller's elementary attitude toward art is given in “What Difference Can a Good Theatrical Stage Actually Make?” (1784):
Concepts
These are essentials used by Goethe and Schiller for which it is necessary to understand the course of their project.Three key-terms:
- Gehalt: the inexpressible “felt-thought”, or “import”, which is alive in the artist and the percipient that he or she finds means to express within the aesthetic form, hence Gehalt is implicit with form. A work’s Gehalt is not reducible to its Inhalt.
- Gestalt: the aesthetic form, in which the import of the work is stratified, that emerges from the regulation of forms (these being rhetorical, grammatical, intellectual, and so on) abstracted from the world or created by the artist, with sense relationships prevailing within the employed medium.
- Stoff: Schiller and Goethe reserve this (almost solely) for the forms taken from the world or that are created. In a work of art, Stoff (designated as “Inhalt”, or “content”, when observed in this context) is to be “indifferent” (“gleichgültig”), that is, it should not arouse undue interest, deflecting attention from the aesthetic form. Indeed, Stoff (i.e., also the medium through which the artist creates) needs to be in such a complete state of unicity with the Gestalt of the art-symbol that it cannot be abstracted except at the cost of destroying the aesthetic relations established by the artist.
In sum, Gehalt and Stoff must coalesce through the creative, aesthetic potential of the artist as a means to manifest Gestalt whereby all faculties converge within the percipient who may thereby participate in apperceptive aesthetic imagination in lieu of the artist's artistic imagination.
Wieland
Christoph Martin WielandChristoph Martin Wieland
Christoph Martin Wieland was a German poet and writer.- Biography :He was born at Oberholzheim , which then belonged to the Free Imperial City of Biberach an der Riss in the south-east of the modern-day state of Baden-Württemberg...
was the first writer to arrive in Weimar. In 1772 he was called by the widowed Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, then regent of the Duchy Sachsen-Weimar, to educate her son. Weimar remained Wieland's home until his death. Here, in 1773, he founded Der teutsche Merkur
Der Teutsche Merkur
Der teutsche Merkur was a literary magazine published and edited by Christoph Martin Wieland. The first issue appeared in 1773. Wieland used the Merkur as an organ to advance the Enlightenment...
, which under his editorship (1773–1789) became the most influential literary review in Germany.
Herder
1776, one year after his arrival, Goethe arranged that Herder was called to Weimar, whom he had admired already in his Strasbourg years.Goethe and Schiller
Although the vociferously unrestricted, even “organic”, works that were produced, such as Wilhelm Meister, Faust, and West-östlicher Divan, where playful and turbulent ironies abound, may perceivably lend Weimar Classicism the double, ironic title “Weimar Romanticism”, it must nevertheless be understood that Goethe consistently demanded this distance via irony to be imbued within a work for precipitate aesthetic affect. This, similar to what Schiller wrote of BürgerGottfried August Bürger
Gottfried August Bürger was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, Lenore, found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English adaptation and a French translation.-Biography:He was born in Molmerswende , Principality of Halberstadt, where...
's poetry, partly explains the varied nature of the works they both produced in a considerable light and how it is they can sometimes escape the most exacting of categorizations. The vast array of writings themselves, other than being solely literary pursuances or distichs, include scientific, philosophic, and aesthetic disquisitions and periodicals as well.
Schiller was remarkably prolific during this period, writing his plays Wallenstein (1799), Mary Stuart (1800), The Maid of Orleans (1801), The Bride of Messina (1803) and William Tell (1804).
Christoph Martin Wieland
- Alceste, (stage play, 1773, first on stage: Weimar, May 25, 1773)
- Die Geschichte der Abderiten, (novel on ancient AbderaAbdera, ThraceAbdera was a city-state on the coast of Thrace 17 km east-northeast of the mouth of the Nestos, and almost opposite Thasos. The site now lies in the Xanthi peripheral unit of modern Greece. The municipality of Abdera, or Ávdira , has 18,573 inhabitants...
, Leipzig 1774-1780) - Hann und Gulpenheh, (rhymed novel, Weimar 1778)
- Schach Lolo, (rhymed novel, Weimar 1778)
- Oberon, (rhymed novel, Weimar 1780)
- Dschinnistan, (tom. I-III, Winterthur 1786-1789)
- Geheime Geschichte des Philosophen Peregrinus Proteus, (novel, Weimar 1788/89; Leipzig 1791)
- Agathodämon, (novel, Leipzig 1796-1797)
- Aristipp und einige seiner Zeitgenossen, (novel on AristippusAristippusAristippus of Cyrene, , was the founder of the Cyrenaic school of Philosophy. He was a pupil of Socrates, but adopted a very different philosophical outlook, teaching that the goal of life was to seek pleasure by adapting circumstances to oneself and by maintaining proper control over both...
, tom. I-IV, Leipzig: Göschen 1800-1802)
Johann Gottfried Herder
- Volkslieder nebst untermischten anderen Stücken (1778–1779, ²1807: Stimmen der Völker in Liedern)
- Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (essays, tom. I-IV, 1784–1791)
- Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität, (colleced essays, 1791–1797)
- Terpsichore, (Lübeck 1795)
- Christliche Schriften, (5 collections, Riga 1796–1799)
- Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft, (essay, Part I+II, Leipzig 1799)
- Kalligone, (Leipzig 1800)
Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe
- Egmont (“Trauerspiel”, begonnen 1775, im Druck 1788)
- Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung (nvel, ab 1776, im Druck 1911)
- Stella. Ein Schauspiel für Liebende (stag play, 1776)
- Iphigenie auf Tauris (“Iphigenia in Tauris”, stage play, printed 1787)
- Torquato Tasso (stage play, 1780- , printed 1790)
- Römische ElegienRömische ElegienThe Roman Elegies is a cycle of twenty-four poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Along with the Venetian Epigrams, they reflect his Italian Journey and celebrate the sensuality and vigor of Italian and Classical culture...
(written 1788–90) - Venezianische Epigramme (1790)
- Faust. Ein Fragment (1790)
- Beiträge zur Optik (“Theory of ColoursTheory of ColoursTheory of Colours is a work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by man, published in 1810...
”, 1791/92) - Der Bürgergeneral (stage play, 1793)
- Reineke Fuchs (“Reineke Fox”, hexametric epos, 1794)
- Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (“Conversations of German Refugees”, 1795)
- Das Märchen, (“The Green Snake and the Beautiful LilyThe Green Snake and the Beautiful LilyThe Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily is a fairy tale by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1795 in Friedrich Schiller's German magazine Die Horen . It portrays in imaginative form Goethe's impressions of Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a series of Letters...
”, fairy tale, 1795) - Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (“Wilhelm Meister's ApprenticeshipWilhelm Meister's ApprenticeshipWilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is the second novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1795-96. While his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, featured a hero driven to suicide by despair, the eponymous hero of this novel undergoes a journey of self-realization...
”, novel, 1795/96) - Faust. Eine Tragödie (“FaustGoethe's FaustJohann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is a tragic play in two parts: and . Although written as a closet drama, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages...
” I, 1797- , first print 1808) - Novelle (1797- )
- Hermann und Dorothea (“Hermann and DorotheaHermann and DorotheaHermann and Dorothea is an epic poem, an idyll, written by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe between 1796 and 1797, and was to some extent suggested by Johann Heinrich Voss's Luise, an idyll in hexameters, first published in 1782-84...
”, hexametric epos, 1798) - Die natürliche Tochter (stage play, 1804)
- Die Wahlverwandtschaften (“Elective AffinitiesElective AffinitiesElective Affinities , also translated under the title Kindred by Choice, is the third novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1809. The title is taken from a scientific term once used to describe the tendency of chemical species to combine with certain substances or species in preference...
”, novel, 1809)
Friedrich (von) Schiller
- Don Karlos, (stage play, 1787)
- Über den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen, (essay, 1792)
- Augustenburger BriefeAugustenburger BriefeThe Augustenburger Briefen are a collection of letters on aesthetics written by Friedrich Schiller from 1791 to 1793 to Friedrich Christian von Augustenburg....
, (essays, 1793) - Über Anmut und Würde, (essay, 1793)
- Kallias-BriefeKallias-BriefeThe Kallias-Briefen was a collection made by Schiller of his thoughts on beauty from his correspondence with his friend Christian Gottfried Körner. He planned to turn them into a major treatise entitled Kallias oder Über die Schönheit but in the end did not have time to do so....
, (essays, 1793) - Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, (“On the Aesthetic Education of Man”, essays, 1795)
- Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, (essay, 1795)
- Der TaucherDer TaucherThe Diver is a ballad by Friedrich Schiller, written in 1797, the year of his friendly ballad competition with Goethe....
, (poem, 1797) - Die Kraniche des IbykusDie Kraniche des IbykusThe Cranes of Ibycus is a ballad by Friedrich Schiller, written in 1797, the year of his friendly ballad competition with Goethe. It is set in the 6th century BC....
, (poem, 1797) - Ritter ToggenburgRitter ToggenburgSir Toggenburg is a ballad by Friedrich Schiller, written in 1797, the year of his friendly ballad competition with Goethe. The text was used to inspire a Symphonic Poem of the same name by the New German composer and conductor Wendelin Weißheimer...
, (poem, 1797) - Der Ring des PolykratesDer Ring des Polykrates (poem)Polycrates' Ring is a ballad written in June 1797 by Friedrich Schiller. It was first published the following year. It gave its name to the Korngold opera Der Ring des Polykrates, set in or around 1797....
, (poem, 7987) - Der Geisterseher, (“The Ghost-seerThe Ghost-SeerThe Ghost-Seer ; or the Apparitionist is an unfinished novel by Friedrich Schiller. It first appeared in several instalments from 1787 to 1789 in the journal Thalia, later appearing as a three-volume book in its own right...
”, (1789) - Die BürgschaftDie BürgschaftThe Hostage is a 1798 ballad by German poet Friedrich Schiller. He took the idea out of the medieval Latin collection of anecdotes and tales, the Gesta Romanorum.- Synopsis :...
, (poem, 1798) - WallensteinWallenstein (play)Wallenstein is the popular designation for a trilogy of dramas by German author Friedrich Schiller. It consists of the plays Wallenstein's Camp with a lengthy prologue, The Piccolomini , and Wallenstein's Death...
(trilogy of stage plays, 1799) - Das Lied von der Glocke (poem, 1799)
- Maria Stuart (“Mary Stuart”, stage play, 1800)
- Die Jungfrau von Orleans (“The Maid of Orleans”, stage play, 1801)
- Die Braut von MessinaDie Braut von MessinaThe Bride of Messina is a tragedy by Friedrich Schiller; it premiered on March 19, 1803 in Weimar. It is one of the most controversial works by Schiller, due to his use of elements from Greek tragedies .In the play, Schiller attempts to combine antique and modern theatre...
(“The Bride of Messina”, stage play, 1803) - Das SiegesfestDas SiegesfestThe Victory Festival is a poem written in May 1803 by Friedrich Schiller, whose theme is the futility of military victories....
(poem, 1803) - Wilhelm Tell “(William Tell”, stage play, 1803/04)
- Die Huldigung der KünsteDie Huldigung der KünsteDie Huldigung der Künste is a dramatic poem written by Friedrich Schiller. It was his last completed dramatic work and premiered on 12 November 1804 in Weimar...
(poem, 1804) - DemetriusDemetrius (play)Demetrius is an incomplete drama by the German playwright Friedrich Schiller based on the life of Demetrius, briefly Russian czar between 1604 and 1605. It is a reflection on the individual's responsibility in history and on the rule of Napoleon...
(stage play, incomplete, 1805)
By Goethe and Schiller both in collaboration
- Die Horen (edited by Schiller, periodical, 1795–96)
- Musenalmanach (editorship, many contributions, 1796–97)
- XenienXenienXenien is a Germanization of the Greek Xenia "host gifts", a title originally applied by the Roman poet Martial to a collection of poems which were to accompany his presents....
(poems, 1796) - Almanach (editorship, mane contributions, 1798–00)
- PropyläenPropyläenDie Propyläen was a periodical begun in July of 1798 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his friend Johann Heinrich Meyer.- Impetus :During the journal's short, three-year existence its various contributors and editors, for example, shown in essays by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich von Schiller,...
(periodical, 1798–01)
See also: works by Herder, works by Goethe, and works by Schiller.
Influence
Weimar Classicism's two most notable exponents, Goethe and Schiller, especially influenced later Germans where their works have been read and studied by fellow playwrights, and also philosophers: Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Musicians were inspired to compose for the works of these writers: Mozart, Dukas, Beethoven, Carl Friedrich ZelterCarl Friedrich Zelter
Carl Friedrich Zelter was a German composer, conductor and teacher of music.Zelter became friendly with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and his works include settings of Goethe's poems...
. Through the efforts of Scotsman Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
, who translated some of these works and wrote a biography of Schiller, they became more accessible to the English-speaking peoples in the mid-19th Century.
Some of Goethe's ideas in the Theory of Colours
Theory of Colours
Theory of Colours is a work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by man, published in 1810...
have impacted scientific figures such as Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
. Goethe's color spectrum is still used.
See also
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