Schiller After Two Centuries (original) (raw)

Nicholas Martin (ed.), Schiller: National Poet - Poet of Nations. A Birmingham Symposium (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 7-21

This essay is the Introduction to a volume of contributions specially commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary in 2005 of the death of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805): *Schiller: National Poet - Poet of Nations. A Birmingham Symposium*, ed. by Nicholas Martin (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006). The essays assembled in this collection, by leading Schiller scholars from Germany, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.A., shed significant new light on debates surrounding Schiller's status as a national or transnational figure, both in his own lifetime and in the two hundred years since his death. Anniversaries of Schiller's birth or death have usually been celebrated at fifty-year intervals. The “Schiller Year” (Schillerjahr) of 2005 was the eighth such anniversary year, after 1855, 1859, 1905, 1909, 1934, 1955 and 1959. The major “Schiller Years” of the past 150 years present not only a picture of the vicissitudes of the poet's fame but also revealing snapshots of German intellectual, political and popular culture. This introductory essay surveys earlier “Schillerjahre” as background to an analysis of commemorative events and trends during the “Schillerjahr 2005”. It concludes that 2005 witnessed a resurgence of interest in Germany, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, in Schiller as a master dramatist and entertainer, a development to which only either the dyed-in-the-wool “Schiller hater” or the blinkered admirer of Schiller’s highbrow qualities could object.