The Project Gutenberg EBook of The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III, by Kuno Francke, Editor-in-Chief

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Title: The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. In Twenty Volumes

Author: Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

Release Date: March 23, 2004 [EBook #11692]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GERMAN CLASSICS VOL. 3 ***

Produced by Stan Goodman, Jayam Subramanian and PG Distributed Proofreaders

VOLUME III

* * * * *

FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER

THE GERMAN CLASSICS

Masterpieces of German Literature

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

IN TWENTY VOLUMES

ILLUSTRATED

THE GERMAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY NEW YORK

1914

CONTENTS OF VOLUME III

Life of Schiller. By Calvin Thomas

POEMS[1]

  To the Ideal
  The Veiled Image at Saïs
  The Ideal and The Actual Life
  Genius
  Votive Tablets (Selections)
  The Maiden from Afar
  The Glove
  The Diver
  The Cranes of Ibycus
  Thee Words of Belief
  The Words of Error
  The Lay of the Bell
  The German Art
  Commencement of the New Century
  Cassandra
  Rudolph of Hapsburg

DRAMAS

Introduction to Wallenstein's Death. By William H. Carruth

The Death of Wallenstein. Translated by S. T. Coleridge

Introduction to William Tell. By William H. Carruth

William Tell. Translated by Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B.

Homage of the Arts. Translated by A. I. du P. Coleman

HISTORY AND LITERATURE

The Thirty Years' War—Last Campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus. Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison

On the Use of the Chorus in Tragedy. Translated by A. Lodge

Schiller's Correspondence with Goethe. Translated by L. Dora Schmitz

ILLUSTRATIONS—VOLUME III

Milton and His Daughters. By Michael von Munkacsy

Schiller. By C. Jäger

Schiller's Father and Mother

Schiller's House in Weimar and Birthplace in Marbach

Monument to Schiller in Berlin. By Reinhold Begas

Military Academy in Stuttgart and the Theatre in Mannheim, 1782

Church in which Schiller was married

Schiller at the Court of Weimar

The Knight scorns Cunigonde. By Eugen Klimsch

The Diver. By Carl Gehrts

The Lay of the Bell. By Julius Benezur

Cassandra. By Ferdinand Keller

The Count gives up his Horse to the Priest. By Alexander Wagner

Wallenstein and Seni

Wallenstein and Terzky

Wallenstein hears of Octavio's Treason

Wallenstein warned by his Friends

The Death of Wallenstein. By Karl von Piloty

Stauffacher and his Wife Gertrude

The Oath on the Rütli

Tell takes Leave of his Family

Tell and Gessler

The Death of Attinghausen. By Wilhelm von Kaulbach

The Homage of the Arts. By Hermann Wislicenus

Gustavus Adolphus

Wallenstein. By Van Dyck

Monument to Goethe and Schiller in Weimar. By Ernst Rietschel

Goethe on Schiller. From the Ford Collection, New York Public Library

Schiller on Goethe. From the Ford Collection, New York Public Library

Schiller Reciting from his Works to his Weimar Friends. By Theobald von Oer

The Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar

Facsimile of Leaf from the Album of Schiller's Letters to Charlotte von Lengefeld

THE LIFE OF SCHILLER

BY CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D.

Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University

  He kept the faith. The ardent poet-soul,
  Once thrilled to madness by the fiery gleam
  Of Freedom glimpsed afar in youthful dream,
  Henceforth was true as needle to the pole.
  The vision he had caught remained the goal
  Of manhood's aspiration and the theme
  Of those high luminous musings that redeem
  Our souls from bondage to the general dole
  Of trivial existence. Calm and free
  He faced the Sphinx, nor ever knew dismay,
  Nor bowed to externalities the knee,
  Nor took a guerdon from the fleeting day;
  But dwelt on earth in that eternity
  Where Truth and Beauty shine with blended ray.[2]

Friedrich Schiller, the greatest of German dramatic poets, was born November 10, 1759, at Marbach in Swabia. His father was an officer in the army which the Duke of Württemberg sent out to fight the Prussians in the Seven Years' War. Of his mother, whose maiden name was Dorothea Kodweis, not much is known. She was a devout woman who lived in the cares and duties of a household that sometimes felt the pinch of poverty. After the war the family lived a while at the village of Lorch, where Captain Schiller was employed as recruiting officer. From there they moved, in 1766, to Ludwigsburg, where the extravagant duke Karl Eugen had taken up his residence and was bent on creating a sort of Swabian Versailles. Here little Fritz went to school and was sometimes taken to the gorgeous ducal opera, where he got his first notions of scenic illusion. The hope of his boyhood was to become a preacher, but this pious aspiration was brought to naught by the offer of free tuition in an academy which the duke had started at his Castle Solitude near Stuttgart.

This academy was Schiller's world from his fourteenth to his twenty-first year. It was an educational experiment conceived in a rather liberal spirit as a training-school for public service. At first the duke had the boys taught under his own eye at Castle Solitude, where they were subjected to a strict military discipline. There being no provision for the study of divinity, Schiller was put into law, with the result that he floundered badly for two years. In 1775 the institution was augmented by a faculty of medicine and transferred to Stuttgart, where it was destined to a short-lived career under the name of the Karlschule.