German Authors and Genres

At the beginning of the relation between Goethe and Schiller was a bitter antipathy. In his book “Goethe und Schiller. Geschichte einer Freundschaft” (i.e., Goethe and Schiller. History of a Friendship), Rüdiger Safranski describes how nevertheless one of the most fruitful friendships in the history of German literature arose between the two poets. In an interview with goethe.de, he tells us, among other things, what we can learn from the poets.

At the beginning of their relation, Friedrich Schiller said of Goethe that he “was like a proud prude who has to be got with child so as to humiliate him before the world”. That doesn’t sound like a promising start!

No. That’s what’s interesting about this friendship, it was so improbable because the differences were so great. Schiller, ten years younger than Goethe, was struggling to get on an equal footing with the older man. From the start, he felt he was being repulsed. And so in 1788 it came to this real outpouring of hate. That was six years before the beginning of their friendship.

“An explosion of feeling”

How did they get to know one another?

When Schiller wrote that sentence to his friend Körner, he noticed that this tension and resentment was paralyzing his own artistic work. He therefore prescribed himself a real cure: he wouldn’t perpetually compare himself with Goethe but rather tread his own path. In this way Schiller regained his naturalness.

At a time when he was the leading philosophical-literary intellectual in Germany – that was in 1794 – he was publishing, along with his publisher Cotta, the journal Die Horen [The Horae] . It was intended to be the major organ of German culture. Obviously, Schiller had to invite Goethe to contribute. That brought about their first real meeting, and Schiller achieved the goal of his wishes.

How much had Goethe changed in the meantime?

Goethe had learned to appreciate Schiller as an author. This Schiller, he said to himself, is a real literary professional and can be of great use to me. Goethe had the feeling that his poetic vein was drying up, that he wasn’t really advancing. This was the background of the legendary meeting in summer 1794, when it sparked between the two. They were really surprised at the great joy and intensity they felt at being together. It was a real explosion of feeling.

A deliberate friendship

At the end Schiller said, “In the face of superior excellence” – he meant Goethe – “the only freedom lies in love”.

Yes, that’s a wonderful sentence. Goethe also found it so beautiful that he used it, slightly modified, in his Elective Affinities. If you want to be free from the negative feelings of envy and resentment, then you have to go into the offensive and love what is superior. And Schiller acted in accordance with this maxim.

That sounds like a very deliberate resolve to friendship.

And it was. Looking at it from Schiller’s side, it was really very deliberate. He really thought with his head – that was part of his sense of freedom. He was also a very emotional person, but he always made sure his head pulled his feelings after it and not the reverse.

Closeness with distance

Why did Goethe and Schiller continue to use the formal form of address to one another up to the end, even though they enjoyed the warmest relations? For example, Goethe was on familiar terms with his friends Herder and Jacobi.

It’s noticeable that they wanted closeness with distance. They wanted to preserve both these elements. There was a time after two or three years of the friendship that they felt tempted to use the informal address. That was a high-point of the emotions between them, but then they decided to remain with the formal form. I think they had the intuitive feeling that this gave them greater freedom with one another.

I can understand that, and I believe it was quite good so. You have also to consider that Herder and Jacobi were old friends of Goethe from the time of his youth. Goethe and Schiller both said their relation was the most important one in their lives for them.

Gift of a second poetic youth

What would have been lost had Goethe und Schiller not become friends?

Their friendship left deep tracks in their lives. They stimulated one another. The most famous example is that Goethe ceded the material for William Tell to Schiller and altogether gave him the idea to write this play. Without their friendship, we would also probably not have Wallenstein. And Schiller would have perhaps never made his daring return to the theater and written his classical works.

Goethe, for his part, declared again and again that it was Schiller who had brought him back to poetry, who had given him his second poetic youth. And without Schiller, Wilhelm Meister might never have been completed.

“Oops! Be careful!”

You’ve called this friendship a “contribution to the art of life”. What can we learn from Goethe and Schiller?

The very elementary thing that we learn is this: friendship is a work of design. Goethe and Schiller knew very well that friendship works only when you do something for it and handle it very carefully. And they were grateful for their friendship.

I say to myself sometimes, oops, be careful, don’t handle friendships and relationships so slip-shod; they need to be cultivated and well arranged. That has to be a life’s work. Goethe and Schiller had the proud awareness that this was part of their life’s work. We could well use something of that

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