Rüdiger Safranski Goethe und Schiller Geschichte einer ...

Schiller: ‘You have procured for me a second youth and have made me a
poet once more, a vocation I had as good as abandoned.’
The full story of what had brought about this change is the subject of
this book. How the young Schiller gazed upon the much admired Goethe
when he saw him for the first time as the Duke’s guest at the prize-giving at
the Karlsschule. How the next few years produced curious parallel
developments in the two men’s lives: flight and transformation for both of
them. Schiller fled from Stuttgart and beyond the reach of Duke Karl Eugen.
Goethe fled to Italy. Both men were liberated to pursue a new career as
writers. Then there were two love relationships. Schiller and Charlotte,
Goethe and Christiane. Goethe fell in love and committed himself to a
woman beneath him socially; Schiller did likewise, though in his case,
Charlotte was above him socially. This was followed by the laborious
process of coming closer to one another. Schiller made tentative approaches
to Goethe, while the latter kept his distance. Then, in Jena, in the summer of
1794, came the real breaking of the ice. That is when the correspondence
begins, probably the most important joint endeavour of the two men and the
most important source for this book. Their friendship lasted from 1794 to
Schiller’s death in May 1805. The polar opposites of character and
temperament led in both men to an intensification of their creative powers,
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