I too should know more about Friedrich Schiller, but here is how he comes into the piece I wrote. First, as a child in the immediate dismal post-war period (1945 to 1954) we were taught the “mature” Schiller in school. The emphasis was on his Lied von der Glocke (Song of the Bell). After all, it is about the “dignity of labor” and “the poetry of man’s social life” at a time when Germany had to rebuild what through its crimes it had destroyed.1 Though published in 1798, the first stanza says it all: earnest work, running sweat, praising the experts, but knowing that the blessing comes from on high. It is a brief summary of all that is worthy of a civilization recovering from its mistakes: the recovery of the transcendent over hard work, conscious appreciation of it, and human responsibility.
And for all of it, so Schiller, we got the faculty of reason – and here is why – so that we may not merely work out of force or necessity, but because we feel within our innermost heart the value of what we create with our hands. Schiller put together – reason and feeling; heart, mind, value and action. And then follows the order of nature and culture. Just think, what might have happened in Africa, for example, if such a poem and its implications were taken to heart.
Then, after two long periods of fieldwork in Zambia and Namibia, when I took up archival research in Germany, it led directly to Marbach where Schiller was born. Marbach near Stuttgart houses both a marvelous archive on German Literature and the Schiller Museum. Following that, we (my husband and I) visited Weimar where, finally, although after a first meeting in Jena, Schiller and Goethe met and Schiller became the observer of his own maturing just when, sadly, his physical health began to give way.
Finally, the two paragraphs I blogged, entitled “Friedrich Schiller’s Broad Embrace: Fieldwork and Intellectual History” make a fleeting reference to his youth and An die Freude (The Ode to Joy). I simply and intuitively associate this lyric with my first fieldwork. Schiller was after all a rebel in his youth. He was said to have converted to “fiery radicalism” in the hope of achieving freedom and a literary revolution.
He wrote The Robbers age 21 and Ode to Joy age 26. Alas, making a very weak analogy, I too went through a radical phase in the field when, surprised by love, which should not have happened, I broke through the “German thing” that I had become in America. Years after my return from the field, just when I was promoted to full professor, I let loose and wrote the anger out of me. Then I was young. Now I see things somewhat differently. I too matured, so I re-did (rather than rewrote) the book to take the sting out of it, but to leave the love for work, people, the world, and the transcendent in it.
The point is, Schiller is relevant to our world and, in my view, speaks to maiden fieldwork experiences where what we usually separate – science and art – merges.
Karla Poewe,
November 22, 2018
1. Kuno Francke, editor-in-chief The German Classics (1913: 13-14). New York: The German Publications Society, has a useful description in English of Schiller’s life and work..
