This is no ode to joy. Peace never made a great man, says the main hero.
This wild, violent and crazy stage play was Friedrich von Schiller's `debut', his breakthrough to fame as a literary writer. At the time it was not at all clear that he would be a professional writer -- and then he became one of Germany's proverbial `poets and thinkers'. He was trained as a medical doctor at a military academy, and he was inclined towards philosophy; practical healing had no appeal for him, he needed the `speculation', the `idea'.
(We are idealists and would be ashamed to be shaped by things, rather than have our ideas shape the world of things.) The Robbers were the brainchild of a young doctor without life experience, who had grown up, so far, under the strict discipline of the school, run by a dictator, in Wuerttemberg. After finishing his studies, he was forced to work as army doctor.
The play was born, as a contemporary writer said, from the copulation of subordination and genius. It is an invention out of lack of experience and in anticipation of it.
The play is about brotherly hatred, fatherly love, jealousy, deceit, maliciousness, criminal energies, betrayal, murder, suicide. There is a lot of drama in this drama.
A man loves one son better than the other. The loved one, away as a student, disappoints. The other one plays up the problem, fabricates lies, steals a letter from brother to father, fakes a letter to the brother, tries to rape the betrothed of the brother... The `good one', in despair and believing himself betrayed by his father, becomes a gangster. Gangs were a common problem at the time, a few would-be Robin Hoods were known in Germany. Where does it end? Certainly nowhere idyllic. Gallows are growing on every hill side.
The most often quoted line of the whole play is `Franz heisst die Kanaille?', meaning: is Franz the name of the scoundrel? And what I learned from reading this odd piece of high literature for the first time since ages: the phrase comes with a question mark. I would never have guessed and I remembered wrongly.
When the play was a hit, Schiller ran away from his confinement in military life and eventually made a stellar career as Goethe's equal. Amazing. The man had not one iota of humor. His philosophy was full of pathos. His plays are full of serious thoughts. He was fed on Shakespeare and lived on him; the Robbers are a clear sign of admiration, but not quite up to par. They are ridiculous and grandiose at the same time.
The school of literature that Schiller co-created was called Sturm und Drang, which seems to be generally translated as 'storm and stress'. That strikes me as inadequate. Why not try a combination of turmoil, unrest, ferment?
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