In 1783 Immanuel Kant published
Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason.
He argued that morality does not need religion
because the virtue of the practical reason is sufficient
for a person to recognize one’s duty.
He criticized organized religions because of their rituals,
superstitions, and hierarchical structures.
To avoid the censors he published this book through the
University of Jena, but after the second edition in 1784
the censors discovered the book and got King Friedrich
Wilhelm III to restrict Kant from writing or speaking
about religion for the rest of his life.
In 1797 in the first part of his Metaphysics of Morals
translated as The Science of Right Kant discussed the
right of nations and international law
and also the universal right of mankind.
Ethically people ought to be treated as ends in themselves
and not mechanically as a means to some end.
Therefore the ruler has no right to treat his people as objects
for some warlike purpose.
The people do not owe a duty to the sovereign;
in Kant’s view rather the sovereign has a duty to the people.
As such they must give their free consent,
through their representatives,
not only to the carrying on of war generally,
but to every separate declaration of war;
and it is only under this limiting condition that
the state has a right to demand their services
in undertakings so full of danger.1
Kant defined three rights of peace:
neutrality, guarantee, and alliance.
Neutrality is the right to remain at peace when a war is nearby.
Guarantee is “the right to have peace secured so that
it may continue when it has been concluded.”2
Alliance is the right of federation, that states may defend
themselves in common against attack.
However, there is no right of alliance for
external aggression or internal aggrandizement.
Kant applied the categorical imperative to the relations
of states and rejected any action or policy which would
make peace among the nations impossible.
He pointed out that nations, like individuals, must enter into
a legal state, in this case, a union of states, which is the
only way to establish peace and the public right of nations.
Thus a permanent congress of nations must eventually become
practical so that differences may be settled by means of
a civil process instead of by barbarous war.
Kant based the right to a universal peaceful union of
all nations on the juridical principle of legal justice rather than
on the moral ideal of the philanthropic or ethical principles.
Because all people originally share the soil of the Earth,
they have a right to associate with each other.
Even though perpetual peace may not be real yet,
Kant emphasized that we must work
to realize it as our duty.
He concluded,
The universal and lasting establishment
of peace constitutes not merely a part,
but the whole final purpose
and end of the science of right
as viewed within the limits of reason.3
In his “Idea for a Universal History from a
Cosmopolitan Point of View” in 1784 Kant had stated
that Nature forces people to a cosmopolitan solution,
making a league of nations the inevitable
result of social evolution.
Until then humans must suffer the cruelty of conflicts.
The answer lies in a moral order, which can only be
brought about through education.
This enlightenment requires a commitment of heart
to the good that is clearly understood.
He lamented that rulers spend little money on public education
because they spend it paying for past and future wars.
He predicted that the ever-growing war debt
(which was new in his time) would eventually
make war impractical economically.
He foresaw that this and the value of interstate
commerce would prepare the way eventually
for an international government
even though there had never been one in world history.
Looking toward the goal of world citizenship,
he suggested that the philosophical historian ought to note how
various nations and governments have contributed to this goal.
Kant felt that war is the greatest obstacle to morality
and that the preparation for war is the greatest evil;
therefore we must renounce war.
“The morally practical reason utters within us
its irrevocable veto: There shall be no war.”4
Yet without a cosmopolitan constitution and the
wisdom to submit ourselves voluntarily to its constraint,
war is inevitable.
The obstacles of ambition, love of power, and avarice,
particularly of those in authority, stand in the way.
Again education must foster the building of character
in accordance with moral principles.
The full realization of our destiny, the sovereignty of God
on Earth, ultimately depends not on governments
but on justice and conscience within us.
Kant’s major work on peace entitled Perpetual Peace
was published in 1795.
That year in the separate treaty of Basel, Prussia ceded
France territory west of the Rhine so that it could partition
Poland with Russia and Austria.
Kant was so indignant at this that he wrote Perpetual Peace
as a just treaty that could be signed by nations.
He stated six preliminary propositions
for a perpetual peace among states:
1. No treaty of peace shall be held valid in which
there is tacitly reserved matter for a future war.
2. No independent states, large or small,
shall come under the dominion of another state
by inheritance, exchange, purchase, or donation.
3. Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.
4. National debts shall not be contracted
with a view to the external friction of states.
5. No state shall by force interfere with
the constitution or government of another state.
6. No state shall, during war, permit such acts
of hostility which would make mutual confidence
in the subsequent peace impossible:
such are the employment of assassins,
poisoners, breach of capitulation,
and incitement to treason in the opposing state.5
He added that a state has no right to wage a punitive war
because just punishment must come from
a superior authority and not an equal.
In introducing the three definitive articles, Kant observed that
the state of nature tends toward conflict and war;
therefore peace must be actively established
and maintained by a civil state.
Civil constitutions are of three levels: the law of persons,
the law of nations, and the law of world citizenship.
The first definitive article states, “The civil constitution
of every state should be republican.”6
By this Kant meant that the laws must be applied to everyone
universally and fairly—in other words, government by law,
not by favored men.
Thus the principles of freedom, common legislation,
and equality must pertain.
He hoped that requiring the citizens’ consent to declare war
would prevent its devastation because it is usually the people,
not the ruler, who sacrifice and suffer.
By “republican” Kant meant representative of the people,
but not necessarily democracy, which he considered
more likely to be despotic than representative government
by one (autocracy) or a few (aristocracy).
In a pure democracy it is not possible to separate
the execute power from the legislative function.
The second definitive article states,
“The law of nations shall be founded on
a federation of free states.”7
This constitution establishes the rights of states
through a league of nations.
Kant noted that Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel, and many
other irritating comforters have been cited to justify war,
but their code cannot have legal force.
Victory in war goes to the stronger,
but it does not settle what is right.
At its conclusion a peace treaty ends that war,
but to end all wars forever there must be a league of peace.
The more republics associate with each other,
the more practical a federation becomes.
In the federation a supreme legislative, executive,
and judicial power may be established to reconcile
the differences between nations peaceably.
But if nations do not acknowledge these supreme powers,
then how can they safeguard their rights?
He noted that using unilateral maxims through force leads
to “perpetual peace in the vast grave that swallows
both the atrocities and their perpetrators.”8
Therefore states must give up their savage (lawless) freedom
in order to find a greater freedom and security
within the constraints of public law.
The third definitive article states, “The law of world citizenship
shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality.”9
Everyone has the right not to be treated
as an enemy when arriving in another land.
How prophetic Kant was when he wrote,
“The narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth
has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place
is felt throughout the world.”10
Thus he did not consider a law of world citizenship high-flown
nor exaggerated but rather indispensable
for human rights and perpetual peace.
For Kant the guarantee for perpetual peace is the design
and process of world history which we call “providence.”
People have spread throughout the Earth and have been
forced to develop lawful relations with each other.
States were formed for defense against violations,
and people have been forced to be good for the
sake of others by laws to keep the peace.
Although differences of language and religion may have
kept states separate, competition nevertheless maintains
an equilibrium; commerce has made peace
far preferable to war.
Kant argued that politics must eventually be moral
because the moral laws are eternal
and transcendent of political stratagems.
Like Bentham, Kant emphasized that
justice must be public and open to scrutiny.
He reasoned that political maxims must be able to be public
in order to be legitimate; those which need publicity in order
to succeed are both right and politically advantageous
because they must be in accord
with the public’s universal good.
Therefore it is our duty to promote publicly those policies
which lead to the universal good of lasting peace.
Kant published On Pedagogy in 1803.
In regard to morality he emphasized teaching children to think
so that they can apply moral maxims to their conduct.
This is preferable to discipline, and he warned against
inflicting punishment with anger.
The child’s character should be formed
to be truthful and sociable.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte is considered a founder of ethical
and transcendental idealism.
He was born on 19 May 1762 in rural Saxony.
His father was from a family of serfs but became
a linen weaver to support his wife and eight children.
Baron Freiherr von Militz paid for Fichte to go
to the prestigious Pforta School 1774-80.
In 1780 he began studying theology
at the University of Jena seminary.
He transferred to Leipzig University in 1781; but his financial
support ended in 1784, and he did not complete his degree.
He worked as a tutor in Zurich, and in 1790 he moved back
to Leipzig and began studying the works of Kant.
He went to Konigsberg in 1791 and attended Kant’s lectures.
Fichte also tutored in Danzig (Gdansk).
In 1792 Kant helped Fichte publish anonymously his
first book, Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation.
People thought that Kant wrote it; but he explained
that he did not, and he praised Fichte’s work
which made him known.
In 1793 Fichte married in Zurich, and he published the radical
works, Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the
Princes of Europe and Contributions toward Correcting
the Public’s Judgment of the French Revolution,
defending the Revolution which many had abandoned.
The next year he was hired by the University of Jena
and published Foundations of the Science of Knowledge
(Wissenschaftslehre) based on his philosophy lectures.
Fichte began writing Foundations of Natural Right
and published it in two parts in March 1796 and March 1797.
His main principal of what is right is that each person
should limit one’s freedom so that others can be free also.
He accepted the original rights expressed
in the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
He found freedom in self-consciousness and used reason
to discover the principles of right.
His first theorem is, “A finite rational being cannot posit itself
without ascribing a free efficacy to itself.”11
His second theorem is that this rational being cannot ascribe
this freedom to oneself without ascribing it to others.
The third theorem is that such beings may also stand
in a right relation to each other.
Fichte recognized republicanism in the French Revolution
as sovereignty which comes from the popular will
that allows the governed a role in governing.
He emphasized the reality of freedom more than the goal
of happiness because he rejected the paternalism of princes
who claimed they were acting for the happiness of society.
The ability to reason creates the choice to exercise free will.
Because humans have reason and a physical body
they can act intelligently in the natural world.
Humans form relationships with each other,
and reason enables us to work for right or good relations.
A community is a collection of free beings
with reciprocal relationships.
A just state will respect and protect
the original rights of individuals.
The state makes laws and can use some coercion to
prevent individuals from violating the rights of others.
Fichte recognized the social contract developed by Rousseau
in his concept of unification which enables the individual
to become a part of an organic whole.
He also recognized a social spirit in society
that transcends private interests.
Fichte used “police” in its Greek political meaning
as a way the state enforces its principles of justice that
may include public health and assisting the poor
as well as protection and law enforcement.
He explained that one can only conceive of oneself
as free if one recognizes the freedom of others.
From this comes the understanding of reciprocity
and equality as guiding ideals.
Thus economic justice becomes an important part
of his political philosophy, and to eliminate poverty
the state may redistribute wealth.
Like Rousseau he recognized that economic
deprivation restricts personal freedom.
Thus he argued that everyone has the right
to subsistence for self-preservation.
In his first appendix on family right he wrote,
“It is a universal moral duty of every morally good
human being to spread morality beyond himself
and to promote it everywhere.”12
In 1798 Fichte published his Systems of Ethical Theory.
He explained moral activity as the free commitment
of the will to ideal devotion.
Duty is a challenge and the will of the true self.
He affirmed that if one should, then one can.
Evil comes from rejecting or denying the moral will
or from the laziness that leads to cowardice.
These two vices lead to falseness and lying.
He believed that one owes to
every person frankness and truthfulness.
Also in 1798 Fichte published On the Ground of Our Belief
in a Divine World-Order.
He believed in divine providence and that moral actions
always have good results while evil actions do not.
Because of his statement that the
“living and operative moral order is God,”
he was accused of atheism, and in 1799
he was dismissed from Jena University.
In 1800 he moved to Berlin
and published The Vocation of Man.
In that meditative work he examined himself
so that he would know.
Yet he could not explain how the power
of nature produces thought.
In his inward consciousness he found independence.
He recommended faith and the inward voice to open
spiritual vision to a better world where
one may be united with an infinite will.
Fichte lectured on the Characteristics of the Present Age,
which he considered the third of five epochs of civilization.
The first stage is unreflective conduct, and the second is
a minority imposing their authority on the masses.
His contemporary phase he described
as lawless defying of laws.
He prophesied that the fourth epoch would be the gradual
recognition and adopting of the
rational policies of the enlightenment.
Fichte’s fifth and final epoch is
the spiritual fulfillment of a humane society.
He criticized the romantics Novalis, Tieck,
and the Schlegel brothers.
In 1805 Fichte was given a chair at Erlangen University
where he lectured On the Nature of the Scholar.
The following winter at Berlin he taught and published
The Way to the Blessed Life or The Doctrine of Religion,
suggesting that the knowledge and love of God
are the purpose of life because God is all.
When Napoleon’s army invaded Prussia, Fichte left Berlin;
but he returned in 1807 and in the winter he delivered his
Addresses to the German Nation with
practical suggestions for national recovery.
He urged cultivating philanthropic devotion
to guide university education.
In his second address he advocated
a new system of national education.
He explained that humans can will only what they love
which is the only infallible motive of the will for all actions.
This must replace selfish love.
He wrote,
We must set up and establish in the hearts of all
those whom we wish to reckon among our nation
that other kind of love, which is concerned directly
with the good, simply as such and for its own sake.13
He suggested that the direct revelation of God is love
which is “the only real world.”
Fichte recommended the educational methods
of Pestalozzi as the remedy.
He encouraged love of the “Fatherland,” but he also wrote,
To you has fallen the greater destiny,
to found the empire of the spirit and of reason,
and completely to annihilate the rule of brute
physical force in the world.
If you do this, then you are
worthy of your descent from us.14
After Wilhelm Humboldt founded the University of Berlin
named after himself in 1810,
Fichte was appointed dean of philosophy.
He also served as rector in 1811-12.
His wife volunteered to nurse the sick and caught typhus.
Fichte contracted the disease from her
and died on 29 January 1814.
Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852) was born in Thuringia,
and his mother died nine months later.
His father was a Lutheran pastor who became busy building
a church, and in 1792 Friedrich was allowed to live
with his kind maternal uncle who trusted him.
In 1799 he went to the University at Jena
to study mathematics and botany.
While in the university prison for unpaid
debts he read the Zendavesta.
He was also influenced by the pantheistic philosophy
of Schelling that united mind and nature.
He liked the peaceful life of plants
and perceived unity in diversity.
His father died in 1802.
Fröbel worked as a surveyor until 1805 when he began
teaching at a secondary school in Frankfurt.
In 1806 he began tutoring three sons of a noble,
and he lived with them from 1808 to 1810 at Pestalozzi’s
school in Yverdon where he combined teaching with learning.
After teaching at a boarding school in Berlin he joined
the army fighting against Napoleon’s armies in 1813.
In 1816 Fröbel founded the German General Education
Institute at Griesheim in Thuringia,
and the next year he moved it to Keilhau.
He married in 1818 but had no children.
He began publishing pamphlets in 1820, and in 1826
he published his magnum opus, The Education of Man.
In 1837 he founded the Play and Activity Institute,
and in 1840 he invented the kindergarten
for pre-school children,
saying, “Come, let us live for our children.”
He loved children, and his educational play
materials were called “Froebel’s Gifts.”
Fröbel devoted his life to improving education for children
in harmony with physical and mental development.
He recognized the divine spirit in all growing things
and applied German transcendentalism to education.
He worked to discover the laws that
could make teaching scientific.
He valued childhood for its own sake,
not just as a preparation for being an adult.
He warned that adults have no right to feel superior to children,
and he advised that they should not interfere
with the natural conditions of childhood.
His child-centered education is based
on understanding individual differences.
In understanding the divine nature of the universe he held that
humans need senses and feelings educated as well as reason.
Like Pestalozzi he found a “living soul-unity” between parents
and children, and he derived his principles
from the oneness of life.
Thus education should be cooperative rather than competitive.
The harmony of diversity can be found in play just as Schiller
in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man
noted that art is a sublime form of play.
For the child play combines attention, relaxation, purpose,
independence, and freedom.
Play for the child is as important as work is for adults.
Fröbel observed that early experiences in childhood shape
the development of personality, and he argued
that the kindergarten could help redeem humanity.
Fröbel began The Education of Man by discussing
the Divine Unity that lives and reigns as eternal law.
Then he wrote,
Education consists in leading man, as a thinking,
intelligent being, growing into self-consciousness,
to a pure and unsullied, conscious and free representation
of the inner law of Divine Unity,
and in teaching him ways and means thereto.15
The true science of life is the knowledge of life in its totality
by an intelligent being, and from this
comes the science of education.
The highest human aim is to be wise.
Education can unfold the divine essence and raise a person
to the acceptance of the divine principle that lives inside.
Education should lead and guide humans to a clear
understanding of themselves and to inner peace
with nature and unity with God.
Individuality is found in humanity,
diversity in nature, and unity in God.
The child, boy, and man should be at each stage
what is needed for that stage.
Fröbel urged the cultivation of religion,
industry, and temperance.
He considered play the highest phase of child development
because it is the self-active representation of the inner life.
He urged parents to learn from their children and live with
them in peace and joy, and these will help them to grow wise.
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) was born in Oldenburg
in northwest Germany, and as a fragile child he was taught
by his mother for his first twelve years.
Then he attended a gymnasium school for six years before
going on to the University of Jena where he studied
philosophy under Fichte for three years.
Herbart became a tutor for three years in the Swiss canton
of Bern where he visited Pestalozzi.
Next Herbart studied Greek and mathematics
at Bremen for three more years.
In 1801 he went to the University of Göttingen where
he earned a doctoral degree and began teaching pedagogy.
In 1806 he wrote Science of Education, and in 1809
he became the chairman of philosophy
at the University of Königsberg.
He started a seminary of pedagogy
and taught there until 1833.
In 1816 Herbart published his Textbook in Psychology
which became the basis for his comprehensive theories
on learning and teaching.
He observed that much learning is forgotten; but he deduced
that this knowledge remains in the
subconscious mind because it can be revived.
He concluded that consciousness is conditioned by all learning.
Sigmund Freud acknowledged that his theory of the
unconscious was influenced by the ideas of Herbart.
For Herbart the duty of a teacher is to preserve the natural
vigor of the pupils, though they need to learn how to
control their natural exuberance and obey.
He noted that children have a tendency to lie in order
not to offend their parents and teachers.
Therefore they need to develop confidential communication
among themselves and with adults.
Children should be invited to be free and confident.
He explained that humans are motivated in four ways.
Occupation includes work and recreation.
Disposition covers love, approval,
and social intercourse and their opposites.
The third is family relationships, and the fourth is service
whether it be paid, compulsory, or honorary.
People need to learn the ethical ideals of inner freedom,
perfection, good will, justice, and compensation.
Education should promote courage
and an open mind rather than ambition.
Herbart believed that interest in mental activity could
become so great that play will seem trifling.
Children should be encouraged to have many interests
and to cultivate different abilities.
Good instruction appeals to what interests the students and
teaches them to use analysis and synthesis to understand facts
and ideas while using descriptive
instruction to develop associations.
He believed that the ultimate goal is to develop moral character,
and he argued that the more advanced the civilization is the
more important it becomes for liberal education to shape the
affections so that the individual can better serve that culture.
Interest makes the student susceptible and open to outside
impressions while being able to
integrate them into a harmonious whole.
In his time he noted the differences between the German
Gymnasium, the French Lycée, and the English Public School.
He suggested that instruction pay attention to cultural epochs
because he believed that individual development
follows the progress of the human race.
Herbart explained that instruction should proceed through
the stages of clarity, association, system, and method.
First the new ideas or facts must be presented clearly.
Then they are associated with other concepts.
The purpose of system is to connect the ideas
in the total context of the lesson.
With method the student is encouraged
to apply the new learning in the future.
Herbart taught that ethics is based on transcendent values,
and he also emphasized the importance of esthetic values
such as good taste, tact, and appreciation of beauty.
At the end of Science of Education
he described the ideal person as follows:
An active and mature man will not be subject
to a tempestuous fate that urges him
on to an unknown goal,
unaware whether he is driving or being driven.
On each level of life
he will attempt to attain serenity and reason.
He will aim to attune his soul to accord
with his environment,
and from his vision of the Absolute
he will derive his faith in the ultimate
victory of the good.
He will strive to acquire a harmony of mind
that will allow him to move freely, but prudently,
between the finite and the infinite,
between the transient and the permanent.
By noble participation in the
joys and griefs of human life
he will be led to a fuller appreciation
of the pure light of the spirit,
and his deeds will reflect the elation of his soul.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart
on 27 August 1770.
At the age of three he attended a German school
and then a Latin school in 1775.
His mother helped him learn Latin, and he went to the
Gymnasium school in Stuttgart in 1780.
His mother died when he was 13.
He read widely in the classics, translating the Manual
(Encheiridion) by Epictetus in 1786
and studying Aristotle's Ethics in 1788.
That year Wilhelm graduated from the Gymnasium and went
to Tubingen University where he earned
an M.A. in Philosophy in 1790.
For a while he shared an apartment with the younger Schelling
and the poet Hölderlin,
and they were excited by the French Revolution.
In 1793 Hegel passed the theology exam
and moved to Bern to work as a tutor.
In addition to the classics he was also influenced by Gibbon,
Montesquieu, Lessing, Rousseau, and Kant.
In Goethe’s Iphigenia Hegel found a goddess
who trusted the truth in herself and the human heart.
He wrote about folk religion, and in 1795 he wrote
The Life of Jesus and
The Positivity of the Christian Religion.
He hoped to reconcile the teachings
of Jesus with the ethics of Kant.
In 1797 Hegel went to Frankfurt to tutor as arranged by
Hölderlin who was having an illicit love affair
and would later have a mental breakdown.
Hegel suffered from depression and worked hard studying
Greek philosophy and modern history and politics.
He came to believe that the law is fulfilled by the love of God
and that a community of such believers
can be the kingdom of God.
Love unites the divine and human.
He was inspired by the idea of the Holy Spirit,
and he wrote The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate in 1799.
That year his father died, and he inherited a small fortune.
Schelling had become a professor
at the University of Jena in 1798.
In 1801 Hegel moved to Jena, and he published
The Difference Between Fichte’s
and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy.
He defended his Latin dissertation On Planetary Orbits
on his 21st birthday and became a university teacher.
In 1802 Hegel and Schelling founded the
Critical Journal of Philosophy;
but it ended when Schelling left Jena in 1803.
In February 1805 Hegel became a professor,
and Goethe helped him get a stipend in July.
Hegel’s last lecture there on 18 September 1806
was on his Phenomenology.
After the battle of Jena in October he fled
and went to Heidelberg in January 1807.
In February he moved to Bamberg where he edited the
Bamberger News and published 750 copies of his
henomenology of Mind (Spirit);
but it was not reprinted until after his death.
In his Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes)
Hegel explained his views on how human experience is a
continuous development of mental stages and that the life of
consciousness is a whole formed from all experiences,
and he suggested that self-consciousness of Spirit
is the supreme reality and the final consummation
of the progress of experience.
He wrote in the Preface,
The spirit that, so developed, knows itself
as spirit is science.
Science is actuality of the spirit and the realm
that the spirit builds for itself
in its own element.16
The underlying reality of the Spirit is infinite
which he described this way:
This bare and simple infinity, or the absolute
notion, may be called the ultimate nature of life,
the soul of the world, the universal life-blood,
which courses everywhere, and whose flow
is neither disturbed nor checked
by any obstructing distinction,
but is itself every distinction that arises,
as well as that into which
all distinctions are dissolved.17
Hegel got the idea of dialectic from Fichte who used it
to explain the process of thought and history.
The first idea is the thesis which is challenged
or contradicted by the antithesis.
Then through the process of dialectic
(which goes all the way back to Socrates)
the two are modified into a higher or more complex
synthesis which then becomes the thesis and so on.
He found the freedom of self-consciousness
in the Stoic philosophy.
Self-consciousness can use reason to transform
a negative attitude into a positive one
of idealism that brings about independence.
He wrote that idealism expresses the principle of reason
which is “the conscious certainty of being all reality”
that is infinite.
Hegel emphasized his concept of sittlichkeit which
means the ethical life or order which he considered
“the absolute spiritual unity.”
Individuals can surrender or sacrifice their individuality
to virtue because they are conscious that
this universal substance is their soul.
He discussed the ethical maxims
“Everyone ought to speak the truth”
and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
He began the large part on “Spirit” this way:
Reason is spirit, when its certainty of being
all reality has been raised to the level of truth,
and reason is consciously aware of itself
as its own world, and of the world as itself.18
He considered the living ethical world the true spirit.
He described the family as a natural ethical community
as is the justice of government.
Because the ethical is an absolute power,
it “cannot endure any perversion of its content.”
Spirit calls to every consciousness
to be rational for yourselves
because that is what you are essentially in yourselves.
In 1808 Hegel went to Nuremberg and worked
as a rector of a gymnasium school until 1816.
In 1811 he married a woman 21 years younger than himself.
They were happy, and his two sons
went into history and theology.
In 1817 his 10-year-old natural son Ludwig,
whose mother had died, joined their household.
Hegel published his Science of Logic in 1812
and added a third volume in 1816.
The next year he was given a full professorship at Heidelberg
University, and he explained his ideas in the
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline.
He described how the Absolute Spirit comes to know itself
as spirit by thinking, through nature, and as finite spirits
expressing themselves in self-discovery,
history, art, religion, and philosophy.
He suggested that pure being is nothing
even though they seem to be opposites.
They are united by becoming,
which is and is not at the same time.
He considered nature as the external opposite of the inner spirit.
Nature is finite and exists in space and time.
Human nature rises to self-consciousness
and develops rationality.
The human mind is subconscious as well as
conscious and has a rational will.
Through society and history humans come to know themselves
as spirits that are one with God, the absolute truth.
In 1818 Hegel was offered professorships
at Berlin and Erlangen,
and he chose Berlin where he taught for the rest of his life.
In 1821 Hegel published his Philosophy of Right in which
he began by discussing right and wrong
in regard to property and contracts.
In regard to coercion and crime he noted,
“Only the will which allows itself to be coerced
can in any way be coerced.”19
In the second part on morality he discussed the importance
of responsibility, intention, the good, and conscience.
He wrote, “True conscience is the disposition to will
what is absolutely good”20 based on fixed principles.
The third part on the ethical life focuses on family relationships
and the education of children, the needs and laws of civil
society with its administration of justice and law enforcement,
and the state with its constitution and relation to international law.
In 1827 he went to Paris and also visited Goethe at Weimar.
Hegel lectured in Berlin on aesthetics, philosophy of history,
philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.
After his death from cholera in November 1831
these were published from 1832 to 1840.
He had disciples called Hegelians, and his philosophy has been
influential and often debated.
In his Philosophy of History he analyzed the civilizations of
Asia, Greece, Rome, and later Europe as the “German World.”
Near the end he concluded that the history of the world
is the development of the idea of freedom.
He believed that wars would gradually disappear
as humanity progresses.
After publishing his History of the Revolt in the United
Netherlands Against Spain in October 1788, at the age
of 29 Friedrich Schiller became a professor of history
and philosophy at the University of Jena.
Hundreds of students marched in the streets to get him
a larger hall for his inaugural lecture which he gave in the
crowded and larger auditorium on 26-27 May 1789.
In November he published the lecture as
“What is Universal History, and why do we study it?”
Near the beginning he said that the field of history includes
the entire moral world and all the conditions that humanity
has experienced from shifting opinions with folly and wisdom,
and history must give account of everything
that mankind has taken and given.
In August he had compared the militaristic oligarchy
of the Spartans founded by Lycurgus to the
democratic reforms implemented by Solon in Athens.
His new position enabled Schiller to marry
Charlotte von Lengefeld on 22 February 1790.
On April 15 he wrote in a letter of his concern
that war would spread throughout Germany.
In January 1791 he became seriously ill from
a fever, chest pain, and gastric disorders.
In May asthma made breathing difficult,
and he coughed up blood.
He nearly died and never fully recovered.
On 10 December he received word that two Danish nobles
would grant him a thousand thalers a year for three years.
He was working hard on his History of the Thirty Years War
in Germany, which was published in 1791-93 and then on his
History of the French Troubles which preceded the
Reign of Henri IV, which covered the reigns of François II,
Charles IX, and Henri III up to the massacre on
St. Bartholomew’s day in 1572 and included
the first five volumes of Sully’s Memoirs.
In 1792 Schiller began studying Kant’s philosophy.
In the next seven years he would write essays mostly
on aesthetics and philosophical poems that included
“The Ideal and Life,” “Dignity of Women,” “Ceres’ Lament,”
and “The Song of the Bell.”
Schiller wanted to go beyond Kant’s rationalistic concepts
of duty by looking for ways to integrate ethics with aesthetics.
In July 1793 he published On Grace and Dignity
in the second issue of New Thalia.
He looked to Greek mythology to help understand
the relationship between beauty and grace.
He wrote that a beautiful soul has such moral sentiment
that the emotions of a person do not require the guidance
of the will because they will not go against its own decisions.
Thus the beautiful soul not only does moral deeds,
but also the entire character is moral.
He found grace more in women because their bodies
contribute suppleness to receive impressions and put them
into play while the character has the harmony of moral feelings.
He defined grace as “the expression of a beautiful soul,”
and dignity as “the expression of a noble disposition of mind.”
He wrote, “Mastery of instinct by moral force
is freedom of mind, and dignity is its epiphany.”21
He suggested that the highest degree of grace
is enchanting while the highest dignity is majesty.
Kant found no relation between beauty and science,
but Schiller in “Of the Aesthetic Estimation of Magnitude”
perceived a coherence between beauty
and mathematical science.
Schiller and his family moved back to Jena in May 1794,
and he persuaded Johann Friedrich Cotta to publish
a literary magazine called Die Horen (The Hours)
that he could edit.
He enlisted 26 reputable writers including the philosophers
Herder, Fichte, and Fritz Jacobi, the jurist C. G. Körner,
Humboldt, and Goethe.
Schiller had talked with Goethe after a meeting of the
Scientific Society in Jena,
and he moved to Weimar in September.
In the first issue in January 1795 he began publishing
his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.
In these 27 Letters Schiller expressed his view that humans
are improving and moving from a state of nature with instincts
and needs toward a moral state of freedom and reason.
In the past humans lived like lower animals who were driven
by their instincts and appetites
that emphasized the value of survival alone.
Even when social groups formed, the primitive politics
of brute force was prevalent.
Yet humans developed the capacity to reason and discover
principles they could use as guides for a better life.
In his time he diagnosed that the lower classes were prone
to selfishness, superstition, and violence
while the cultivated class was egotistic, decadent, and perverse.
The use of tools and technology led Schiller to suggest that
specialization dehumanized people as tools of the social order.
The sudden awakening of hopes in France had major problems
because the citizens were not yet educated and disciplined
for a freer life based on reason and moral principles.
The French people were not yet prepared
for a better government,
and the basic instincts of feeding, fighting, fleeing,
and fornicating often won the struggle against reason.
Schiller believed that rational morality was not enough
if it tried to ignore the physical senses.
What he recommended is a balance between the two
that can be achieved through aesthetic education
so that the two sides of human nature
could cooperate and live in harmony.
Thus he encouraged free play, appreciation of beauty,
and practice of the fine arts as well as games and sports.
Art imitates life in creating a semblance of the world
that is not false because the mind understands it is not real.
People are influenced by the arts, and then life imitates art.
The understanding gained from the lessons learned
ennobles human character.
The sense drives create emotions,
and they can be expressed in play and the arts.
The human mind discovers the laws of science
and principles with the ideals of truth, justice, and duty.
Play involves wholeness and simultaneity
for the body and the spirit.
Play is a human activity without the drives
or motives of need and profit.
Art and play are valuable for themselves through
the appreciation of beauty and aesthetic freedom.
Behavior is improved by the
development of manners and grace.
Humans adorn and decorate their lives
for more subtle pleasures.
If people’s animal and rational drives are put into an
adversary relationship,
the result can be violence and exploitation.
Schiller asked if humans can use philosophical inquiry
to challenge present conditions and work on using art
to construct “true political freedom.”
He called art the daughter of freedom which is guided by
the mind rather than physical needs and desires.
He suggested that beauty can lead people to freedom.
The cultured person is a friend of Nature and honors freedom.
Imagination can lead us to a better life.
Schiller believed that developing the human capacity
for feeling was the urgent need of his time
because it improves insight.
When the unity of ideas embraces all phenomena
we transcend time and move from being an individual
to humanity, and then the choice of all hearts
is represented by our actions.
Reason sets up beauty and justice
as the ideals of art and morality.
In the 25th Letter Schiller wrote,
Spirit cannot be injured by anything
except that which robs it of its freedom,
and man gives evidence of his freedom
precisely by giving form
to that which is formless.22
Schiller published his essays “On the Naïve”
and “On the Sentimental” in the last two issues of
The Hours in 1795 and his “Conclusion on the Treatise
on Naïve and Sentimental Poetry Together with some
Observations Concerning a Characteristic Difference
Among Men” in the first issue of 1796.
He described the naïve poets, such as Shakespeare
and Goethe, as being influenced by nature and following
a realistic philosophy of adapting to life as it is.
The sentimental poet like himself uses reason with
a concern for moral principles and adopts an idealistic
philosophy that strives to improve the world.
He also used these concepts in his essays “On Suffering”
and “On the Sublime.”
The latter work considers human freedom
the most essential quality.
In “The Moral Utility of Aesthetic Manners” in 1796
Schiller attributed to taste the merit of contributing
to moral progress, though he realized that good taste alone
does not make an action moral.
Yet taste is favorable to the conduct of morality.
In moral action there can be conflict between the good
and the agreeable, between reason and desire.
The force of sensuous instincts may overcome
the moral faculty of the will,
and this is a source of human faults.
Yet taste demands moderation and dignity
because it has a horror of what is violent
and likes ease and harmony.
In 1797 Schiller began writing a series of plays on the last days
of Wallenstein during the middle of the Thirty Years War.
Schiller condensed the events in the winter of 1633-34
to the last four days of Wallenstein’s life
that ended on February 25.
They were presented at Goethe’s theater in Weimar
with the one-act Wallenstein’s Camp premiering on
12 October 1798 followed by the five-act The Piccolominis
on 30 January 1799 and the five-act Wallenstein’s Death
on April 20 Cotta published the Wallenstein Trilogy
in June 1800, and the 4,000 copies soon were sold.
In Wallenstein’s Camp after a prolog peasants and soldiers
talk about the war and army life which offers
opportunity and excitement.
They are Bohemians fighting in Bohemia
after sixteen years of war.
The soldiers fear the commander-in-chief Wallenstein
who has been paying them with his own money
and leading them to victories without following
the orders of the Emperor Ferdinand II.
A suttlerwoman complains that her business has declined fatally,
and she wants to collect some money.
A sergeant notes that speech is free; but actions are mute,
and obedience is blind.
A soldier says that the Duke of Friedland (Wallenstein)
has hired a devil from the depths of hell.
A Capuchin friar arrives and preaches that they are
violating the commandments against
taking the Lord’s name in vain and stealing.
He says that as long as the Emperor lets Friedland
have power, the land will not be free of war.
The soldiers defend their commander.
They have become Wallensteiners and will refuse
to leave their commander for the Emperor.
A cuirassier complains that the sword has driven out justice.
A soldier urges them to stand together as one,
and the soldiers sing.
A dragoon notes that freedom has vanished from the land,
leaving only masters and slaves,
and deceit and treachery are in command.
Finally the soldiers agree to put their lives
at stake so that they can win.
In The Piccolominis the Emperor Ferdinand II has sent
his war commissioner Questenberg to the headquarters
at Pilsen in Bohemia to order Lt. General Octavio Piccolomini
to arrest Wallenstein, but he learns that the generals
Illo, Terzky, and Buttler will obey
Commander Wallenstein rather than the Emperor.
Octavio’s son, Col. Max Piccolomini, arrives with the
Wallenstein women, and the father soon realizes that
Max has fallen in love with Wallenstein’s daughter Thekla
who was in a convent.
(Max and Thekla are fictional characters.)
Max blames Questenberg and those
in Vienna and defends Wallenstein saying,
You stir up trouble for the Duke, you hinder
His every step, heap him with a slander,—why?
Because he values Europe’s welfare more
Than certain paltry hides of land which may
Be gained or lost for Austria;—you term him
Seditious and God knows what more besides
Because he spares the Saxons and attempts
To foster confidence among our foes
Which is the only way to peace when all
Is said and done, for if war does not bring
Its own conclusion, then whence shall peace come?23
Wallenstein confers with his wife,
and her brother Terzky brings in Thekla.
Before the generals Wallenstein debates Questenberg
and admits he has been driven to rebel against the Emperor.
Questenberg says that he went into winter quarters
and burdens imperial lands.
Wallenstein replies that the troops have gone a year
without pay after he supported them himself,
and now he is being deposed.
Questenberg says that the Emperor has ordered
Col. Suys
into Bavaria which undermined Wallenstein’s command.
Count Terzky warns Wallenstein that several generals
are avoiding the conference, and he advises
the commander to march against Vienna.
Wallenstein orders Illo and Terzky to get the generals’
signatures on a pledge of support for him.
Thekla does not trust the generals and warns Max.
Wallenstein announces that he will resign,
and after dinner the clause mentioning
their oath to the Emperor is removed.
The fearful generals sign the document,
but Max refuses to sign.
Illo is drunk and exposes the trick falsifying the document.
In act 5 Octavio warns Max that Wallenstein is plotting treason
by joining his army with the enemy Swedes and Saxons
so that he can keep Bohemia for himself;
but Max is loyal to the commander, criticizes his father,
and says he will not obey the Emperor.
Octavio warns of civil war and says he is spying for the
Emperor who has ordered him to kill Wallenstein
and has appointed him commander.
A courier arrives and says proof has been found
that Wallenstein is plotting treason.
Max says he will tell Wallenstein what he has learned.
Max warns that the powerful man
will pull down the world during his own destruction.
Schiller begins Wallenstein’s Death with the commander
consulting his astrologer Seni who advises him to act
because of a favorable conjunction of Venus, Jupiter, and Mars.
(At that time Jupiter was in opposition to Saturn,
square Mars and trine Venus.)
However, Count Terzky brings him bad news that
his messenger to the Swedes was captured by imperial troops
with his secret documents.
Wallenstein realizes he must move quickly, and he negotiates
with the Swedish envoy Wrangel who asks him
to cede Prague to Sweden to show that
he has his generals’ support.
Wallenstein shows him the signed loyalty oath.
General Illo and Terzky with his wife
persuade him to accept the offer.
Wallenstein refuses to let Max Piccolomini
marry his daughter Thekla.
Max wants to support Wallenstein
but not by betraying the Emperor.
Max’s father Octavio Piccolomini persuades the generals
to oppose Wallenstein’s treason, and he wins over
the Irish General Buttler by showing why
Wallenstein refused to promote him.
Buttler is allowed to stay with Wallenstein in Pilsen.
All the officers except Illo and Terzky have deserted
the commander, and the Prague garrison refused to surrender.
Wallenstein goes to Eger on the German frontier while
Buttler plots to murder him and the officers loyal to him.
News arrives that Max led his men
against the advancing Swedes and was killed.
That night Wallenstein retires, and Buttler and his men
break in and assassinate him with swords.
Octavio arrives with an army and criticizes Buttler
for killing Wallenstein without orders.
Buttler and his men are seeking gain and head for Vienna.
Countess Terzky has taken poison and walks off to die.
News arrives that the Emperor has made Octavio a prince.
Schiller’s tragedy Mary Stuart opened on 14 June 1800
at the Weimar Theater and was well received,
and the story was used for Donizetti’s opera in 1835.
Once again Schiller condensed the story into
the last few days of her life in February 1587.
The Protestant Queen Elizabeth has kept her cousin Mary
Queen of Scots imprisoned for 19 years because
she is concerned that Catholics might try
to make her Queen of England.
Schiller altered the facts to enhance his dramatic purposes,
suggesting that the queens portrayed
should be under thirty years of age.
He created the character Mortimer to represent aspects
of Anthony Babington who was executed
for conspiring to help Mary escape.
Mortimer has become a Catholic
and tells Mary that she is to be executed.
William Cecil, Baron of Burleigh, makes the formal
announcement of Mary’s fate, and she defends herself,
admitting that she had committed crimes,
but not against Elizabeth.
In the second act Elizabeth at court pretends that she loves
the Duc d’Anjou to the French deputies
hoping for a diplomatic marriage.
She sends them away and asks Burleigh about Mary,
and he advises immediate execution.
George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, pleads for Mary
and says a woman is a fragile creature,
but Elizabeth replies, “Woman is not weak.
There are strong souls among the sex.—
I will not tolerate talk of that sex’s weakness in my presence.”
Burleigh opposes an interview, and Robert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester, says Elizabeth must decide.
She talks with Mortimer alone and hopes he will kill Mary.
Mortimer gives Leicester a letter from Mary,
and Leicester confesses that he loves her.
(This romance is fictional.)
Leicester suggests that Elizabeth meet Mary by chance.
Although no historical evidence indicates that
Elizabeth and Mary ever met to talk,
Schiller invents a dramatic discussion in which Mary offers
to renounce her claim to the throne of England
which she never did.
Elizabeth warns Mary that no one will want to marry her
because she kills her suitors and husbands.
Mary admits she was seduced by power and says
Elizabeth’s mother was unchaste.
Mortimer goes to Mary and embraces her,
startling the audience.
Rumors fly that Elizabeth was killed;
then comes a report that the plot failed.
Mortimer flees.
In act 4 Elizabeth expels the French ambassador
for attempting regicide.
Burleigh suspects Leicester who saves himself
by having Mortimer arrested for treason.
Mortimer stabs himself and invokes “Holy Mary” as he dies.
Now Leicester urges Elizabeth to execute Mary,
and she puts him and Burleigh in charge of the punishment.
Elizabeth gives William Davison a signed document
without instructions, which is historically accurate.
In the last act Mary says goodbye to her friends
and is dressed regally for her demise.
At last she will be free from prison.
She confesses that she hated Elizabeth, loved Leicester,
was guilty of her husband Darnley’s murder and adultery
with Bothwell but not of plotting against Elizabeth.
She believes her death will atone for guilt
because she is not guilty of the charge.
In the final scene Elizabeth banishes Burleigh
and has Davison put in the Tower.
Shrewsbury resigns, and Leicester leaves
for France, leaving Elizabeth alone.
Schiller’s romantic tragedy, The Maid of Orleans, premiered
at Leipzig on 18 September 1801 and then in Berlin,
but it did not open at Weimar until 23 April 1803.
Printed as a book in October 1801, the popular play
was very successful for generations.
Schiller followed most of the history of Jeanne d’Arc
but radically changed the ending with poetic license.
In the prolog her father Thibaut believes the 17-year-old Joan
has been influenced by the evil spirit in the local Druid Tree.
Raimond is in love with Joan, and Bertrand lets her
have the military helmet he found.
Joan believes she is inspired to lead the French army to defeat
the English siege of Orleans, and she will have the dauphin
Charles crowned at Rheims.
She feels that God will guide her
if she avoids the love of a man.
In the first act Joan goes to the court at Chinon and
not only identifies King Charles not sitting on the throne
but also describes his prayers.
She speaks of her divine mission,
and Charles gives her command of the army at Orleans.
In act 2 Joan leads the army that drives
the English forces away from Orleans.
Montgomery surrenders to her; but she believes
it is her duty to make him fight, and she kills him.
Next she persuades the Duke of Burgundy
to change sides and fight for France.
In the third act the generals Dunois and La Hire propose
marriage to Joan, but she refuses to profane her
holy mission and warns them of the dangers they face.
King Charles makes her a noble woman.
On the battlefield she meets a black knight who warns her
to avoid battles until Charles is crowned at Rheims.
She draws her sword, but he stops her
and disappears into the ground.
Joan believes he was a phantom from hell.
The English knight Lionel challenges her to combat,
and she defeats him but suddenly feels
desire for him and does not kill him.
Instead she asks him to kill her,
but he refuses and takes her sword as a token of love.
In act 4 Joan’s mood has changed, and she reluctantly
joins the coronation parade at Rheims.
Her father denounces her as led astray by bad spirits
and challenges her to swear that she is pure.
Influenced by this, King Charles banishes her.
Like Schiller’s Mary Stuart, she submits to unjust punishment
because she believes it expiates her guilt for past sin.
In the final act Joan wanders in the forest with Raimond
and is called a witch.
The English with the renegade
French Queen Isabeau capture Joan.
Lionel visits her in prison and begs her to marry him.
She overcomes her previous love for him and refuses.
Raimond reports what happened to the French,
and Charles changes his mind
and attacks the castle to try to free her.
The French are being defeated; but she prays for help,
breaks free, overpowers a guard,
and leads the French to victory but is mortally wounded.
Joan sees a heavenly vision
and believes she is ascending in eternal joy.
She drops a flag from her hand,
and King Charles orders her body covered with flags.
Schiller has portrayed Joan as a morally sublime person
because she overcame the temptation to go against moral law.
Although Joan was a French heroine,
because she fought against an invading army,
Napoleon banned the play after his victories in 1805.
Influenced by two tragedies Schiller saw as a young man
about two brothers in conflict over a woman,
he drew the incest theme from the Greek tragedy of Oedipus
and used a chorus of the soldiers under the princely brothers
in the city of Messina on Sicily in the medieval period.
He called this tragedy The Bride of Messina, or the
Two Hostile Brothers which premiered
at Weimar on 19 March 1803.
The seeds of the family curse derive from an earlier king
raping Isabella after she chose to marry his son.
He becomes king after his father’s death,
and Isabella gives birth to the twins Manuel and Cesar.
This king has learned from a Moor
that if Isabella has a daughter,
she will cause the death of his sons.
She consults a Christian monk
and has her daughter Beatrice put in a convent.
The two brothers develop a bitter rivalry,
and both secretly fall in love with Beatrice
without knowing she is their sister.
She marries Manuel.
Without knowing she married his brother,
Cesar kills Manuel.
Then he discovers that he murdered his brother,
and in guilt he commits suicide.
The chorus concludes that life is not the
highest possession and that the worst evil is guilt.
Goethe had visited Switzerland and in 1797 considered writing
an epic poem about the legend of Wilhelm Tell,
but he gave up the project.
Schiller studied Swiss history and culture and in August 1803
began working on the play which
opened in Weimar on 17 March 1804.
Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell is one of the most popular plays ever,
and in its first century it had
an average of 232 performances per year.
The legend of a soldier having to shoot an apple
off his son’s head goes back to the Danish historian
Saxo Grammaticus about 1200.
He wrote that King Harold Bluetooth (r. 958-85)
forced Toko to shoot the apple off his son’s head,
and Toko had two more arrows for the king in case he missed.
Wilhelm Tell does not appear in extant literature
until about 1400, though the historian Aegidius Tschudi
(1505-72) collected the legends and passed them off as
history happening from October 28 to 20 November in 1307,
though modern historians have found no evidence
of a Swiss uprising that year.
Nonetheless Schiller’s play captured the imagination
and the current feelings for a democratic revolution
led by Swiss cantons.
His play takes place in the forest cantons of Uri, Schwyz,
and Unterwalden which surround Lake Lucerne
and formed a league in 1291.
The Austrian Emperor Albrecht (r. 1298-1308)
reimposed Austrian taxes and administration.
The league formed a federal union in 1315
and agreed to peace with Duke Leopold in 1318
that lasted until the end of the century.
In the first act men see a storm on Lake Lucerne when
bloody Konrad Baumgarten of Unterwalden arrives
and says he killed the tyrannical Governor Wolfenshiessen
with an ax for trying to rape his wife.
Baumgarten is fleeing from pursuing soldiers,
but the ferryman Kuoni refuses to take him
across the lake during the storm.
The master helmsman Wilhelm Tell shows up
and offers to take him across.
As they are leaving, the soldiers arrive and in frustration
kill the peasants’ sheep and burn their homes.
Werner Stauffacher at Steinen in Schwyz tells his wife Gertrude
that he is in conflict with the Austrian Regent over the ownership
of his house, and Tell brings Baumgarten there for refuge.
The governor Hermann Gessler has ordered a pole
erected in the public square at Altorf to which
every man passing by has to bow or face death.
Tell and Stauffacher arrive and see a hat placed
on the pole and discuss what to do.
Walter Fürst from Uri and Arnold of Melchtal from
Unterwalden meet, and Stauffacher brings them the news.
They agree to meet with ten men from each canton.
The Baron of Attinghausen persuades his nephew
Ulrich von Rudenz to join the people
against the King’s tyranny.
Melchtal and Baumgarten have gathered armed men
in a meadow, and they are joined
by Stauffacher and then Fürst.
They vote 20-12 to postpone the rebellion until Christmas.
They debate whether to use force to regain their ancient rights,
and they hope to unite their brotherhood without violence.
They do not trust the aristocrats to help them and agree
to meet in the forest at Rütli on November 7.
In act 3 Wilhelm Tell with his crossbow
takes his son Walter to Altorf.
The Baron’s heir Rudenz loves Berta; but she refuses
to wed him because he has abandoned his people.
She is heir to large estates and does not believe
the Emperor will let her marry him.
She persuades Rudenz to support Swiss liberty.
Tell at Altorf refuses to bow before the hat
on the pole in respect for the Emperor.
The imperial officer Hardheart arrests him,
and a crowd gathers.
Governor Gessler arrives with his retinue and orders Tell
to shoot an apple off his son’s head at 80 paces
and be beheaded if he misses.
The famous archer accomplishes
the challenge with his cross-bow.
Gessler asks why he has a second arrow in his belt,
and Tell replies that it was for Gessler in case he hit his son.
Gessler orders Tell chained and taken to a dungeon,
but on the ship in a storm Tell is needed
to save the boat and escapes.
The Baron dies, and Rudenz agrees to join the rebel leaders.
Tell ambushes Gessler on a road
and shoots an arrow through his heart.
He makes himself known to take responsibility for his action.
In act 5 the armed revolt is successful without further bloodshed,
and the fortress at Uri is torn down.
Duke Johannes of Swabia has murdered his uncle,
Emperor Albrecht, for cheating him out of his inheritance,
and disguised as a monk he comes to Tell’s cottage.
Tell urges Johannes to expiate his crime
by going on a pilgrimage to Rome.
In the final scene the Swiss people with the confederates
celebrate their liberation outside Tell’s home.
Berta extends her hand to a free man from a free woman,
and Rudenz frees all the bonded peasants on his land.
Schiller was working on a play about young Dmitry
who overthrew the brief reign of Russia’s Tsar Fyodor II
in June 1605; but Dmitry’s reign lasted less than a year
before he was killed by boyars.
Madame de Staël had visited Schiller in December 1803,
and he influenced her book on German culture.
Schiller suffered from a long illness
and died on 9 May 1805, probably of tuberculosis.
Heinrich von Kleist was born on 18 October 1777 in Frankfurt.
His father was a captain in the Prussian army and died in 1788.
Heinrich was sent to Berlin and was educated by a clergyman.
He loved music and played the clarinet well.
In 1792 he joined a regiment in Potsdam, and he fought in the
Rhineland 1793-95 and gained a commission in 1797,
but he resigned from the military in March 1799.
Kleist studied physics, mathematics, history, and Latin
at the University of Frankfurt for a while.
He favored the French Revolution and traveled in
Germany, Switzerland, and France.
Influenced by Rousseau he tried to live
a simple life among the Swiss.
He volunteered to fight for the French against the English
but was rejected and sent back to Germany.
His tragedy The Schroffenstein Family was performed
anonymously in 1803, but he abandoned his tragedy
about Robert Guiscard, and only a fragment remains.
After a mental crisis in Mainz he got a position in the
Prussian civil service in 1804 for two years.
The French suspected he was a spy, and in January 1807
they imprisoned him for six months.
Then he went to Dresden and with Adam Müller during 1808
edited the twelve issues of the journal Phoebus
modeled after Schiller’s The Hours.
Phoebus published some of Kleist’s plays and stories.
In an epigram in November he asked
if women should not get education.
In 1809 Kleist went to Austria to fight against Napoleon,
but after witnessing the Austrian defeat at Wagram in July
he suffered another breakdown in Prague.
He lost a pension after Queen Luise of Prussia
died in July 1810.
That year his romantic play, Käthchen of Heilbronn,
played in Vienna.
In the essay “On Reflection” he suggested that deliberation
is more effective after an action because at the moment of
decision it suppresses power which comes from magnificent
feeling; but reflection afterward makes purpose known
so that errors can be avoided in the future.
He returned to Berlin and edited the successful daily
newspaper, the Berliner Abendblätter from
1 October 1810 to 30 March 1811 until government
censorship forced them to shut down.
His collected stories were printed
in two volumes in 1810 and 1811.
He applied for the civil service and the army but was rejected.
He completed The Prince of Homburg in September 1811.
His friend Madame Henriette Vogl was suffering
from an incurable condition and wanted to die.
On 22 November 1811 they drank much wine, rum,
and coffee, at her request Kleist shot her and then himself.
Her husband found the corpses.
Kleist never witnessed a performance of his plays.
He wrote his comedy The Broken Jug
between 1803 and 1806.
In March 1808 Goethe produced it at Weimar;
but it failed, and the two men parted company.
The play was later considered a masterpiece of
dramatic comedy, and it is still performed.
The Dutch Judge Adam is suffering from a head wound
and has a club foot (which indicates he may be a devil).
He desires Eve who is engaged to Ruprecht, and her mother
Frau Marthe Rull is suing Ruprecht for having
broken her beautiful pitcher during a fight in Eve’s room.
The High Court Judge Walter has come
to inspect Adam’s court.
Bald Adam presides without his wig and tries
to explain his gashed cheek and bad foot.
Ruprecht testifies that Eve is a slut
because he found her at night with another man.
He says he broke down the door, grabbed a door-handle,
and hit the intruder in the head, breaking the jug;
but the intruder escaped by a window.
Eve refuses to name the intruder.
Ruprecht’s aunt Brigitte testifies that she found a wig
on the trellis outside the window
and saw footprints in the snow showing a club foot
going from Eve’s house to the courtroom.
Adam rules that irrelevant and tries to sentence Ruprecht,
but Walter takes control of the case.
Then Eve confesses that Adam tried to seduce her
by blackmailing her with the threat to draft Ruprecht
into the army and send him to the East Indies.
The court clerk Licht is ambitious and reveals
that the draft document is forged.
Eve and Ruprecht are reconciled and kiss,
and Adam flees outside.
Walter sends Licht to retrieve Adam
who is suspended and to be replaced by Licht.
Marthe asks about her jug, and Walter says
she can take her case to the High Court.
This satire exposed the corruption of the courts.
Kleist adapted Molière’s comedy Amphitryon
which had been based on a play by Plautus.
Jupiter takes the form of the general Amphitryon
so that he can make love to Alcmene
while Hermes replaces her servant Sosia.
The real Amphitryon asks the god to give him a great son,
and Jupiter says his son will be Hercules.
Kleist wrote Amphitryon in 1805-06,
and it was published in 1807.
Kleist published his Penthesilea in 1808,
but Goethe declined to produce the wild tragedy.
Set at Troy the Amazons are allied
with the Trojans against the Greeks.
Their Queen Penthesilea ignores the Amazonian tradition
of occasionally accepting an opportune man’s love
in order to procreate children.
Instead she seeks out the heroic Achilles and leads
a surprise attack that surrounds him, but he escapes.
Penthesilea’s friend Prothoe has fallen in love
with a Greek prisoner, and the women quarrel.
Achilles challenges Penthesilea and defeats her in combat.
When she regains consciousness,
he pretends that she overcame him.
She confesses her love for him
but soon realizes that she is his captive.
She prepares for another battle and plans to take him home
for their hymeneal feast, but he challenges her to a duel.
She doubts she can defeat him and calls upon the Furies
to aid her, and they attack him.
Her arrow penetrates his neck, and she bites him,
saying that kissing often turns into biting.
Kleist reverses the myth by having
Penthesilea kill Achilles instead of him slaying her.
When she recovers from her madness,
she realizes what she has done.
She renounces the Amazonian laws
and kills herself with a dagger.
Kleist completed his last play The Prince of Homburg
by the summer of 1811, but it was not performed until 1821,
ten years after his death.
The story centers around the battle of Fehrbellin when the
Prussians defeated the Swedes on 18 June 1675,
a date celebrated by Germans until 1914.
In a park Prince Friedrich II of Hesse-Homburg daydreams
about military glory in the imminent battle.
His friend Count Hohenzollern brings the Brandenburg Elector
Friedrich Wilhelm there, and they observe
Homburg with a laurel wreath.
The Elector puts a gold chain around the wreath
which he gives to his niece Princess Natalia.
Homburg gets up and tries to grab the wreath
but gets only one of her gloves.
The next day when he learns it is Natalia’s glove
during the war council, Homburg is distracted,
preventing him from understanding the battle plan.
The Elector warns him he had been
disobedient in previous actions.
During the fighting he declines to wait for his signal to attack,
and he persuades Count Kottwitz
to support his cavalry assault.
This prevents a definite victory.
Homburg believes his troops have won the battle
and joins Natalie and the Electress.
They hear that the Elector was killed, but it turns out
it was another man on his white horse.
During the celebration in Berlin the Elector orders
Homburg arrested, and a military court sentences him to death.
Natalia is to marry Swedish royalty to improve the alliance.
Homburg pleads with the Electress to spare his life.
Natalia asks the Elector to pardon him,
and she summons her regiment to support him.
Natalia brings the Elector’s letter of pardon;
but when Homburg reads it, he decides the sentence
is just and declines the clemency.
Kottwitz and Hohenzollern defend Homburg who says that
triumphing over the inner enemy is more important.
He is led to the field of execution blindfolded.
Natalia crowns him with a laurel wreath.
Homburg is cheered,
and the Elector tears up the death warrant.
Born Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg on 2 May 1772
in the Harz mountains, he chose the name “Novalis”
meaning “from the clearing.”
His pious father was in the Herrnhuter Church, and Georg went
to a Lutheran school in Eisleben before attending the universities
of Jena (where he heard Schiller’s lectures),
Leipzig, and Wittenberg.
He studied geology, mathematics, chemistry, biology, history,
and philosophy, and he worked in the mining industry.
In 1795 he became engaged to twelve-year-old
Sophie von Kühn, but she became ill and died in March 1797.
In his Hymns to the Night (1800) Novalis described
a mystical experience he had at her grave.
His novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen
contained “Klingsohr’s Fairy Tale.”
The father of the family is the Mind, the mother the Heart,
and the child is Eros.
In his essay “Christendom or Europe” he described history
moving from the Age of Faith to the Age of Reason
and then to a third age that would harmonize
the two for human happiness.
Novalis died of tuberculosis in March 1801.
His “Aphorisms” include the following:
Imagination represents the afterlife
either on high or in the depths or in metempsychosis.
We dream of journeys through the universe,
but is the universe not within us?
We do not realize the profundities of our spirits.
Inward is the direction of the mystic path. (1)Without total self-understanding
no one will ever really learn
to understand others. (8)Where children are,
there is the Golden Age. (20)If the spirit sanctifies,
every real book is a Bible. (23)
From his “Miscellaneous Fragments” come these:
Anyone seeking God will find Him everywhere.
Nothing is more accessible to
the mind than the infinite. (9-10)Who has declared the Bible completed?
Should the Bible not be still
in the process of growth? (12)There is only one temple in the world
and that is the human body.
Nothing is more sacred than that noble form. (14)Dreams are extremely important for the psychologist—
and for the historian of the human races.
Dreams contributed very much to the culture
and development of mankind.
Hence, rightly, the former great respect for dreams. (19)A character is a fully developed will. (20) 24
In his last Hymn Novalis wrote,
The system of morality must become
the system of nature.Morality, properly understood,
is man’s actual medium of life.
It is essentially identical with fear of God.
Our pure ethical will is the will of God.
(III, 662, 684) 25
After reviving his spirit by living in Italy for two years Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the fall of 1788 returned to his work at Weimar as Minister of State and Privy Councilor to Karl-August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar. That year Goethe had begun living with 23-year-old Christiane Vulpius, and their only son to survive infancy was born on 25 December 1789; they did not marry until 1806. He had met Schiller in September 1788, and Goethe helped him get a low-paid position at the University of Jena in 1789. Goethe visited Venice in the spring of 1790 and wrote Venetian Epigrams.
In February 1790 Goethe published his collected works in eight volumes with his completed tragedy Torquato Tasso as volume 6, but the play was not performed until February 1807 at Weimar. Written in blank verse, Goethe’s Torquato Tasso portrays the Italian poet Tasso who was most appreciated at this time for his epic poem Jerusalem Liberated about the First Crusade, which he has just completed for Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara. The tragedy is set in spring about 1577 at Alfonso’s pleasure palace Belriguardo with his sister, Princess Leonore d’Este, Leonore Sanvitale (Countess of Scandiano), Ferrara’s Secretary of State Antonio Montecatino, and the manic-depressive (bipolar) poet Tasso. His relationship to the Princess Leonore reflects Goethe’s platonic relationship with Frau von Stein, though he dedicated a poem to her in which he suggested that he had been her brother or husband in a former life. Tasso’s love for the Princess was a fiction created by Giovanni Battista Manso in his biography of Tasso. Goethe also used the 1785 biography of Tasso by Abbate Pierantonio Serassi that described his problems with the Inquisition.
In a garden Princess Leonore crowns a bust of Vergil, and the Countess Leonore so honors a statue of Ariosto. They appreciate Ferrara which fostered Petrarch and Ariosto. Duke Alfonso comes in looking for Tasso, wishing he would finish his poem. The Duke suggests that friends not spare Tasso needed criticism, and he has been patient with his paranoia such as claiming his room was burglarized. Tasso arrives with his new book and presents it to Alfonso who is pleased. Tasso is glad to be living there. Alfonso has his sister take the wreath from the head of Vergil’s statue and crown the kneeling Tasso who hopes his life will be eternal progress toward heroism. Yet he feels shame compared to the men he wrote about. Antonio enters and hopes to end his quarrel with Tasso.
Tasso tells the Princess that he feels confusing conflict in himself, but one glance from her cures his mania. She encourages him to get along with her brother. She thinks the golden age should allow what is befitting, and she suggests that women could rule better with morality than men who strive for freedom but are violent. Tasso is left alone and then welcomes Antonio offering reconciliation. Antonio says, “Man knows himself through man alone, and only life can teach him what he is.”26 Their discussion becomes an argument, and Tasso asks if truth has been banished from the palace where the free mind is imprisoned. Antonio is offended and defends princely rule. The quarrel heats up, and Tasso draws his sword; but Duke Alfonso comes in to calm the situation, and Antonio reluctantly accepts his judgment that Tasso is to stay in his room under his own guard. Tasso goes. Alfonso advises Antonio that when grown men quarrel, the one more prudent should be held responsible. He tells Antonio to restore Tasso’s liberty, and Antonio obeys his master.
The Princess and Leonore discuss how they might help Tasso. Antonio tells Leonore that one is on guard with strangers but one’s passions are more free with friends. He argues that Tasso treasures only his laurel wreath and “women’s favor.” Leonore counters that Antonio depends on his Prince’s confidence which gives him fame and self-assurance. She says he knows how to take care of himself and others, but Tasso lacks many things that women can give him. She believes he harms himself and no others, but Antonio says his passion hurts people. Yet he says he will try to reconcile with him if Tasso will follow his advice.
Leonore goes to see Tasso in his room where he is being punished for his offense. Tasso says he recognizes only the master who feeds him. Yet he observes that a selfish spirit envies. He believes the Duke has become his foe to be hated. She wonders how he can remain at his court, but she assures him that the Princess and her brother trust him. Leonore advises him to go away to Florence where she and her husband will take care of him. He asks how the Princess feels toward him, and Leonore says that she excuses him. Tasso is left alone and believes they are deceivers. He decides to leave. Antonio comes in and acting for the Prince says that Tasso is no longer captive, asking him to accept forgiveness. Tasso gives in, and Antonio offers to help him. Tasso asks for his liberty so that he can go to Rome to revise his book; but Antonio urges him to stay, and he doubts that Alfonso will release him. Tasso says that Gonzaga has a court that will receive him in Rome. Antonio predicts that it will go badly with him in Rome, but he will ask the Prince. Tasso does not trust Antonio, and he fears that the Princess has abandoned him.
Alfonso tells Antonio he will let Tasso go to Rome, though he does not trust the Medici Gonzaga. Alfonso asks Antonio to forgive Tasso and says foes test our valor while friends test our patience. Antonio blames Tasso for his intemperate life as one who disobeys his doctor’s treatments. Alfonso wishes Tasso well on his journey and will write letters to his friends in Rome. Tasso asks for his manuscript. Alfonso says he will have a copy made, but Tasso wants it right away. Tasso says his life is writing and meditating. Alfonso says farewell. The Princess comes in and asks if Tasso will stay for a while. He is in a hurry to go, and she warns him he is not yet free to go. Tasso says he will disguise himself as a poor pilgrim. He asks her to plead his cause and suggests that he could live with her in one of the Prince’s castles. She sees no remedy and says she must give him up. He asks what he can do to get the Prince’s forgiveness. She says he must trust them as friends. He feels passion and offers himself to her. This frightens her, but he asks her to take him entirely and embraces her. She pushes him aside and hurries away. Leonore is approaching and asks what happened. Alfonso says Tasso has lost his mind and orders him held. Tasso feels imprisoned and tortured as a sacrificial victim. Antonio says he goes to extremes. Tasso feels despair and surrenders as a captive. Antonio advises him to be strong and not give in to himself. Tasso says he is nothing because he was stolen from himself and lost her.
Goethe’s Tasso tragedy portrays the conflicts of a sensitive poet in an era when poets often had to please a powerful aristocrat to achieve success. The historical Tasso confessed his religious doubts to the Inquisition, and Duke Alfonso was concerned that he might jeopardize his Calvinist court and so treated him as if he were mad by imprisoning him for seven years.
Goethe directed the Court Theater
in Weimar from 1791 to 1817.
Karl August was given a command under the
Duke of Brunswick in the Prussian army,
and Goethe went with him on the campaign
against the French in August 1792.
He observed the surprising French victory at Valmy
on 20 September and later famously commented,
“From here and now begins a new epoch in world history,
and you can say you were there.”
By December he was back in Weimar.
In 1794 he helped the philosopher Fichte get a chair at Jena;
but he was blamed by some
when Fichte was dismissed in 1799.
Although Schiller was more idealistic and Goethe more realistic,
they both admired the culture of the ancient Athenians
and became close friends in 1794.
In the 1790s many intellectual leaders visited Goethe
including the Humboldt brothers, poets Hölderlin and Novalis,
writers Jean Paul Richter and Tieck, philosophers
Schelling and Hegel, novelist Sophie von La Roche,
physicist Ritter, geologist Werner, and his former mentor Herder.
In 1797 Goethe visited Switzerland for the third time.
He wrote ballads and translated Cellini’s autobiography.
Goethe published The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister
in four volumes in 1795 and 1796.
Young Wilhelm is in love with the theater
and the actress Mariana.
He was going to elope with her, but he mistakenly thinks
he discovered that she has a lover.
This disappointment causes him to renounce poetry and drama
to please his burgher father.
He works traveling to collect debts for his father’s business
and to increase its trade.
In his travels he has adventures and becomes friends
with pretty Philina and Laertes.
While watching acrobats perform, Wilhelm is upset how
they are treating the girl Mignon, and he rescues her.
She dotes on him.
Eventually he is persuaded to loan money to the
theater company led by the Melinas.
Wilhelm flirts with the countess and is surprised in the
count’s bedroom in his clothes,
but the count thinks he is his doppelgänger (double).
When he forcibly embraces the countess, she dismisses him.
In the next town the robbers take the company’s possessions.
Wilhelm is injured and wakes up in Philina’s lap.
While recovering he stays with a pastor
with Mignon who was also wounded.
The actors go into the country,
but Philina stays to nurse them.
Wilhelm wants to act and calls on his friend Serlo who
is an actor-manager, who gives him the lead in Hamlet.
He spends time with Serlo’s unhappy sister Aurelia who
had been abandoned with the child Felix by a noble lover.
Wilhelm learns that his father died,
and he is baffled by the player of the ghost in Hamlet.
One night there is a fire,
and Felix is sent away with an old harpist.
While Wilhelm is fighting the fire, Mignon tells him
that the harpist is trying to kill Felix in the basement.
Wilhelm manages to get a clergyman
to take care of the old man.
Wilhelm and Mignon became the guardians of Felix.
Aurelia tells Wilhelm about her failed love affair
and gives him a letter to take to the noble Lothario.
At his castle Wilhelm recognizes him
as the brother of the countess.
Lothario initiates him into a secret society
for intellectuals seeking to improve the world.
He learns that the old harpist is a former priest
who had a child by a relative.
On a mission Wilhelm learns that Felix is his son
by Mariana who died of grief from losing Wilhelm.
He meets Lothario’s sister Natalia.
She is the woman he calls an “Amazon”
who saved his life in the forest.
Mignon dies, and he learns that she was the daughter
of an Italian priest, the harpist who went insane
because he believed his beloved was his sister.
The mother had died in a convent,
and traveling players stole the child Mignon.
Wilhelm marries Natalie, and he believes that by his
experiences he has learned how to
appreciate both art and life.
In this book Goethe intended to show
among other things how guilt is punished on earth.
He also paraphrased Hippocrates, writing,
“Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.”
Goethe’s sequel Wilhelm Meister’s Travels was not published
until 1821 with a much revised edition printed in 1829.
Wilhelm has renounced desires and travels with his son Felix.
They have adventures with various people and discuss geology,
astronomy, and other things.
Felix suffers from unrequited love but survives.
Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities, published in 1809,
is more relevant to modern society, showing the conflicts
between the morality of marriage
with the natural desires of sexual attraction.
Edward is wealthy and married but falls in love with Charlotte.
She likes him too but is also married.
After their spouses die, they marry each other.
Her daughter Luciana is put in a school,
and Charlotte lives with Edward on his country estate.
Edward gets a letter from the Captain
and invites his friend to stay in his mansion.
Charlotte agrees to let him come and work on the estate.
Edward enjoys working with the Captain and moves to
another wing of the castle to be near him.
Charlotte’s dear friend died,
and she takes on her daughter Ottilie,
who is at school with Luciana, as her protegée.
After discussing the elective affinities of chemical elements,
Edward and Charlotte agree
to let Ottilie come to live there too.
Edward and Ottilie are attracted to each other and play duets.
They spend much time together,
leaving Charlotte and the Captain with each other.
She becomes more interested in the Captain
and tolerates her husband’s attentions to Ottilie.
One day while boating Charlotte and the Captain kiss
but decide to stay on a moral path.
However, Edward and Ottilie give in
to their passion for each other.
They are visited by a baron and his mistress, a countess,
and Edward shows them their rooms.
He spends that night with his wife Charlotte,
and they make love; but he is thinking of Ottilie
while Charlotte imagines the Captain.
While celebrating Ottilie’s birthday Charlotte becomes upset
at Edward’s behavior and wants Ottilie
to go back to school or live with someone else.
In anger Edward leaves the castle on the day
the Captain leaves for his promotion.
Charlotte discovers she is pregnant and turns
to the amateur marriage-counselor Mittler,
but Edward refuses to give up Ottilie.
As a war has begun, Edward volunteers and fights with honor,
hoping he will have Ottilie if he survives.
Two other men become interested in Ottilie at the castle,
but she longs for Edward.
When Charlotte’s child is christened, the baby mysteriously
appears to resemble Ottilie and the Captain.
Edward comes back and tells the Captain he will divorce
Charlotte so that he can marry Ottilie,
and the Captain can wed Charlotte.
Edward returns to the castle;
but Ottilie becomes so upset that
she drops Charlotte’s baby from a boat.
The baby drowns, and the Captain is horrified to see
that the corpse looks like him.
Ottilie goes to an inn,
but Edward persuades her to return to the castle.
They try to resume their relationships,
but Ottilie speaks little and starves herself to death.
Edward then eats little, drinks wine, and dies,
and his body is buried in the grave next to Ottilie’s.
In this novel Goethe wrote that what married people
owe to each other is incalculable
because it is an infinite debt which can only be
fulfilled through all eternity.
Goethe was affected by the deaths of Herder in 1803
and Schiller in 1805.
After Napoleon’s victories Weimar was taken into the Rhine
Confederation and had to pay heavy reparations
to maintain its sovereignty.
Goethe had praised Bonaparte for leading France out of
anarchy; but he could foresee his fall and Germany’s liberation.
He was proud to be admitted into the Legion d’Honneur in 1808.
Late in life Goethe told his friend Eckermann that Napoleon
“had trampled underfoot the lives and happiness of millions.”
Goethe did not like Kleist’s Penthesilea,
and Kleist blamed him for his adaptation
distorting the comedy, The Broken Jug.
In 1811 Goethe began a series of autobiographical writings with
his From my Life: Poetry and Truth (Dichtung und Wahrheit)
and descriptions of his journeys.
He spent much time working on his theory of colors
but was unable to refute the optics of Newton.
Some of the romantics who visited him were the poets
Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano as well as
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm who wrote the famous fairy tales.
In 1827 Goethe began his essay “On World Literature”
with the bold statement, “National literature is no longer
of importance; it is the time for world literature,
and all must aid in bringing it about.”
Goethe worked on his magnum opus, Faust,
from the early 1770s until 1831.
He published Faust Part One in 1808 and the much longer
Faust Part Two in 1828-29
and with his final revisions posthumously in 1832.
The poetry is rhymed until Act 4 in Part Two when Faust
and Helen begin speaking in blank verse.
In the Prelude the Poet says,
Find me that nook of heaven’s stillness, heady
With blossom of the poet’s pure delight,
Where for the heart both love and friendship flourish,
With godly hands create its bliss and nourish.27
The Director wants above all a sufficient plot,
and a Merry Person encourages them.
The Prologue in Heaven begins with the archangels Raphael
recognizing the power of the Sun, the Earth, and the tempest.
Mephistopheles speaks to the Lord
who asks if he knows Faust.
The demon replies that the doctor is deeply troubled,
and he wants to bet the Lord that He will lose him.
The Lord does not forbid it if the demon can estrange
his spirit because Man ever errs while he strives.
The Lord does not hate this negative spirit
he considers least onerous.
In his Gothic chamber at night Faust feels he is no wiser
even with his master and doctor degrees.
He does not presume that he has knowledge
nor that he can teach college men.
Thus he resorts to magic by spirit to bring secrets to light.
He asks nearby spirits to give him answers and says,
Am I a god?
I feel such light in me!
Within these tracings pure and whole
There lies creative Nature open to my soul.
At last I comprehend the sage’s plea:
“The world of spirits is not barred.” (439-43)
He summons the Spirit of the Earth
and feels his powers rising higher.
He pronounces a sign, and the spirit appears and speaks to him.
Faust says he feels close to him, but the spirit vanishes.
His attendant Wagner heard something
and wants to learn from Faust.
On Easter Faust hears a chorus of angels,
but he does not believe in miracles.
Outside the city gates Faust and Wagner mix with students
and peasants, and Faust notes their freedom.
In his study Faust notices a black dog, and he summons
the spirits of the four elements.
Mephistopheles appears dressed like a student.
Faust calls him Lord of Flies, corrupters, and liars.
The demon says he is part of the force that would always
do evil and always does good,
a spirit which eternally denies.
Faust asks if they could make a compact,
and the demon says he will render what is promised
as long as he can practice his arts.
Faust curses belief, visions of glory after death,
pride of ownership, Mammon, the grape,
lovers’ thrall, faith, hope, and patience.
Mephistopheles offers to be his servant and squire
and asks for equal worth.
He will give Faust arts which no man has seen.
They agree to a pact and a wager.
He signs his name with a drop of blood.
After Faust leaves, the demon says
he will drag him through dissipation.
Mephistopheles shows Faust merry company at a tavern.
The demon manifests wine that burns,
and he is called a sorcerer.
Then he and Faust disappear.
In a witch’s kitchen the demon
enables Faust to see a beautiful woman.
On a street Faust sees pretty Margarete,
but she denies that she is fair or a lady.
Faust tells his partner that he wants to enjoy her that night;
but the demon says that she had nothing to confess,
and so he has no hold on her.
While she is away, Mephistopheles takes Faust to her room
which he likes.
The demon puts a box of jewels in her cabinet
that she discovers; but he tells Faust that she showed them
to her mother who let a priest have them.
The demon puts an ebony casket in her room with more gems,
and Margarete shows them to her neighbor Marthe
who advises her to keep them secret.
The demon visits them and tells Marthe that her husband died.
He urges Margarete to get married or take a lover.
Margarete falls in love with Faust,
but she hates the man with him.
In her chamber she warns Faust that
they may wake her mother,
but he suggests that she put a drug in her drink.
After a while she realizes that she has been led into sin.
She discovers she is pregnant and is now called “Gretchen.”
Her brother Valentine, who is a soldier, comes to her door
and gets into a sword fight with Mephistopheles
who mortally wounds him.
Valentine blames his sister for renouncing honor,
and he dies.
Gretchen goes to the cathedral where
she finds an evil spirit and the choir.
In the mountains there is a long scene of witches
and revelry called “Walpurgis Night.”
There Faust and Mephistopheles encounter strange
characters and attend the wedding of Oberon and Titania.
On a dreary day Faust is in misery and despair
because Gretchen has been imprisoned
and is to be executed.
He insists that his demon save her
or take him there so that he can free her.
Mephistopheles agrees to lead him there
and help him by distracting the jailers.
Faust calls to Gretchen in the dungeon, and her chains fall off.
She asks him to kiss her, and she embraces him.
She confesses that she killed her mother and drowned her child.
She dreads fleeing like a beggar with a sinner’s conscience.
Faust says he will stay with her,
but she tells him to run and save his child.
Finally, Mephistopheles says she is condemned,
but a voice from above says, “Redeemed.”
The voice also calls, “Heinrich” (Faust).
Faust Part 2 begins with the spirit Ariel singing of spring
and asking the fairies to help the unlucky man by
removing his remorse and cleansing his soul.
Faust appears revived and greets the sunrise.
The Emperor assembles his advisors.
Mephistopheles kneels and asks a series of riddles.
The Chancellor describes the commonwealth
with its feverish evils.
The Quartermaster says that half the Earth’s
dominion has been forfeited.
The Treasurer warns that they cannot trust their allies
because they cannot afford to subsidize them.
The Marshal notes that every day they go deeper in debt.
Mephistopheles says they need cash and suggests
they can get gold underground because man has gifts of
Nature and Mind; but the Chancellor replies that Nature is sin,
and the Mind is Satan.
They consult the astrologer who advises that
those who hope for wonders must follow a divine path.
The Emperor proclaims the carnival before Ash Wednesday,
and much celebration and entertainment follows.
Hope optimistically concludes,
Like an ever-welcome guest
We feel certain of our ground:
We are confident the best,
Must be somewhere to be found. (5437-40)
Plutus, the god of wealth, warns that soon will occur a
“gruesome riot,” but he advises that the art of magic
will protect them from harmful spirits.
The Chancellor announces that there is wealth to redeem
the paper money, but the Emperor senses a gross fraud.
Mephistopheles recommends the Greek goddesses, the mothers.
In the Hall of Chivalry they put on a play the astrologer calls
“The Rape of Helena;” but an explosion interrupts the action,
knocking Faust unconscious as the spirits disappear.
In act 2 Faust is in bed in the Gothic Chamber,
and his assistant Wagner has created
an artificial Homunculus that learns.
The former student, who has earned a bachelor’s degree,
comes in and implies he is taking over
from those who are too old.
In the laboratory Wagner demonstrates his Homunculus
by engaging it in conversation, and they work on healing Faust.
In the Classical Walpurgis Night the Greek gods
and other creatures appear.
Faust wakes up there and seeks Helena.
On the Lower Peneios he finds some nymphs,
and Chiron takes him to meet the sybil Manto
who guides him into the underworld.
Mephistopheles goes after the monstrous Lamiae
and disguises himself as a grey witch.
The Homunculus asks to join the philosophers
Thales and Anaxagoras, hoping to become more human,
and they meet up with the legendary Nereus.
Proteus helps Homunculus to change.
The third act was published separately in 1827 as
Helena: The Classical-romantic Phantasmagoria
Interlude to Faust.
The ugly Phorcyas warns Helena that
Menelaus may sacrifice her.
Faust is seeking the ideal of beauty in the form of Helena,
who was stolen from her husband Menelaus by Paris
and taken to Troy, triggering the long Trojan War
about the 13th-century BC.
Faust describes four destructive periods
in the history of Greek culture.
Following this war the Dorians invaded Mycenaean Greece
that resulted in a dark age prior to
the golden age of classical Greek culture.
The second destruction followed the Roman conquest
of Greece and was by the Germanic Goths
in the early centuries of the Christian era.
The third invasion of Greece was by the French Normans
during the Crusades, and the fourth was the Greek rebellion
against the Ottoman Empire of the Turks in the 1820s.
Faust lives out a romance with Helena and a victory
over the army of Menelaus;
but Helena disappears into Hades.
The act ends with Mephistopheles revealing
that he was disguised as Phorcyas.
Act 4 begins with Faust climbing in high mountains,
and in the clouds he sees the female forms of
Juno, Leda, and Helena.
Mephistopheles appears and tells him that he is in hell,
but to Faust this is Nature.
The demon offers him a metropolis,
but Faust sees that as pebbles and rebels.
Faust mentions Sardanapalus, the hero of a play
that Byron dedicated to Goethe.
The demon knows the history of a hundred thousand years.
They discuss the faults of civilization
and inspect the troops in the valley.
The Emperor has camped in the foothills and confers
with his commander of the army.
A scout reports that a rival emperor has arisen.
Faust arrives in armor with three strong men,
and he persuades the Emperor to accept
their aid against his rival.
Mephistopheles reports that the enemy is retreating,
but the Emperor sees ill omens.
The rival emperor’s tent is corrupted
by Grab-swag and Rapacious.
The Emperor with four princes claims the enemy is defeated,
and he makes his Arch-Marshal the Arch-Chamberlain.
The Archbishop is the Arch-Chancellor and warns
the Emperor that he is in league with Satan’s power.
In the final act the elderly peasant couple,
Baucis and Philemon, welcome a wayfarer.
In a palace Faust is now an old man
with a lofty title he considers impure.
Mephistopheles comes in with the three strong men.
Faust is worried, and the demon tells him how
they removed the elderly couple by killing them.
At midnight the crones Want, Debt, Care, and Need gather.
Faust sees three leave, but Care remains to taunt him.
He orders her to leave.
She breathes on his eyes, making him blind.
Yet he still perceives the inner light.
At the outer court of the palace Faust joins Mephistopheles
and the evil spirits of the dead.
Faust makes his final speech saying,
Wisdom’s last verdict goes to say:
He only earns both freedom and existence
Who must reconquer them each day. (1574-6)
Then he collapses and dies.
Mephistopheles prepares to take his soul away.
A chorus of angels throws rose petals as blossoms of blessings,
but they burn the devils.
The devils retreat from the angels who urge with loving flames
the self-damned toward the Light and the blessing of the All-Unity.
Mephistopheles curses them but sees Faust’s soul ascending.
Anchorites are living in mountain gorges and teach unbaptized
children who are blessed and join the angels.
Women from the Gospel stories and the penitent Gretchen appear,
and the mystical chorus ends the play with the words
“Woman Eternal draws us on high.” (12,110-1)
In 1829 Goethe published his Maxims and Reflections
which includes:
I believe in God—this is a fine,
praiseworthy thing to say.
But to acknowledge God wherever
and however he manifests himself,
that in truth is heavenly bliss on earth.The true is Godlike; we do not see it itself;
we guess at it through its manifestations.
1. The Science of Right 55 by Immanuel Kant, tr. W. Hastie.
2. Ibid., 69.
3. Ibid., Conclusion.
4. Ibid.
5. Perpetual Peace 343-346 by Immanuel Kant,
tr. Lewis White Beck in On History, p. 85-89.
6. Ibid., 349, p. 93.
7. Ibid., 354, p. 98.
8. Ibid., 357, p. 101.
9. Ibid., 357, p. 102.
10. Ibid., 360, p. 105.
11. Foundations of Natural Right by J. G. Fichte, tr. Michael Baur, p. 18.
12. Ibid., p. 310.
13. Addresses to the German Nation by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, tr. R. F. Jones et al, p. 19.
14. Ibid., p. 225.
15. The Education of Man by Friedrich Froebel, tr. W. N. Hailmann, p. 2.
16. Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary, tr. Walter Kaufmann, p. 396.
17. The Phenomenology of Mind by G. W. F. Hegel, tr. J. B. Baillie, p. 208.
18. Ibid., p. 457.
19, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right 91 tr. T. M. Knox, p. 66.
20. Ibid. 137, p. 90.
21. Friedrich Schiller: Poet of Freedom, p. 374.
22. On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a series of letters by Friedrich Schiller,
tr. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, p. 185.
23. Wallenstein: A Historical Drama in Three Parts by Friedrich von Schiller,
tr. Charles E. Passage, p. 62.
24. Quotes from Hymns to the Night and Other Selected Writings by Novalis,
tr. Charles E. Passage, p. 66-72
25. Quoted in Novalis by John Neubauer, p. 158.
26. Torquato Tasso lines 1242-3 tr. Charles E. Passage.
27. Faust lines 63-66, tr. Walter Arndt.
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