EDITIONS
During the lifetime of Schiller his writings were printed in different forms by different publishers, and owing to the absence of copyright unauthorized reprints were numerous. He himself undertook no complete and final redaction of all his works, though in his later years he revised and arranged a selection of his poems. 'Don Carlos' and some of the prose writings also underwent revision at the hands of their author.
The first edition calling itself complete was that of Körner, which was published in 1812-15, in twelve volumes, by Cotta of Stuttgart. Körner divided the poems into three periods,—a division which has since been extensively copied. Körner's edition became the basis of the later Cotta editions (down to 1868), which were reprinted in various forms and degrees of completeness, but without important changes or additions. With the expiration of Cotta's monopoly and the opening of the philological era, the works of Schiller began to be deemed worthy of the same scrupulous editorial care that had long been bestowed on the Greek and Latin classics. The mid-century researches of Hoffmeister and others, particularly Hoffmeister's Supplemente zu Schillers Werken, 1840-1, had brought to light much new material not usually printed with the works of Schiller, and the received text, even of the more important works, was known to be more or less faulty and uncertain. To meet the new demand a historico-critical edition was undertaken by Goedeke, with the assistance of several sub-editors. The result was Schillers, Sämmtliche Schriften, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, 15 vols., Cotta, Stuttgart, 1868-76. This edition aimed at completeness, arranged the works chronologically and went deeply into the matter of variant readings. It is still indispensable to the scholar, though not free from pedantries.
Contemporaneous with this work of critical scholarship was the cheaper and more popular edition of Boxberger and Maltzahn, published by Hempel in Berlin—Schillers Werke, nach den vorzüglichsten Quellen revidierte Ausgabe, 16 parts in 6 vols., 1868-74,—which, though unsightly, is valuable for its introductions and notes. In more recent years several good editions have appeared, the most noteworthy being (1) that of Boxberger and Birlinger, published as a part of Kürschner's Deutsche National-Litteratur, 12 vols., Stuttgart, 1882-91; (2) that of L. Bellermann, Kritisch durchgesehene und erläuterte Ausgabe, 14 vols., Leipzig, 1895 ff., and (3) the latest of the critical Cotta editions, completed in 16 vols. in 1894.
The dramatic fragments have been twice edited by Kettner, Schillers Dramatischer Nachlasz nach den Handschriften herausgegeben, Weimar, 1895, and Schillers Dramatische Entwürfe und Fragmente aus dem Nachlasz zusammengestellt, Stuttgart, 1899. The Xenia have recently been edited by Schmidt and Suphan, Xenien 1796, nach den Handschriften des Goethe-Schiller Archivs herausgegeben, Weimar, 1893.
As is well known the later plays of Schiller, to a certain extent also some of his prose writings, are familiar school classics wherever German is studied. The school editions, many of them meritorious works of scholarship, are very numerous. They are not mentioned here because a mere list of names and dates would be of no use, while a selection with discriminative or critical comment would be a difficult and invidious task to which the compiler of this survey has no inclination. Any of the scholarly editions published in recent years, in Germany, the United States or England, will usually be found to contain a sufficient bibliography of the particular work under consideration.