BIOGRAPHY
The first account of Schiller by a conscientious and competent writer was that by Körner, which accompanied his edition of 1812-15. This, however, was a mere sketch.
In 1825 Carlyle published his Life of Schiller at London, and a few years later the book was translated into German and supplied with an introduction by Goethe. It was based on very imperfect information, but was an inspiring work of genius nevertheless. It is now more valuable as a Carlyle document than as a Schiller-document.
In 1830 Karoline von Wolzogen, Schiller's sister-in-law, published her memoir of the poet, which is now to be had in Cotta's Bibliothek der Weltlitteratur. It contained a large number of authentic letters and was based upon an intimate personal acquaintance dating from the year 1787. For the earlier years data were furnished by friends and relatives. The little book has many excellencies, but the portrait of Schiller, as it came from the hands of the talented but aging Baroness, is a shade too idealistic and sentimental. Of his virile youth one gets hardly an inkling.
The year 1836 brought a valuable contribution to the knowledge of
Schiller's youth in Schillers Flucht von Stuttgart, by Andreas
Streicher.
From this time on the biographies are numerous. A mediocre one by Doering, first published in 1832, was often reprinted in subsequent years. Between 1838 and 1842 appeared Schillers Leben, Geistesentwickelung und Werke im Zusammenhang, von Karl Hoffmeister. This monumental work of scholarship, in five volumes, has been indispensable to later biographers, however they might differ with Hoffmeister in matters of critical estimate. Hoffmeister's learned work was made the basis of a more popular biography by H. Viehoff, which appeared first in 1846. A new and revised edition was published in 1875. Of the shorter and more popular biographies which appeared down to 1859, it may suffice to mention those by G. Schwab (1840) and J.W. Schäfer (1853). The sketch by Bulwer, which accompanied his translation of Schiller's poems, London, 1844, was based mainly on Hoffmeister and Schwab.
The great Schiller-festival of 1859 called forth a mass of literature of which the titles fill ten octavo pages in Goedeke's Grundrisz. Of the longer biographies dating from this period the most important are that by J. Scherr, Schiller and seine Zeit, Leipzig, 1859 (English translation by Elizabeth MacLellan, Philadelphia, 1881), and that by E. Palleske, Schillers Leben und Werke, Berlin, 1858-9. Palleske's work, of which an English translation by Lady Wallace appeared in London in 1860, soon attained a remarkable popularity, which it still enjoys with some abatement. It is the work of a conscientious Schiller enthusiast, written with great warmth of feeling and great fulness of biographical detail, but not strong on the critical side. A twelfth edition, somewhat popularized by H. Fischer, appeared in 1886, a fifteenth edition in 1900.
For some twenty years Palleske and Scherr held the field in Germany without serious competition, and then a new crop of biographies began to appear. That of H. Düntzer, Schillers Leben, mit 46 Illustrationen und 5 Beilagen, Leipzig, 1881 (English translation by Pinkerton, London, 1883), retold the familiar story in a style less attractive than that of Palleske, and without adding anything of great importance in the way of critical appreciation. The same may be said of the biography by C. Hepp, Leipzig, 1885.
Of an entirely different character are the contributions of Weltrich, Minor, and Brahm, which are essentially works of historico-critical interpretation. Unfortunately, however, they were begun on a scale of such magnitude, and with such an uncompromising respect for the infinitely little, that there is small prospect of their completion.
Of the work of Weltrich, Friedrich Schiller, Geschichte seines Lebens und Charakteristik seiner Werke, unter kritischem Nachweis der biographischen Quellen, the first installment appeared in 1885, the second in 1891, and the third (completing the first volume) in 1899.