[Footnote 79: See above, page 135.]
CHAPTER XI
Historical Writings
Der Mensch verwandelt sich und flieht von der Bühne, seine Meinungen verwandeln sich und fliehen mit ihm; die Geschichte allein bleibt unausgesetzt auf der Bühne, eine unsterbliche Bürgerin aller Nationen und Zeiten.—First lecture at Jena.
Schiller's merit as a writer of history has been much discussed and very differently estimated by high authorities. In general one may say that his historical writings have fared at the hands of experts very much like the scientific writings of Goethe; both being treated as the rather unimportant incursions of a poet into a field which he had not the training or the patience to cultivate with the best results. Niebuhr's adverse opinion is well known and has often been echoed in one form or another by later critics. On the other hand, lovers of the poet are very apt to overestimate the historian, who would probably be seldom heard of to-day If he had not achieved immortal fame by his plays and poems. As it is, his historical writings have become, for better or worse, a part of the classical literature of Germany, and as such we have to reckon with them.
And the best way to reckon with them is to describe them as objectively as possible and to consider them in relation to the intellectual tendencies of Schiller's own time. We shall see that he began a history of the Dutch Rebellion without knowing Dutch or Spanish, and without spending any time in a preliminary study of the original sources of information.[80] His 'History of the Thirty Years' War' was a bread-winning enterprise, hastily executed for a ladies' magazine. For neither work did he draw a full breath. To compare him, therefore, with the modern giants of research, would be quite absurd; and the more absurd since Schiller the historian, unlike Goethe the scientist, was extremely modest in his self-estimate and fully aware of his limitations on the side of scholarship.
Of the qualities that go to the making of a great historian he had two,—the philosophic mind and the vivid imagination. But he lacked the spirit of the investigator and had not a sufficient reverence for the naked fact. History interested him for the sake of his theories and his pictures, and rhetoric was his element. This being so it is not strange that we get from him now and then a distorted image. Great movements and prominent characters are depicted by him in accordance with his freedom-loving, cosmopolitan preconception; and his study was not to correct this preconception by a survey of all the evidence, but rather to select that which would confirm his view in a striking manner. On the whole, however, the tale of his positive error, as brought to light by the critics, is not as large as one might expect. This chapter will not deal with it at all, but rather with his general method and point of view.[81]
'The Defection of the Netherlands' was begun in the summer of 1787 and grew out of the reading of Watson's 'Philip the Second'. This book impressed Schiller strongly and he attributed its fascination to the working of his own imaginative faculty. He wished that others might see and feel what he had seen and felt. So he began to retell the story in his own way, intending at first only a brief sketch. As he proceeded, he found gaps and contradictions and isolated facts of obscure import. He began to consult the authorities, not so much to increase his store of information as to clear up his doubts. In this way the intended sketch expanded ideally into a six-volume treatise which should present the history of the Netherlands from the earliest times down to the establishment of their independence. Of the magnum opus thus planned the first volume, the only one that was ever written, appeared in the autumn of 1788, in three books. The first book sketched the history of the Low Countries down to the Spanish domination; the second dealt with the regency of Margaret of Parma, and the third with the conspiracy of the nobles, ending with the supersession of Margaret by the Duke of Alva, in 1567. Thus the most dramatic period of the great struggle was not reached. Subsequently, however, the narrative was supplemented by two separate pictures, 'The Death of Egmont' and 'The Siege of Antwerp,' which in the edition of 1801 were first printed with the history.
Letters of Schiller indicate that for a while at least he was very enthusiastic in his new pursuit. He found in the seeming capriciousness of history a constant challenge to the philosophic mind, and he enjoyed the imaginative exercise of investing the dry bones with muscles and nerves. It struck him that the inner necessity was much the same in history as in a work of art. He even went so far as to contend that the fame of the historian was on the whole preferable to that of the poet, and to express the opinion that his own nature was more akin to that of Montesquieu than to that of Sophocles. He felt that he was getting new ideas and expanding his soul at every step. 'Really,' he wrote to Körner in 1788, 'I find each day that I am pretty well suited to the business I am now carrying on. Perhaps there are better men, but where are they? In my hands history is becoming something in many respects different from what it has been.'
And so it really was. In point of readableness 'The Defection of the Netherlands' is vastly superior to any previous historical writing in the German language. The stately march of its paragraphs, each bearing the impress of a serious and lofty mind; the care with which seemingly small matters are logically connected with great issues, the mingling of philosophic reflection with the narrative,—all this gave to the work an air of literary distinction. It was actually interesting, and this was much in a land that had no historical classics whatsoever. To be interesting was what Schiller frankly aimed at; he wished to 'convince one portion of his readers that history might be written with fidelity to the facts, but without becoming a trial to the reader's patience; and another portion that it might borrow something from a kindred art without becoming romance'. And he succeeded. In reading him it is easy to see that the poetic habit of conceiving his characters to fit a preconceived scheme, his vivid imagination, his love of sharp contrasts, telling analogies and broad generalizations, occasionally distort the true relation of things. He was an artist rather than a scholar, and one must e'en accept him as such. A letter to Karoline von Beulwitz puts the matter thus: