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“A noble longing must be kindled towards the rich legacy of truth, morality, and freedom that is brought over from the past, that like an immortal chain winds through all humanity. We must each contribute according to our means to this legacy, which we must strengthen as it passes into the world of tomorrow, and focus our being unto it.”

Shortly after Schiller’s inaugural speech as Professor of History at the University of Jena in 1789, the French revolution broke out, and the French made their bloody contribution to the barricades and to the pages of history. By this time, the great author of Die Räuber (The Robbers) und Don Carlos, Friedrich Schiller, was already a notable historian.

Golo Mann, son the the novelist Thomas Mann and a respected historian in his own right, described Friedrich Schiller as the "historian of liberty," a role which is now nearly forgotten. This title originates to the year 1788, when the completion of his exacting historical treatise “History of the Decline of the Netherlands” drew him to the attention of the German public. Schiller saw humanity as being united by the sequence of historical events. To him, the urge for freedom was the promise and the promoter of history everywhere, from late medieval France (“Joan of Arc”), to Elizabethan England (“Mary Stuart”) and Germany (“Thirty Years’ War”). Schiller's cosmos, spun of history and drama, mirrors the large European conflicts, and defines the coordinates of a democratic Europe composed of independent states and free citizens.

Schiller repeatedly emphasizes the relationship of the individual to history, freedom of thought and his responsibility towards the historical moment. Schiller investigated transitional situations, historical ties that hinder the acting subject looking into an abyss. "For Schiller, freedom is totally paradoxical," wrote the Dutch literary scholar Eelco Runia. “For Schiller, freedom means not only the opportunity, but the duty to do terrible things that are not limited by what has happened before.” At the moment of action, one cannot know what will become apparent only in retrospect: history is made blindly. That is why Schiller's heroes are historical criminals who, guilty of their crimes, throw themselves into destruction: Karl Moor, who challenges the family hierarchy and becomes a disillusioned terrorist; the Marquis of Posa, who misuses his trusting friend Don Carlos for revolutionary goals; Fiesco, who denies becoming the head of a new society until this society leaves him behind.

How can individuals make their contribution to history, if the end goals of history are only revealed in hindsight? "Acts like this are to be considered only once they are done," Karl Moor says at the end of Schiller’s "The Robbers". The dilemma of knowledge, and action, shapes the characters of Schiller's dramas as well as his historical and philosophical theses.

Even if man is not master of history, it is important for Schiller that men act as if freedom were possible – and not just individual freedom, but also the freedom of determining the future of humanity. "This is a confidence that has to contribute its invigorating moment in history in order to make it true (…)" wrote Rüdiger Safranski. The imagination enables real action to occur. Posas’ famous call for "freedom of thought" in Don Carlos becomes a precondition for any political action, and also for linking one’s “fleeting existence” to the eternal chain of history.

Schiller's understanding of history is defined by the tension between retrospective historical writing as an essential instrument of social knowledge, and the blind acts that form history - history and theatre, conservation and volatility, cognition and behaviour. Inspired by Schiller today we are not only confronted with the question of knowledge and legacy, that have to be presevered in the globalised world, but also with the individual’s capabilities and degrees of freedom in shaping history. Against the background of global networking and climate change, Schiller’s universalistic concept of history becomes once again highly relevant, and challenges acting contemporaries such as ourselves.

The 16th International Schiller Festival (in German, “Schillertage”) hosts artists from Europe, and around the world, who are in search of their own history -- the great historical lines, and both individual and collective freedom of action. As in previous years, the festival invites actors from home and abroad, with both individual and cooperative productions and offers seminars and lectures to the participants. The evenings will be brought to a close with concerts and parties. For nine summer days and nights, the “International Schillertage” will enchant the stages of the National Theatre and its partner institutions, as well as the whole city and region of Mannheim with specially commissioned performances, installations, concerts and promotions.

Review
14. Internationale Schillertage 2007 - click here.
15. Internationale Schillertage 2009 - click here.