Abstract
On November 10. 1859, the fledgling writer Wilhelm Raabe recited a sincerely bombastic poem at the celebration of Schiller's hundredth birthday in WoIfenbüttel. Eleven or twelve years later, at the time of the founding of the Reich, he was to take a more ironic view of the occasion in his comic political novel Der Dräumling. However, his skepticism about the motives and the alleged unanimity of the celebration did not extend to the significance of the centennial itself. Although his narrator spares us the droning speeches, he allows us to hear from the end of one of them: "Er lebe hoch als Freund und als Vorbild, der Paraklet unseres, des Beraters, HeIfers, Vermittlers oft so sehr Bedürftigen Volkes! Friedrich von Schiller lebe hochl Er lebe dreimal hoch!" Raabe shared the widespread view that the centennial had been a major step toward the achievement of national unity. To the second edition in 1892 he wrote, in reference to his novel of the 1860 convention of the Nationalverein in Coburg, Gutmanns Reisen: "Die Familien Gutmann und Blume wiirden sicherlich nicht in Koburg sich so rasch zur gemeinschaftlichen Aufrichtung des neuen deutschen Reichs die Herzen und die Hfulde geboten haben. wenn nicht vorher der Rektor Fischarth. der Sumpfmaler Haeseler und Fräulein Wulfhilde in Paddenau im Draumling die Schillerfeier trotz allem zustande gebracht hatten!"
Recommended Citation
Sammons, Jeffrey L.
(1990)
"The Schiller Centennial: 1859 — Some Themes and Motifs,"
University of Dayton Review: Vol. 20:
No.
3, Article 3.
Available at:
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/udr/vol20/iss3/3
