Friedrich Schiller

Friedrich Schiller was born in 1759 at Marbach in the Duchy of Württemberg, the son of an army surgeon. At thirteen he was ordered by the duke into a military academy, where under strict discipline he studied law and medicine and read Rousseau and Shakespeare in secret. After graduating he became an army doctor, and at twenty-two wrote the play The Robbers, whose premiere caused a sensation; when the duke forbade him to write any more, he fled Stuttgart by night and lived for years in poverty and wandering. Later he became professor of history at Jena, studied Kant's philosophy and wrote a series of essays on aesthetics. His friendship and ten-year collaboration with Goethe in Weimar became a legend of German literature. Poor and ill for much of his life, he died at forty-five. Beethoven set his Ode to Joy in the Ninth Symphony.