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  • Schiller’s Die Räuber:Revenge, Sacrifice, and the Terrible Price of Absolute Freedom
  • Christoph E. Schweitzer

There have been many excellent interpretations of Schiller's Die Räuber, beginning with Benno von Wiese's chapter in his Schiller1 up to the 1998 essay by Hans-Richard Brittnacher.2 Jaimey Fisher in an article published in the Goethe Yearbook in 2003 raises several issues that relate to my reading of the play. I will address these issues below. In general I agree with Karl S. Guthke's assessment of Karl Moor as being driven by what the other robbers call "Grob-Mann-Sucht" (titanic ambition), that the negative aspects of his character prevail over the positive ones, and that his final sacrifice does not redeem him.3 Guthke's careful and thorough discussion of the roles of both Karl and Franz is the best interpretation of the play I know. I also want to mention Theodore Ziolkowski's perceptive statement about Schiller's tragic characters in general: "an individual, be he ever so noble, cannot with impunity offend the accepted norm: the collective anxiety, aroused by the spectacle of the hero's nearly successful defiance, is met and put to rest by his defeat."4 Since Guthke and Brittnacher review the most important Räuber interpretations, I will refer to them only if I have a specific comment.

A close reading of Die Räuber shows the importance of both revenge and sacrifice in the complicated relationship among the four principle characters, old Moor, his two sons Karl and Franz, and Amalia. Such a reading reveals aspects of the text that have so far not been explored, such as an accurate understanding of why the report of Karl's supposedly heroic death is said to be a revenge on his father. An analysis of the ending of the play also yields what I believe is the correct way to understand Karl's murder of Amalia, a deed that has been questioned ever since Heribert von Dalberg prepared the first staging of the play in Mannheim. The meaning of the murder will shed light on Karl's turning himself in to the authorities, a decision he terms a sacrifice. A comparison of the text of the original version with that of the second, which has as its subtitle Ein Trauerspiel, will show how Schiller tried to make the murder of Amalia more comprehensible for the spectator.

It is revenge that Karl seeks after receiving what he believes is a letter written by his father but was actually written by Franz. The latter had turned the remonstrations his father wanted him to convey to Karl into threats of cruel imprisonment were he to return home. Karl, having just begged his father's forgiveness for the excesses he had committed in the company of other young men and counting on a favorable reply from his father, flies into [End Page 161] a rage upon reading the letter. His reaction is revenge, "Rache ist mein Gewerbe" he tells the priest at the end of act 2 (88), revenge not so much on his father as on society in general. To be sure, he will soon modify the target of his revenge to those in power who are known to be corrupt and exploitative, that is, he will try to be a second Robin Hood.

Amalia has learned about the letter old Moor had allowed Franz to write to Karl and while she does not know about the cruel rejection and threat of imprisonment Franz had made part of that letter, she obviously knows that it must have contained harsh words of rejection since Karl has not returned home. When Franz tries in vain to woo Amalia at the end of act l, he threatens her for sacrificing him in favor of a beggar, i.e., of Karl. All along Amalia had been upset by old Moor's apparent life of luxury while abandoning Karl, as she puts it, to wolves and monsters (46). Even at a much later time, when Karl finds his half-dead father, old Moor remembers Amalia's prediction that he would reach in vain for Karl's warm hand...

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