Familial Politics and Political Families: Consent, Critique, and the Fraternal Social Contract in Schiller's Die Räuber

JAIMEY FISHER Familial Politics and Political Families: Consent, Critique, and the Fraternal Social Contract in Schiller's Die Räuber Introduction: Political Readings of Die Räuber In act 1, scene 2 of Schiller's Die Räuber, Roller, a member of the wouldbe robber band, responds to Spiegelberg's recruitment plan with one of his own: So unrecht hat der Spiegelberg eben nicht. Ich hab auch meine Plane schon zusammengemacht, aber sie treffen endlich auf eins. Wie wärs, dacht ich, wenn ihr euch hinsetztet, und ein Taschenbuch oder einen Almanach, oder so was ähnlichs zusammensudeltet, und um den lieben Groschen rezensiertet , wie's wirklich Mode ist?1 It might seem odd that a band that will shortly cast its social lot in favor of robbery, rape, and murder would consider professional paperback or almanac writing. And Roller's proposal may be a joking reply to Spiegelberg's animated enthusiasm, but Spiegelberg refers to it again soon thereafter. It would seem that Roller's idea is more than a mere robber witticism . In fact, the passage—in particular the Latinate import "rezensiertet" as a "Mode"—points to tectonic shifts in publishing, the public sphere, and civil society that were afoot at the time of Schiller's famous play, written in 1781 and premiering in 1782.2 Roller's proposal deliberately references social and political changes that both circulate around the play and are articulated by it. Such references link the robber band to emergent social and political categories that underpin much of the play's action. It has long been accepted in the secondary literature that the play concerns politics, at least in part. Scholars have discussed above all the "revolutionary " potential of the play, though the word never occurs in the text.3 Subsequently, most critics have, predictably, found the play decidedly lacking : they question the play's political content, particularly because the freedom the play, at times, purports to celebrate lacks much meaning and promises no future.4 In his important study, Klaus Scherpe argues that the play is political insofar as it considers legitimate and illegitimate authority and the possibility of resistance. By the end, however, Scherpe observes that the play departs the political in favor of a higher moral order embodied in the lonely individual.5 In a more optimistic reading, Hinderer posits Goethe Yearbook XIII (2005) 76 Jaimey Fisher a "Utopian" moment in the text, but admits that the play does not yield any direct political content.6 Most other readings of the play's politics are content to quote Karl's opening monologue about forging a republic and/or Spiegelberg's proto-Zionist dream, and then move on to other interpretive positions. Given that Die Räuber fails to articulate any enunciated revolutionary politics, scholars have tended to focus on the Moor family, especially the conflict between the brothers Franz and Karl.7 Many critics observe an infelicitous split between the familial and political aspects of the text, and favor, in the end, the familial to the detriment of the political.8 More recent interpretations of Die Räuber have continued in this vein, concentrating on the family and the individual characters of the play9 A fruitful interpretation by Denis Jones focuses on the changing model of the family,10 while intriguing analyses by Koc and Hammer favor psychoanalytic approaches that almost entirely eclipse questions of the play's (traditional) politics.11 If the reception suggests a split between the political and familial, the latter has, of late, dominated the secondary literature. Roller's surprisingly resonant declaration, however, does link the text inextricably to the social—and, if one understands literary criticism as historically anticipating political critique, as Habermas and Reinhart Koselleck do,12 to political discourses contemporaneous to the play. I would like to suggest that Die Räuber's engagement with emergent social and political categories addresses the split between the familial and political . Political readings of the play usually emphasize a shift from a feudal to a postfeudal world (whatever that latter might be).13 But more than this mere shift, the text explicitly addresses and considers the transition from one type of authority and community to another. If one...