Die Brüder des Marquis Posa: Schiller und der Geheimbund der Illuminaten (review)

Goethe Yearbook 421 Hans-Jürgen Schings, Die Brüder des Marquis Posa: Schiller und der Geheimbund der Illuminaten. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996.247 pp. One might be forgiven for supposing that, after nearly two centuries of scholarship, few facts remained to be discovered about the life of such a prominent figure as Schiller. Schings's new book puts an abrupt end to any such complacency. In a virtuoso synthesis of materials gathered from a wide range of sources (including the famous "Schwedenkiste"), he has reconstructed the story of Schiller's relations with the secret society of the Illuminati and therewith placed three works—Don Carlos, the Briefe über Don Carlos, and Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen—in an entirely fresh context. Besides being the most important study of Schiller to have appeared for a considerable time, the book also forms a notable addition to the growing literature on the Illuminati and their impact on German life during the closing phase of the eighteenth century. (Previous research in this area is scrupulously documented in the footnotes and bibliography.) The book is thus required reading for anybody concerned with the period, a recommendation that can be made with a clear conscience in that Schings makes his narrative as engaging as a mystery story. Indeed, he comments (13) that, as he pieced together the story, the inevitable gaps in his sources often placed him in the role of a detective. The years 1782-83 can be seen as the high tide of the Illuminati , with the important Convention of Wilhelmsbad taking place in late summer 1782. The ebb came soon enough: Knigge quarrelled with Weishaupt and was expelled from the order in summer 1784; the ban was imposed in Bavaria in 1784-85, with Weishaupt's flight from Ingolstadt following soon after; and the publication of the two volumes of Originalschriften with their embarrassing material (Weishaupt fathered a child by his sister-in-law, and had contemplated an abortion when she became pregnant) in spring and summer 1787 brought the episode to a provisional end. These events coincide with the period of composition of Don Carlos, from the "Bauerbacher Entwurf" of spring 1783, through the Thalia fragment (1785 to early 1787) and the first complete edition of 1787 (the manuscript being completed by the end of May), to the publication of the controversial Briefe über Don Carlos in the Teutscher Merkur in July and December 1788. Johann Joachim Christoph Bode tried subsequently to resuscitate the order, an attempt that ended with Bode's death in Decern- 422 Book Reviews ber 1793. His activities attracted the attention of the Danish Prince Friedrich Christian von Schleswig-Holstein-SonderburgAugustenburg and his friend, the poet Jens Baggesen, both of them ardent supporters of the order.Their efforts form the background to the celebrated stipend paid to Schiller, in return for which he composed the "Augustenburger Briefe" and the revised version which appeared in the Horen in 1794-95 as the Ästhetische Briefe. The biographical material on offer here is rich and detailed, and Schings's conjectures are always careful and well supported. Surveying the story, one can make two general statements. First, Schiller was surrounded by members of the order from the time of his flight from Stuttgart to Mannheim. Indeed, Abel, the most prominent teacher at the Karlsschule, not only joined the Illuminati after Schiller's departure, but even before this had organized his own secret society of teachers and students—including Schiller, of course—to promote the goals of the Enlightenment. It is a fair inference that the encounters were not coincidental, that the Illuminati aimed to recruit Schiller as one of the leading spirits of the age, and that he was sounded out repeatedly, perhaps even by Knigge himself , whom Schiller may well have met in Heidelberg. The second point is that, despite all sympathy with its ideals, Schiller had an aversion to the order itself, presumably to its methods and to the type of men who found these methods attractive. In Mannheim, Schiller's resistance to advances by the Illuminati might be attributed to his need to remain on good terms with Dalberg, the Intendant of the theatre and a "non...