"Fremde Menschen fielen einander schluchzend in die Arme": Die Räuber and the Communal Response

ALAN C. LEIDNER "Fremde Menschen fielen einander schluchzend in die Arme": Die Räuber and the Communal Response JUDGING FROM a well-known eyewitness account of its premiere, Schiller's first play was received in a way quite different from earlier Sturm und Drang: "Das Theater glich einem Irrenhause: rollende Augen, geballte Fäuste, stampfende Füße, heisere Aufschreie im Zuschauerraum! Fremde Menschen fielen einander schluchzend in die Arme, Frauen wankten, einer Ohnmacht nahe, zur Türe. Es war eine allgemeine Auflösung im Chaos, aus dessen Nebeln eine neue Schöpfung hervorbricht."1 In January 1782, after having been repelled by a decade of raging Kraftmenschen, Schiller's Mannheim audience suddenly understood—and appreciated—a violent protagonist, the charismatic Karl Moor. The immediate hostility of some critics, including Goethe, notwithstanding, and despite technical weaknesses and stylistic inconsistencies pointed out by Schiller himself, the play filled theaters like no other drama of the tradition and evoked numerous imitations and adaptions. Critics were, from the beginning, eager to explain the phenomenon. At first, the success of Die Räuber was ascribed to the superior acting of Iffland (in the role of Franz) and Bock (Karl): "Schwerlich hat je ein Stück in Deutschland mehr Wirkung auf dem Theater gemacht . . . aber es ist auch noch kein Schauspiel in Mannheim so gut gegeben worden als dieses."2 When the response to its next two productions, in Hamburg and Leipzig, immediately discredited this notion, its popularity was attributed to other, equally superficial qualities, such as the sheer entertainment value of the plot, or the contemporary appeal of a tale about highwaymen.3 These and other similarly inadequate explanations of the play's success reflect a fundamental puzzlement surrounding its spectacular reception. Even P. Klein, the most severe of Die Räubers early detractors, was confounded that "so viel 58 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA Unedles, Ungereimtes, Scheußliches" could have been so effective, and, while conjuring up a comparison to the world of painting, inadvertently paid Schiller a compliment: "Die schwelgerische Einbildungskraft eines Malers schuf einst ein Bild, vor dem eine halbe Nation staunte."4 Klein's review appeared in 1783, yet today we are still no closer to explaining why Schiller's first play, if we take the above eyewitness account seriously, seems to have had such an inspiring—even psychologically liberating—effect on its audience. I would like to take a new approach to this question by arguing that Die Räuber owes its success to Schiller's sensitivity to the problem of German national unity and his accurate estimation of the specific kind of group dynamics to which his audience would be susceptible. Specifically, Schiller employs the psychology of charismatic leadership, which, according to modern social theory, can help a society—or audience—confirm its identity and self-worth while releasing tension, but which derives its effect from exploiting the community's willingness to be deceived. The rebellious individualism of Karl Moor belongs to the larger tradition of European Pre-romanticism, a movement that embraces both personal individualism and national individualism. For Germany, with its long history of disunity, the national aspect of Pre-romanticism was especially pronounced, and Germany's long-standing political problem quickly became the deeper, more complex, and more subtle issue of national identity. Inevitably, the question of any group's identity, crucial as it is to its well-being, is difficult to grasp. As Orrin E. Klapp observes in his interesting study of group dynamics, identity "is like wealth ; when you have it you do not need it, but when it is gone, you know you do not have it."5 Individuals have probably always looked to the community and its values for reassuring confirmation of their identity, and there have surely always been those who felt like outsiders. But occasionally the entire group is weak in styles, rituals, and leaders, leading to an unusually widespread feeling that a sense of community is lacking. Klapp compares the unity of society to that of a play: If a social system is defective in role casting, it becomes like a play in which most of the actors are dissatisfied with their parts; or, worse, extras standing around with...