Ungleiche Gleichgesinnte: Die Beziehung zwischen Goethe und Schiller, 1794–98 by Gerrit Brüning (review)

My earliest image of German literary culture was of the replica of the Goethe-Schiller monument from Weimar in the Poets' Garden in Cleveland, where I was taken as a schoolboy. As I studied my way into the field, the image remained stable for a time, as an axis that separated epochs and as a sign of an extraordinarily productive collaboration. However, when I noticed in Weimar that Goethe is a little taller than Schiller, which I believe was not the case in life, I began to wonder if the image had been manipulated to manufacture a narrative, and the Goethe-Schiller correspondence began to make me uneasy. I thought I detected stresses, asymmetries, irritations, and partly subliminal impatience and annoyance. In a lexicon article, I ventured the observation that "although Schiller analyzed both himself and Goethe, Goethe analyzed Goethe but rarely Schiller." Lacking the deep learning and gumption of Dan Wilson, I felt unqualified to pursue a cow this sacred any further. But when Gerrit Brüning's study of the correspondence appeared, I was curious to see whether my impressions had any external support.

Brüning, working with all the materials, including drafts and unpublished texts, applies a philological exactitude to the major issues in the correspondence that is not encountered everywhere today. He exposes a surprising amount of carelessness in the work of prestigious scholars. One of his tools is chronology: if A preceded B chronologically, B cannot have influenced or caused A—an old-fashioned idea, perhaps, but useful in this matter. On the whole, he finds that the differences between Goethe and Schiller have been exaggerated, and he rejects views that see Goethe as indifferent or Schiller as attempting to impose an unpoetic rationality on the superior genius. Brüning traces much of the misapprehension to Goethe's memoir of 1817, Glückliches Ereignis, which he finds almost completely misleading. As for Schiller's critical review of Egmont, Brüning believes that Goethe did not know Schiller had written it. Brüning does not even mention the embarrassing moment when Schiller belittled the Elpenor fragment, not knowing that Goethe was the author (Schiller to Goethe, June 25, 1798).

Brüning judiciously reviews Schiller's careful wooing of the initially indifferent Goethe for his attention and respect, Schiller's marriage, which Goethe supported, and Goethe's willingness to be a contributor to Die Horen up to the breakthrough with the birthday letter. Brüning ascribes Schiller's attacks on Goethe in letters to Körner and Caroline von Beulwitz to resentment at Goethe's more comfortable economic situation. Of the conflicting accounts of the conversation of July 20, 1794, Brüning prefers Schiller's, recalled a couple of days later, and he does not believe that the two Episteln Goethe contributed to Die Horen were parodistically directed against Schiller or that Goethe's praise of the first nine letters of the Ästhetische Erziehung was ironic. Schiller did object to the beginning of the Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten as too political for the politically abstinent Horen but he was overruled.

Schiller's advice on Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre is generally evaluated as helpful and appreciated; Brüning casts doubt on Eckermann's report that Goethe complained of having to hold his ground against Schiller's interference. Brüning finds that Goethe considered Schiller's suggestions and accepted many of them, especially for book 8. Still, most of these are matters of plot management, while Goethe continued to resist Schiller's persistent appeal for a philosophical summation. It was in this connection that Goethe spoke of his realistischer Tic (to Schiller, July 9, 1796); Brüning sees this as a confession of a deficiency on Goethe's part that Schiller's interventions helped in part to relieve. With constant attention to the secondary literature, Brüning recapitulates the discussion on epic and tragedy, noting that Goethe concentrated mainly on the epic. He points out that Goethe said...