The Theatre considered as a Moral Institution

Under the title The stage a speech Friedrich Schiller was regarded as a moral institution published, which he had held on June 26, 1784 before the Palatine German Society. The main question was: " What can affect a good standing stage, anyway?"

Circumstances and intention

Schiller had been taken in January 1784 in the Palatine German society, a language society whose members worked to improve the morals and purification of the German language. Schiller's position at the Mannheim theater began to be more and more dubious in the summer of 1784. With his speech, he hoped to recommend himself for the vacant position as secretary of this society. The salary associated could have based its existence as a freelance playwright material. The members of the society considered theater at that time mainly as a place for entertainment and " Kurzweil ". With his speech Schiller wanted to draw attention to the fact that theater acting intellectually, morally and emotionally on moral settings of the visitors.

Content

In his speech, Schiller provides for this purpose on three overarching assertions.

• A stage is a moral institution and a school of practical wisdom.

Educates the moral influence of the stage and taught the people through the presentation of varied human virtues, follies, suffering and vice, it " protects his heart against weaknesses " and rewarded him " with a magnificent growth of courage and experience," " humanity and toleration ".

• A stage is a socio-political institution and instrument of enlightenment.

In addition to their function of moral education of the people, the theater is also tool " higher plan ". It is the " common channel into which of the thinking part of the people, the light of wisdom flows down ," let their pulpit to " the opinions of the nation about government and rulers rebuke ". "Because she wanders through the whole area of human life, all of life's situations exhausted and down lights to all corners of the heart; because they all ranks and classes united in itself, " the stage could unite the countries of the Empire to a (cultural) nation.

• A stage is an aesthetic institution.

Human nature can not stand " continuously to lie on the torture of the business ," she demanded, " equal incapable longer in a state of the animal fortzudauern as the finer works of the mind continue ", after a mean state with the spiritual animal Nature and connects " to the mutual transition of a state in the other " easier. This benefit makes now the aesthetic sense of beauty in general and the theater in particular. It is she that " every soul force is food, without a single span, [that] the formation of the mind and heart with the noblest entertainment united " and people " fraternized by a allwebende sympathy dissolves again in a generation." She is the one who can feel the people as it is to " be a man ".

Criticism

Schiller's tendency to enlarge, its tendency to exaggeration, for digression in a distant ideal suggests, was as pretty handy for young playwrights to winning the masters of society for the theater. Rüdiger Safranski expresses in this regard:

His listeners were impressed by the enthusiastic little speech Schiller, however. There was no cooperation of the company with the Mannheim theater. Nor was offered a place Secretary Schiller.