The Robbers
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Featured:  Illustration: Portrait fantaisiste du marquis de Sade (1866) by H. Biberstein |
The Robbers (German: Die Räuber) was the first drama of German playwright Friedrich Schiller. It is divided into five acts, of two to five scenes each. It was written towards the end of the Sturm und Drang movement, published in 1781, and premiered on January 13, 1782 in Mannheim, Germany.
The plot revolves around the conflict between two aristocratic brothers, Karl and Franz Moor. The charismatic but rebellious student Karl is deeply loved by his father. The younger brother, Franz, appears as cold, calculating villain who plots to wrestle away the paternal inheritance from Karl. As the play unfolds, however, the motives for Franz's villainy prove to be complex, as does the seeming heroism of his "innocent" older brother.
Schiller raises many disturbing issues in his first play, which astounded the Mannheim audience and made its author an overnight sensation. He questions the dividing lines between personal liberty and the law, probes the psychology of power, the nature of masculinity, and the essential differences between good and evil. Verdi's opera of the same name, I masnadieri, is based on Schiller's work.
It has also been said that The Robbers was loosely based on real-life brothers John von Christophe Kasebier (trained as a tailor by his father, and himself later father of the personal tailor to the Count of Wittgenstein) and his brother Andreas Kasebier (a notorious crime boss in Germany during the early 18th Century). Eventually, Adreas was punished for his crimes by being sent to a Polish Prison. Later, he would be pardoned by Frederick the Great for serving the state as a spy in Prague. He disappeared during his third stay in Prague while collecting information.
Notes
The German poet, Schiller, was enchanted by the thick walls of the Landštejn castle and laid the scene of his play "The Robbers" in the surrounding forests.
Colin Wilson in the chapter "The Romantic Outsider" in his extended essay on existentialism The Outsider says that "Nietzsche quotes somewhere a German military as saying "If God had foreseen the Robbers he would not have created the world."" It should come as no surprise than that in 1781, Friedrich Schiller is arrested after the first performance of his play, The Robbers. This illustrates the subversive nature of the Romantic movement.
The Robbers is considered by critics like Peter Brooks to be the first European melodrama. The play pits two brothers against each other in alternating scenes as one quests for money and power, while the other attempts to create a revolutionary anarchy in the Bohemian Forest. The play strongly critiques the hypocrisy of class and religion, the economic inequities of German society, and conducts a complicated inquiry into the nature of evil. The language of The Robbers is highly emotional and the depiction of physical violence in the play marks it as a quintessential work of Germany's Storm and Stress movement (Sturm und Drang).
Colin Wilson seems to imply that romanticism was born in Germany rather than England as is sometimes believed. From The Outsider:
"In England, German romanticism was introduced when Coleridge translated Schiller and Byron published Childe Harold (1812 - 1818)."
Dramatis personae
The language of The Robbers is highly emotional and the depiction of physical violence in the play marks it as a quintessential work of Germany's Romantic 'Storm and Stress' movement. The Robbers is considered by critics like Peter Brooks to be the first European melodrama. The play pits two brothers against each other in alternating scenes, as one quests for money and power, while the other attempts to create a revolutionary anarchy in the Bohemian Forest. The play strongly criticises the hypocrisies of class and religion and the economic inequities of German society; it also conducts a complicated inquiry into the nature of evil.
- Maximilian, Count von Moor (also called "Old Moor") is the beloved father of Karl and Franz . He is a good person at heart, but also weak, and has failed to raise his two sons properly; he thus bears responsibility for the perversion of the Moor family. Because of his failure, family values become invalidated. The Moor family acts as an analogy of State, a typical political criticism of Schiller's; the prince as a father of the nation is particularly condemned.
- Karl (Charles) Moor, his older son, is a self-confident idealist. He is good-looking and well-liked by all. His emotions and impulses are rather feminine in nature (his feelings of deep love for Amalia, his general melancholy etc). Together with his gang of robbers, he fights against the unfairness and corruption of the feudal authorities, and in doing so, also becomes a disgraceful criminal and murderous arsonist, while believing his father to have banished him from his home after supposedly disgracing their family name. He loves Amalia and his offended homeland deludes itself. This despair leads to the urge to express and discover new goals and directions, and to realize his ideals and dreams of heroes. He breaks the law, for as he says, the end justifies the means. He develops a close connexion with his robbers, especially to Scooter and Schweizer, but recognizes in the process the unscrupulousness and dishonor of Spiegelberg and his other associates. He is not an honest robber, as his bad deeds illustrate, and recognizes that his father it would not dishonour himself by forgiving him. Amalia, who becomes as a death toy to him, creates a deep internal twist in the plot and in Karl's persona, since he swore alliegance to the robbers that he would never separate from them, and since Schweizer and Scooter had died for his sake alone. In desperation, after the death father, he kills his lover and decides to turn himself in to the law, which shows that he the reasoning in his heart is still good.
- Franz Moor, his younger son, is an egoistic rationalist and materialist. He is feelingless and cold. He is rather ugly and unpopular, as opposed to his brother Karl, but quite intelligent and cunning. He is not pure evil. However, since his father loved only his brother and not him, he developed a lack of feeling, which made the "sinful world" intolerable for his passions, and he consequently fixed himself to a rationalistic way of thinking. In the character of Franz, Schiller demonstrates what could happen if the moral way of thinking was replaced by the pure rationalization. Franz strives for power in order to be able to implement his interests.
- Amelia von Edelreich, his niece is Karl's love and is a faithful and reliable person (to learn more of their relationship see "Hektorlied").
- Spiegelberg acts as an opponent of Karl Moor — driven by crime; in addition, he was nominated to be captain in Karl's robber band, and surprisingly not even the captain was envious. He tries to portray Karl badly among the robbers in order to become the captain, but does not succeed.
- Schweitzer
- Grimm
- Razmann
- Schufterle
- Roller
- Kosinsky
- Schwartz
- Hermann, the natural son of a Nobleman.
- Daniel, an old servant of Count von Moor.
- Pastor Moser
- Father Dominic
- A Monk.
- Band of robbers, servants, etc.
