But  in  spite  of  this,  a  change  has  come  over
the  attitude  of  the  German  people  towards
Schiller  since  the  Centenary  of  1859.  Had  that
event  fallen  only  a  few  years  later,  it  would  not
have  met  with  so  unanimous  a  response;  and
when,  in  1871,  Germany  at  last  became  a  nation,
when  the  poet's  **  seid  einig !  "  was  not  merely
a  spiritual  but  also  a  political  fact,  Schiller  was
no  longer  the  man  of  the  hour,  and  received
even  hardly  his  fair  share  of  the  national  grati-
tude. The  kingdom  of  the  Germans  was  no
longer  a  kingdom  of  the  air ;  Schiller,  the  cos-
mopolitan enthusiast  of  the  eighteenth  century,
was  but  indifferently  adapted  to  be  the  repre-
sentative poet  of  the  real  German  Empire  of
1871.  As  the  years  went  on,  a  younger  genera-
tion grew  up  which,  under  the  guidance  of
scholars  like  Herman  Grimm,  Wilhelm  Scherer,
and  Erich  Schmidt,  discovered  that  not  Schiller
but  Goethe  was  the  embodiment  of  Germany's
spiritual  aspirations ;  the  new  and  healthier  out-
look on  life  and  literature  stimulated  an  interest


19

in  dramatists  like  Kleist,  Grillparzer,  and  Hebbel,
and  awakened  in  many  minds  an  aversion  to
Schiller  as  the  favourite  poet  of  an  age  on  which
the  "  Deutsche  Reich  "  did  not  care  to  look  back ;
and  thus  the  aureole  disappeared  which,  for
thirty  years,  had  surrounded  the  poet's  head.-^^

There  is,  however,  one  hindrance  to  the  Ger-
man people  arriving  even  yet  at  a  final  judgment
of  Schiller's  position  in  the  national  literature,
and  that  is  the  tradition  kept  alive  in  the  Ger-
man school.  We  have  already  seen  how,  at
the  Centenary  of  1859,  Schiller  was  brought
forward  as  an  educational  factor — perhaps  the
greatest  misfortune  that  can  befall  a  poet.  The
most  absurd  rodomontades  were,  on  that  occa-
sion, due  to  the  schoolmasters,  and  it  is  difficult
to  avoid  the  impression  that  the  celebration  was
in  great  measure  pedagogic  in  its  origin.  The
German  school  of  to-day  not  merely  holds  fast
in  the  main  to  the  traditional  standpoint  of
1859,  t)ut  shows  an  increasing  desire  to  main-
tain the  old  sentiment  about  Schiller,  to  twist
and  warp  his  ideas  to  fit  the  changed  con-
ditions of  German  nationalism.  German  youths
are  brought  up  on  fulsome  and  unreal  biog-
raphies of  the  poet,  written  by  Gymnasium  pro-


20  SCHILLER  AFTER  A   CENTURY.
