Biography
Johann Christopher Friedrich von Schiller was born on 10th November, 1759, in Marbach, Wurttemberg. He was the only son of military doctor Johann Casper Schiller and Elisabeth Dorothea Kodweiß. His childhood was marked by poverty. He attended the local school and the Latin school where he was taught to become a pastor. In 1773, the Duke of Wurttemberg, Karl Eugen, insisted on Schiller to be admitted in the elite military academy Karlsschule Stuttgard where he spent eight years studying Law and Medicine. In 1780, after graduating, he became doctor of the regiment in Stuttgard.
In 1781, his first play, “The Robbers”, was performed in Mannheim. Following this first remarkable performance he was arrested and forbidden from publishing any further works. Later on, he lived in Mannheim where he worked as a librarist and a poet in the local theatre. In 1783, he fled Wurttemberg and lived in Leipzig and Dresden for several years. In 1788, he settled in Weimar where he was invited by the duke Karl August on recommendation on Johann Goethe. In 1789, Schiller was appointed professor of History and Philosophy in Jena where he wrote a lot of his historical works. In the following year he got married to Charlotte von Lengefeld and had four children – two sons and two daughters.
In 1799, he went back to Weimar and on the insistance of Goethe he returned to playwriting. Both of them founded the Weimar Theatre which became the leading theatre in Germany. He became a nobleman in 1802 for his achievements in literature, playwriting and history. Schiller died on 9th May, 1805, from tuberculosis in Weimar.

Writing
Friedrich Schiller was a prominent German poet, playwright, philosopher, historian and theorist of the Enlightenment. He wrote a number of philosophical works – “On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters”, “On Naivity and Sentimentality in Poetry”, “On Courage and Dignity”, etc. He developed the concpt of the “Beautiful soul”. “Beauty” for Schiller was not merely a sensual experience, but a moral one as well. His philosophical work was also particularly cencerned with the question of human fredom as the ability to defy one`s animal instincts as in the case of someone who willingly dies for a beautiful idea.
Amongst his famous poetic works are “Ode to the Happiness”, “The Artist”, “Poetry of Life”, “Woman`s Strength”, etc. Some of his significant histories are “The Revolt of the Netherlands” and “A hIstory of the Thirty Years` War”. However, a special place should be devoted to his plays. Apart from “The Robbers” which was already mentioned, he wrote a number of other plays such as “Intrigue and Love” (1783), “Don Carlos” (1787) which was used as a libretto for the Verdi`s eponymus opera; “The Wallenstein Trilogy”, “Mary Stuart” (1800), “The Maid of Orleans” (1801), and “William Tell” (1804) which is a libretto of the Rossini`s opera “Guillaume Tell”. The last of his plays, “Demetrius”, is unfinished. All of these works were inspired by historical events.
In 1758, Schiller wrote “Ode to the Happiness” which became the basis for the fourth movement of Beethoven`s ninth symphony. Today, it is the official anthem of the European Union.