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Gottfried Koerner, father of the more famous Theodor, was some three years older than Schiller and belonged to an opulent and distinguished family. His father was a high church dignitary, his mother the daughter of a well-to-do Leipzig merchant. The boy had grown up under austere religious influences and then drifted far in the direction of liberalism.
Does the Professor know nothing of Beethoven's application in 1807 to the Theater- Direktion of the imperial playhouses, to be employed as regular operatic composer? of the opera "Romulus?" of his correspondence with Koerner, Rellstab, and still others? It appears not. We must close our article somewhere; it is already, perhaps, too long; we add, therefore, but a general remark or two.
Schiller himself reported, after seeing it performed at Weimar, in 1803, that he had 'received for the first time the impression of true tragedy'. There is also an authentic record to the effect that Goethe was inexpressibly delighted with it and declared that 'by this production the boards had been consecrated to higher things'. Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote that nothing could surpass the majesty of the play, and Koerner assigned it a high rank among Schiller's productions.
This petition brought severe punishment to almost all the people whose names were signed to it. Veressayev went abroad; he visited Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland. Gifted with poetic inspiration, he had begun writing at an early age. He was not more than fourteen when he translated some poems of Koerner and Goethe into Russian verse.
Other leading spirits were Colonel McClure and John Hickman of Pennsylvania; Stanley Matthews, George Hoadly, and Judge R. P. Spalding, of Ohio; Carl Schurz, William M. Grosvenor, and Joseph Pulitzer, of Missouri; John Wentworth, Leonard Swett, Lieutenant-Governor Koerner, and Horace White, of Illinois; Frank W. Bird and Edward Atkinson of Massachusetts; David A. Wells of Connecticut; and John D. Defrees of the District of Columbia.
Then another and very different Charlotte crossed his path and quickly taught him the better way. The story of Schiller's gradual adjustment to the Weimar milieu is told very fully in his frequent letters to Koerner. He called upon Herder and Wieland, and was received with 'amazing politeness' by the one, with loquacious cordiality by the other.
Koerner was just as loyal as ever, but he was also wise enough to respect his friend's longing for a more assured and less dependent existence. And so in July Schiller set out for Thueringen, to be seen no more in Dresden save as an occasional visitor.
Cyr fled with the whole of his troops. The bookseller Perthes, Prell, and von Hess, formed a civic guard. The youthful Koerner, a volunteer Jaeger, was the Tyrtaeus of those days: his military songs were universally sung: his father also expressed great enthusiasm. Clausewitz. The Bavarians stood under Raglowich, the Wuertembergers under Franquemont, the Saxons under Reynier.
An amusing glimpse of domestic conditions in the Koerner household is afforded by Schiller's dramatic skit, entitled 'Koerner's Forenoon'. It belongs apparently to the year 1787, but was not published until 1862. The busy councillor of the Dresden Consistory sees a little leisure before him and squares off at his desk for a solid forenoon's work. He begins by ordering his man to shave him.
And the justice of his criticism was admitted by Goethe; whereupon Schiller drily observed in a letter to Koerner that Goethe was a man who could be told a great deal of truth. As time passed, Schiller dropped the tone of humble docility and became more and more independent.
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