The Robbers and Wallenstein

F. Lamport · Friedrich Schiller

Nov 1979 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was one of the most influential of all playwrights, the author of deeply moving dramas that explored human fears, desires and ideals. Written at the age of twenty-one, The Robbers was his first play. A passionate consideration of liberty, fraternity and deep betrayal, it quickly established his fame throughout Germany and wider Europe. Wallenstein, produced nineteen years later, is regarded as Schiller's masterpiece: a deeply moving exploration of a flawed general's struggle to bring the Thirty Years War to an end against the will of his Emperor. Depicting the deep corruption caused by constant fighting between Protestants and Catholics, it is at once a meditation on the unbounded possible strength of humanity, and a tragic recognition of what can happen when men allow themselves to be weak.

About the author

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was one of the greatest playwrights, poets, philosophers and historians writing in German. Penguin also publishes his plays Mary Stuart, The Robbers and Wallenstein. Some of the most productive years of his short life were spent in Jena and Weimar, where his creative friendship with Goethe has taken on a mythic status. His poem 'Ode to Joy' became the basis for the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and is now the European Union's anthem.