Kabale und Liebe

Von Friedrich Schiller

Major Ferdinand, Sohn eines hochrangigen Adligen am Hof eines deutschen Fürsten, entdeckt seine leidenschaftliche Liebe zu der schönen Luise. Die junge Frau jedoch sieht sich als Tochter eines Bürgerlichen den gottgegebenen Gesetzen der ständischen Gesellschaft verpflichtet - ein Überschreiten der Standesgrenzen, und sei es aus tief empfundener Liebe, ist schlichtweg unmöglich. Auch für Ferdinands Vater ist die Verbindung der beiden undenkbar, und er spinnt seine Intrigen. Friedrich Schillers "Kabale und Liebe", 1784 uraufgeführt, gehört neben Lessings "Emilia Galotti" zu den gelungensten und repräsentativsten Beispielen des bürgerlichen Trauerspiels.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: Anaconda Verlag
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1. Juli 2013
• ISBN: 9783730690123

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller, ab 1802 von Schiller (* 10. November 1759 in Marbach am Neckar; † 9. Mai 1805 in Weimar), war ein Arzt, Dichter, Philosoph und Historiker. Er gilt als einer der bedeutendsten deutschen Dramatiker, Lyriker und Essayisten.

Rezensionen für Kabale und Liebe

[thorold_1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Schiller's third play is another prose tragedy, but this time it's a love-story across the class divide in a contemporary setting on the fringes of the court of an unnamed small German state. This is the play that Verdi adapted as Luisa Miller. The young nobleman Ferdinand von Walter has fallen in love with sixteen-year-old Luise, daughter of the humble musician Miller. Ferdinand's father, an important minister in the Duke's court, tries to frustrate the affair, first by arranging a marriage of convenience between Ferdinand and the Duke's current mistress, the exiled English noblewoman Lady Milford, and then by abusing his judicial powers to put the Miller family under pressure. Needless to say, it all ends badly, with the most famous lemonade scene in literary history...Schiller is settling some personal scores here: of bourgeois origins himself, he had recently been involved in a love-affair with an aristocratic married woman, and he was also satirising the misrule and abuses of power of his former employer the Duke of Württemberg (in particular the way he financed an extravagant lifestyle by hiring out conscript soldiers to fight against liberty in America). But the play also makes a powerful general statement against the arbitrary power and unaccountability of monarchies and the rigidity of the class system, very much in the spirit of the revolutionary 1780s. Interesting — particularly when we know that Don Carlos is next — is the way Schiller ignores the usual conventions governing father-son relationships. Präsident von Walter is an amoral, self-interested scoundrel, without a hint of honour or nobility. He's obtained his judicial office by having his predecessor murdered, and he is completely cynical about his son's erotic adventures, and only intervenes when his secretary, Wurm (who's also pursuing the lovely Luise), threatens him with blackmail. Yet he has a son who is the very picture of the noble romantic hero, honourable in every fibre of his being, and — absurdly, in the circumstances — proud of his centuries of noble heritage. Normally, the rules say that a hero like that should have a parent who is honourable but misguided in some way, but Schiller clearly doesn't go in for playing by the book.