Radical Intermediality: Goethe’s Schiller Memorials as Experimental Theater
In: The Radical Enlightenment in GermanySearch for other papers by Mary Helen Dupree in
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Abstract
Taking Jonathan Israel’s trilogy on ‘Radical Enlightenment’ and his commentary on Goethe’s idiosyncratic approach to Spinozism as points of departure, this essay investigates how Goethe promoted his own unique vision of ‘Radical Enlightenment’ in the Weimar and Bad Lauchstädt theaters, in particular through the memorial performances he staged in Schiller’s honor in the months following Schiller’s death in 1805. These Schiller memorials served Goethe’s project of ‘secular paternalism’, using theater to transform social and individual life on the micro-level while upholding the outward structures of absolutism and courtly hierarchy. Goethe’s radically experimental approach to theater and ritual is also reflected in the innovative and eclectic structure of these staged memorials, which took place in the secular ‘temple’ of the theater rather than in religiously connoted spaces.