Poems

Friedrich von Schiller was born in Marbach, Württemberg in an officer family. Schiller studied first law and entered then the newly created medical department, but was dismissed from the academy in 1780 after writing a controversial essay on religion On Relation Between Man's Animal and Spiritual Nature. His first drama, Die Rauber, (The Robbers) published in 1781, about a noble outlaw, Karl Moor, who has rejected the values of his father gained immediate success among young students.
Pressured by the Duke for his 'Sturm und Drang' writings, he fled to Württemberg. In 1783 he was given a post of theater-poet at the Mannheim theater, but he lost it in 1784. Schiller was forced to give up in 1791 his professional duties because of pneumonia and pleurisy. He continued to write and in the 1790s Schiller wrote philosophical poems and studies about philosophy and aesthetics under the influence of Kant.
Schiller's best-known works is An Die Freude (Ode to Joy), later set to music by Ludwig van Beethoven in his Choral Symphony.