Schiller’s Wound: The Theater of Trauma from Crisis to Commodity

One of the founders of German national literature, Friedrich A. Schiller (1759-1805) was that country’s most important neoclassical playwright. In Schiller’s Wound , Stephanie Hammer shows that Schiller was also one of the first self-conscious explorers of psychological trauma in the theatre.In a revisionist reading of Schiller, Hammer re-envisions him as a psychologically tormented artist and argues for his pivotal role in the developing relationship between pain, spectacle and capital in modern Anglo-European drama, literature and film. Each chapter offers an in-depth reading of one of Schiller’s plays: The Robbers , Don Carlos , the Wallenstein trilogy, The Bride of Messina and the fragment Demetrius , all of which mark important moments of crisis in Schiller’s career. Interwoven with her interpretations of the plays are passages from Schiller’s private correspondence and references to such diverse sources as Freud’s case studies, Samuel Beckett’s plays, German and American films, and Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel The Sandman . Through this interplay, Hammer uses Schiller’s work to illustrate the ways in which we think about art and money and the ways in which we have come to understand the theatre and other media as venues for the display of personal pain. Schiller’s Wound is a work that should not only entice scholars but also serve as a useful resource for instructors who wish to reintroduce this important writer into their curricula. As the 200th anniversary of Schiller’s death approaches, it should provide a valuable context for further discussions of his work and its impact.