DON KARLOS (DON CARLOS)

This father-son conflict with its great impact on world history occupied Friedrich Schiller from 1783 to 1787. In the course of these four years, it changed its aesthetic form several times, from a bourgeois tragedy to a so-called drama of ideas. It was first performed two years before the start of the French Revolution. With his characterisation of Posa, Schiller passes censure on the Enlightenment and shows how fragile idealism has always been and how dangerous noble causes are. The following years only strengthened his opinion. DON CARLOS has a hinge position of sorts within Schiller’s body of work: between Sturm und Drang and Weimar Classicism. It is a message from a time with a concept of politics less narrow than today that did not fail to factor in love.