Friedrich Schiller - Eine Dichterjugend
About Friedrich Schiller - Eine Dichterjugend
The film follows Friedrich Schiller as a pupil at the duke's military academy, the Karlsschule. He is drilled, shut into a narrow course of study, and drawn to Shakespeare, Klopstock, and Lessing. He turns on the authorities he thinks are unjust, attaches himself to women, and cannot keep hold of money.
Cast & crew
More about Friedrich Schiller - Eine Dichterjugend
Curt Goetz directed this silent biographical film. Theodor Loos plays in the lead cast with Hermann Vallentin and Ilka Grüning. Otto Tober was the cameraman. Julian Ballenstedt designed the sets. Location work was done in Stuttgart. A 2005 restoration runs slightly shorter than the original.
Themes
Background
Released in Germany in 1923, during the worst inflation of the Weimar Republic, as a costume biography of an eighteenth-century writer rather than a story of the present.
In film history
A silent German biography that stays on Schiller's school years, his reading, and his money troubles, instead of staging the opening nights of the plays.
Making
Ballenstedt's sets and the Stuttgart locations stand in for the eighteenth-century academy. Tober photographed both.
Look
Otto Tober shot the film, with location scenes in Stuttgart and studio sets by Julian Ballenstedt.
Preservation
Restored in 2005 at a slightly shorter length than the 111-minute original. A print is posted for viewing.
Notes
- The German title means Friedrich Schiller: A Poet's Youth.
- Goetz, later known mainly as a comic playwright and actor, directed as well as staging the youth of the writer.
- Isabel Heermann, Max Pategg, and Robert Leffler are also in the cast lists.
- The Karlsschule sequences stress physical drill and a closed curriculum, not the later premieres of the famous plays.
- The 2005 restoration shortens the 111-minute release length.
Scenes
- Schiller is put through the academy's physical drill.
- He reads Shakespeare, Klopstock, and Lessing against the narrow teaching of the school.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-friedrich-schiller--eine-dichterjugend)
