During this year at Mannheim _Fiesco_ and _Cabal and Love_ were put on the stage and published. The former is a quasi-historical tragedy of intriguing ambition, ending--in the original version--with the death of Fiesco at the hands of the fanatical republican Verrina. While there is much to admire in its abounding vigor and its picturesque details, _Fiesco_ lacks artistic finality and is the least interesting of Schiller's early plays. Much more important is _Cabal and Love_, a domestic tragedy that has held the stage to this day and is generally regarded as the best of its kind in the eighteenth-century German drama. Class conflict is the tragic element. A maid of low degree and her high-minded, aristocratic lover are done to death by a miserable court intrigue. Far more than in _The Robbers_ Schiller was here writing with his eye on the facts. Much Württemberg history is thinly disguised in this drastic comment on the crimes, follies and banalities of German court life under the Old Régime.
Notwithstanding his success as a playwright and his receipt of the honorable title of Councilor from the Duke of Weimar, Schiller was unhappy at Mannheim. Sickness, debt and loneliness oppressed him, making creative work well-nigh impossible. In June, 1784, when the sky was looking very black, he received a heartening letter from a quartet of unknown admirers in Leipzig, one of whom was Gottfried Körner. Schiller was deeply touched. In his hunger for sympathy and friendship he resolved to leave Mannheim and seek out these good people who had shown such a kindly interest in him. Fortunately Körner was a man of some means and was able to help not only with words but with cash. So it came about that in the spring of 1785 Schiller forsook Mannheim, which had become as a prison to him, and went to Leipzig. Thence, after a short sojourn, he followed Körner to Dresden. The relation between the two men developed into a warm and mutually inspiring friendship. A feeling of jubilant happiness took possession of Schiller and soon found expression in the _Song to Joy_, wherein a kiss of love and sympathy is offered to all mankind.
[Illustration: 1. SCHILLER'S HOUSE IN WEIMAR]
[Illustration: 2. SCHILLER'S BIRTHPLACE IN MARBACH]