Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German playwright, poet, philosopher, and historian considered one of Germany's most important classical playwrights and one of the most important figures of the Sturm und Drang movement. Initially intended for the priesthood, he entered a military academy in Stuttgart and studied medicine before his first play, The Robbers, proved a great success; he later became professor of History and Philosophy at the University of Jena in 1789. During the last seventeen years of his life he developed a close friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, with whom he founded the Weimar Theater and collaborated on the satirical poem collection Xenien, a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism.