 Born in 1759 in Marbach am Neckar, Schiller showed such early intellectual promise that he was recruited by Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, to attend his military academy. There Schiller was broadly educated, including in medicine, and became an army doctor in 1780. But his interests always lay in more humanistic subjects. Already in 1777, he had published his first poem; soon thereafter, he began composing dramas. The revolutionary mood of the age, combined with his deep objections to the Duke’s tyrannical rule, prompted a passion for freedom already evident in his first play, The Robbers [Die Räuber], whose protagonists defy social norms at the expense of their own lives. The play premiered in Mannheim in 1782, achieved instant success, and quickly earned Schiller international fame. The Duke, alarmed at Schiller’s revolutionary tendencies, had him arrested and forbade further playwriting. Schiller responded by fleeing to Mannheim to begin his literary career in earnest (Martinson 2005a: 2; Sharpe 1991: viii).