Fiesco's Conspiracy at Genoa

 

Within two years of the success of his first play Die Räuber on the German stage in 1781, Schiller wrote a drama based on a rebellion in sixteenth century Italy, its title: The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa. A Republican Tragedy. At the head of the conspiracy stood Gian Luigi de’ Fieschi (1524–1547), Schiller’s Count Fiesco, a clever, courageous and charismatic figure, an epicurean and unhesitant egoist, politically ambitious, but unsure of his aims and principles. He is one of Schiller’s mysterious, protean characters who secures both our admiration and disgust. With Fiesco as tragic hero Schiller examines the complex entanglement of morality and politics in his own times that was to preoccupy him throughout his career.

The play was a moderate success when performed in Mannheim in 1784; it was more popular in Berlin where, during Schiller’s lifetime, it was performed many times in a version by Carl Plümicke, which however radically altered the play’s meaning. There have been some noteworthy productions on the German stage and television, even if it has remained somewhat in the shadow of Schiller’ other works. In the English-speaking world it is all but unknown and very seldom performed. This translation aims to remedy that oversight.

We have published two other translations by Flora Kimmich of works by Schiller: Wallenstein and Don Carlos.

 

John Guthrie teaches modern German literature and language and is a Fellow of Murray Edwards College founded as New Hall, Cambridge. He has written books on Lenz and Büchner, Droste-Hülshoff's poetry and Schiller's dramas, including Schiller the Dramatist. A Study of Gesture in the Plays (2009).

 

Flora Kimmich translates from French and German. Her translation of Gustav Droysen’s classic History of Alexander the Great—the first into English—was published in 2012 by the American Philosophical Society. She is also the translator of Schiller's Wallenstein: A Dramatic Poem, Don Carlos and Jules Michelet's  On History, published by OBP.

Translation © 2015 Flora Kimmich.
Introduction and Notes to the Text © 2015 John Guthrie


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:

Friedrich Schiller, Fiesco’s Conspiracy at Genoa. Translated by Flora Kimmich, with an Introduction and Notes to the Text by John Guthrie. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0058

Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

List of Illustrations:

1) Portrait of Friedrich Schiller (between ca.1786 and ca.1791) by Anton Graff. Oil on canvas. Dresden State Gallery. Image in the public domain, from Wikimedia Commons. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anton_Graff_-_Friedrich_Schiller.jpg
2) Portrait of Fiesco from Schiller’s 1859 edition of Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua, engraving by Karl Moritz Lämmel. Image from Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friedrich_
Pecht_gez,_Schiller-Galerie,_Friedrich_von_Schiller,_Sammelbild,_Stahlstich_um_1859,_Fiesco_aus_Die_Verschw%C3%B6rung_des_Fiesco_zu_Genua,_Karl_Moritz_L%C3%A4mmel.jpg. Scan by Bernd Schwabe, CC BY 3.0.

Cover image: Bernhard Neher (der Jüngere), ‘Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua’ (fresco), photograph by Rolf-Werner Nehrdich, courtesy of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München/Rolf-Werner Nehrdich, Munich.