Weimar Classicism and Intellectual Exile: Schiller, Goethe and Die Horen

This article asks how Goethe and Schiller’s works in Die Horen, in the shadow of the French Revolution and the ‘émigré question’, prefigured the concerns of later exile writing. It asks how far they established principles of ‘intellectual exile’ that have gained currency in the writings of Edward Said and Vilém Flusser. It compares Schiller’s Ästhetische Briefe with Adorno’s reception of them; it examines concepts of exile in Goethe’s ‘Erste Epistel’ and Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten. Finally, it asks how elegy fits into a poetics of exile. The article suggests a fresh perspective on Weimar Classicism, and widened scope for Exil­forschung.