Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/420

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
398
SCH—SCH

passages the play is remarkable rather for brilliant rhetoric than for pure poetry. His last original drama, Wtihelm Tell, the first representation of which took place in March 1804, is in some respects greater than any of those which preceded it, Walfenstein excepted. It has some obvious faults of construction, but these defects do not seriously mar the impression produced by its glowing picture of a romantic and truly popular struggle for freedom. Besides his complete original plays, Schiller left some dramatic sketches and fragments, the most important of which, Demetrius, has been finished in Schiller's manner by several later writers. He also produced German versions of Macbeth, of Gozzi's Turandot, of two comedies by Picard, and of PhMre. His renderings of Picard's comedies arc entitled Der Parasit and Der Neffe, als Onkel, In his last years Schiller received many tokens of growing fame. In 1802 he was raised to noble rank, and in 1804 he was informed that if he pleased he might be invited to settle in Berlin on advantageous terms. He went with his family to the Prussian capital, but the only result of the negotiations into which he entered was that the duke of Weimar, alarmed at the prospect of losing him, doubled his salary of 400 thalers. His health was at this time completely undermined, and from the summer of 1804 work was often rendered impossible by serious illness. On the evening of the 29th April 1805 he returned from the Weimar theatre in a state of high fever, and from this attack he was unable to rally. He died on the 9th May 1805, in his forty-sixth year. Schiller was tall, slight, and pale, with reddish hair, and eyes of an uncertain colour, between light-brown and blue. At the military academy he acquired a manner somewhat formal, like that of a soldier ; but in carrying on conversa- tion that interested him he became eager and animated. He had little appreciation of humour, and even in the treatment of subjects which he made his own he was apt to recur too frequently to the same ideas and the same types of character. But when he is at his best he is excelled among the poets and dramatists of Germany only by Goethe in the power with which he expresses sublime thoughts and depicts the working of ideal passions. As a man he was not less great than as a writer. He started in life with high aims, and no obstacle was ever formidable enough to turn him from paths by which he chose to advance to his goal. Terrible as his physical sufferings often were, he maintained to the last a genial and buoyant temper, and those who knew him intimately had a con- stantly increasing admiration for his patience, tenderness, and charity. With all that was deepest and most humane in the thought of the 18th century he had ardent sympathy, and to him were due some of the most potent of the influences which, at a time of disaster and humilia- tion, helped to kindle in the hearts of the German people a longing for a free and worthy national life. There have been many editions of Schiller's collected works. The first was issued in twelve volnmes at Stuttgart and Tubingen in 1812-15, the editor being his friend C. G. Korner. There are also a good many volumes of Schiller's correspondence, the most interesting being his correspondence with Goethe. Of the bio- graphies of Schiller, Carlyle's published in 1825 was one of the earliest. See also SchUlers Leben, by Frau von Wolzogen, Schiller's sister-in-law:; SchUlers Leben, by Hoffmeister (extended by Viehoff) ; SchUlers Leben, by Boas ; SchUlers Leben und Werke, by Palleske ; SchUlers Leben, by H. Diintzer ; and Schiller, by J. Sime (in " Foreign Classics for English Readers "). (J. SI. )


SCHINKEL, KARL FRIEDRICH (1781-1841), architect and painter, and professor in the academy of fine arts at Berlin from 1820, was born at Neuruppin, in Brandenburg, on March 13, 1781, and died at Berlin, on October 9, 1841. He is esteemed one of the most original of modern German architects. His principal buildings are in BERLIN (q.v.) and its neighbourhood. They include the Bauakademie, which contains a museum of his designs. His Sammltun/ (trr/iitektonischer Entioiirfe (1820-1837 ; 3d ed. 1857-58) and Werke der hoheren Baukunst (1845-6 ; new ed. 1874) exemplify his style.


SCHIRMER, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1802-1866), land- scape artist, was born in 1802 in Berlin. As a youth he painted flowers in the royal porcelain factory ; afterwards he became a pupil of F. W. Schadow in the Berlin Academy, but his art owed most to Italy. His first journey across the Alps was taken in 1827 ; his sojourn extended over three years ; he became a disciple of his countryman Joseph Koch, who built historic landscape on the Poussins, and is said to have caught inspiration from Turner. In 1831 Schirmer established himself in Berlin in a studio with scholars ; in 1839 he was appointed professor of landscape in the academy; in 1845 he again visited Italy, but duties soon brought him back to Berlin. Illness compelled him in 1865 to seek a southern clime; he grew worse in Rome, and died on his way home in 1866. Schirmer's place in .the history of art is distinctive : his sketches in Italy were more than transcripts of the spots ; he studied nature with the purpose of composing historic and poetic landscapes. On the completion of the Berlin Museum of Antiquities came his opportunity : upon the walls he painted classic sites and temples, and elucidated the collections by the landscape scenery with which they were historically associated. His supreme aim at all times was to make his art the poetic interpretation of nature. His pictures appeal to the mind by the ideas they embody, by beauty of form, harmony of line, significance of light and colour. In this construc- tional landscape German critics discover "motive," "inner mean- ing," "the subjective," "the ideal." And Schirmer thus formed a school. Nevertheless at times he painted poor pictures, partly because ho deemed technique secondary to conception.


SCHIRMER, JOHANN WILHELM (1807-1863), land- scape painter, was born in 1807, at Jtilich in Rhenish Prussia. This artist, only a namesake of the preceding, had similar aim and career. He first was a student, and subse- quently became a professor in the academy of Diisseldorf. In 1854 he was made director of the art school at Carlsruhe, where in 1863 he died. He travelled and sketched in Italy, and aimed at historic landscape after the manner of the Poussins. His Biblical landscapes with figures are held in good esteem.


SCHIZOMYCETES, a term proposed by Nageli in 1857 to include all those minute organisms known as Bacteria, Microphytes, Microbes, &c., and allied forms. These terms have been used at various times by different authors with widely different meanings in detail, but it is now agreed that the Schizomycetes are minute vegetable organisms devoid of chlorophyll and multiplying by repeated bipartitions. They consist of single cells, which may be spherical, oblong, or cylindrical in shape, or of filamentous or other aggre- gates of such cells. True spores occur in several, but no trace whatever of sexual organs exists. From their mode of growth, division, and spore-formation (in part), as well as their habit of forming deliquescent, swollen cell-walls, and other peculiarities, there can be no doubt of the close alliance between the Schizomycetes and certain lower Atyx; whence both groups have been conjoined under the name Schizophyta. No one character except the want of chlorophyll which of course entails physiological differ- ences separates the Schizomycetes from other Schizophyta ; morphologically and phylogenetically the two groups are united. From this point of view we relegate all the so- called bacteria which contain chlorophyll (e.g., Engelmann's Bacterium, chlorinum, Van Tieghem's B. viride and Bacillus virens, Cohn's Micrococcus chlorinus, &c.) to the Algy. Schizomycetes, then, are saprophytic or parasitic Mti':n- pltyta devoid of chlorophyll, though they may secrete other colouring matters. In size their cells are commonly about O'OOl mm. (called 1 micro-millimetre = lju,) in diameter, or

from two to five times that length ; but smaller ones and