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Schoethe is the slash ship between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller from the Historical fandom.
Canon[]
It is known that Goethe and Schiller were linked by a long-standing creative alliance. There are different opinions as to whether they were close friends or whether their relationship was limited to collaboration.
They met for the first time in 1788. Schiller wrote about this in a letter to his friend Körner. He said that he could not get along with someone like Goethe, but he still loves Goethe's works and spirit. Schiller seems worried that he will "never be able to cross paths with him again".
They didn't communicate directly for several years after that, but they did have a few indirect overlaps. For example, Goethe helped Schiller get a job as a historian at the university in Jena (which is named after Schiller nowadays) by recommending him. Besides that, they kept reading each other's works and were observing each other.
Their friendship and creative partnership officially started in 1794. Goethe used to call it "a happy event." They met at a conference of the Society of Naturalists in Jena, and they had a long conversation. During that conversation, they went to Schiller's house. It seems likely that this meeting wasn't accidental, but Schiller found Goethe on purpose.
After some time, Schiller invited Goethe to work together for the literary magazine "Hören." This is how their correspondence began. It lasted 11 years and included more than a thousand letters. Amidst philosophical musings and discussions of writing, the letters often contain subtle emotional hints that speak of their close relationship.
One of the most remarkable things they worked on together was a collection of distiches called "Xenien." Goethe and Schiller created them in response to criticism of their own writings published in the "Hören". At first, writing “Xenien” was a kind of competition for both poets: each letter was accompanied by several distiches, which were counted in order to determine who would write more. The competition soon faded into the background: they began writing “Xenien” together. This process bound them so firmly together that the authorship of most of the distiches is still not clearly determined; it is not possible to distinguish ones of Goethe and of Schiller, so most of the “Xenien” are considered to be a work of them both. The first attempts to fix the authorship of some couplets for one of them occurred during the lifetime of Goethe, who said that it is not only impossible, but also does not make sense: “Friends, such as Schiller and I, intimate for years, with the same interests, in habits of daily intercourse, and under reciprocal obligations, live so completely into one another, that it is hardly possible to decide to which of the two the particular thoughts belong. We have made many distiches together: sometimes I gave the thought, and Schiller made the verse; sometimes the contrary was the case <...> What matters the mine and thine?”. Xenien were created during a relatively short period - from December 1796 to August 1797; according to various estimates, there are 800 to 1000 of them.
In 1799 Schiller moved to Weimar. After that, there are fewer letters, and rather little is known about the interactions between the poets in face-to-face meetings. One of the most important achievements of this period was their founding of the German National Theater (modern name); there is a legend that in those days there was a separate box in the hall just for the two of them, and it was made especially for this purpose according to Goethe's idea.
In 1805 Schiller died, but the story of their relationship does not end there. Death was one of Goethe's greatest fears, and the loss of his friend was the greatest tragedy for him. For the first few months Goethe practically fell into depression; one documented indicator of this is his diary, which left blank pages instead of daily short notes.
One of Goethe's most striking and revealing acts in this field is his will, according to which he was buried next to Schiller. Because their common place was not to be located where Schiller was originally buried, a reburial was required; in the process, Schiller's skull was kept for some time in Goethe's home, in the library, on a velvet cushion. Under the impression of this he wrote the poem “In Contemplation of Schiller's Skull,” which is one of the last examples of his lyricism and is often printed at the very end of collections of his poems.
Fanon[]
In the academic community, the personal relationship between Goethe and Schiller is often left out and little explored. In order to simplify the search for information for those interested in this topic, an account was created on Tumblr with a large collection of quotes from letters, portraits, monuments and more. The account is still active today.
The main part of the fan content is fanfiction - 261 works on AO3 (as of May 2025). One of the largest and most famous works is "Referendare und Liebe" by fanpersoningfox; there are separate works complementing this one. Besides fanfics, historical novels about Schoethe exist - "Das Erlkönig-Manöver" by Robert Löhr and "Goethe und Schiller ermitteln" by Stefan Lehnberg.
Fandom[]
- FAN FICTION
- Goethe/Schiller tag on AO3
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| Historical Ships • Historical Figures | ||
| SHIPS | het | Cleosar • Franzisi • Hamgelica • Hamliza |
| slash | Clayhoun • Diswerks • Hamburr • Lams • Mengels • Schoethe | |
| femslash | AnneMary | |
| poly | The Gay Trio | |