Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von, b 10 November 1759 in Marbach, Swabia, d 9 May 1805 in Weimar. German dramatist, poet, literary theorist, and historian. Since 1839 his poems have been translated into Ukrainian by Yosyp Levytsky, Yurii Fedkovych, K. Bilylovsky, Panteleimon Kulish, Borys Hrinchenko, Ivan Franko, Antin Mohylnytsky, Mykola Markevych, Oleksander Navrotsky, Orest Levytsky, Oleksander Konysky, Olena Pchilka, Iryna Steshenko, Ostap Hrytsai, T. Piurko, Sviatoslav Hordynsky, Dmytro Zahul, and other writers. His plays (Kabale und Liebe and Die Räuber) were first staged in Ukrainian at the Ruska Besida Theater in Lviv (1881–9). In central Ukraine (because Ukrainian-language plays were banned under the tsars) the first Ukrainian performance did not take place until 1918, when Die Räuber was staged by Panas Saksahansky at the People's Theater in Kyiv. Famous Soviet Ukrainian productions of Schiller's plays include the Kyiv Young Spectator's Theater's Wilhelm Tell in 1927, the Berezil theater's Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua in 1928, and the Kyiv Ukrainian Drama Theater's Don Carlos in 1936.

Some of Schiller's dramas have been published in Ukrainian translation: Wilhelm Tell, trans Volodymyr Kmitsykevych (1887), Borys Hrinchenko (1895, 1908), and Borys Ten (1955); Die Jungfrau von Orleans, trans Ye. Hornytsky (1889), Ivan M. Steshenko (1906), and Yevhen Drobiazko (1955); Maria Stuart, trans B. Hrinchenko (1896, 1911) and Yurii Koretsky (1941); Die Räuber, trans Oleksander Cherniakhivsky (1911), Maik Yohansen (1936), and B. Ten (1953); Kabale und Liebe, trans M. Yohansen (1934), A. Hozenpud (1947), and Yu. Nazarenko (1955); and Don Carlos, trans Iryna Steshenko (1955). Other editions of his works published in Ukrainian translation include poems (Lviv 1914, ed Ostap Hrytsai), ballads (Kyiv 1927, trans Dmytro Zahul), lyric poems (Kyiv 1967, trans Mykola Lukash), selected (six) dramas (Kyiv 1955), works (five poems, three dramas, Kyiv 1968), and writings on esthetics (Estetyka, Kyiv 1974, trans B. Havryshkiv).

Roman Senkus

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]