Schiller Gartenhaus

Schiller's Garden House in Jena today belongs to the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena and serves as a museum as well as a venue for humanities discussions and events.

Schiller acquired the small house at Schillergäßchen 2 in March 1797 for 1050 talers as a second residence and garden. At the time of purchase the building, erected around the middle of the 18th century, still lay outside the city limits with a view over the Leutra stream and the surrounding gardens. During his professorship in Jena Schiller’s main residences were various rented apartments in the city centre; only the house in the Zwätzengasse survives besides this one and is also used by the university. The years 1789 to 1799 mark Schiller’s longest continuous stay in one place; from the summer of 1797 until 1799 he lived in the garden house with his wife Charlotte, their two sons and three servants. He bought the property on the advice of friends, chiefly with the aim of improving his fragile health through fresh air; he financed the purchase with a loan and carried out several renovation works partly himself.

The Schillers arranged the living spaces functionally: a veranda and a children’s room on the ground floor, Charlotte’s salon and bedroom on the first floor, and Schiller’s study with its library on the second floor, his writing desk facing the garden. The kitchen was moved to the northwest corner of the garden to avoid cooking smells, which involved prolonged construction work. In 1798 Schiller had a small turreted structure built in the southwest corner of the garden, the “Gartenzinne,” with a bath below and a quiet workroom above. Under a preserved pergola stands a round stone table at which Schiller and guests, including Goethe, often gathered.

In the study and in the Gartenzinne substantial parts of Wallenstein, the opening of Maria Stuart, numerous ballads, and—during a repeated stay in 1801—also passages of Jungfrau von Orleans were written. Many contemporary personalities visited the garden house. After the family moved to Weimar at the end of 1799 the house was initially let and was sold in 1802 to the jurist Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut.

Today the building houses on its lower floors a museum dedicated to Schiller’s Jena period and to his life in the garden house; the upper floors have been faithfully reconstructed. The garden was restored according to a historic plan that Schiller once possessed. As a place of discourse the garden house contributes to the university’s identity through symposia, lectures and workshops; regular series and workshop formats connect contemporary poets, emerging female authors and the sciences with the classical tradition. Major lectures are published in an in-house publication series.