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Jeffrey L. High (California State University, Long Beach)

Two Centuries of Freude or Freiheit: Schiller's Responses to Leonard Bernstein's "An die Freiheit"

Western Happiness discourses since the turn of the nineteenth century demonstrate the emergence of a new orthodoxy in the general mistrust of “mere” happiness as the regulative idea of a republic. The public culmination of this shift is evident in Leonard Bernstein’s very problematic claim in 1989 that Friedrich Schiller originally wrote a poem entitled “An die Freiheit” (Ode to Freedom), only to replace "Freedom" with "Joy" – “An die Freude” (Ode to Joy) out of fear of censorship. Bernstein’s unfounded claim, and the fact that nobody (but I) disputed its plausibility, demonstrates to what extent Happiness has been displaced by Freedom in popular discourses since the eighteenth century.

5:15-7:00 pm, in H2.02 (2nd floor Humanities Building)

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