Friedrich Schiller
1) Mary Stuart
This work details the dramatic final days of Mary, Queen of Scots. The action opens with Mary's unjust imprisonment and ends with her execution, which is ultimately ordered by Mary's morally conflicted cousin, Queen Elizabeth of England. Schiller's play is widely regarded as one of the finest literary distillations of these controversial historical events, and the text served as the basis for the opera Maria Stuarda.
2) The Robbers
Fans of classic European melodrama will love The Robbers. Originally staged in the late eighteenth century, this play—which follows the feud between brothers in an aristocratic German family—was a blockbuster success that propelled Friedrich Schiller to the height of literary fame. The Robbers was later adapted into an equally renowned opera written by Verdi.
Tensions between Catholic and Protestant factions of the Roman Empire erupted into what became know as the Thirty Years' War in 1618. German poet, historian, philosopher and dramatist Friedrich Schiller writes about the effect this war had on the territories in which it was fought, most of which became modern-day Germany. Schiller wrote this history in part as a consequence of his interest in the freedom of man.