High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788 1805), Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang Goethe, with whom he frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics and encouraged Goethe to finish works he left merely as sketches; this relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Die Xenien (The Xenies), a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe challenge opponents to their philosophical vision.