IT IS DIFFICULT TO DRAW THE LINE between Schiller's original literary prose works, his short historical works and anecdotes, his adaptations and translations, and his shorter philosophical prose in the form of fictional letters and dialogs. The following is a brief justification for the selection of the works included in this collection and the exclusion of those short prose works not included.

Aside from his four original short prose works, Schiller wrote numerous short prose works that do not necessarily fit into a collection of “literary” prose works — as opposed to critical, philosophical, or historical short prose works — for a variety of reasons. Schiller's “Brief eines reisenden Dänen” (1785, Letter from a Traveling Dane) is foremost an essay on aesthetics expressed largely in the idiom of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's theories of classical art, which analyzes the classical statues of the Mannheim collection from the perspective of a Danish traveler. The philosophical dialog, “Der Spaziergang unter den Linden” (1782, The Walk under the Lindens), in which the melancholy Wollmar and the optimist Edwin debate the meaning of happiness, and “Philosophische Briefe” (1786, Philosophical Letters), an exchange of letters between the fictional Julius and Raphael, are philosophical discussions, without story or event. They are not included here.