La Conjuration de Fiesco à Gênes marque le début d'une longue et fructueuse collaboration de l'auteur avec l'Histoire. Fasciné par la notion du « génie », le jeune auteur découvre à travers la figure historique de Fiesco une incarnation du « grand homme ».
People best know long didactic poems and historical plays, such as Don Carlos (1787) and William Tell (1804), of leading romanticist German poet, dramatist, and historian Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.
This philosopher and dramatist struck up a productive if complicated friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe during the last eighteen years of his life and encouraged Goethe to finish works that he left merely as sketches; they greatly discussed issues concerning aesthetics and thus gave way to a period, now referred to as classicism of Weimar. They also worked together on Die Xenien (The Xenies), a collection of short but harsh satires that verbally attacked perceived enemies of their aesthetic agenda.