Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright. The Robbers is considered by critics to be the first European melodrama.

Schiller wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics. He synthesized the thought of Immanuel Kant with the thought of the German idealist philosopher, Karl Leonhard Reinhold. Schiller's aesthetic doctrine shows the influence of Christian theosophy. His aesthetic theories have also had a long influence on German philosophy.

He also wrote a study of the 16th-century conflict between Spain and the Netherlands which forms the background to the play, and this earned him a professorship of history at the University of Jena.