Abstract
This article discusses the reappearance of fortune as a literary motif at the turn of the nineteenth century in the context of the growing influence of Adam Smith's economic thought in Germany by looking at Schiller's 1797 ballad “Der Ring des Polykrates” as an example. The article's main argument is that fortune, long associated with incalculable fate, could find expression in this work as a herald of the uncontrollable regulatory forces and in‐built crises of economic liberalism. “Der Ring des Polykrates” is a poem – in true ballad tradition – of the border. This border is one between cameralist economic orthodoxy and the new, liberal model of Smith and Malthus. It is this intersection that allows for the centrality of fortune in the poem and also for its reappearance on the literary scene.
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