If Goethe made an unpoetic poet out of Lessing, Schiller made him an untragic tragedian. With Schiller, the reflection on tragedy as a literary genre takes an anthropological turn: The poetics of tragic plots, which Aristotle had elaborated and Lessing had rediscovered, is now transformed into a philosophy of the tragic, with standards that obscure our view of Lessing’s work. This process takes place in the 19th century, condensing in the formula of “tragic necessity” and the idea of the inevitability and inescapability of the tragic fate. Plots in which the catastrophe – as in the case of Lessing – could have been avoided by prudent action can be no instances of true tragedy. The 19th century, indeed, is neither the first nor the only one blind and deaf to Lessing’s art of representing the tragic delusion of the virtuous protagonist. Its perspective makes Lessing appear as a precursor to Schiller – a precursor, however, who seems to have missed his target.