When Goethe traveled through Swabia in 1779 alongside his employer Duke Carl August, he unknowingly encountered the young Carlsschüler Friedrich Schiller in Stuttgart. At that time, he could not have imagined that he would return to the southwestern German duchy in 1797 – equipped with Schiller's travel recommendations. Heilbronn, Stuttgart, and Tübingen were this time the poet's main stops. People, buildings, rock types, plants – he meticulously recorded his impressions in letters and diaries, depicting a country that was on its way to modernity. To this day, his confession to the sculptor Johann Heinrich Dannecker resonates: "Now I have spent days here as I did in Rome.".