Heinrich von Kleist
in full Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von
Kleist
born October 18, 1777, Frankfurt an
der Oder, Brandenburg [now in Germany]
died November 21, 1811, Wannsee, near
Berlin
German dramatist, among the greatest of
the 19th century. Poets of the Realist,
Expressionist, Nationalist, and
Existentialist movements in France and
Germany saw their prototype in Kleist, a
poet whose demonic genius had foreseen
modern problems of life and literature.
Having grown up in military
surroundings, Kleist became dissatisfied
with the career of an army officer,
which had been chosen for him, and
resigned his commission after “the loss
of seven valuable years.” For a time he
studied law and mathematics, but his
reading of the philosophy of Immanuel
Kant destroyed his faith in the value of
knowledge. Despairing of reason, he
decided to place his trust in emotion.
The unresolved conflict between them
lies at the heart of his work.
After Kleist had abandoned his
studies, he went first to Paris and then
to Switzerland. There he wrote his first
work, the tragedy Die Familie
Schroffenstein (1803; “The
Schroffenstein Family”), which depicts
pathological states with ruthless
clarity. Underlying this drama of error
is Kleist’s recurring theme, the
fallibility of human perception and the
inability of the human intellect by
itself to apprehend truth. At this time
he was also working on the play Robert
Guiskard, an ambitious work in which he
attempted to unite ancient Sophoclean
tragedy and the Shakespearean drama of
character, but it would remain a
fragment. He set out on a new journey
and in Paris, overcome by despair,
burned his manuscript of Guiskard
(though he partially rewrote it later)
and tried to volunteer for the French
army. Expelled from France, he traveled
to East Prussia and applied for a
civil-service post in Königsberg. He
resigned during training, however, and
left for Dresden, where he hoped to
continue writing, but was arrested by
the French and imprisoned for six months
as a spy.
In Dresden (1807–09) he became a
member of a large circle of writers,
painters, and patrons and, with the
political philosopher Adam Müller,
published the periodical Phöbus, which
lasted only a few months. While he was
in prison his adaptation of Molière’s
Amphitryon (published 1807) attracted
some attention, and in 1808 he published
Penthesilia, a tragic drama about the
passionate love of the queen of the
Amazons for Achilles. Although this play
received little acclaim, it is now
thought to contain some of Kleist’s most
powerful poetry, with the grimness of
plot and intensity of feeling that have
made his place unique among German
poets. In March 1808 Kleist’s one-act
comedy in verse, Der zerbrochene Krug
(The Broken Pitcher), was unsuccessfully
produced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
in Weimar. The play employs vividly
portrayed rustic characters, skillful
dialogue, earthy humour, and subtle
realism in its depiction of the
fallibility of human feeling and the
flaws inherent in human justice. It
ranks among the masterpieces of German
dramatic comedy. Toward the end of 1808,
inspired by a threatened rising against
Napoleon, Kleist wrote some savage war
poems and a political and patriotic
tragedy, Die Hermannsschlacht (1821;
“Hermann’s Battle”), and in 1809
attempted to found a political
periodical that would call all Germany
to arms. Between 1810 and 1811 his Das
Käthchen von Heilbronn (1810; Katherine
of Heilbronn), a drama set in Swabia
during the Middle Ages, was performed in
Vienna, Graz, and Bamberg. But the
Berlin stage remained closed to him.
Kleist also wrote eight masterly
novellas, collected in Erzählungen
(1810–11), of which “Das Erdbeben in
Chili” (“The Earthquake in Chile”),
“Michael Kohlhaas,” and “Die Marquise
von O…” have become well-known as tales
of violence and mystery. They are all
characterized by an extraordinary
economy, power, and vividness and by a
tragic subject matter in which men are
driven to the limits of their endurance
by the violence of other men or of
nature. Kleist’s last drama, Prinz
Friedrich von Homburg (published
posthumously in 1821 by Ludwig Tieck),
is a brilliant psychological drama. The
play’s problematical hero is Kleist’s
finest figure, reflecting Kleist’s own
conflicts between heroism and cowardice,
dreaming and action.
For six months Kleist had edited the
daily newspaper Berliner Abendblätter,
and, when it ceased publication, he lost
his means of livelihood. Disappointed in
life and embittered by the lack of
recognition accorded him by his
contemporaries, particularly Goethe, he
came to know an incurably sick woman,
Henriette Vogel, who begged him to kill
her. This gave Kleist the final
incentive to end his life, and on
November 21, 1811, he shot Henriette and
himself on the shore of the Wannsee.
