| Heinrich Von Kleist |
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| 1777 births | |
| 1811 deaths | |
| kleist | |
| german dramatists and playwrights | |
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LIFE Kleist was born at Frankfurt (Oder) , and after a scanty education, he entered the Prussian army in 1792 , served in the Rhine campaign of 1796 and retired from the service in 1799 with the rank of lieutenant. He next studied law and philosophy at the Viadrina University , and in 1800 received a subordinate post in the ministry of finance at Berlin . In the following year his roving, restless spirit got the better of him, and procuring a lengthened leave of absence he visited Paris and then settled in Switzerland. Here he found congenial friends in Heinrich Zschokke and Ludwig Friedrich August Wieland (-1819), son of the poet Christoph Martin Wieland ; and to them he read his first drama, a gloomy tragedy, ''Die Familie Schroffenstein'' (1803), originally entitled ''Die Familie Ghonorez''. In the autumn of 1802 Kleist returned to Germany; he visited Goethe , Schiller and Wieland in Weimar , stayed for a while in Leipzig and Dresden, again proceeded to Paris, and returning in 1804 to his post in Berlin was transferred to the Domänenkammer (department for the administration of crown lands) at Königsberg . On a journey to Dresden in 1807 Kleist was arrested by the French as a spy, and being sent to France was kept for six months a close prisoner at Châlons-sur-Marne. On regaining his liberty he proceeded to Dresden, where in conjunction with Adam Heinrich Müller (1779-1829) he published in 1808 the journal ''Phöbus''. In 1809 he went to Prague, and ultimately settled in Berlin, where he edited (1810/1811) the ''Berliner Abendblätter''. Captivated by the intellectual and musical accomplishments of a certain Frau Henriette Vogel, Kleist, who was himself more disheartened and embittered than ever, agreed to do her bidding and die with her, carrying out this resolution by first shooting the lady and then himself on the shore of the Wannsee near Potsdam , on the 21st of November 1811 . Kleist's whole life was filled by a restless striving after ideal and illusory happiness, and this is largely reflected in his work. He was by far the most important North German dramatist of the Romantic movement, and no other of the Romanticists approaches him in the energy with which he expresses patriotic indignation. WORK His first Tragedy , ''Die Familie Schroffenstein'', has been already referred to; the material for the second, ''Penthesilea'' (1808), queen of the Amazons, is taken from a Greek source and presents a picture of wild passion. More successful than either of these was his romantic play, ''Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, oder Die Feuerprobe'' (1808), a poetic drama full of medieval bustle and mystery, which has retained its popularity. - In Comedy , Kleist made a name with ''Der zerbrochne Krug'' (1811), while ''Amphitryon'' (1808), an adaptation of Moliere's comedy, is of less importance. Of Kleist's other dramas, ''Die Hermannschlacht'' (1809) is a dramatic treatment of an historical subject and is full of references to the political conditions of his own times. In it he gives vent to his hatred of his country's oppressors. This, together with the drama ''Prinz Friedrich von Homburg'', the latter accounted Kleist's best work, was first published by Ludwig Tieck in Kleist's ''Hinterlassene Schriften'' (1821). ''Robert Guiskard'', a drama conceived on a grand plan, was left a fragment. Kleist was also a master in the art of narrative, and of his ''Gesammelte Erzählungen'' (1810-1811), '' Michael Kohlhaas '', in which the famous Brandenburg horse dealer in Martin Luther 's day is immortalized, is one of the best German stories of its time. '' Das Erdbeben In Chili '' and '' Die Heilige Cäcilie Oder Die Gewalt Der Musik '' are also fine examples of Kleist's story telling as is '' Die Marquise Von O '' . He also wrote patriotic lyrics in the context of the Napoleonic wars. Apparently a Romantic by context, predilection, and temperament, Kleist subverts clichéd ideas of Romantic longing and themes of nature and innocence and irony, instead taking up subjective emotion and contextual paradox to show individuals in moments of crises and doubt, with both tragic and comic outcomes, but as often as not his dramatic and narrative situations end without resolution. Because Kleist’s works so often present an unresolved enigma and do so with careful attention to language, they transcend their period and have as much impact on readers and viewers today as they have had over the last two hundred years. He is a precursor of both modernism and postmodernism; his work receives as much attention from scholars today as it ever has. Seen as a precursor to Ibsen and modern drama because of his attention to the real and detailed causes of characters’ emotional crises, he was also understood as a nationalist poet in the German context of the early twentieth century, and was instrumentalized by Nazi scholars and critics as a kind of proto-Nazi author. To this day, many scholars see his play ''Die Hermannsschlacht'' ("The Battle Of The Teutoburg Forest ", 1808) as prefiguring the subordination of the individual to the service of the ''Volk'' (nation) that became a principle of fascist ideology in the twentieth century. Kleist reception of the last generation has repudiated nationalist criticism and concentrated instead mainly on psychological, structural and post-structural, philosophical, and narratological modes of reading. Kleist wrote one of the lasting comedies and most staged plays of the German canon, ''Der zerbrochene Krug'' ("The Broken Jug", 1803-05), in which a provincial judge gradually and inadvertently shows himself to have committed the crime under investigation. In the enigmatic drama ''Prinz Friedrich von Homburg'' (1811), a young officer struggles with conflicting impulses of romantic self-actualization and obedience to military discipline. Prince Friedrich, who had expected to be executed for his successful but unauthorized initiative in battle, is surprised to receive a laurel wreath from Princess Natalie. To his question, whether this is a dream, the regimental commander Kottwitz replies, “A dream, what else?” Kleist wrote his eight novellas later in his life and they show his radically original prose style, which is at the same time careful and detailed, almost bureaucratic, but also full of grotesque, ironic illusions and various sexual, political, and philosophical references. His prose often concentrates on minute details that then serve to subvert the narrative and the narrator, and throw the whole process of narration into question. In ''Die Verlobung in Santo Domingo'' (“Betrothal in St. Domingo”, 1811) Kleist examines the themes of ethics, loyalty, and love in the context of the colonial rebellion in Haiti of 1803, driving the story with the expected forbidden love affair between a young white man and a black rebel woman, though the reader's expectations are confounded in typically Kleistian fashion, since the man is not really French and the woman is not really black. Here for the first time in German literature Kleist addresses the politics of a race-based colonial order and shows, through a careful exploration of a kind of politics of color (black, white, and intermediate shades), the self-deception and ultimate impossibility of existence in a world of absolutes. KLEIST PRIZE The Kleist Prize , a prestigious prize for German literature, is named after him. Heinrich von Kleist is the official North German Romantic dramatist of the University of Michigan College Bowl team. BIBLIOGRAPHY His ''Gesammelte Schriften'' were published by Ludwig Tieck (3 vols. 1826) and by Julian Schmidt (new ed. 1874); also by F. Muncker (4 vols. 1882); by T. Zolling (4 vols. 1885); by K. Siegen, (4 vols. 1895); and in a critical edition by E. Schmidt (5 vols. 1904-1905). His ''Ausgewählte Dramen'' were published by K. Siegen (Leipzig, 1877); and his letters were first published by E. von Bühlow, ''Heinrich von Kleists Leben und Briefe'' (1848). See further :A. Wilbrandt, ''Heinrich von Kleist'' (1863); :O. Brahm, ''Heinrich von Kleist'' (1884); :R. Bonafous, ''Henri de Kleist, sa vie et ses oeuvres'' (1894); :H. Conrad, ''Heinrich von Kleist als Mensch und Dichter'' (1896); :G. Minde-Pouet, ''Heinrich von Kleist, seine Sprache und sein Stil'' (1897); :R. Steig, ''Heinrich von Kleists Berliner Kämpfe'' (1901); :F. Servaes, ''Heinrich von Kleist'' (1902); :S. Wukadinowic, ''Kleist-Studien'' (1904); :S. Rahmer, ''H. von Kleist als Mensch und Dichter'' (1909). REFERENCE EXTERNAL LINK |
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