KLEIST, HEINRICH von. - German playwright, born in Königsberg on 18 Oct. 1776, died in Berlin on 11 Nov. 1811. For a few years he followed a military career, studied—without any profit—philosophy and science, then sought in vain a plan for his life, always hounded by financial difficulties; he traveled ceaselessly without finding lasting peace: a restless and excessive spirit, desperately straining toward the realization of a supreme artistic dream.
Upon discovering his vocation for poetry, he wrote, at intervals, two comedies: *Der zerbrochene Krug*, a verbose farce of little artistic value, and *Amphitryon*, a reworking of Molière’s eponymous comedy; several tales of singular originality and dramatic power, among which *Michael Kohlhaas*; and six dramas, which above all secure the poet’s fame. *Die Familie Schroffenstein* is the tragedy of irrational life arising from humanity’s inability to understand one another; *Robert Guiskard* is the tragedy of titanism, in which the man of genius succumbs to the whim of chance; *Penthesilea* is the tragedy of love in chains, Kleist’s masterpiece in dark and fearful hues, sometimes blazing with dazzling splendor; *Käthchen von Heilbronn*, a dramatized fairy tale; *Die Hermannsschlacht*, the drama of the *furor teutonicus*; and finally *Der Prinz von Homburg*, in which is extolled the individual’s full devotion to the supreme exigencies of the state in a period most calamitous for the nation’s life. K. is the tragic man of the *furor teutonicus*, driven to clash against insurmountable reality or to penetrate the mysterious realm of life in search of new aspects, whence arise tragic and fearful events. His moral conception follows from his worldview: “if nothing stable or objective exists in the world, then nothing is absolutely evil”; and from this springs his proud presumption of substituting his own morality for divine law. It was therefore inevitable that, as the poet felt himself sinking into the abyss of his own despair, his tragic vision of life grew ever more intense, until he deluded himself into finding in suicide the peace of the spirit.
