Heinrich von Kleist

Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (1777–1811) was a German dramatist, poet, essayist, and novella master whose intense, destabilizing psychological realism stood outside both Weimar Classicism and Jena Romanticism. Born into an ancient Prussian noble military family, he abandoned the army to study law and philosophy, experiencing an epistemological crisis upon reading Immanuel Kant.

Kleist produced some of the most powerful and modern works in German literature, including the historical novella Michael Kohlhaas (a study of obsessive justice), the comedy Der zerbrochne Krug (The Broken Jug), the ferocious Amazon tragedy Penthesilea, and the profound aesthetic essay Über das Marionettentheater ('On the Marionette Theatre'). Impoverished and misunderstood in his lifetime, he ended his life in a mutual suicide pact with his terminally ill friend Henriette Vogel at Lake Wannsee.