Heinrich Von Kleist

Personal

Passions

Vocation

German poet, novelist and playwright. Born into a military family, he entered the Prussian army, 1792-1799, leaving to study mathematics and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. He produced his first play in 1803, a tragedy. In 1807, he was arrested as a spy and imprisoned. When released, he lived in Dresden where he published a literary periodical. Too passionately nationalistic for occupied Germany, Kleist was not recognized in his time, and in his despair over his latest writing, a political newspaper, he arranged for his suicide. At the time, he had a fatal passion for Henriette Vogel and he shot her to death before turning the gun on himself, 11/21/1811, near Potsdam, Germany. Annotation (mik):A document says: "hiernächst habe ich weiter nichts von ihnen gehört, bis sie mir am 21.November nachmittags in der vierten Stunde auf der Chaussee begegneten...(als)ich wieder nach Hause gegangen war und kaum eine halbe Stunde dort (war), als meine Frau gestürzt kam und mir sagte, dass die beiden Fremden dort auf dem Berge lägen." (translated)he saw the two strangers against 16:00 (4 p.m.),was half an hour at home, when his wife came and said, the two were dead on the mountain." (The suicide must therefore have been at about 16:30 (4:30 p.m.) (via police protocol in: "I came, saw and wrote" (dt.:Ich kam, sah und schrieb") Link to Wikipedia biography