Kleist: Eine Biographie

by Gerhard Schulz

606 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Karen· · Rating 5 out of 5]

What career choices are open to a young aristocratic Prussian man at the end of the eighteenth century when the family members before him have already won wreaths of laurel as officers in the military campaigns that won Prussia its position as a puffer power between France, Russia and the Hapsburg Empire? Well, choice is probably the wrong word. His father died when Heinrich was just eleven, and three years later he was in the regiment of Guards, but if you find it distasteful to beat the lower ranks into obedience, what alternatives do you have? The only other area open to the nobility was the civil service, serving the monarch in an administrative role. Against some opposition, Kleist took leave of the army and started to study natural sciences, history, Latin, and as a sop to relatives, fiscal administration, but gave that up after just three semesters when he realised that he would have to limit himself to one specialization in order to get a job. He travelled, to Paris, and to Switzerland where he tried to live out a Rousseauesque pastoral fantasy. By this time he was writing, first dramas and later narrative works, but this was the very beginning of the 19th century. The system of patronage by a wealthy prince had ended, but the market structures that would support a writer were not yet in place, especially if that writer is not prepared to provide sentimental moral tales merely to entertain. The rest of his short life was plagued with worries about how to secure a regular income and earn the respect of his family; he tried, and failed, to publish a monthly journal of the arts in Dresden (he fell out with Goethe, not a thing you could afford to do at that time); did better with the first German daily newspaper in Berlin, but failed here too when some of the contributions did not fit in with establishment thinking and his prerogative to publish Police reports was withdrawn. In addition to the tectonic shifts of this changeover time from mercantilistic, paternalistic monarchy to a market economy and the beginnings of democracy, Kleist was also tossed about by the ravages of the Napoleonic Wars, arrested and imprisoned in France, worried that the dominance of French would destroy any market for literature in his language. He committed suicide when he was just 34.
Gerhard Schulz is Professor of German at the University of Melbourne. His biography is academic, but never dry. Kleist was a great letter writer, but Prof. Schulz is cautious about taking him at his own word, pointing out how important it is to take the addressee into account, and where letters and sources are missing, he gives an overview of some of the bold theories of past experts, but sensitively withholds judgement himself. His enthusiasm for the work comes through, and he brings the man so close that I had a lump in the throat when it came to the painful end. Extremely rewarding, not just for the Kleist enthusiast but as a portrait of an unsteady life in a time of transience.