KLEIST, BERND HEINRICH WILHELM VON (1777-1811), German poet, dramatist and novelist, was born at Frankfort-on-Oder on Oct. 18, 1777. 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 in his native city, and in 1800 entered the Ministry of Finance at Berlin. Next year his roving, restless spirit got the better of him, and taking leave of absence he visited Paris and other places with his sister, and then settled in Switzerland, on Lake Thun, with the intention of developing his talent in quiet communion with nature. The decision cost him the love of Wilhelmina von Zenge, to whom he had been betrothed. In Switzerland he found friends in Heinrich Zschokke (q.v.), and August Wieland (1777-1819), son of the poet ; and to them he read the draft of his first drama, a gloomy tragedy of the Sturm und Drang type, in which his genius was already apparent, 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. At Weimar he began to work on his play Robert Guiscard, but was so discouraged that he began to doubt his own powers. He then wandered to Leipzig, Dresden and Paris. In Paris in an attack of nerves bordering on madness he burnt the MS. of his play, of which only the first act was saved. On returning to Berlin in 1804 he was transferred to the Domdnenkammer (department for the administration of crown lands) at Konigsberg. There he found Wilhelmina von Zenge married to Professor Krug. At Konigsberg he wrote the comedy Der zerbrochene Krug, a classic in German comedy. 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 Chalons-sur-Marne. He was released in July, and in August returned to Dresden, where, with Heinrich Muller (1779- 1829), he published in 18°8 the journal Phbbus, in which many of his poems and the tragedy Penthesilea appeared.
In 1809 he went to Prague, and ultimately settled in Berlin, where he edited ( I8ro–i ) the Berliner Abendbldtter, which corn batted the policy of Hardenberg. Meanwhile he had written the romantic drama Das Kiithchen von Heilbronn (r808), and some admirable short tales, among them Michael Kohlhaas, a story of the days of Luther, which is a landmark in German fiction. The great works of his Berlin period only appeared (Kleists hinter lassene schriften, ed. Tieck, 1821) after his death ; they were the patriotic drama Die Hermannschlacht (1809), in which Varus and the Romans are but names for Napoleon and the French, and Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, the scene of which is laid in the time of the great elector. The full history of the tragic close of Kleist's life is not clear. He was embittered by the cool recep tion given to some of his work, and the closing down of the Abendbliitter reduced him to poverty. He had a fatal passion for Henriette Vogel, and shot first the lady and then himself on the shore of the Wannsee near Potsdam, on Nov. 21, 1811.
See further A. Wilbrandt, Heinrich von Kleist (1863) ; R. Bonafous, Henri de Kleist, sa vie et ses oeuvres (1894) ; H. Conrad, Heinrich von Kleist als Mensch und Dichter (1896) ; R. Steig, Heinrich von Kleists Berliner Kiimpfe (190I) ; F. Servaes, Heinrich von Kleist (low) ; S. Wukadinowic, Kleist-Studien (r904) ; C. Gassen, Die Chronologie der Novellen H. von Kleist (Weimar, 1920) ; R. Unger, Herder, Novalis and Kleist, Studien ober die Entwicklung des Todes-probleins (Frank furt, 1922) ; P. Witkop, H. von Kleist (Leipzig, 5922) ; W. Silz, H. von Kleist's conception of the tragic (Gottingen, 1923).