KLINGER, FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN VON (1752– 1831), German dramatist and novelist, was born of humble par entage at Frankfurt-on-Main, on Feb. 17, 1752, and had a hard childhood, as he was early left an orphan. He was befriended by Goethe who knew him from childhood. In 1775 Klinger gained with his tragedy Die Zwillinge a prize offered by the Hamburg theatre, and in 1776 was appointed Theaterdichter to the "Sey lersche Schauspiel-Gesellschaft." In 1778 he entered the Austrian military service and took part in the Bavarian war of succession. In 1780 he went to St. Petersburg, and became an officer in the Russian army. He married a natural daughter of the empress Catherine, and was made praeses of the Academy of Knights in 1799. From 1803 to 1817 he was curator of the university of Dorpat. He then gradually gave up his official posts. He died at Dorpat on Feb. 25, 1831.
The bitter experiences and deprivations of Klinger's youth are largely reflected in his dramas. It was one of his earliest works, Sturm und Drang (1776), which gave its name to this literary epoch. In addition to this tragedy and Die Zwillinge (1776), the chief plays of his early period of passionate fervour and restless "storm and stress" are Die neue Arria (1776), Simsone Grisaldo (1776) and Stilpo und seine Kinder (1780). To a later period
belongs the fine double tragedy of Medea in Korinth and Medea auf dem Kaukasos (1791). In Russia he devoted himself mainly to the writing of philosophical romances, of which the best known are Fausts Leben, Taten und Hollenfahrt (1791), Geschichte Giafars des Barmeciden (1792), Geschichte Raphaels de Aquillas and Der Weltmann and der Dichter (1798), the finest of them all. In 1803 he summed up his human and literary experi ences in Betrachtungen und Gedanken fiber verschiedene Gegen stande der Welt und der Literatur. In this work Klinger gives calm and dignified expression to the leading ideas which the period of Sturm and Drang had bequeathed to German classical literature.
Klinger's works were published in twelve volumes (1809-15). A selection will be found in A. Sauer, Stiirmer und Driinger, vol. i. (1883). See E. Schmidt, Lenz und Klinger (1878) ; M. Rieger, Klinger in der Sturm- and Drangperiode (188o) ; and Klinger in seiner Reife (1896).