Authors

German · 1777–1811

Heinrich von Kleist

Heinrich von Kleist was a Prussian playwright and prose writer whose dramas — including The Broken Jug (Der zerbrochne Krug), Penthesilea, and Prince Friedrich of Homburg — and novellas — The Marquise of O..., Michael Kohlhaas — are among the most formally original works of German Romanticism. He struggled with depression throughout his life and eventually entered a suicide pact with a terminally ill woman, Henriette Vogel, shooting her and then himself at the Wannsee lake near Berlin at thirty-four. His work was largely neglected until after his death.