Seán Allan

Foreword: Heinrich von Kleist and His Legacy

Although today the importance of Kleist’s impact on the European cultural imagination is beyond dispute, it is important to remember that this enig- matic author’s rise to prominence in the German literary canon is a predom- inantly twentieth-century phenomenon. In 1911, in an article marking the centenary of Kleist’s death, the director of Vienna’s Burgtheater, Berthold Viertel, complained that, “While the mythologisation of Kleist’s life is pro- ceeding apace, his works have still to be discovered.” But as Viertel adds, with uncanny prophetic accuracy, “Kleist can afford to be patient. Time is on his side and he will be the subject of many anniversary celebrations in the future. His work has a lasting quality.”1 The view that, even a century after Kleist’s death, the author’s works had not yet fully “arrived” in the German- speaking world is also echoed in an article written by the celebrated Berlin actor, Ferdinand Gregori:

Kleist would surely starve were he to return to our “liberated” Germany today. But he and his work will survive even if he has to wait another 100 years for recognition. Then, perhaps, Penthesilea […] Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, Der zer- brochne Krug (The Broken Pitcher), and Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (Kate of Heilbronn) — all of them in their original versions — will truly belong to a German public that even today is still not demanding to see his works.2

It is no coincidence to find such views expressed by figures from the world of the theatre, for even at the beginning of the twentieth century, Kleist’s re- putation as a writer owed more to his novellas than to his dramas. Kleist, we are told by Clemens Brentano, “felt quite humiliated at having to lower his

1 “Die Mythenbildung um sein Leben herum wird mit Eifer betrieben. Aber indessen wartet das Werk […] Nun, Kleist kann warten. Er hat Zeit. Er hat noch manchen hundertjährigen Gedenktag vor sich. Er ist ausdauernd.” Heinrich von Kleists Nachruhm. Eine Wirkungsgeschichte in Dokumenten, ed. by Helmut Sembdner (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1984), No. 396. Subsequent references abbreviated to “Nachruhm” followed by the entry number. 2 “Aber Kleist würde wirklich verhungern, wenn er heute auf die ‘befreite’ deutsche Erde herunterstiege […] Aber er erträgt auch noch hundert Jahre der Wartezeit, und vielleicht gehört dann Penthesilea, […] Der Prinz von Homburg, Der zerbrochne Krug und Das Käthchen von Heilbronn ohne jede textliche Veränderung wirklich dem deutschen Volke, das heute noch nicht nach Kleist verlangt” (Nachruhm, No. 397). 6 Seán Allan sights and abandon the genre of drama in favour of prose fiction.”3 As far as we know, he never saw any of the (very few) productions of his stage- works during his lifetime. Any hopes he may have entertained of living up to Christoph Martin Wieland’s extravagant description of him as a writer whose talents would enable him to surpass the achievements of even Goethe and Schiller in the sphere of drama were dashed, at least in part, by the reluctance of the contemporary theatrical establishment to embrace the radical character of his work. Kleist’s long-running feud with August Wil- helm Iffland, the director of Berlin’s Königliches Nationaltheater, Goethe’s catastrophic production of Der zerbrochne Krug in Weimar in 1808, and his damning verdict that the play “was written for a theatre that is yet to come,”4 all contributed to the marginalization of Kleist’s dramatic oeuvre during his lifetime. And, as Gregori’s remarks above underline, nineteenth- century productions of his plays were often based on grotesquely distorted versions of the text that reflected the pragmatism of nineteenth-century theatre managers and their predominantly bourgeois audiences. Such public acclaim as Kleist enjoyed during his own lifetime was, for the most part, a reflection of his achievements as a writer of short stories and co-editor of the short-lived newspaper project, the Berliner Abendblätter. Kleist’s novellas were published both individually from 1807 onwards and in two widely reviewed collections of Erzählungen (Tales) in 1810 and 1811 re- spectively; and the eclectic mix of contributions for the Berliner Abendblätter — the first edition of which appeared on 1 October 1810 — was en- thusiastically received until the undertaking was brought to an abrupt halt on 30 March 1811. Kleist’s ability to both shock and impress the contemporary reading public is evident in early reactions to his novellas. Reviewing “Die Marquise von O…” for the Berlin newspaper Der Freimüthige on 4 March 1808, Karl August Böttiger writes: “The Marquise is pregnant and does not know how, or by whom? Is this really the kind of material that merits in- clusion in a journal about art and aesthetics?”5 In a similar vein, the portrait painter Dora Stock, writes to a friend complaining that “no young woman

3 “Pfuel sagte mir [Clemens Brentano], daß sich vom Drama zur Erzählung herablassen zu müssen, ihn [Kleist] grenzenlos gedemütigt hat” (Nachruhm, No. 73a). 4 “Nur schade, daß das Stück auch wieder dem unsichtbaren Theater angehört.” Heinrich von Kleists Lebensspuren. Dokumente und Berichte der Zeitgenossen, ed. by Helmut Sembdner (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1984), No. 185. Subsequent references abbreviated to “Lebensspuren” followed by the entry number. 5 “Die Marquise ist schwanger geworden, und weiß nicht wie, und von wem? Ist dies ein Süjet, das in einem Journale für die Kunst eine Stelle verdient?” (Lebensspuren, No. 370).