DOCSLIB.ORG

The Poetics of the Middle in Kleist's “Michael Kohlhaas”

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Poetics of the Middle in Kleist's “Michael Kohlhaas” The Germanic Review, 85: 171–188, 2010 Copyright c Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0016-8890 DOI: 10.1080/00168890.2010.504435 The Poetics of the Middle in Kleist’s “Michael Kohlhaas” Zachary Sng Heinrich von Kleist’s story, “Michael Kohlhaas,” has been often read as a demonstration of literature’s ability to cross over and intervene in a sphere other than its own. Kleist’s text is, however, replete with instances of thwarted crossing, impassable borders, and diversion into errancy. I argue that this tension points to Kleist’s profound ambivalence toward the logic of mediation and his doubts about whether language can function as a medium for the transportation and direction of force. I read the text as an exploration of a poetics of the middle and explore (via a brief discussion of Walter Benjamin’s “Zur Kritik der Gewalt”) the implications of such a reading for claims about the its performative efficacy. Keywords: Walter Benjamin, Heinrich von Kleist, law, mediation, performativity, vio- lence f the three elements of a well-constructed plot that Aristotle identified in the Poetics—a O beginning (archeˆ), a middle (meson),andanend(telos)—it is telling that our attention has so ostentatiously pooled around the first and the last, leaving the middle high and dry.1 The middle seems to suffer from a twofold problem: it is on the one hand less tangible than beginnings and endings, but on the other possessed of sufficient self-evidence to dodge critical notice. We find the middle indispensable, in other words, because something has to come between beginning and end, but our expectations of it are set pretty low.2 The secondary scholarship on Heinrich von Kleist’s story “Michael Kohlhaas” certainly bears out this characterization: an attention to the paired problem of beginning and ending, with a corollary neglect of the middle, has long been a hobby horse of its criticism. This is not surprising, given the striking symmetry of the text’s opening and closing gestures. Its subtitle refers to the historical chronicle from which it draws, and its final sentences invite the reader to consult history to see how the story continues for its main characters. The literary 1Aristotle, Poetics 2: 2–7. 2The most prominent among the few literary scholars who have engaged with the “middle” at length is probably Samuel Weber. See, for example, his Theatricality as Medium and Benjamin’s -Abilities. 171 172 THE GERMANIC REVIEW VOLUME 85, NUMBER 3 / 2010 text itself thus seems to be presented as a diverting interlude between historical book ends, an imaginative space flanked on both sides by things weightier and more concrete.3 Small wonder, then, that most readings of it are focused on its dramatic opening and closing scenes rather than on its somewhat problematic middle. The question of the middle could actually be addressed not just to the plot or narrative structure of Kleist’s text but also to its poetics. In Passions of the Sign, a study of revolutionary language in Germany around 1800, Andreas Gailus refers to the text’s opening and closing scenes as “clearly defined textual borders” that serve a double purpose: they draw a line of distinction between text and history but also act as signs of the story’s “pragmatic aspirations, the relation to the historical and political domain it aims to engage in.” From this perspective, the densely interwoven “border narratives” (107) that make up Kleist’s story reflect on how language institutes borders such as the one between literature and history, but they also reveal how it can undo those same boundaries. Through an analysis of performative force in Kleist’s writings, Gailus shows how literature’s ability to both construct and undo such borders, thus producing “change in the matter and meaning of history” (148), is a function of what he calls an “energetic dimension of speech” (141). A similar interest in the text’s performativity can be found in J. Hillis Miller’s “Laying Down the Law in Literature,” which underscores the numerous acts by which Kohlhaas the character and the text itself leave behind old jurisdictions in order to establish new ones. He reads, for example, the preposition “aus” in Kleist’s subtitle (“aus einer alten Chronik”) as a forceful launching of the text “from the safely grounded and lawful realm of history” into the realm of the literary, which is governed no longer by historical and legal realities but by “a law the story itself establishes” (86). This is the first of many crossings between history and fiction performed in and by the text, which can therefore be read as testimony to how literature can “intervene performatively into history” (102). In order for a literary text to lay down a law that is no longer confined to the literary but actually becomes “socially and historically effective” (104), however, it must bring something to a close and initiate something new, and it is in the space of the middle—the delicate threshold between ending and beginning—that this law-positing force of literature is located.4 Borders such as the ones between literature and history, language and action, writing and its effects, are drawn in order to be crossed, as these critics demonstrate with elegance. Sometimes, however, the crossing is fraught, and one is indefinitely stuck in the middle, detained at the border, redirected into a perpetual escalation and errancy that never resolves into arrival or even traversal. Such problems point to a different kind of middle being at work, emphatically dissimilar to the mediating middle that Aristotle imagines as a reliable ferryman from beginning to end, from point of departure to destination. A middle that refuses to mediate in this way acts as a disruption of directed trajectories and teleological movements 3Kleist draws considerably, as is well known, from the “Nachricht von Hans Kohlhasen,” which was published in Christian Schottgen¨ and George Christoph Kreysig, Diplomatische und curieuse Nachlese der Historie von Ober-Sachsen und angrentzenden Landern¨ (Dresden and Leipzig, 1731). 4Miller is, in fact, another critic who has called our attention to the unfairly neglected space of the middle in narrative; see, for example, the essays collected in Reading Narrative. This earlier work on narrative middles does not really feature prominently, however, in his reading of “Michael Kohlhaas.” SNG POETICS OF THE MIDDLE IN “MICHAEL KOHLHAAS” 173 and a challenge to the principles of transitivity and conductivity that define the medium. It also punctuates with an urgent question mark any claim about the ability of literature to intervene in history, politics, or any space beyond its own borders. The above-mentioned mediological complications are, in nuce, the ones that Kleist’s protagonist has to contend with. A horse-trader who travels frequently between Saxony and Brandenburg, Kohlhaas depends on border-crossings for his living, but a legally dubious detention and confiscation of his horses at the border sets into motion a string of injustices and misfortunes, and a series of violent acts of vengeance follows in their wake. This escalating madness carries the narrative toward a problematic conclusion marked by patently hollow justice and unsatisfactory resolutions. The central role that borders and crossings play in the text’s complicated choreography of movement is obvious; equally undeniable, however, is the fact that the story’s narrative and dramatic engine is driven by the thwarting of traversal rather than by its successful completion. For the bulk of the story, our would-be hero is caught in a medial nightmare: he shuttles back and forth between cities and states in a vain attempt to seek revenge and redress, writing desperate appeals for justice that are consigned to purgatorial deferral at the hands of corrupt intermediaries. What happens, then, if we read what Gailus refers to as “Kleist’s ambition to extend the reach of fiction into history” (108) and Miller as “the legislative power of a literary work” (104) as a reflection on and dramatization of certain complexities regarding the middle? This would make the frustrated crossings and delayed transport in Kleist’s text not just aberrations but symptoms of a problematic middle that will not efface itself to support acts of inauguration or closure. By remaining insistently medial, such a middle paradoxically establishes itself as both a pure medium and an absolute interruption of mediation. THE MEDIATIZED WORLD OF MICHAEL KOHLHAAS One of the primary roles of the middle is to facilitate passage, transport, and crossing between two poles (such as beginning and end), and an unmistakable indication of its breakdown in “Michael Kohlhaas” is the unreliable and inflationary circulation of writing in the story. Kohlhaas’s early attempts to seek redress for the illegal detention and abuse of his horses are almost exclusively conducted through letters of appeal. Writing, thus, promises at the outset to function as medium of communication that is also a mechanism of correction, for Kohlhaas’s missives aim to identify and remedy the kinks that inevitably occur in the elaborate network of political decision-making that makes up the Holy Roman Empire. Unfortunately, he is compelled for a number of reasons to hand his letters over to a number of intermediaries for delivery, including his own wife, who is disastrously killed in the course of discharging this duty. None of the communications end up arriving uncompromised at their proper destination—that is to say, in the hands of an impartial court or sovereign who can judge the merits of his case. Instead, they are diverted and rendered ineffective by the intervention of corrupt officials related to the Junker whom he is accusing of a criminal act in the first place.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Die Hermannsschlacht
    WWWW ^W^H^I INTRODUCTION AND NOTES TO KLEIST'S DIE HERMANNSSCHLACHT BY FRANCES EMELINE GILKERSON, A. B. '03. THESIS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 1904 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY Q^/iß^Mt St^uljIcI^ bZL^/teAsC^ ENTITLED IS APPROVED BY ME AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF 4 PREFACE. This volume has been prepared to meet the demand for an .edition of Kleist' s "Die Hermannsschlacht" with English Introduction and Notes. It is designed for advanced classes, capable of reading and understanding the play as literature. As a fairly good reading knowledge of the language is taken forgranted, few grammatical passages are explained. The Introduction is intended to give such historical, biographi- cal and critical material as will prepare the student for the most profitable and appreciative reading of the play. It has been said that Kleist is one of those poets whose work cannot be fully under- stood without a knowledge of their lives. But this is perhaps less true of "Die Hermannsschlacht" than of some of Kleist' s other works. For an intelligent understanding of this drama an intimate knowledge of the condition of Germany in the early part of the Nineteenth Century is even more essential than a knowledge of the poet's life. The Notes contain such suggestions regarding classical, geo- graphical, and vague allusions as are deemed necessary or advisable for understanding this great historical drama.
    [Show full text]
  • And Prinz Friedrich Von Homburg
    HITTING ROCK BOTTOM: READING MALE SYNCOPE IN KLEIST’S DIE FAMILIE SCHROFFENSTEIN , “MICHAEL KOHLHAAS,” AND PRINZ FRIEDRICH VON HOMBURG by SUSANNE GOMOLUCH A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: Dr. Jonathan Hess (Advisor) Dr. Eric Downing Dr. Clayton Koelb ABSTRACT Susanne Gomoluch: Hitting Rock Bottom: Reading Male Syncope in Kleist’s Die Familie Schroffenstein, “Michael Kohlhaas,” and Prinz Friedrich von Homburg. (Under the direction of Dr. Jonathan Hess) This thesis examines fainting scenarios in three of Heinrich von Kleist’s works: Die Familie Schroffenstein , “Michael Kohlhaas,” and Prinz Friedrich von Homburg. In Kleist’s oeuvre, fainting is portrayed as a gradual process that even reaches beyond the act of the physical fainting of the body. Depending on the fainting protagonists’s degree of spirituality and acceptance of divine realms, syncope can also mean remedy. The first chapter provides an analysis of the Sylvester’s syncope in Die Familie Schroffenstein and shows in what way Sylvester’s fainting means remedy. The second chapter explores the fainting spells of the Saxon Elector in “Michael Kohlhaas” and focuses on the absence of spirituality. The third chapter investigates unconsciousness in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg which unlike the two previous places appears to be an example of continual syncope. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction ……………………………………. ....................................................1 II. Like a Phoenix from the Ashes: Fainting in “Die Familie Schroffenstein” ...........10 III. Faint at Heart: The Elector’s Fainting Spells in “Michael Kohlhaas” ...................25 IV.
    [Show full text]
  • Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist
    Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist 098195572X, 9780981955728, Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist, 2010, 283 pages, Archipelago Books, 2010, In this extraordinary and unpredictable cross-section of the work of one of the most influential free spirits of German letters, Peter Wortsman captures the breathlessness and power of Heinrich von Kleist’s transcendent prose. These tales, essays, and fragments move across inner landscapes, exploring the shaky bridges between reason and feeling and the frontiers between the human psyche and the divine. From the "The Earthquake in Chile," his damning invective against moral tyranny; to "Michael Kohlhaas," an exploration of the extreme price of justice; to "The Marquise of O . ," his twist on the mythic triumph of love story; to his essay "On the Gradual Formulation of Thoughts While Speaking," which tracks the movements of the unconscious decades before Freud; Kleist unrelentingly confronts the dangers of self-deception and the ultimate impossibility of existence ina world of absolutes. Wortsman’s illuminating afterword demystifies Kleist’s vexed history, explaining how the century after his death saw Kleist’s legacy transformed from that of a largely derided playwright into a literary giant who would inspire Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. The concerns of Heinrich von Kleist are timeless. The mysteries in his fiction and visionary essays still breathe. file download musu.pdf 341 pages, Heinrich von Kleist, 1982, ISBN:0826402631, Plays Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist
    [Show full text]
  • Everybody's Talking: Non-Verbal Communication in “Über Die
    AT A LOSS FOR WORDS: NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION IN KLEIST‟S “ÜBER DIE ALLMÄHLICHE VERFERTIGUNG DER GEDANKEN BEIM REDEN,” “MICHAEL KOHLHAAS,“ AND “DER FINDLING“ Matthew Feminella A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Dr. Clayton Koelb (Advisor) Dr. Eric Downing Dr. Jonathan Hess ABSTRACT Matthew Feminella: At a Loss for Words: Nonverbal Communication in Kleist‟s “Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden,” “Michael Kohlhaas,“ and “Der Findling“ (Under the direction of Dr. Clayton Koelb) This thesis examines instances of nonverbal communication in three works of Heinrich von Kleist. Once viewed outside the context of authentic communication, nonverbal signs expose structures within his texts. These structures reveal overlooked conflicts and character dynamics. The first chapter explores the essay “Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden,” and demonstrates that Kleist‟s model of successful speech acts as an implicit dialogue and consists of nonverbal cues performed the speech recipient. The second chapter extends this analysis to “Michael Kohlhaas,” whose protagonist is gradually exiled into a nonverbal condition. The third chapter examines the nonverbal elements in “Der Findling,” particularly glancing, and claims that through nonverbal acts characters previously thought of as passive play an additional active role. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction……………………………………………………………………….………..1 II. Don‟t Speak When Spoken to?: Kleist‟s Nonverbal Dialogue in “Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden”............................................................................9 III. Lieber ein Hund sein: Subjugation and the Nonverbal in “Michael Kohlhaas”................26 IV.
    [Show full text]
  • THE GERMAN SOCIETY of PENNSYLVANIA Michael Kohlhaas
    Nemesis then intrudes in the guise of a brigand named Johan Nagelschmidt. Kohlhaas is tricked into making a fatal mistake: he communicates with Nagelschmidt, a former fol- THE GERMAN SOCIETY OF lower, who is still leading an outlaw band and pretending to fight on for Kohlhaas. Consequently, Kohlhaas is quickly condemned to a horrible death (so ward er verurteilt, mit PENNSYLVANIA glühenden Zangen von Schinderknechten gekniffen, gevierteilt). On a larger stage, electoral and regional Aussenpolitik oscillating between Brandenburg , Saxony, and Poland seem for at time to mitigate yet again in favor of Kohlhaas. At one junc- Friday Film Fest Series ture, he is packed off from Dresden to Berlin, to be judged on his home turf of Branden- burg. Yet ultimately, since he represents a mortal threat to the status quo, it is deemed necessary to make ein abschreckendes Beispiel of Kohlhaas, and his death sentence is allowed to stand. In a plot twist worthy of Wikileaks, the Elector of Saxony becomes aware that Kohlhaas has in his possession an amulet containing a scrap of paper upon which is written a prophecy concerning the House of Saxony. It was written by a gypsy fortune teller. The elector be- comes obsessed with this written prophecy (…der Besitz dieses Zettels von der äussersten Wichtigkeit sei) and expends tremendous effort to obtain it, but fails to do so. Just before he is executed, Kohlhaas is informed that his original lawsuit has finally been decided in his favor. Hence the prosperous horse dealer (cum righteous terrorist cum Welt- verbesserungswut laden revolutionary) exits this world with a sense of justice having been served.
    [Show full text]
  • Man and the Law in the Dramas and Novellen of Heinrich Von Kleist
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 8-1965 Man and the Law in the Dramas and Novellen of Heinrich von Kleist Milton A. Kaufman University of Tennessee Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Recommended Citation Kaufman, Milton A., "Man and the Law in the Dramas and Novellen of Heinrich von Kleist. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 1965. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/5804 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Milton A. Kaufman entitled "Man and the Law in the Dramas and Novellen of Heinrich von Kleist." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in German. John Osborne, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) August 6, 196S To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Milton A. Kaufman entitled 11 }fan and the Law in the Dramas and Novellen of Heinrich von Kleist.tt I recommend t ha t it be accepted for nine quarter hours of credit in partial fulfillment of t he requirements for t he degr ee of Master of Arts, with a major in German.
    [Show full text]
  • Kleist and Hoffmann in Dialogue with Enlightenment
    KLEIST AND HOFFMANN IN DIALOGUE WITH ENLIGHTENMENT A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2018 WILLIAM J. HALL SCHOOL OF ARTS, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES !2 Contents List of Abbreviated Works 4 Abstract 6 Declaration 7 Copyright Statement 7 Acknowledgements 8 Introduction 9 Part I Mündigkeit Chapter 1 Mangelnde Mündigkeit 22 Über das Marionettentheater: The Irredeemable Loss of Grace 27 Die Familie Schroffenstein: The Intellectual Awakening that never was 30 Testing Nurture in Der Findling 41 Conclusions 48 Chapter 2 Michael Kohlhaas: The Pursuit of Absolutes 51 Michael Kohlhaas, merchant, family man, rational bourgeois 58 Moral ambiguity: The narrator’s shifting presentation of Kohlhaas and the contingent 61 The political Kohlhaas 69 Conclusions 72 Part II Time, Space, and Causality Chapter 3 The Supernatural 74 The Green Epistemological Lenses 75 Das Bettelweib von Locarno: A Tale of Projected Blame 82 Narrative reliability in Das Majorat 89 Conclusions 101 Chapter 4 Metaphysics and Materiality 102 Religious Metaphysics and the Island of Truth 103 Die Elixiere: Crafting a Narrative of Redemption 108 A Tonic for Rationalism 117 Doppelgänger and Materiality 119 The Gothic 123 Avatars of the Unconscious 124 !3 Die heilige Cäcilie, or a Tale of Church Dominion 128 Vested Interests 132 Conclusions 137 Part III Representational Aesthetics Chapter 5 Beyond Mimesis 140 Mimesis 149 The Creative Process 154 The Serapiontic Principle 156 Creative Struggle 160 Inspiration - Divine and Mundane 162 Satire: ‘Anselmi’ Figures 166 Conclusions 168 Chapter 6 The Sublime 171 Narrative strategies and the moral codex 178 Dogma against the natural order 182 Ritter Gluck 187 Madness and the Narrator 188 Gluck and ‘die romantischste aller Künste’ 190 Kant and the power of music to move 193 The blank score 194 Conclusions 195 Conclusions 197 Bibliography 207 Word count: 81,543 !4 List of Abbreviated Works All pages numbers given for E.T.A.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Kohlhaas
    MICHAEL KOHLHAAS [1] had he passed the bar than he heard behind him a new voice calling from the tower: By Heinrich Von Kleist "Ho, there, horse-dealer!" and saw the castellan shut the On the banks of the Hafel, about the middle of the window, and hasten down to him. "Now, something else sixteenth century, lived a horse-dealer, named Michael new!" said Kohlhaas to himself, stopping with his horses. Kohlhaas. He was the son of a schoolmaster, and was one The castellan, buttoning a waistcoat over his spacious of the most honest, while at the same time he was one of stomach, came, and standing aslant against the rain, the most terrible persons of his period. Till his thirtieth asked for his passport. "Passport!" cried Kohlhaas; year this extraordinary man might have passed as a adding, a little puzzled, that he had not one about him, to pattern of a good citizen. In a village, which still bears his his knowledge; but that he should like to be told what sort name, he held a farm, on which, by means of his of a thing it was as he might perchance be provided with business, he was enabled to live quietly. The children one, notwithstanding. The castellan, eyeing him askance, whom his wife bore him, he brought up in the fear of God remarked, that without a written permission no horse- to honesty and industry; and there was not one among his dealer, with horses, would be allowed to pass the border. neighbours who had not felt the benefit of his kindness or The horse-dealer asserted that he had crossed the border his sense of justice.
    [Show full text]
  • "Michael Kohlhaas", De Heinrich Von Kleist
    Rodrigo Campos de Paiva Castro Michael Kohlhaas – a vitória da derrota Uma interpretação da novela "Michael Kohlhaas", de Heinrich von Kleist Dissertação de Mestrado em Literatura Alemã apresentada à Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo Orientador: Prof. Dr. Helmut Galle São Paulo 2006 Aos meus pais 2 AGRADECIMENTOS Gostaria de agradecer, primeiramente, aos três professores sem os quais esta dissertação não teria sido possível: Uli, Helmut e Pasta. Os três contribuíram, cada um de forma diferente, para que este trabalho pudesse ser concluído. A eles, o meu mais sincero obrigado. Agradeço também à minha família e aos amigos pelos incentivos constantes e pelo apoio e carinho de sempre. Agradeço ao professor doutor Steffen Martus, da Humboldt Universität, de Berlim, por ter aceitado ser meu tutor na Alemanha, onde parte fundamental das pesquisas foi realizada. Agradeço ao Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD, Serviço Alemão de Intercâmbio Acadêmico) pelo custeio parcial da viagem à Alemanha. Agradeço ainda à Capes pela bolsa que custeou este trabalho no meu regresso ao Brasil. 3 ÍNDICE Resumo/Abstract ........................................................................................ 5 Introdução ........................................................................................ ........... 6 Fazedor de enigmas – um breve panorama da crítica kleistiana ................ 11 Uma voz total ..............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Kohlhaas in Der Deutschsprachigen Literatur
    HISTORIZITAT—AKTUALITAT—INTERTEXTUALITAT: KOHLHAAS IN DER DEUTSCHSPRACHIGEN LITERATUR J By THOMAS MUELLER Staatsexamen Universitat Mannheim, 1982 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES GERMANIC STUDIES We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA June 1988 © Thomas Mueller, 1988 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Germanic Studies The University of British Columbia 2075 Wesbrook Place Vancouver, Canada V6T 1W5 Date: Abstract The transformation of a historical figure into a literary character reflects a twofold interest. On the one hand it shows an interest in that figure in its given historical context, and on the other hand it reveals a topical interest, which uses that figure and its historical context to establish connections and parallels to the present of a respective writer. Hans Kohlhase, a poor merchant from the area around Berlin during the first half of the 16th century, whose legal quarrel with a Saxon nobleman led to a feud that lasted for several years and only came to an end with his execution in 1540, first appeared as a literary character in Heinrich von Kleist's story Michael Kohlhaas.
    [Show full text]
  • Kleist and the Space of Collapse
    KLEIST AND THE SPACE OF COLLAPSE Jane Madsen PhD Bartlett School of Architecture University College London I, Jane Louise Madsen confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Abstract In 1800 the writer Heinrich von Kleist observed that an arch remains standing because its stones all want to collapse at the same time. Rather than being an empirical observation, Kleist’s proposition of the collapsing arch as a material object made from cut stone which constructs space, inadvertently became a poetic, and a trope for his later work as it contained the possibility of its own disruption and demise. After reading Kant’s critical philosophy Kleist made a traumatic transition from empirical to critical thinking. Kleist represented the potential for collapse through the application of Kant’s premise of uncertainty and in the unknowability of truth. This thesis is practice-based and interdisciplinary. Novalis’s poetic, multi- disciplinary, experimental writing is referenced. The central inquiry theorises collapse, uncertainty and experimentation through philosophical, historical, material, architectural and conceptual thinking and in film and video making as experimental practice. Through making 16mm films, videos and still photography I explored and demonstrated collapse on the island of Portland in Dorset, as an uncertain landscape where quarrying and landslips have rendered much of the island as a space that can be viewed as one of collapse. Portland is a site where material histories of place and histories of material in turn can be traced on to the constructed, empty spaces as a disrupted landscape of collapse.
    [Show full text]
  • Heinrich Von Kleist 1777
    Heinrich von Kleist Universitätsbibliothek der 1777 − 1811 Freien Universität Berlin Garystr. 39 Ausstellung 14195 Berlin zum 200. Todestag 07.11.2011 − 03.01.2012 am 21. November 2011. Montag bis Freitag 9 – 20 Uhr Heinrich von Kleist führte ein im Umbruch der Zeit um 1800 schwieriges und ungesichertes Leben, hatte weder einen Beruf noch ein Einkommen oder einen festen Wohnsitz und war zu seinen Lebzeiten wenig bekannt. Sein dichterisches Werk – acht Dramen und acht Erzählungen, die literarhistorisch weder der Klassik noch der Romantik zuzuordnen sind − setzte sich erst in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts durch. Geboren 1777 in Frankfurt (Oder) in alter preußischer Generals- und Offiziersfamilie, von 1792–1799 in Ausbildung im Regiment Garde in Potsdam. 1799-1800 Studium der Physik, Philosophie, Mathematik und Staatswissenschaften an der Universität Frankfurt/Oder, Verlobung mit der Nachbarstochter Wilhelmine von Zenge. Abbruch des Studiums in Erkenntnis der Unsicherheit jedes Wissens. 1801 Reise nach Paris, dann in die Schweiz an den Thuner See, Bruch der Verlobung. Beginn der dichterischen Arbeit: Familie Schroffenstein. Die Familie Schroffenstein. Die beiden Linien der Familie Schroffenstein - die Häuser Rossitz und Warwand - sind hintergründig verfeindet, weil sie sich im Falle des Absterbens einer Linie beerben sollen. Romantische Liebe von Ottokar von Rossitz und Agnes von Warwand, tödliches Ende. Das Frühwerk von Kleist, 1801-02 am Thuner See in der Schweiz entstanden, 1803 anonym in Bern bei Geßner gedruckt. Uraufführung 1804 in Graz. Die textkritische Ausgabe bearbeitet von Christine Edel und Klaus Kanzog (1994) sowie die 1.Fassung Die Familie Ghonorez in der Brandenburger Ausgabe (2003). Die Familie Ghonorez ist die einzige vollständige Dramen-Handschrift von Kleists Hand (Staatsbibliotek zu Berlin).
    [Show full text]