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Common Knowledge

Canonical name: von Kleist, Heinrich
Legal name: Kleist, Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von
Birthdate: 1777-10-18
Date of death: 1811-11-21
Gender: male
Education: Viadrina University
Occupations: soldier
poet
dramatist
novelist
short story writer
journalist
Relationships: Vogel, Henriette (muse)
von Kleist, Marie (sister)
Cause of death: suicide
Nationality: Kingdom of Prussia
Birthplace: Frankfurt an der Oder, Margraviate of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia
Places of residence: Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Place of death: Kleiner Wannsee, Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia
Burial location: Ehrengrab, Bismarckstraße 2-4, Berlin-Wannsee, Deutschland
Map Location: Germany

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105 reviews

dulac3 143 reviews

Michael Kohlhaas (The Art of the Novella) by Heinrich von Kleist

_Michael Kohlhaas_ is a fictionalized account of an actual historical event. A horse trader from Brandenburg on a journey to Saxony is falsely extorted for a border crossing by the Squire Wenzel von Tronka, who also keeps two of Kohlhaas’ horses as surety against the trader’s inability to pay. Upon arriving at Saxony, Kohlhass learns that, as he suspected, the border tax was a ruse and on his return journey demands his horses back from the squire. Instead he finds that the servant he had show more left in charge of the horses was beaten and run out of the castle, and the horses so maltreated and overworked that they are on the point of dying. Infuriated, Kohlhaas demands reparation and thus a saga of justice denied begins.

How far would you go to redress wounded pride? At what point is the pursuit of justice an exercise in diminishing returns or even downright revolt? When is a citizen justified in renouncing his duties to the state if the state does not provide him with protection and justice? All of these questions are examined in this smart and compelling novella written by Heinrich von Kleist in the 19th century. It is obvious that von Kleist sympathizes with Kohlhaas throughout the tale, and the reader can’t help but do the same. Squire Tronka is pictured as the worst kind of nepotistic nobleman, calling on his family connections at court to have all of Kohlhaas’ lawful attempts at receiving justice thwarted. As Kohlhaas’ frustration mounts, so does ours. When his wife, who had pleaded with her husband to be allowed to carry his final petition to the court of the Elector in the assurance that this last ditch attempt to breach the courtly barriers of favouritism and ritual would be successful, is brought back to his home wounded and near death as the result of a mishap at court he can take no more.

Kohlhaas sends a decree to Tronka demanding that his horses be fattened and brought back to health at the Squire’s expense and returned to the horse dealer, along with reparation for the injuries suffered by his servant at the hands of the Squire’s men. Of course, this produces no result and so Kohlhaas, driven to the edge of endurance acquires a troop of men and proceeds to Tronka castle, intent on taking justice for himself if no one else will grant it to him. Kohlhaas is obviously not a man who believes in the old adage about revenge, for he takes his hot and at the end of a flaming torch as he burns Tronka castle to the ground. He pursues the Squire with a blind eye, killing nearly all whom he finds in the castle without distinction and while we may look at his response as extreme I have to admit that I couldn’t help but experience a bout of schadenfreude at the Squire’s turn from a smug, insolent bastard into a frightened, mewling kitten who probably pissed his pants when we discover that

the Squire, who, to the accompaniment of immoderate laughter, was just reading aloud to a crowd of young friends the decree which the horse-dealer had sent to him, had no sooner heard the sound of his voice in the courtyard than, turning suddenly pale as death, he cried out to the gentlemen—"Brothers, save yourselves!" and disappeared.

Uncaring of the safety of his guests, Tronka escapes Kohlhaas’ vengeful hand via a secret door and makes haste to a convent that is run, not surprisingly, by his aunt. Kohlhass, disappointed but not defeated, pursues his quarry and a game of cat and mouse ensues. It turns out that the Squire had managed to piss of many more than just the poor horse dealer and as Kohlhaas proclaims his just vengeance to the world, men start to flock to his banner. Soon he is an out-and-out outlaw, burning down the towns that dare keep his victim from Kohlhaas’ hands and the state decides that it must intervene. Matters take a roller coaster turn as Kohlhaas first defies the authorities stating that he is justified in his actions, whatever “laws” he may be breaking, for:

"I call that man cast out," answered Kohlhaas, clenching his fist, "who is denied the protection of the laws. For I need this protection, if my peaceable business is to prosper. Yes, it is for this that, with all my possessions, I take refuge in this community, and he who denies me this protection casts me out among the savages of the desert; he places in my hand—how can you try to deny it?—the club with which to protect myself."

A point that many philosophers might debate, on either side, but a compelling argument nonetheless. Finally Kohlhaas approaches Martin Luther himself, and after some argument the latter agrees to intercede for him to the elector in the name of justice.

It’s at this time that the story takes yet another turn and Kohlhaas the outlaw becomes Kohlhaas the plaintiff as he is apparently granted amnesty for his ravages in the countryside and waits for the interminable grind of the courts to proceed to his case. Of course things do not run smoothly and the ups and downs of Kohlhass’ fortunes are many. In the end it can be said that Kohlhaas both receives and satisfies the requirements of justice and the story itself is a very compelling one that asks some important questions. I enjoyed this work thoroughly. It was a gripping examination of human nature that presents us with a problem that has no easy answers. show less

Apr 2, 201328 other reviews

Macumbeira 109 reviews

Michel Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist

If Man’s Justice fails and Divine providence is blatantly absent, can one take Justice into one own hands? And if one does, what are the consequences? These are the themes Heinrich von Kleist develops in this old story, this “alten chronik”, recounting the dramatic destiny of Michael Kohlhaas.

Hans Kohlhaas is a historical figure. Kleist changed his first name into the one of the Archangel for dramatic effect. Kohlhaas was a sixteenth century horse-dealer who for a brief moment in show more history set fire to the Duchy of Saxony. Who could suspect that this hardworking man with a God-fearing and Family – loving reputation, would turn into the avenging Angel of Death?

Kleist presents his hero at once, already on the first page, with two paradoxes:

He was[…] the most honest, while at the same time he was one of the most terrible persons of his period.

and

The feeling of justice made him a robber and a murderer.

What had happened? On his way to a yearly trade fair, with some fine horses to sell, Kohlhaas had to cross the land of the Aristocratic family Von Tronka. He is stopped by a barrier across the road and a guard who prohibits him to travel further. First Kohlhaas is requested to pay a tribute and show some papers for passing. The horse-dealer is a bit surprised that he has not been warned of this but does not make too much of it. He agrees two leave two nice black horses as collateral at the castle of the local Lord, Wenzel von Tronka. Kohlhaas intends to proceed to the market, sell his horses, get the necessary papers and then collect the two black stallions on his way back. He leaves a servant behind with some money to take care of the horses.

When Koolhaas returns to the Von Tronka castle, he finds his horses and his man-servant in a dire state. The horses have been badly abused by Von Tronka’s men. They have been using the horses to plough a field.

Kohlhaas, a man who strongly believes in justice, understandably does not accept this situation. He demands compensation through the local courts of Justice for the damage done to his animals and for his servant who has been manhandled when he wanted to protect the horses. Unfortunately the lawyers and the influential people in the area are all friends or in some way related to the von Tronka family. Most of them are genuinely disgusted by what has been done to the horses but no one intervenes and the Junker Wenzel von Tronka remains unpunished. Kohlhaas mood darkens when he is time and again obstructed in his actions to recuperate his due. His wife gets worried by his obsession and proposes to ask Justice from the Prince of Saxony himself. As a woman she thinks she can get closer to this well-guarded man than her husband would. Don’t forget that we are still in feudal times and that the aristocrats cannot be bothered by normal people. But drama happens. At the moment that the Prince walks by, Kohlhaas’ wife surges forward but is caught by the Prince bodyguards and pushed back with the back of a lance into the crowd. While she is wounded in the chest by this brutal act, she still makes it back to her husband but dies in his arms.

Kohlhaas decides on the spot, to get retribution in a different way. He arms his servants, rides to the Von Tronka castle, takes it by surprise, sets fire to its buildings and slaughters everybody who crosses his path. He fails however to get Von Tronka, who in the commotion succeeds to flee to the neighboring town.

But Kohlhass keeps following him, burning down house after house. His army of renegades grows with new mercenaries paying themselves with the loot and living from the land. They soon turn the fertile farming communities into a wasteland.

By now the feudal establishment has taken notice and sits up. They arm themselves, hunt Kohlhaas but fail to corner and catch him. As the common people who have heard the story of the injustice start to grumble, Von Tronka and his allies change their strategy.

They ask the famous Martin Luther to intervene and to demand a cease-fire. He does, but has not been told the true story and unknowingly lures Kohlhaas into a situation of which he cannot escape.

ooOoo

The writer of this captivating story, Heinrich von Kleist, a key figure of the German Romantic literary tradition, was a paradox himself. At the age of twenty-one, he wrote a “Life plan”, a Lebensplan, which was supposed to give him a sense of security, confidence and happiness but unexplainably and ironically Kleist took a, non planned, early exit with his double suicide comitted with his lover Henriette Vögel. He died on the shore of the lake Wannsee (Wahnsinn?) near Potsdam on 21 November 1811. He had just turned 34.
Still, Von Kleist has left us many works and he is an author worth giving attention to. There is his famous “Prince of Homburg”, “The broken Jug” and “The Marquise of O”, but I especially love him for his short but brilliant philosophical essay: “On the theater of Marionette”.I have copied it in its entirety in my blog, for it is really a little gem of a text.

ooOo
There hangs some kind of “Western atmosphere” around the story. Some obvious ingredients are easily spotted: The lonely guy looking for compensation, the shocked reaction about the cruelty done to the horses and the wild riders trying to hunt down the bad but powerful Von Tronka who is the scion of an evil establishment. The story of Kohlhaas was turned into a “cowboy” movie in 1999, titled “The Jack Bull”, directed by John Badham and starring John Cussack as Kohlhaas.

Kleist touches deeper meanings too. Obviously the theme of Justice but there is more. By turning the individual Kohlhaas into the Archangel Michael and Martin Luther into a mediator in the Power struggle between the rising class of Burghers and the members of a crumbling Feudality, Kleist makes statements about the society around him. Himself a Junker, an officer educated in the Prussian military tradition, it seems that he left the Army because he had problems with the hierarchy trampling the rights of the individual.

Maybe the “old story”, this “alten chronik”, should even be read ironically, for at least in Von Kleist time, during the reactionary times that followed the French revolution, things had not changed that much. show less

Mar 22, 201128 other reviews

proustitute 259 reviews

The Marquise of O and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) by Heinrich von Kleist

Irreligious, perverse, and shocking even to this day. Von Kleist's discontent with the social structures of his time—most especially the church, the law, and the vagaries of community life—makes his tales perhaps more politically rich than his contemporary Hoffmann, although both are equally skillful in plumbing the depths of the human psyche when it comes to matters of love, survival, family, and even gender.

Von Kleist's style is very proto-modernist: his paragraphs run on for pages show more with no apparent reason for when they begin and when they end; his pacing is subjectively approached rather than objectively obsessed; and he often begins his stories by telling his reader the endings.

Absurdism runs rampant through these pieces. The title story involves a widowed Marquise who takes out an advertisement in the newspaper, searching for the man who apparently—although she has no memory of this—impregnated her. This kind of illogical and paradoxical situation is at the heart of most of von Kleist's work: "The Earthquake in Chile" turns an exiled pair of lovers into heroic figures in an apocalyptic setting ruled by no seeming authority; however, von Kleist seems to suggest that the imposing orders of the church and the law are so pervasive in their hold on mankind that mankind wreaks the same violence if left with no punitive action from high above.

This is also the case in "Michael Kohlhaas" where the protagonist takes the law into his own hands after repeated attempts to bring legal action against a man who is terrorizing the community. This kind of Kafkaesque critique of the law is also carried out to the extreme limits of surrealism, rendering reality as nightmarish in much the same way Kafka would do later. Of the shorter pieces collected here, "The Foundling" is the strongest and seems to speak to the same examination of reality versus fantasy in Hoffmann's "The Sandman." However, it is in the longer tales that von Kleist is able to enlarge his canvas and allow his oddly distorted syntax and phrasing to loop in and out of sense and nonsense most elegantly. show less

Apr 2, 20239 other reviews

MikeFutcher 1,238 reviews

Michael Kohlhaas: From an Old Chronicle by Heinrich von Kleist

Despite being an 1810 recasting of a historical German personage into an avenging folk-hero, Heinrich von Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas is surprisingly modern. The story goes like this: [spoilers] Kohlhaas, a horse-trader, is taking his wares to market when he is stopped by a newly-erected toll booth. Taken unawares and unable to pay the toll, he leaves two of his black horses behind as collateral in the care of the land's owner. Upon returning from market, he finds the horses in show more extremely poor condition and the groom he left behind to care for them has been badly beaten and driven off the land. Kohlhaas' attempts at redress through the legal system are frustrated by the machinations of bureaucracy and more readily by the political connections of the landowner who has wronged him. Ignored by the system, and the attempts at redress leading directly to the death of his wife, Kohlhaas embarks on a violent insurrection in the land, sacking the castles of those who harbour the now-fugitive landowner and drawing up a manifesto demanding the airing of his grievances against the landowner in court and the return of his horses to their prior condition. More violence and political machinations later, and with Kohlhaas viewed as both a hero to the common people and as a dangerous incendiary to the rulers, Kohlhaas' lawsuit is heard. The court finds in his favour, with the horses returned to him in their prior condition, but he is sentenced to death for all the violence that he has incited to get the case heard. [end spoilers]

The reason the story is enduringly modern is because it poses an eternal question: At what price justice? Faced with injustice – whether through corruption or privilege – and when the system fails the individual, how far does the individual go in search of redress? Not only does this strike an emotional chord with the reader (who loves an underdog), concerning as it does an honest man denied recourse to the law, but it also asks fundamental questions about the fabric of society: whether it is working for everyone or just for a privileged few, and what those who find themselves disadvantaged can do about it. It evokes the intolerability of the suppressed voice, of the honest, dues-paying man who, when the time comes, finds his society wanting: "Nothing caused him greater dissatisfaction with the government he had dealings with than the semblance of justice it displayed, while all the time dishonouring the amnesty it granted him." (pg. 88). Particularly after the year we've just had, with President Trump finding decisive votes in the so-called 'flyover states' and the established classes in Britain trying to reverse or water down the EU referendum result, the question is both timely and enduring. Cleverly, von Kleist doesn't try to preach any answers, and only poses the Gordian knot of society and the individual for us to wrestle with.

In fact, with this libertarian angst which permeates the tale, it was no wonder that the story was adapted into a Western film, 1999's The Jack Bull (the only wonder is why the film is not widely fêted – it is excellent). With knowledge of the film and the story's end already known to me (I hesitated to include the spoiler alert at the start of this review, because I think it unnecessary for a tale like this), I couldn't help but compare the two, and The Jack Bull comes out on top. To start with, Kohlhaas has some traits that are unpalatable to modern ears, not least that he is quicker to violence than the film's protagonist, and his killing of women and children somewhat compromises the no-right-answers approach von Kleist is going for. But if not the violence of the man, than at least his sensibilities are for our time.

The book is also inferior in other ways, not least how it tells the story. The prose is rather functional: it often reads like a summary rather than a complete story spun with good pace and consideration for the reader's entertainment. I did wonder whether this was a translation issue (I read a 1967 Blackie edition translated into English by James Kirkup) but the style seems too deliberate and indelible to the tone of the story. I have no doubt this is how von Kleist wrote it, and I do wonder whether I would have liked Michael Kohlhaas as much had I not already watched (and loved) The Jack Bull so many times over the years. Unlike the streamlined and cohesive film, the book doesn't adequately explain how Kohlhaas increased his forces, nor how he proved to be so adept at insurrectionary warfare. Much of the backstory and qualifying detail is glossed over: like I said, at times it reads like a summary. It also goes off the rails a bit towards the end, devolving into a boring sequence of bureaucratic manoeuvres before ending with a silly focus on magic gypsies and prophecies. Kohlhaas' lawsuit against the man who mistreated his horses becomes almost an afterthought.

This is a shame, because the story itself, even imperfectly told, is an arresting one. It is profound and thought-provoking and noble and tragic all at once. It speaks to that eternal abrasiveness between the rights of the individual and the wellbeing of the society as a whole – questions that are increasingly being asked in western democracies rejecting the economic inequality of globalization at the voting booth. Whilst the system usually rights itself in the end, it is changed by individuals, whose actions are not only necessary for the moral rightness of their specific causes but also for the general benefit of their society in the long-run, having expended themselves in ironing out the kinks in that society as it ploughs onwards. And for those elites who shrug off the common man as insignificant or 'deplorable' or that they 'didn't know what they were voting for', whilst blindly feathering their own nests, they should read in the story of Michael Kohlhaas the power of the honest man who has his voice suppressed:

"You can bring me to the scaffold, but I am able to harm you, and I will." (pg. 108). show less

Feb 27, 201728 other reviews

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