Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger (1752-1831), German playwright and novelist associated with the turbulent and often extravagant literary movement known as Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), forerunner of German romanticism. Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Klinger was an early orphan who had an unhappy childhood. In 1771 he joined a group of revolutionary young poets who, under the leadership of the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, soon became the center of the Sturm und Drang movement. The movement took its name from Die Wirrwarr; oder Sturm und Drang (Confusion; or Storm and Stress), a play that Klinger himself wrote in 1776.

Klinger based his literary program on a concept of nature derived from the works of French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and a concept of passion derived from the works of William Shakespeare, then popular in Germany. Almost all of Klinger’s literary work deals with social problems, his favorite theme being the conflict between the individual and society. His plays of the Sturm und Drang period contain bombastic tirades intended to express passion, and only some of them, notably Die Zwillinge (The Twins, 1776), were well received. The tragedy Stilpo und seine Kinder (Stilpo and his Children, 1780) marked the end of this period for Klinger, and he subsequently turned to more conventional forms both in his numerous plays and in his philosophical novels. Among these later works are the novel Fausts Leben, Taten, und Höllenfahrt (1791; Faust’s Life, Deeds, and Journey to Hell, 1825) and the philosophical romance Der Weltmann und der Dichter (The Man of the World and the Poet, 1798).

In 1780 Klinger went to live in Russia, becoming an officer in the Russian army following unsuccessful attempts to find a suitable position either in the German military or, through the influence of Benjamin Franklin, in the American Revolutionary army. He became major general of the Russian Army in 1798, lieutenant general in 1811, and acted as curator of the University of Dorpat in Russia from 1803 to 1817. In 1820 he sought release from all his offices but did not relinquish the last of them until 1830.