Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian Von

Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian von (frē`drĭkh mäk'sēmē`lyän fən klĭng`ər), 1752–1831, German dramatist. A friend of the young Goethe, he was a playwright for a theatrical troupe and later an army officer. His early work typified the Sturm und Drang period, so named after his play Wirrwarr; oder, Sturm und Drang [confusion; or, storm and stress] (1776); his later plays, influenced by Schiller and Iffland, are more reserved in tone. Klinger's other works include the play The Twins (1776) and the novel Faust's Life, Deeds, and Journey to Hell (1791, tr. 1825).

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Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian Von 

Born Feb. 17, 1752, in Frankfurt-am-Main; died Feb. 25, 1831, in Dorpat (present-day Tartu). German writer, representative of the Sturm und Drang movement.

Klinger moved to Russia in 1780. His work centers on the rebel’s struggle against social injustice (for example, in the dramas Otto, 1775, and the Suffering Woman, 1775) and on men of unyielding will and strong passions (for example, in the dramas The Twins, 1776, and Confusion, or Sturm und Drang, 1776). In the prologue to the drama Damocles (1788), Klinger attributes the tragedy of his heroes to the disparity between the rebel’s aspirations and the unpreparedness of the people for struggle. Klinger’s sociophilosophical novels, such as Faust: His Life, Deeds, and Descent Into Hell (1791; Russian translation, 1913), are marked by keenly antifeudal satire, a more than skeptical attitude toward the new bourgeois order, and bright flashes of enlightened atheism.

WORKS

Werke, vols. 1–2. Weimar, 1958.

REFERENCES

Smolian, O. A. “Klinger v Rossii.” Uch. zap. Leningradskogo ped. in-ta, 1958, vol. 32, part 2, pages 31–77.
Hering, C. F. M. Klinger: Der Weltmann als Dichter, Berlin, 1966 (Bibliography, pages 377–81).

N. P. BANNIKOVA