Kleist's Prinz Friedrich von Homburg in its relation to Schiller's Wallenstein: a reappraisal

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine what, if any, significance is to be attached to the parallels that have been noted between two plays written in the period covered by the last years of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth - Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein and Heinrich von Kleist's Prinz Friedrich von Homburg. These parallels are to be seen in a comparison of the relationship between Wallenstein, his daughter Thekla and Max Piccolomini in the former play and that between the Elector, his niece Natalie and Prince Friedrich von Homburg in the latter. The manner in which each of the relevant characters is portrayed is analysed, and the differences as well as the similarities in personality and in reaction to events are noted. The similarities disclosed by the analysis are so striking that it appears that the view taken by earlier writers that they are indicative only of Schiller's indirect influence on Kleist is inadequate and that in fact Kleist used Schiller's basic model deliberately, but altered it in such a way as to express his own philosophy and outlook on life. A consideration of Kleist's own character and attitudes, as revealed in his published letters, suggests the reasons why the enthusiasm he initially displayed for Schiller's play did not continue, and indicates the important aspects in which he showed his opposition to the ideas expressed in it. Although the circumstances of his own life clearly had a strong influence on the development of the plot of Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, Kleist himself saw the play, written at a time when Europe was crushed by the might of Napoleon, as primarily a patriotic one. It appears, therefore, that he chose to use Schiller's drama as the model for so much of the basic structure of his own play in order to make plain his rejection of the approach evident in the former and to spur his countrymen to action through a positive vision of what the future might hold for Prussia.