Heinrich von Kleist

Artistic and Aesthetic Legacies

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The works and biography of Heinrich von Kleist have fascinated authors, artists, and philosophers for centuries, and his enduring relevance is evident in the emblematic role he has played for generations. Kleist’s prose works remain “utterly unique” seventy years after Thomas Mann described their singular appeal, his dramas remain “disturbingly current” four decades after E.L. Doctorow characterized their modernity, and twenty-first century readers need not read far before finding the unresolved questions of the current century in Kleist. Heinrich von Kleist: Artistic and Aesthetic Legacies explores examples of Kleist’s impact on artistic creations and aesthetic theory spanning over two centuries of seismic metaphysical crises and nightmare scenarios from Europe to Mexico to Japan to manifestations of the American Dream.

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Jeffrey L. High received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is Professor of German Studies at California State University, Long Beach, as well as Guest Professor at Portland State University’s Deutsche Sommerschule am Pazifik. He is the co-editor of the volumes Schiller’s Literary Prose Works (2008), Who Is This Schiller (Now)? (2011); Heinrich von Kleist: Artistic and Political Legacies (2013); Inspiration Bonaparte? Napoleonic Occupation and German Culture (2021); and Heinrich von Kleist: Artistic and Philosophical Paradigms (2022). He is a 2018 recipient of the CSULB “President’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Achievement in Scholarship and Mentoring,” the 2019 recipient of the University Honors Program’s “Most Valuable Professor” award, and the 2020 recipient of CSULB awards for both Advising and Mentoring.

Carrie Collenberg-González received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and is Associate Professor and Section Head of German, and Director of the Deutsche Sommerschule am Pazifik at Portland State University. She has published articles on Heinrich von Kleist, German cinema, Goethe’s Faust, the aesthetics of terrorism, and the Red Army Faction, including articles in Feminist German Studies and the Goethe Yearbook. She is co-author of Cineplex: German Language and Culture Through Film (2014) and co-editor of Moving Frames: Photographs in German Film (2022). She is actively involved in the American and Oregon Association of Teachers of German and in the Coalition of Women in German.
Foreword: Interrogating Kleist?
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: The Artistic and Aesthetic Legacies of Heinrich von Kleist
Jeffrey L. High and Carrie Collenberg-González

Kleist and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Valerio Rocco Lozano

Operatic Reception of Kleist’s Das Käthchen von Heilbronn: From Holbein’s Stage Adaptation to the Operas of Hoven, Lux, and Reinthaler
Glen Gray

Stranger than Fiction: Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig on Goethe, Kleist, and the Struggle with the Daemon
Elaine Chen

Brecht, Kleist, and the Early GDR: The Berliner Ensemble’s Playbill for Der zerbrochne Krug (1952) and Its Renegotiation of Formalism, Realism, and Cultural Heritage
Markus Wessendorf

Penthesilea and Her Sisters: Visualizing the Feminine in the German Cultural Imagination of the 1970s and 1980s
Seán Allan

Victories of Insurrection: Heinrich von Kleist, Aleksandr Bek, and Heiner Müller
Wolf Kittler

Coetzee and Kafka with Kleist (and Job): Debating the ‘Kohlhaasian Solution’
Tim Mehigan

Film Adaptations of Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas: On Triage, Recasting, and Restructuring
Sophia Clark and Jeffrey L. High

An Earthquake in Chile in Mexico: Juan Villoro on Kleist
Craig Epplin

The Vanishing Point: Heinrich von Kleist, Frank Stella, and the American Dream
Carrie Collenberg-González

Righteous Rebels: Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas and Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan
Cassio de Oliveira

Kleist in Yoko Tawada’s Works
Susan C. Anderson

Index of Names
Index of Kleist’s Works
Students, scholars, professors and avid readers of Kleist and German Literature.
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