3 - Prince Friedrich von Homburg: Soldier-Dreamer

Summary

Wer bin ich. Lieutenant ohne Portepee. Student ohne Wissenschaft. Staatsbeamter ohne Amt.

— Christa Wolf, Kein Ort. Nirgends

Literary Forbears

IN THEIR VIVID AND PRECISE depiction of a wide range of psychological and somatic conditions, Kleist's stories and plays are nearly without precedent in the history of European literature. As we have already seen in Das Käthchen von Heilbronn and Penthesilea, Kleist takes as a point of departure his fascination with the irrational side of human nature, as manifested in such phenomena as somnambulism and cataleptic trances, and develops a character type that deviates considerably from the traditional passive characters in German literature. This new type most often assumes the form of the soldier-dreamer figure who typically embodies the qualities of warrior, officer, or statesman but who is simultaneously beset by contrary tendencies —often issuing from the unfathomable depths of the psyche — that render the otherwise forceful individual feckless and inert. A number of examples drawn from both the novellas and the plays provide confirmation of this observation: Guiskard, Penthesilea, Graf Wetter vom Strahl, Friedrich von Trota, and the Kohlhaas of the novella's second half all come to mind. Since Prinz Friedrich von Homburg is generally regarded as Kleist's masterpiece and his most mature work, it can provide us with a prime example of this character type.

To fully appreciate the extent to which Keist radically revised and reconstructed the figure of the passive protagonist, it is necessary to consider the antecedent heroic types from which he chose to deviate.