author
Friedrich Maximilian Klinger
1752–1831
Best remembered for giving the Storm and Stress movement its name, this German dramatist and novelist wrote with the emotional force and rebellious energy that defined an era. His life later carried him far beyond the literary circles of Frankfurt, into military and court service in Russia.
1 Audiobook
Faustus : his life, death, and doom
by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger
About the author
Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1752, Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger grew up in modest circumstances and became part of the generation of young German writers associated with Sturm und Drang. His 1776 play Sturm und Drang became so influential that its title was adopted for the wider literary movement, with its emphasis on passion, conflict, and resistance to cold rationalism.
Klinger was connected with the lively literary world around the young Goethe, and his early dramas helped shape the mood of late eighteenth-century German writing. Alongside his plays, he also wrote novels, and his work often explored intense feeling, moral struggle, and restless characters.
Later, his life took a different path: he entered Russian service and spent many years away from the German literary center, eventually dying in Dorpat in 1831. That unusual mix of fierce youthful writing and a long public career gives his story a special interest, especially for readers curious about the people who stood at the beginning of European Romanticism.