Upon this spot, on the 20th of November, 1811, at the age of thirty-four, the greatest German poet of the younger generation of that day, shot, with unerring aim, first the woman he loved and then himself. It was long believed that the two were united simply by a calm, reasonable friendship. But when, in 1873, their correspondence was published, its unhealthy passion made it evident that there was extravagantly strong feeling on both sides, and that the reason of both was undermined. Kleist addresses his friend, Frau Henriette Vogel, in such terms as these: "My Jette, my all, my castle, land, meadows, and vineyards, sun of my life, my wedding, baptism of my children, my tragedy, my fame, my guardian angel, my cherub and seraph!" and she replies: "My defence, my guard, my sword, my spear, my buckler, my shield," &c. Heinrich von Kleist was of noble birth, the scion of an old Prussian military family, which in the eighteenth century had already produced a poet. Heinrich had been through one campaign, as a young ensign, when military life became distasteful to him, and a dim consciousness of his unusual powers impelled him to turn to study. In 1799 he matriculated at the university of his native town, Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and was soon working hard at philosophy, mathematics, and classics, living, in spite of his youth, a very sober life, entirely occupied with his own ardent introspective thoughts. In an awkward, pedantic way he attempted to educate his sister, and to cultivate the mind of his _fiancée_, so that she might really understand him. In the course of a year he left Frankfort to pursue his studies in Berlin. He early developed a fatal inclination to stake everything on one card. His biographer, Wilbrandt, has aptly compared his character to Werther's. He had Werther's gloomy dissatisfaction and cynical reserve, his vivid imagination, his habit of brooding and reasoning, and of dwelling upon everything painful, his overpowering outbursts of emotion. It was clear to Kleist himself that his was the poet's vocation long before he dared confide the thought to his friends; he left them, he isolated himself, until he was certain of his powers. When for the first time he felt the plan of a work taking shape in his mind, it seemed to him as though "something like earthly happiness" were smilingly beckoning him on. Impetuous and audacious, he expected to produce a masterpiece at once. The immature beginner's attempt was unsuccessful. When, a year later, he planned _Robert Guiscard_, the tragedy which occupied his thoughts throughout the rest of his youth, it was with the distinct intention of surpassing the classical works of Goethe and Schiller "by the aid of a new art principle." In his art Æschylus and Shakespeare, the best qualities of antiquity and the Renaissance, were to be fused together, the cult of the beautiful was to be combined with truth to nature, and irreproachable style with the extreme of tragic horror.