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KLEPIITES KLOPSTOCK. 



319 



mrnt, he entered the army, and became, in 1736, a 

 Danish officer. He studied, with zeal, the military 

 art, and, when Frederic the Great, of Prussia, began 

 his reign, Kloist entered his service. He always 

 disliked the military profession which, together with 

 an unfortunate attachment, gave to his poems the 

 tone of melancholy which distinguishes them. Few 

 German poems, from an author without previous 

 reputation, have met with such immediate success, as 

 his Frilhling (Spring), which was first printed in 

 1749, for his acquaintance only. In 1757, Kleist was 

 made major. In 1759, he lost his leg in the battle of 

 Kunnersdorf : he lay, during the whole night, with 

 his wounds exposed, on the field of battle. The next 

 noon, he discovered himself to a Russian officer, who 

 was passing by, and who had him carried to Frank- 

 fort. Eleven days after the battle, the fractured bones 

 parted, and tore an artery, and he died August 24. 

 Kleist was an amiable and upright man. He composed 

 several war-songs, and liked to call himself a Prussian 

 grenadier. His admiration of Frederic the Great 

 was deep, as many of his most beautiful compositions 

 prove. Kleist enjoyed the friendship of many of the 

 most talented men of his nation. 



KLEPHTES, (KX:$rqf , xXj*vjj), properly a robber, 

 is the name given to those Greeks who kept them- 

 selves free from the Turkish yoke, in the mountains, 

 and carried on a perpetual war against the oppressors 

 of their country, considering every thing belonging 

 to a Turk a lawful prize, often, as may be easily 

 imagined, exercising their profession on Greeks. 

 Such a population is very common in conquered 

 countries, where there are mountains to afford a 

 retreat to the vanquished. At the time of the con- 

 quest of "Greece, many inhabitants of the plain 

 retreated to the highlands, where they even formed 

 xXtq>r/>xui. (klephtes villages), from whence they 

 surprised and annoyed the Turks. By degrees, their 

 independence was acknowledged by the Turks (as, 

 for instance, in the case of the Mainots), and a 

 militia acknowledged by the Turks was formed among 

 them, which, under the pachas and other officers of 

 the Porte, was intrusted with the maintenance of 

 order in different parts of Greece. The members of 

 this were called a^tai-aXo/ and a^araXm (probably 

 from the Latin and Italian word arma, as many words 

 of this description have become incorporated in the 

 modern Greek, partly through the conquest of the 

 country by the Romans, partly by the predominance 

 of Italian on the Mediterranean in later periods ; or 

 from affix, which is connected with the ancient Greek 

 agptKHi.) The leaders were called capitani (q. v.), and 

 their dignity appears to have been hereditary. These 

 armatoloi, also called pallikaris, from the ancient 

 raXXa| or fraXXjjS;, returned to their profession of 

 klephtes, when their rights were attacked ; as, for 

 instance, when Ali Pacha of Janina attacked the 

 Albanians. They retained a proud feeling of inde- 

 pendence, and Greece would never have been freed, 

 had it not been for these robbers, who were the first 

 to take part in the struggle against the Porte in 1821, 

 and furnished the few good soldiers in the land-service 

 of Greece, their leaders becoming the best generals 

 in the Greek service, as Niketas, Colocotroni, &c. 

 (See Greece.') Whole tribes are to be counted among 

 the klephtes; as the Suliots and Chimariots, in the 

 ancient Epirus, and the Sphakiots on the island of 

 Crete. Besides these, there were single klephtes 

 in the Morea, &c. (For their mode of attack, see 

 Hobhouse's Journey through Albania, 1817.) The 

 songs of the klephtes, composed among themselves, 

 form part of the modern national Greek poetry, of 

 which Fauriel (Chants populaires de la Grece moderne, 

 2 vols., Paris, 1824 and 1825) has published several. 

 The same work gives, in a discount preliminairc, 



interesting details respecting the klephtes nnd arma- 

 toloi. The klephtes are hospitable towards those 

 who are not tempting objects of plunder, as the writer 

 can testify. 



KLINGEMANN, AUGUSTUS ; doctor of philosophy 

 and director of the national theatre at Brunswick ; 

 born Aug. 31, 1777, at Brunswick. Inspired by the 

 example of Goethe and Schiller, who had raised the 

 theatre of Weimar to a high degree of perfection, he 

 devoted himself entirely to the theatre of his native 

 place. In 1813, this was raised from a private to a 

 national institution. Klingemann received the direc- 

 tion of it, and, under his superintendence, it became 

 one of the first of the German theatres. Of his 

 dramatic productions, Heinrich tier Lowe, Luther, 

 Moses, Faust, Deutsche Treue, are stock pieces. His 

 Dramatische tVerke were published at Brunswick, 

 18171818, 12 volumes. 



KLINGER, FREDERIC MAXIMILIAN VON, was born 

 at Frankfort on the Maine, in 1753. He fell, when 

 young, into an exaggerated style of writing, but 

 even then produced a great sensation. Few works 

 have stirred the passions more than his Twins (Twil- 

 linge). Goethe speaks favourably of his exterior, his 

 disposition, and his manners. What Klinger was, he 

 became through himself. Rousseau was a favourite 

 author of his. After having studied at the gymnasium 

 of Frankfort, he went to the university of Giesseu. 

 His first productions were dramatic. In the war of the 

 Bavarian succession, he entered the military service, 

 and was made a lieutenant in the Austrian army. 

 After the peace, he went (1780) to St Petersburg, 

 and was appointed an officer and reader to the grand- 

 admiral, the grand-prince Paul, with whom he after- 

 wards travelled through Poland, Austria, Italy,France, 

 Switzerland, Germany, &c. In 1784, he was appoint- 

 ed an officer of the military school at St Petersburg, 

 and rose, in the reign of Catharine, to the rank of 

 colonel. In 1799, he was made major-general by 

 the emperor Paul, and director of the corps of cadets, 

 He distinguished himself by an independent upright- 

 ness, at a time when the vagaries of Paul made such 

 conduct dangerous. When Alexander ascended the 

 throne, he received several other offices, as the 

 direction of the university of Dorpat, the inspection 

 of the body of pages, &c. After having received 

 many orders, and the income of a crown village for 

 life, he was made lieutenant-general in 1811. He 

 had served forty years, when he retired. He died in 

 February, 1831. In the midst of his many occupa- 

 tions, Klin<*er was ever alive in the field of poetry. 

 His works are quite peculiar. He collected them in 

 12 volumes (Konigsberg, 1809 to 1810.) Der JVelt- 

 mann und der Dichter is considered by many the 

 best of his productions. 



KLOOTZ, ANACHARSIS. See Clootz. 



KLOPSTOCK, FREDERIC GOTTLIEB, one of the 

 most celebrated of the German poets, was born July 

 2, 1724, at Quedlinburg. His father, a senator of 

 Quedlinburg, and an eccentric man, removed, after 

 his birth, to Friedeburg, near Wettin, on the Saal, 

 where the young Klopstock spent his childhood, and 

 was subsequently placed at the gymnasium of Qued- 

 linburg. At the age of sixteen, he went to the 

 Schulpforte, near Naumburg. Here he made himself 

 perfect in the ancient languages, acquired a decided 

 predilection for the classical writers, and formed the 

 resolution of writing a great epic poem, though he 

 was not determined what subject to choose ; and 

 the reign of Henry the Fowler at that time attracted 

 him most. In 1745, he studied theology at Jena, 

 and commenced, in solitude, the first canto of his 

 Messiah. In Leipsic, where he went the next year, 

 he formed an acquaintance with Cramer, Schlegel, 

 Rabener, Zacharia, and others, who then published 



