On the 200th death anniversary of famous German poet and playwright Heinrich von Kleist, his fans paid tribute to him by reading his works at more than a 100 places worldwide, at the same time on Monday. In the provincial capital, the reading took place at Annemarie-Schimmel-Haus, commonly known as the German Cultural Centre, on Monday evening. A small literary gathering heard the impressive works of the 19th century writer read by famous radio jockey Ayesha Alam Khan. Ayesha read part of Heinrich’s novel “The Marquise of O” and excerpts from his letters. The three letters selected for the reading were the writer’s farewell letters written to his cousin, sister and beloved before committing suicide. Born to an ancient Prussian family in 1777, Kleist was a crisis expert and project-maker at the turn of the 19th century who regarded Germany as a waiting room lacking movement.
He attempted to shake his contemporaries back to life with futuristic experiments, in many areas other than literature. As a character, playwright and storyteller with extreme positions and misunderstood by his contemporaries, Kleist is nowadays seen as a modern figure who got caught up in the political and societal upheavals of his times and whose life was marked continuously by instability, despite the fact that he belonged to an aristocratic family from the Margraviate of Brandenburg. He shot himself on November 21, 1811, in a suicide pact. “Kleist Prize”, the esteemed German literary award, is named after him.
