“We Changed Our Nature with Animals”: The Problem of Dehumanization in Heinrich von Kleist’s Works

The article examines animalistic motifs in Heinrich von Kleist’s works through the prism of Rousseauian and Kantian philosophy. The comparison of the animal and the human world was one of the most common methods with which Kleist depicted the crisis of humanity caused by the collapse of Enlightenment ideals and the historical and social catastrophe that followed the French Revolution at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. By polemics with Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller, Kleist rethinks the traditional opposition of culture and nature, as well as the concept of morality. Through the prism of the essay “On the Puppet Theater,” where Kleist theoretically comprehended his views on the place of man in the universe, the article shows the evolution of animal images in his works of art, starting from the particular situation of The Schroffenstein Family and ending with the nationalistic pathos of The Battle of Hermann. The core character for Kleist is a woman who deviates from her traditional role and is associated with the animal, as shown in the example of such characters as Penthesilea, Kätchen from Heilbronn, and Thusnelda from the The Battle of Hermann. Dehumanization is one of the constant and most important motifs of Kleist’s work.