Kleist Grave at Kleiner Wannsee

Flowers lie on the gravestone of the poet Heinrich von Kleist in Berlin.

The grave of Heinrich von Kleist and Henriette Vogel is located between Bismarckstraße and Kleiner Wannsee in southwest Berlin. Kleist and his friend ended their lives here in November 1811.

The grave of Heinrich von Kleist and Henriette Vogel lies beneath tall trees on a site between Bismarckstraße and Kleiner Wannsee in southwest Berlin. The poet from Goethe's time and his terminally ill friend committed suicide there together on November 21, 1811.

No burials permitted in the cemetery

Since it was forbidden at that time to bury suicides in a cemetery, their bodies were buried on the spot. Whether the joint suicide actually took place where visitors find the gravestone today is disputed. It is possible that the suicide took place some distance away and that the grave or just the gravestone was moved afterwards.

About Heinrich Kleist

Heinrich von Kleist lived and worked in Berlin from 1807 onwards. It was here that he published his most important stories and edited the Berliner Abendblätter, a newspaper featuring local news. His literary works, which are so famous today, did not receive much recognition during Kleist's lifetime, and the poet lived in near poverty during his final years. A lack of recognition for his art, financial hardship, and traumatic war experiences may have been the reasons why Kleist apparently traveled to the Kleiner Wannsee with the firm intention of taking his own life. He found a companion in Henriette Vogel, who was suffering from uterine cancer.

Heinrich von Kleist: An outsider in literary history

The poet Heinrich von Kleist is considered an outsider of his literary era. His dramas and stories deal with catastrophes, crimes, and profound social and moral conflicts. Rape, murder, and revenge are just a few of the themes in his texts. Like his literary works, his suicide in a "cheerful" mood is dramatic and extraordinary, a suicide that Kleist biographers sometimes see as a final performance that ultimately brought him the fame he could not achieve in life.

Redesign of Kleist's grave at Kleiner Wannsee

On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the poet's death, the grave site was redesigned and the gravestone restored. The stone is not the original gravestone, but one from the Nazi era. The National Socialists attempted to appropriate Heinrich von Kleist—as they did other poets—for their own purposes. In 1936, they replaced the existing gravestone on the occasion of the Olympics. In 1941, they tampered with the gravestone once again, replacing the verses by the Jewish poet Max Ring ("He lived, sang, and suffered / In gloomy, difficult times, / He sought death here / And found immortality") with a quote from Kleist's Prince Friedrich von Homburg: "Now, O immortality, you are all mine." A memorial stone for Henriette Vogel was added in 2003.

Following its redesign in fall 2011, the gravestone now bears an inscription on both sides. The front once again features Max Ring's words, and Henriette Vogel's name is now also engraved on the gravestone. The back of the stone shows the old inscription as it appeared before the restoration. Visitors can walk around the grave on newly laid paths and compare the inscriptions. It is noticeable that Heinrich von Kleist's date of birth is not identical. The back is engraved with October 18, 1777, while the front bears October 10—the date that Kleist himself gave as his birthday.

In addition to restoring the gravestone, the area surrounding Kleist's grave was also redesigned to mark the 200th anniversary of his death. A new path leads from Königstraße almost to Kleist's grave. However, the path ends at Bismarckstraße before reaching Kleist's grave and does not run across the grounds of a local rowing club. The only access to Kleist's grave is still via Bismarckstraße.

Radio play provides more information

Visitors to Kleist's grave can learn about Heinrich von Kleist and Henriette Vogel on site. At the corner of Bismarckstraße and Königstraße, on the way to Kleist's grave, there are information boards providing details about the poet's life and death. Visitors can also take an audio tour with audio guides. Through headphones, they can hear excerpts from eyewitness interrogation transcripts and farewell letters. The tour passes the steamboat landing stage at Wannsee, crosses Königstraße, follows the newly constructed path to the Kleist grave, and descends to the small Wannsee lake. The audio guides are available at the Wannsee S-Bahn station.

Information

• Address:
  Bismarckstraße 2-4
  14109 Berlin
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