• Writer Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger, 1752

Klinger was born of humble parentage in Frankfurt. His father died when he was a child, and his early years were a hard struggle. He was able, however, to enter the university of Gießen in 1774, where he studied law. Goethe, with whom he had been acquainted since childhood, helped him in many ways.

In 1775, Klinger gained with his tragedy Die Zwillinge a prize offered by the Hamburg theater, under the auspices of the actress Sophie Charlotte Ackermann (1714 – 1792) and her son the famous actor and playwright, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder (1744 – 1816). In 1776, Klinger was appointed Theaterdichter to the Seylersche Schauspiel - Gesellschaft and held this post for two years.

In 1778, he joined the Austrian military and took part in the War of the Bavarian Succession. In 1780, he went to Saint Petersburg, became an officer in the Russian army, was ennobled and attached to the Grand Duke Paul, whom he accompanied on a journey to Italy and France. In 1785, he was appointed director of the corps of cadets, and having married Elizabeth, a natural daughter of Empress Catherine the Great, was made praeses of the Academy of Knights in 1799. In 1803, Klinger was nominated by Emperor Alexander curator of the university of Dorpat, an office he held until 1817. In 1811, he became lieutenant general. He then gradually gave up his official posts, and after living for many years in honorable retirement, died at Dorpat.

Klinger was a man of vigorous moral character and full of fine feeling, though the bitter experiences and deprivations of his youth are largely reflected in his dramas. It was one of his earliest works, Sturm und Drang (1776), which gave its name to this artistic epoch. In addition to this tragedy and Die Zwillinge (1776), the chief plays of his early period of passionate fervor and restless "storm and stress" are Die neue Arria (1776), Simsone Grisaldo (1776) and Stilpo und seine Kinder (1780). To a later period belongs the fine double tragedy of Medea in Korinth and Medea auf dem Kaukasos (1791). In Russia, he devoted himself mainly to the writing of philosophical romances, of which the best known are Fausts Leben, Taten und Höllenfahrt (1791), Geschichte Giafars des Barmeciden (1792) and Geschichte Raphaeis de Aquillas (1793). This series was closed in 1803 with Betrachtungen und Gedanken über verschiedene Gegenstände der Welt und der Literatur. In these works, Klinger gives calm and dignified expression to the leading ideas which the period of Sturm und Drang had bequeathed to German classical literature.