An exact and conscientious worker, he did much to improve and systematize the processes of analytical chemistry and mineralogy, and his appreciation of the value of quantitative methods led him to become one of the earliest adherents of the Lavoisierian doctrines outside France. He was the first to discover uranium, zirconium and titanium, and to characterize them as distinct elements, though he did not obtain any of them in the pure metallic state; and he elucidated the composition of numerous substances till then imperfectly known, including compounds of the then newly recognized elements: tellurium, strontium, cerium and chromium.
His papers, over 200 in number, were collected by himself in Beiträge zur chemischen Kenntniss der Mineralkörper (5 vols., 1795–1810) and Chemische Abhandlungen gemischten Inhalts (1815). He also published a Chemisches Wörterbuch (1807–1810), and edited a revised edition of F. A. C. Gren’s Handbuch der Chemie (1806).
KLÉBER, JEAN BAPTISTE (1753–1800), French general, was
born on the 9th of March 1753, at Strassburg, where his father
was a builder. He was trained, partly at Paris, for the profession
of architect, but his opportune assistance to two German nobles
in a tavern brawl obtained for him a nomination to the military
school of Munich. Thence he obtained a commission in the
Austrian army, but resigned it in 1783 on finding his humble
birth in the way of his promotion. On returning to France he
was appointed inspector of public buildings at Belfort, where he
studied fortification and military science. In 1792 he enlisted in
the Haut-Rhin volunteers, and was from his military knowledge
at once elected adjutant and soon afterwards lieutenant-colonel.
At the defence of Mainz he so distinguished himself that though
disgraced along with the rest of the garrison and imprisoned, he
was promptly reinstated, and in August 1793 promoted general
of brigade. He won considerable distinction in the Vendéan
war, and two months later was made a general of division. In
these operations began his intimacy with Marceau, with whom he
defeated the Royalists at Le Mans and Savenay. For openly
expressing his opinion that lenient measures ought to be pursued
towards the Vendéans he was recalled; but in April 1794 he
was once more reinstated and sent to the Army of the Sambre-and-Meuse.
He displayed his skill and bravery in the numerous
actions around Charleroi, and especially in the crowning victory
of Fleurus, after which in the winter of 1794–95 he besieged
Mainz. In 1795 and again in 1796 he held the chief command of
an army temporarily, but declined a permanent appointment as
commander-in-chief. On the 13th of October 1795 he fought a
brilliant rearguard action at the bridge of Neuwied, and in the
offensive campaign of 1796 he was Jourdan’s most active and
successful lieutenant. Having, after the retreat to the Rhine
(see French Revolutionary Wars), declined the chief command,
he withdrew into private life early in 1798. He accepted
a division in the expedition to Egypt under Bonaparte, but
was wounded in the head at Alexandria in the first engagement,
which prevented his taking any further part in the
campaign of the Pyramids, and caused him to be appointed
governor of Alexandria. In the Syrian campaign of 1799,
however, he commanded the vanguard, took El-Arish, Gaza
and Jaffa, and won the great victory of Mount Tabor on the
15th of April 1799. When Napoleon returned to France
towards the end of 1799 he left Kléber in command of the
French forces. In this capacity, seeing no hope of bringing
his army back to France or of consolidating his conquests,
he made the convention of El-Arish. But when Lord Keith,
the British admiral, refused to ratify the terms, he attacked
the Turks at Heliopolis, though with but 10,000 men against
60,000, and utterly defeated them on the 20th of March 1800.
He then retook Cairo, which had revolted from the French.
Shortly after these victories he was assassinated at Cairo by a
fanatic on the 14th of June 1800, the same day on which his
friend and comrade Desaix fell at Marengo. Kléber was undoubtedly
one of the greatest generals of the French revolutionary
epoch. Though he distrusted his powers and declined the responsibility
of supreme command, there is nothing in his career to
show that he would have been unequal to it. As a second in
command he was not excelled by any general of his time. His
conduct of affairs in Egypt at a time when the treasury was
empty and the troops were discontented for want of pay, shows
that his powers as an administrator were little—if at all—inferior
to those he possessed as a general.
Ernouf, the grandson of Jourdan’s chief of staff, published in 1867 a valuable biography of Kléber. See also Reynaud, Life of Merlin de Thionville; Ney, Memoirs; Dumas, Souvenirs; Las Casas, Memorial de Ste Hélène; J. Charavaray, Les Généraux morts pour la patrie; General Pajol, Kléber; lives of Marceau and Desaix; M. F. Rousseau, Kléber et Menou en Egypte (Paris, 1900).
KLEIN, JULIUS LEOPOLD (1810–1876), German writer of
Jewish origin, was born at Miskolcz, in Hungary. He was
educated at the gymnasium in Pest, and studied medicine in
Vienna and Berlin. After travelling in Italy and Greece, he
settled as a man of letters in Berlin, where he remained until his
death on the 2nd of August 1876. He was the author of many
dramatic works, among others the historical tragedies Maria
von Medici (1841); Luines (1842); Zenobia (1847); Moreto (1859);
Maria (1860); Strafford (1862) and Heliodora (1867); and the
comedies Die Herzogin (1848); Ein Schützling (1850); and Voltaire
(1862). The tendency of Klein as a dramatist was to become
bombastic and obscure, but many of his characters are vigorously
conceived, and in nearly all his tragedies there are passages of
brilliant rhetoric. He is chiefly known as the author of the
elaborate though uncompleted Geschichte des Dramas (1865–1876),
in which he undertook to record the history of the drama from
the earliest times. He died when about to enter upon the Elizabethan
period, to the treatment of which he had looked forward
as the chief part of his task. The work, which is in thirteen
bulky volumes, gives proof of immense learning, but is marred
by eccentricities of style and judgment.
Klein’s Dramatische Werke were collected in 7 vols. (1871–1872).
KLEIST, BERND HEINRICH WILHELM VON (1777–1811),
German poet, dramatist and novelist, was born at Frankfort-on-Oder
on the 18th of October 1777. After a scanty education, he
entered the Prussian army in 1792, served in the Rhine campaign
of 1796 and retired from the service in 1799 with the rank of
lieutenant. He next studied law and philosophy at the university
of Frankfort-on-Oder, and in 1800 received a subordinate post in
the ministry of finance at Berlin. In the following year his
roving, restless spirit got the better of him, and procuring a
lengthened leave of absence he visited Paris and then settled in
Switzerland. Here he found congenial friends in Heinrich
Zschokke (q.v.) and Ludwig Friedrich August Wieland (1777–1819),
son of the poet; and to them he read his first drama, a
gloomy tragedy, Die Familie Schroffenstein (1803), originally
entitled Die Familie Ghonorez. In the autumn of 1802 Kleist
returned to Germany; he visited Goethe, Schiller and Wieland in
Weimar, stayed for a while in Leipzig and Dresden, again proceeded
to Paris, and returning in 1804 to his post in Berlin was
transferred to the Domänenkammer (department for the administration
of crown lands) at Königsberg. On a journey to Dresden
in 1807 Kleist was arrested by the French as a spy, and being sent
to France was kept for six months a close prisoner at Châlons-sur-Marne.
On regaining his liberty he proceeded to Dresden,
where in conjunction with Adam Heinrich Müller (1779–1829) he
published in 1808 the journal Phöbus. In 1809 he went to Prague,
and ultimately settled in Berlin, where he edited (1810–1811) the
Berliner Abendblätter. Captivated by the intellectual and musical
accomplishments of a certain Frau Henriette Vogel, Kleist, who
was himself more disheartened and embittered than ever, agreed
to do her bidding and die with her, carrying out this resolution
by first shooting the lady and then himself on the shore of the
Wannsee near Potsdam, on the 21st of November 1811. Kleist’s
whole life was filled by a restless striving after ideal and
illusory happiness, and this is largely reflected in his work. He
was by far the most important North German dramatist of
the Romantic movement, and no other of the Romanticists
approaches him in the energy with which he expresses patriotic
indignation.
