Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/876

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KLINGER, M.—KLOPSTOCK
847

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 Raphaels 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.

Klinger’s works were published in twelve volumes (1809–1815), also 1832–1833 and 1842. The most recent edition is in eight volumes (1878–1880); but none of these is complete. A selection will be found in A. Sauer, Stürmer und Dränger, vol. i. (1883). See E. Schmidt, Lenz und Klinger (1878); M. Rieger, Klinger in der Sturm- und Drangperiode (1880); and Klinger in seiner Reife (1896).

KLINGER, MAX (1857–  ), German painter, etcher and sculptor, was born at Plagwitz near Leipzig. He attended the classes at the Carlsruhe art school in 1874, and went in the following year to Berlin, where in 1878 he created a sensation at the Academy exhibition with two series of pen-and-ink drawings—the “Series upon the Theme of Christ” and “Fantasies upon the Finding of a Glove.” The daring originality of these imaginative and eccentric works caused an outburst of indignation, and the artist was voted insane; nevertheless the “Glove” series was bought by the Berlin National Gallery. His painting of “The Judgment of Paris” caused a similar storm of indignant protest in 1887, owing to its rejection of all conventional attributes and the naïve directness of the conception. His vivid and somewhat morbid imagination, with its leaning towards the gruesome and disagreeable, and the Goyaesque turn of his mind, found their best expression in his “cycles” of etchings: “Deliverances of Sacrificial Victims told in Ovid,” “A Brahms Phantasy,” “Eve and the Future,” “A Life,” and “Of Death”; but in his use of the needle he does not aim at the technical excellence of the great masters; it supplies him merely with means of expressing his ideas. After 1886 Klinger devoted himself more exclusively to painting and sculpture. In his painting he aims neither at classic beauty nor modern truth, but at grim impressiveness not without a touch of mysticism. His “Pietà” at the Dresden Gallery, the frescoes at the Leipzig University, and the “Christ in Olympus,” at the Modern Gallery in Vienna, are characteristic examples of his art. The Leipzig Museum contains his sculptured “Salome” and “Cassandra.” In sculpture he favours the use of varicoloured materials in the manner of the Greek chryselephantine sculpture. His “Beethoven” is a notable instance of his work in this direction.

KLIPSPRINGER, the Boer name of a small African mountain-antelope (Oreotragus saltator), ranging from the Cape through East Africa to Somaliland and Abyssinia, and characterized by its blunt rounded hoofs, thick pithy hair and gold-spangled colouring. The klipspringer represents a genus by itself, the various local forms not being worthy of more than racial distinction. The activity of these antelopes is marvellous.

KLONDIKE, a district in Yukon Territory, north-western Canada, approximately in 64° N. and 140° W. The limits are rather indefinite, but the district includes the country to the south of the Klondike River, which comes into the Yukon from the east and has several tributaries, as well as Indian River, a second branch of the Yukon, flowing into it some distance above the Klondike. The richer gold-bearing gravels are found along the creeks tributary to these two rivers within an area of about 800 sq. m. The Klondike district is a dissected peneplain with low ridges of rounded forms rising to 4250 ft. above the sea at the Dome which forms its centre. All of the gold-bearing creeks rise not far from the Dome and radiate in various directions toward the Klondike and Indian rivers, the most productive being Bonanza with its tributary Eldorado, Hunker, Dominion and Gold Run. Of these, Eldorado, for the two or three miles in which it was gold-bearing, was much the richest, and for its length probably surpassed any other known placer deposit. Rich gravel was discovered on Bonanza Creek in 1896, and a wild rush to this almost inaccessible region followed, a population of 30,000 coming in within the next three or four years with a rapidly increasing output of gold, reaching in 1900 the climax of $22,000,000. Since then the production has steadily declined, until in 1906 it fell to $5,600,000. The richest gravels were worked out before 1910, and most of the population had left the Klondike for Alaska and other regions; so that Dawson, which for a time was a bustling city of more than 10,000, dwindled to about 3000 inhabitants. As the ground was almost all frozen, the mines were worked by a thawing process, first by setting fires, afterwards by using steam, new methods being introduced to meet the unusual conditions. Later dredges and hydraulic mining were resorted to with success.

The Klondike, in spite of its isolated position, brought together miners and adventurers from all parts of the world, and it is greatly to the credit of the Canadian government and of the mounted police, who were entrusted with the keeping of order, that life and property were as safe as elsewhere and that no lawless methods were adopted by the miners as in placer mining camps in the western United States. The region was at first difficult of access, but can now be reached with perfect comfort in summer, travelling by well-appointed steamers on the Pacific and the Yukon River. Owing to its perpetually frozen soil, summer roads were excessively bad in earlier days, but good wagon roads have since been constructed to all the important mining centres. Dawson itself has all the resources of a civilized city in spite of being founded on a frozen peat-bog; and is supplied with ordinary market vegetables from farms just across the river. During the winter, when for some time the sun does not appear above the hills, the cold is intense, though usually without wind, but the well-chinked log houses can be kept comfortably warm. When winter travel is necessary dog teams and sledges are generally made use of, except on the stage route south to White Horse, where horses are used. A telegraph line connects Dawson with British Columbia, but the difficulties in keeping it in order are so great over the long intervening wilderness that communication is often broken. Gold is practically the only economic product of the Klondike, though small amounts of tin ore occur, and lignite coal has been mined lower down on the Yukon. The source of the gold seems to have been small stringers of quartz in the siliceous and sericitic schists which form the bed rock of much of the region, and no important quartz veins have been discovered; so that unlike most other placer regions the Klondike has not developed lode mines to continue the production of gold when the gravels are exhausted.

KLOPP, ONNO (1822–1903), German historian, was born at Leer on the 9th of October 1822, and was educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin and Göttingen. For a few years he was a teacher at Leer and at Osnabrück; but in 1858 he settled at Hanover, where he became intimate with King George V., who made him his Archivrat. Thoroughly disliking Prussia, he was in hearty accord with George in resisting her aggressive policy; and after the annexation of Hanover in 1866 he accompanied the exiled king to Hietzing. He became a Roman Catholic in 1874. He died at Penzing, near Vienna, on the 9th of August 1903. Klopp is best known as the author of Der Fall des Hauses Stuart (Vienna, 1875–1888), the fullest existing account of the later Stuarts.

His Der König Friedrich II. und seine Politik (Schaffhausen, 1867) and Geschichte Ostfrieslands (Hanover, 1854–1858) show his dislike of Prussia. His other works include Der dreissigjährige Krieg bis zum Tode Gustav Adolfs (Paderborn, 1891–1896); a revised edition of his Tilly im dreissigjährigen Kriege (Stuttgart, 1861); a life of George V., König Georg V. (Hanover, 1878); Phillipp Melanchthon (Berlin, 1897). He edited Corrispondenza epistolare tra Leopoldo I. imperatore ed il P. Marco l’Aviano capuccino (Gratz, 1888). Klopp also wrote much in defence of George V. and his claim to Hanover, including the Offizieller Bericht über die Kriegsereignisse zwischen Hannover und Preussen im Juni 1866 (Vienna, 1867), and he edited the works of Leibnitz in eleven volumes (1861–1884).

See W. Klopp, Onno Klopp: ein Lebenslauf (Wehberg, 1907).

KLOPSTOCK, GOTTLIEB FRIEDRICH (1724–1803), German poet, was born at Quedlinburg, on the 2nd of July 1724, the eldest