›Kleist’s Births and Rebirths‹. A Symposium Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of Heinrich von Kleist’s Birth (Kooperation mit Duke University und University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

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›Kleist’s Births and Rebirths‹. A Symposium Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of Heinrich von Kleist’s Birth (Kooperation mit Duke University und University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

02. – 04. April 2027

Duke University, USA

The Department of German at Duke will host a conference on the occasion of the 250th Anniversary of Heinrich von Kleist’s Birth.

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Kleist’s Births and Rebirths: Symposium Coming in April

Friday, April 2, 2:00pm

Kleist’s Births and Rebirths

Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811) is among the most influential authors in the German-speaking world; 250 years after his birth, his legacy continues to inspire new scholarship, performances, and adaptations. Repeatedly censured by his contemporaries, his works are now among the most-performed on the German-language stage, present in secondary school curricula across Germany, and in German departments worldwide. Canonical authors from Kafka and Brecht to theorists such as Deleuze and Guattari have engaged with Kleist’s work, and his texts continue to inspire responses across aesthetic, ethical, epistemological, legal, political, and feminist discourses.

This symposium takes the 250th anniversary of Kleist’s birth as an occasion to revisit themes of birth and rebirth—as biological event, political rupture, epistemological emergence, and cultural afterlife—across his extensive oeuvre. Leading Kleist scholars will gather to present papers at Duke on April 3-4, preceded by a graduate mini-symposium on April 2 at UNC.

At a Saturday evening keynote event, marionette master Emmanuel Elpenord, frequent performer at New York’s Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater, will demonstrate the animation of the puppets. He will also join a conversation on Kleist’s famous essay, “On the Marionette Theater,” with a Duke theater professor Torry Bend and Duke Kleist scholar Stefani Engelstein. This text proposes the marionette’s automated grace as a path towards rebirth into a new paradise. Undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty are welcome at the Keynote!

Finally, undergraduates will be able participate in puppeteering workshop on Sunday afternoon. Our goal is to bring undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty into overlapping scholarly and creative spaces and carry Kleist engagement over to future generation.