The writer Heinrich von Kleist had returned to Germany in the autumn of 1802; he had 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 government post in Berlin has been transferred to the Domänenkammer (department for the administration of crown lands) at Königsberg.

Born in Frankfurt an der Oder in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, Kleist had entered the Prussian Army in 1792 after a scanty education, served in the Rhine campaign of 1796, and retired from the service in 1799 with the rank of lieutenant.

He studied law and philosophy at the Viadrina University and in 1800 received a subordinate post in the Ministry of Finance at Berlin.

In the following year, Kleist's roving, restless spirit had gotten the better of him, and procuring a lengthened leave of absence, he had visited Paris, then settled in Switzerland, where he found congenial friends in Heinrich Zschokke and Ludwig Wieland (1777–1819), son of the poet Christoph Martin Wieland; and to them he had read his first drama, a gloomy tragedy, The Schroffenstein Family (published in 1803).