Kleist's Aristocratic Heritage and Das Käthchen von HeilbronnKleist was an important dramatist at the beginning of the nineteenth century and Kthchen was one of his greatest stage successes. Reeve presents a brief outline of the Kleist family involvement in the Prussian aristocracy and Kleist's reactions to his background. He also surveys the literary critics' attempts to come to terms with Kthchen, noting a revisionist trend which associates Kleist with the bourgeois liberalism of his time. While acknowledging