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 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 ), 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 (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.