Heinrich von Kleist’s
Das Bettelweib von Locarno[
The Beggarwoman of Locarno, 1810] is the tale of a beggarwoman’s accidental death in the castle of a nobleman, and a subsequent haunting that results in the nobleman’s suicide in the burning castle. Kleist’s novella was written in early October 1810 and published on 11 October 1810 in the tenth edition of his journal,
Berliner Abendblätter, and was republished with minor changes in volume 2 of
Erzählungen von Heinrich von Kleist[
Tales by Heinrich von Kleist, 1811]. Written during a period when tales of knights had proliferated for decades, contemporary interest in Mesmerism and the supernatural in general resulted in ghost stories comprising a second dominant topic of German popular literature. The immediate inspiration may have…
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Citation: High, Jeffrey L.. "Das Bettelweib von Locarno". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 January 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13119, accessed 21 November 2024.]
