Grave of Heinrich Von Kleist

‘Penniless poet and terminally ill girlfriend die in riverside murder-suicide.’ Such might have been the headline in the papers of 22 November 1811, a day after Romantic poet Heinrich von Kleist first shot his mistress Henriette Vogel and then himself on the southern shore of the Kleiner Wannsee, just south of Wannseebrücke. Kleist, now one of Germany’s most revered literary figures, never enjoyed success in his lifetime; Henriette suffered from advanced stages of cancer. Both are buried on a rise about halfway between the road and the lake, although the tombstone only mentions Kleist.