Ewald Christian von Kleist

Ewald Christian von Kleist (7 March 171524 August 1759) Kleist's father, Joachim Ewald (1684–1738), son of Ewald von Kleist (died 1694), had been born on the family estate. On 7 July 1710, he married Marie Juliane von Manteuffel (sister of Heinrich von Manteuffel) from Groß-Poplow (near Polzin, in the district of Belgard). She died on 9 November 1719 after the birth of the sixth child.

Ewald Christian, the third child of this marriage, lived with his only brother, Franz Casimir, one year older, at the estate of a paternal uncle, Christian von Manteuffel, in Groß-Poplow. Both boys attended the Jesuit school in Deutsch Krone (now Wałcz, Poland) and subsequently, in 1729, the Danzig Gymnasium; in 1731 Ewald von Kleist advanced to the University of Königsberg, where he studied law and mathematics. Either on the completion of his studies, or because his father was unhappy with the direction his studies took (he insisted on studying theology and modern languages and classics as well as law and mathematics) he entered the Danish army, in which he became an officer in 1736. He served in a unit commanded by a friend of his father.

Poetry Kleist's chief work is a poem in hexameters, Der Frühling (1749), for which Thomson's Seasons largely supplied ideas. It earned him the nickname "the Poet of the Spring." He noted in his letters that Carl Wilhelm Ramler had given him belated commentary and improvements on his poem, which he self-published in December 1749. Subsequently, his poem received considerable notice, even from Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis.

Kleist also wrote some odes, idylls and elegies, and a small epic poem, Cissides und Paches (1759), the subject being two Thessalian friends who die an heroic death for their country in a battle against the Athenians.