Kleists Käthchen von Heilbronn als Litotes von Goethes Grethchen in Faust. Ein Fragment: Ein Versuch

Starting from the eighteenth-century discourse inaugurated by Leibniz’s Theodizee on evil and its consequences for the idea of human guilt and responsibility, the article provides a reading of Kleist’s drama Das Käth chen von Heilbronn (1808) as a response to Goethe’s Faust. Ein Fragment (1790). It points out some parallels between Gretchen and Käthchen and their opposite fates in the trial they have to face before God and the humans, concluding that Kleist’s drama is conceived as a sort of litotes of Goethe’s Fragment.