Der verwaltete Souverän. Kleists Michael Kohlhaas und die preußischen Reformen

Kleist's Kohlhaas is often considered a literary investigation into questions of legal theory. However, the novella centers around cases of misapplication of the law. Kleist spells out precisely the problems the Prussian reformers around 1800 ascribed to Frederick William's wildly rampant administration. What preoccupied him, was the imminent transformation from a princely to an administrative state with new forms of speech, writing and style. But if his Kohlhaas is a mouthpiece for the Prussian reform program, he is not exercising a ›critique of bureaucracy‹. Rather, he calls for a modern administration that adheres to the bureaucratic principle of written record-keeping.