Ewald Christian von Kleist

Ewald Christian von Kleist (7 March 171524 August 1759) was a German poet and cavalry officer. His vast family was well-established in Farther Pomerania; 58 male members of his family fought in Frederick the Great's army of the Seven Years' War. Kleist was born at Zeblin, near Köslin (Koszalin) in Farther Pomerania, to the von Kleist family of cavalry leaders. Family The Kleist family is an old, established one in Farther Pomerania whose roots date to the 12th century. 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.