About the work
Die Zwillinge (The Twins) is a tragedy by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, with which he won a Hamburg playwriting competition in 1775 organised by the actress Sophie Charlotte Ackermann and her son Friedrich Ludwig Schröder. It premiered in Hamburg on 23 February 1776 and was published the same year.
Plot
The younger twin Guelfo feels overshadowed by his favoured brother Ferdinando and nurses growing thoughts of revenge, which extend to Ferdinando’s fiancée Kamilla. The conflict escalates until Guelfo kills his brother during a ride, after which their father curses him and kills him with his own hands.
Cultural significance
With its rivalry between brothers and its father-son conflict, the play ranks alongside works by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz and the young Goethe among the central dramas of the Sturm und Drang movement. Klinger’s runner-up in the same competition, Johann Anton Leisewitz, treated the same theme of fratricide in his own play Julius von Tarent.