The Klondike, in spite of its isolated position, brought together miners and adventurers from all parts of the world, and it is greatly to the credit of the Canadian government and of the mounted police, who were entrusted with the keeping of order, that life and property were as safe as elsewhere and that no lawless methods were adopted by the miners as in placer mining camps in the western United States. The region was at first difficult of access, but can now be reached with perfect comfort in summer, travelling by well-appointed steamers on the Pacific and the Yukon River. Owing to its perpetually frozen soil, summer roads were excessively bad in earlier days, but good wagon roads have since been constructed to all the important mining centres. Dawson itself has all the resources of a civilized city in spite of being founded on a frozen peat-bog; and is supplied with ordinary market vegetables from farms just across the river. During the winter, when for some time the sun does not appear above the hills, the cold is intense, though usually without wind, but the well-chinked log houses can be kept comfortably warm. When winter travel is necessary dog teams and sledges are generally made use of, except on the stage route south to White Horse, where horses are used. A telegraph line connects Dawson with British Columbia, but the difficulties in keeping it in order are so great over the long intervening wilderness that communication is often broken. Gold is practically the only economic product of the Klondike, though small amounts of tin ore occur, and lignite coal has been mined lower down on the Yukon. The source of the gold seems to have been small stringers of quartz in the siliceous and sericitic schists which form the bed rock of much of the region, and no important quartz veins have been discovered; so that unlike most other placer regions the Klondike has not developed lode mines to continue the production of gold when the gravels are exhausted.
KLOPP, ONNO (1822-1903), German historian, was born at Leer on the 9th of October 1822, and was educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin and Göttingen. For a few years he was a teacher at Leer and at Osnabrück; but in 1858 he settled at Hanover, where he became intimate with King George V., who made him his Archivrat. Thoroughly disliking Prussia, he was in hearty accord with George in resisting her aggressive policy; and after the annexation of Hanover in 1866 he accompanied the exiled king to Hietzing. He became a Roman Catholic in 1874. He died at Penzing, near Vienna, on the 9th of August 1903. Klopp is best known as the author of Der Fall des Hauses Stuart (Vienna, 1875-1888), the fullest existing account of the later Stuarts.
His Der König Friedrich II. und seine Politik (Schaffhausen, 1867) and Geschichte Ostfrieslands (Hanover, 1854-1858) show his dislike of Prussia. His other works include Der dreissigjährige Krieg bis zum Tode Gustav Adolfs (Paderborn, 1891-1896); a revised edition of his Tilly im dreissigjährigen Kriege (Stuttgart, 1861); a life of George V., König Georg V. (Hanover, 1878); Phillipp Melanchthon (Berlin, 1897). He edited Corrispondenza epistolare tra Leopoldo I. imperatore ed il P. Marco l’Aviano capuccino (Gratz, 1888). Klopp also wrote much in defence of George V. and his claim to Hanover, including the Offizieller Bericht über die Kriegsereignisse zwischen Hannover und Preussen im Juni 1866 (Vienna, 1867), and he edited the works of Leibnitz in eleven volumes (1861-1884).
See W. Klopp, Onno Klopp: ein Lebenslauf (Wehberg, 1907).
KLOPSTOCK, GOTTLIEB FRIEDRICH (1724-1803), German poet, was born at Quedlinburg, on the 2nd of July 1724, the eldest son of a lawyer, a man of sterling character and of a deeply religious mind. Both in his birthplace and on the estate of Friedeburg on the Saale, which his father later rented, young Klopstock passed a happy childhood; and more attention having been given to his physical than to his mental development he grew up a strong healthy boy and was an excellent horseman and skater. In his thirteenth year Klopstock returned to Quedlinburg where he attended the gymnasium, and in 1739 proceeded to the famous classical school of Schulpforta. Here he soon became an adept in Greek and Latin versification, and wrote some meritorious idylls and odes in German. His original intention of making the emperor Henry I. (“The Fowler”) the hero of an epic, was, under the influence of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with which he became acquainted through Bodmer’s translation, abandoned in favour of the religious epic. While yet at school, he had already drafted the plan of Der Messias, upon which his fame mainly rests. On the 21st of September 1745 he delivered on quitting school a remarkable “leaving oration” on epic poetry—Abschiedsrede über die epische Poesie, kultur- und literargeschichtlich erläutert—and next proceeded to Jena as a student of theology, where he elaborated the first three cantos of the Messias in prose. The life at this university being uncongenial to him, he removed in the spring of 1746 to Leipzig, and here joined the circle of young men of letters who contributed to the Bremer Beiträge. In this periodical the first three cantos of the Messias in hexameters were anonymously published in 1748. A new era in German literature had commenced, and the name of the author soon became known. In Leipzig he also wrote a number of odes, the best known of which is An meine Freunde (1747), afterwards recast as Wingolf (1767). He left the university in 1748 and became a private tutor in the family of a relative at Langensalza. Here unrequited love for a cousin (the “Fanny” of his odes) disturbed his peace of mind. Gladly therefore he accepted in 1750 an invitation from Jakob Bodmer (q.v.), the translator of Paradise Lost, to visit him in Zürich. Here Klopstock was at first treated with every kindness and respect and rapidly recovered his spirits. Bodmer, however, was disappointed to find in the young poet of the Messias a man of strong worldly interests, and a coolness sprang up between the two friends.
At this juncture Klopstock received from Frederick V. of Denmark, on the recommendation of his minister Count von Bernstorff (1712-1772), an invitation to settle at Copenhagen, with an annuity of 400 talers, with a view to the completion of the Messias. The offer was accepted; on his way to the Danish capital Klopstock met at Hamburg the lady who in 1754 became his wife, Margareta (Meta) Moller, (the “Cidli” of his odes), an enthusiastic admirer of his poetry. His happiness was short; she died in 1758, leaving him almost broken-hearted. His grief at her loss finds pathetic expression in the 15th canto of the Messias. The poet subsequently published his wife’s writings, Hinterlassene Werke von Margareta Klopstock (1759), which give evidence of a tender, sensitive and deeply religious spirit. Klopstock now relapsed into melancholy; new ideas failed him, and his poetry became more and more vague and unintelligible. He still continued to live and work at Copenhagen, and next, following Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg (q.v.), turned his attention to northern mythology, which he conceived should replace classical subjects in a new school of German poetry. In 1770, on the dismissal by King Christian VII. of Count Bernstorff from office, he retired with the latter to Hamburg, but retained his pension together with the rank of councillor of legation. Here, in 1773, he issued the last five cantos of the Messias. In the following year he published his strange scheme for the regeneration of German letters, Die Gelehrtenrepublik (1774). In 1775 he travelled south, and making the acquaintance of Goethe on the way, spent a year at the court of the margrave of Baden at Karlsruhe. Thence, in 1776, with the title of Hofrat and a pension from the margrave, which he retained together with that from the king of Denmark, he returned to Hamburg where he spent the remainder of his life. His latter years he passed, as had always been his inclination, in retirement, only occasionally relieved by association with his most intimate friends, busied with philological studies, and hardly interesting himself in the new developments of German literature. The American War of Independence and the Revolution in France aroused him, however, to enthusiasm. The French Republic sent him the diploma of honorary citizenship; but, horrified at the terrible scenes the Revolution had enacted in the place of liberty, he returned it. When 67 years of age he contracted a second marriage with Johanna Elisabeth von Winthem, a widow and a niece of his late wife, who for many years had been one of his most intimate friends. He died at Hamburg on the 14th of March 1803, mourned by all Germany, and was buried with great pomp and ceremony by the side of his first wife in the churchyard of the village of Ottensen.
Klopstock’s nature was best attuned to lyrical poetry, and in it his deep, noble character found its truest expression. He was less suited for epic and dramatic representation; for, wrapt up in himself, a stranger to the outer world, without historical culture, and without even any interest in the events of his time, he was lacking in the art of plastic representation such as a great epic requires. Thus the Messias, despite the magnificent passages which especially the earlier cantos contain, cannot satisfy the demands such a theme must necessarily make. The subject matter, the Redemption, presented serious difficulties to adequate epic treatment. The Gospel story was too scanty, and what might have been imported from without and interwoven with it was rejected by the author as profane. He had accordingly to resort to Christian mythology; and here again, circumscribed by the dogmas of the Church, he was in danger of trespassing on the fundamental truths of the Christian faith. The personality of Christ could scarcely be treated in an individual form, still less could angels and devils—and in the case of God Himself it was impossible. The result was that, despite the groundwork—the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Revelation of St John, and the model ready to hand in Milton’s Paradise Lost—material elements are largely wanting and the actors in the poem, Divine and human, lack plastic form. That the poem took twenty-five years to complete could not but be detrimental to its unity of design; the original enthusiasm was not sustained until the end, and the earlier cantos are far superior to the later. Thus the intense public interest the work aroused in its commencement had almost vanished before its completion. It was translated into seventeen languages and led to numerous imitations. In his odes Klopstock had more scope for his peculiar talent. Among the best are An Fanny; Der Zürchersee; Die tote Klarissa; An Cidli; Die beiden Musen; Der Rheinwein; Die frühen Gräber; Mein Vaterland. His religious odes mostly take the form of hymns, of which the most beautiful is Die Frühlingsfeier. His dramas, in some of which, notably Hermanns Schlacht (1769) and Hermann und die Fürsten (1784), he celebrated the deeds of the ancient German hero Arminius, and in others, Der Tod Adams (1757) and Salomo (1764), took his materials from the Old Testament, are essentially lyrical in character and deficient in action. In addition to Die Gelehrtenrepublik, he was also the author of Fragmente über Sprache und Dichtkunst (1779) and Grammatische Gespräche (1794), works in which he made important contributions to philology and to the history of German poetry.
Klopstock’s Werke first appeared in seven quarto volumes (1798-1809). At the same time a more complete edition in twelve octavo volumes was published (1798-1817), to which six additional volumes were added in 1830. More recent editions were published in 1844-1845, 1854-1855, 1879 (ed. by R. Boxberger), 1884 (ed. by R. Hamel) and 1893 (a selection edited by F. Muncker). A critical edition of the Odes was published by F. Muncker and J. Pawel in 1889; a commentary on these by H. Düntzer (1860; 2nd ed., 1878). For Klopstock’s correspondence see K. Schmidt, Klopstock und seine Freunde (1810); C. A. H. Clodius, Klopstocks Nachlass (1821); J. M. Lappenberg, Briefe von und an Klopstock (1867). Cf. further K. F. Cramer, Klopstock, er und über ihn (1780-1792); J. G. Gruber, Klopstocks Leben (1832); R. Hamel, Klopstock-Studien (1879-1880); F. Muncker, F. G. Klopstock, the most authoritative biography, (1888); E. Bailly, Étude sur la vie et les œuvres de Klopstock (Paris, 1888).