When Kleist's first play, Die Familie Schroffenstein was published (anonymously) in February 1803, it was welcomed enthusiastically by a number of reviewers as the work of a promising, though as yet inexperienced, author. Soon after it appeared, however, Kleist distanced himself from the play and wrote to his sister, Ulrike, on 13 March 1803, begging her not to read it, on the grounds that it was ‘a wretched piece of rubbish’ (‘eine elende Scharteke’; SW 11, 731). Nevertheless, it was one of only three plays by Kleist to be performed during his own lifetime – the others being Der zerbrochne Krug and Das Käthchen von Heilbronn – and though lacking some of the sophistication of his later work, it contains, in nuce, almost all the themes that he was to explore in greater depth in the subsequent years.

Unlike Kleist's later works, the majority of which often provoked bitter and uncompromising debates, Die Familie Schroffenstein has been relatively free from critical controversy. What critical debate there has been has tended to focus on the role of the lovers, Ottokar and Agnes, who die at the hands of their respective fathers, Rupert and Sylvester, thereby ending the line of both branches of the Schroffenstein family. At first sight, the denouement of the play appears to confirm the widely-held view that Kleist's work is characterised by a profoundly pessimistic view of the human condition. Certainly, it was the violence of the denouement that attracted the attention of Kleist's near contemporaries, who, whilst acknowledging the play's merits, believed that it would benefit from certain revisions.