Břewnow, to which it still belongs. The mining industry began in 1842.
KLAFSKY, KATHARINA (1855–1896), Hungarian operatic
singer, was born at Szt János, Wieselburg, of humble parents.
Being employed at Vienna as a nurserymaid, her fine soprano
voice led to her being engaged as a chorus singer, and she was
given good lessons in music. By 1882 she became well-known
in Wagnerian rôles at the Leipzig theatre, and she increased her
reputation at other German musical centres. In 1892 she
appeared in London, and had a great success in Wagner’s operas,
notably as Brünnhilde and as Isolde, her dramatic as well as
vocal gifts being of an exceptional order. She sang in America
in 1895, but died of brain disease in 1896.
A Life, by L. Ordemann, was published in 1903 (Leipzig).
KLAGENFURT (Slovene, Celovec), the capital of the Austrian
duchy of Carinthia, 212 m. S.W. of Vienna by rail. Pop. (1900),
24,314. It is picturesquely situated on the river Glan, which is
in communication with the Wörther-see by the 3 m. long Lend
canal. Among the more noteworthy buildings are the parish
church of St Ægidius (1709), with a tower 298 ft. in height; the
cathedral of SS Peter and Paul (1582–1593, burnt 1723, restored
1725); the churches of the Benedictines (1613), of the Capuchins
(1646), and of the order of St Elizabeth (1710). To these must
be added the palace of the prince-bishop of Gurk, the burg or
castle, existing in its present form since 1777; and the Landhaus
or house of assembly, dating from the end of the 14th century,
and containing a museum of natural history, and collection of
minerals, antiquities, seals, paintings and sculptures. The most
interesting public monument is the great Lindwurm or Dragon,
standing in the principal square (1590). The industrial establishments
comprise white lead factories, machine and iron foundries,
and commerce is active, especially in the mineral products of the
region.
Upon the Zollfeld to the north of the city once stood the ancient Roman town of Virunum. During the Middle Ages Klagenfurt became the property of the crown, but by a patent of Maximilian I. of the 24th of April 1518, it was conceded to the Carinthian estates, and has since then taken the place of St Veit as capital of Carinthia. In 1535, 1636, 1723 and 1796 Klagenfurt suffered from destructive fires, and in 1690 from the effects of an earthquake. On the 29th of March 1797 the French took the city, and upon the following day it was occupied by Napoleon as his headquarters.
KLAJ (latinized Clajus), JOHANN (1616–1656), German poet,
was born at Meissen in Saxony. After studying theology at
Wittenberg he went to Nuremberg as a “candidate for holy
orders,” and there, in conjunction with Georg Philipp Harsdörffer,
founded in 1644 the literary society known as the Pegnitz
order. In 1647 he received an appointment as master in the
Sebaldus school in Nuremberg, and in 1650 became preacher at
Kitzingen, where he died in 1656. Klaj’s poems consist of dramas,
written in stilted language and redundant with adventures,
among which are Höllen- und Himmelfahrt Christi (Nuremberg,
1644), and Herodes, der Kindermörder (Nuremberg, 1645), and
a poem, written jointly with Harsdörffer, Pegnesische Schäfergedicht
(1644), which gives in allegorical form the story of his
settlement in Nuremberg.
See Tittmann, Die Nürnberger Dichterschule (Göttingen, 1847).
KLAMATH, a small tribe of North American Indians of Lutuamian
stock. They ranged around the Klamath river and lakes,
and are now on the Klamath reservation, southern Oregon.
See A. S. Gatschet, “Klamath Indians of Oregon,” Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. ii. (Washington, 1890).
KLAPKA, GEORG (1820–1892), Hungarian soldier, was born
at Temesvár on the 7th of April 1820, and entered the Austrian
army in 1838. He was still a subaltern when the Hungarian
revolution of 1848 broke out, and he offered his services to the
patriot party. He served in important staff appointments
during the earlier part of the war which followed; then, early in
1849, he was ordered to replace General Mészáros, who had been
defeated at Kaschau, and as general commanding an army corps
he had a conspicuous share in the victories of Kapólna, Isaszeg,
Waitzen, Nagy Sarlo and Komárom. Then, as the fortune of
war turned against the Hungarians, Klapka, after serving for a
short time as minister of war, took command at Komárom, from
which fortress he conducted a number of successful expeditions
until the capitulation of Világos in August put an end to the war
in the open field. He then brilliantly defended Komárom for two
months, and finally surrendered on honourable terms. Klapka
left the country at once, and lived thenceforward for many years
in exile, at first in England and afterwards chiefly in Switzerland.
He continued by every means in his power to work for the independence
of Hungary, especially at moments of European war,
such as 1854, 1859 and 1866, at which an appeal to arms seemed
to him to promise success. After the war of 1866 (in which as a
Prussian major-general he organized a Hungarian corps in
Silesia) Klapka was permitted by the Austrian government to
return to his native country, and in 1867 was elected a member of
the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies, in which he belonged to the
Deák party. In 1877 he made an attempt to reorganize the
Turkish army in view of the war with Russia. General Klapka
died at Budapest on the 17th of May 1892. A memorial was
erected to his memory at Komárom in 1896.
He wrote Memoiren (Leipzig, 1850); Der Nationalkrieg in Ungarn, &c. (Leipzig, 1851); a history of the Crimean War, Der Krieg im Orient . . . bis Ende Juli 1855 (Geneva, 1855); and Aus meinen Erinnerungen (translated from the Hungarian, Zürich, 1887).
KLAPROTH, HEINRICH JULIUS (1783–1835), German Orientalist
and traveller, was born in Berlin on the 11th of October
1783, the son of the chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth (q.v.).
He devoted his energies in quite early life to the study of Asiatic
languages, and published in 1802 his Asiatisches Magazin
(Weimar, 1802–1803). He was in consequence called to St Petersburg
and given an appointment in the academy there. In 1805
he was a member of Count Golovkin’s embassy to China. On
his return he was despatched by the academy to the Caucasus on
an ethnographical and linguistic exploration (1807–1808), and
was afterwards employed for several years in connexion with the
academy’s Oriental publications. In 1812 he moved to Berlin;
but in 1815 he settled in Paris, and in 1816 Humboldt procured
him from the king of Prussia the title and salary of professor of
Asiatic languages and literature, with permission to remain in
Paris as long as was requisite for the publication of his works.
He died in that city on the 28th of August 1835.
The principal feature of Klaproth’s erudition was the vastness of the field which it embraced. His great work Asia polyglotta (Paris, 1823 and 1831, with Sprachatlas) not only served as a résumé of all that was known on the subject, but formed a new departure for the classification of the Eastern languages, more especially those of the Russian Empire. To a great extent, however, his work is now superseded. The Itinerary of a Chinese Traveller (1821), a series of documents in the military archives of St Petersburg purporting to be the travels of George Ludwig von , and a similar series obtained from him in the London foreign office, are all regarded as spurious.
Klaproth’s other works include: Reise in den Kaukasus und Georgien in den Jahren 1807 und 1808 (Halle, 1812–1814; French translation, Paris, 1823); Geographisch-historische Beschreibung des östlichen Kaukasus (Weimar, 1814); Tableaux historiques de l’Asie (Paris, 1826); Mémoires relatifs à l’Asie (Paris, 1824–1828); Tableau historique, geographique, ethnographique et politique de Caucase (Paris, 1827); and Vocabulaire et grammaire de la langue géorgienne (Paris, 1827).
KLAPROTH, MARTIN HEINRICH (1743–1817), German
chemist, was born at Wernigerode on the 1st of December 1743.
During a large portion of his life he followed the profession of an
apothecary. After acting as assistant in pharmacies at Quedlinburg,
Hanover, Berlin and Danzig successively he came to
Berlin on the death of Valentin Rose the elder in 1771 as manager
of his business, and in 1780 he started an establishment on his own
account in the same city, where from 1782 he was pharmaceutical
assessor of the Ober-Collegium Medicum. In 1787 he was
appointed lecturer in chemistry to the Royal Artillery, and when
the university was founded in 1810 he was selected to be the
professor of chemistry. He died in Berlin on the 1st of January
1817. Klaproth was the leading chemist of his time in Germany.
