Concentrating on Klesel's role in Franz Grillparzer's Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg, William Reeve argues that Klesel represents the culmination of a literary type - the Federfuchser, or pen-pushing secretary. Evolving out of the political and social conditions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the secretary is an intellectually gifted individual who acts as the agent of a less-gifted, usually aristocratic, patron. In the secretary's hand, the pen proves mightier than the sword.