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GERHART HAUPTMANN
GERHART
HAUPTMANN
His Life and His Work
1862-1912
BY ys^J^Jy^r€^\
KARL HOLL, Ph.D.
LECTURER IK GERMAN AT THE UNIVKRSITY OF LIVERPOOL
LONDON
GAY AND HANCOCK, LIMITED
1913
All Bights Reserved
WILUAM BKBNDON AND SON. LTD.
PRINTERS. PLYMOUTH
7'
NO
^71
5
^1
TO
MY FRIEND
HORST K. WINCKELMANN
274110
" Sic eunt fata hominum."
G. Hauptmann, Die Ratten.
" Nur samtliche Menschen machen die
Menschheit."
Goeihe.
PREFACE
The aim of this essay is to give to the English
reader an introduction to Hauptmann's works
in their relation to his life and character.
My wish is that it may act as a stimulus to
read " Hauptmann ** and to see productions of
his plays on the stage. For an author of the
eminence of Gerhart Hauptmann, surely, ought
to be more widely known in England than he
actually is.
If the style of the study is not hopelessly
un-English it is no merit of mine, but the
result of the kind assistance I obtained in
its revision by my friends the Hon. Mrs.
Chaloner Dowdall and Professor D. J. Sloss,
and of the valuable suggestions of Professor
Oliver Elton and Dr. Graham Brown. Mr.
W. G. Jones most kindly read the proofs.
I am indebted to Professor H. G. Fiedler
for kindly supplying me with some biographical
X Preface
notes, and to my friend Professor R. Petsch
for lending me a copy of the rare ** Pro-
methidenlos " and for freely offering his valu-
able advice.
To all of them I express my heartfelt thanks.
Part of this study was first delivered as an
address to the Liverpool Playgoers' Society on
the eve of Hauptmann's fiftieth birthday, and
was repeated to the Leeds Playgoers on March 6,
1913. K. H.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER A
Gerhart Hauptmann's Life from 1862-1}
PAGR
I
CHAPTER B
Literary Tendenciks of his Time .
13
CHAPTER C
Gerhart Hauptmann's Work from 1889-1912
I. Dramas .....
1. Social Dramas
2. Family Dramas
3. Fairy Dramas
4. Survey of Hauptmann's Dramatic Art 76
n. Novels
HL Theory
Conclusion
J
81
92
102
Bibliography
CHAPTER D
105
Table of Works
CHAPTER E
109
GERHART HAUPTMANN
CHAPTER A
GERHART HAUPTMANN's LIFE FROM 1862-1889*
Gerhart Hauptmann is not unknown in
England. Several of his plays have been
translated into English, some of them — as, for
example, "Lonely Lives" and "Hannele" —
have been produced on the stage. As early
as 1905 the University of Oxford — even prior
to that of Leipzic — conferred upon him the
distinction of the honorary degree of Doctor
of Literature. And yet the general public is
hardly aware of the range of his writings and
of the distinguishing characteristics of his
personality.
♦ Since this paper was written Hauptmann has
gained the singular, but well-deserved, honour of the
Nobel Prize, in November, 1912.
2 Gerhart Hauptmann
On November 15, 1912, Gerhart Hauptmann
celebrated his fiftieth birthday, in the midst of
his beloved family, near Obersalzbrunn in the
Silesian mountains, where he was born and
where he spent the truly happy days of his
youth. As the youngest of three sons he
passed his first years, from 1862 to 1874,
in his home at Obersalzbrunn, where his
father, an upright earnest man, kept an hotel.
The elder Hauptmann came from a modest
family who in a few generations, by their own
labour, had come to comfortable circum-
stances. Gerhart 's mild and devout mother,
bred up in the fear of God and love of
duty, was the daughter of a worthy family
of Government ofiicials.
Hauptmann might repeat the words of
Goethe :
Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur, des Lebens emstes
Fiihren
Vom Miitterchen die Frohnatur, die Lust zu
fabulieren.
But it is always hard to fit individuals to
preconceived epigrams, much harder than to
His Life from 1862-1889 3
fit epigrams to persons. It would be certainly
going too far to conclude in anything more than
a general way that in Gerhart the boy was
the father of the man. He grew up lustily
and cheerfully, though his temper was much
quieter than his brothers'. Although he loved
books, probably an inheritance from his self-
taught, but well-read father, he apparently
loved nature more. He gave himself up to
lonely fanciful dreamings. But he was by no
means merely an imaginative, fantastic lad ;
he could be the wildest amongst his playmates,
and was primus inter pares in the little village.
When seven years old he welcomed his returning
brothers, after a lengthy separation, by a dance
of his own invention, designed to represent a
whirlwind. His days were happy. The first
sorrows came, as they often do, with school-
life, when in Easter, 1874, he was sent to
a secondary school at Breslau.
Gerhart was no scholar ; to the country lad,
town seemed but a prison. He hated school
with its regime of cramming. He was distin-
guished only by his skill in essay-writing and
4 Gerhart Hauptmann
drawing. His young brother, Carl,* was the
only one of his associates to recognize the ability
of his early lyrical exultations. Soon Fate re-
heved the boy. His father, by no neglect of his
own, suffered adverse circumstances, and was
obliged to realize his assets. He left his
paternal home with Httle besides an unstained
character, having paid all his creditors to the
last penny.
Gerhart had to be taken from school, much
to his delight, and was sent to a small estate
belonging to his uncle, where he took the place
of his cousin, who had died young. Here
• Carl Hauptmann is a scientist. He studied in Jena
with Haeckel and in Zurich with Forel. The fruit of his
studies is a valuable publication on " Die Metaphysik in der
modernen Physiologie," r893. He then began to follow the
example of his younger brother, Gerhart, by writing dramas.
Naturally, he was at once considered as a mere imitator of
his greater brother. Yet he is an artistic personality with
real individuality. His special talent seems to lie in narra-
tive. But in lyrical poetry he is gifted, even more so
than Gerhart. His works are :— Plays : •* Marianne," 1894 ;
" Waldleute," 1895 ; ♦♦ Ephraims Breite," 1898 ; •' Die Berg-
schmiede," 1902; *♦ Des Kcinigs Harfe," 1903; •'Die
Austreibung," 1905; "Moses," 1906; " Panspiele," 1909.
Lyrics: •' Sonnenwanderer," 1896; "Aus meinem Tage-
buch," 1900. Fiction: "Aus Hutten am Berge," 1902;
** Mathilde," 1902 ; '* Miniaturen," 1904 ; and his latest novel
"Einhart der Lachler," 191 1,
His Life from 1862-1889 5
again he could breathe the healthy country air.
His childish mind received impressions which
have remained constant throughout his life.
A pious, implicit Christian faith ruled the house,
not fanatically, but still with that singleness
of object pecuHar to the Moravian sect. Bach
and Handel, but also Beethoven, were the
geniuses who hovered round the simple house.
Music and Nature enraptured the soul of the un-
conscious poet, who, having escaped from the
confinement of town life, enjoyed the free life of
the country. His soul grew strong again, and he
felt the emotions for which, long years after-
wards, when he was in Greece, in 1907, he found
expression : '* The peasant's soul was strong
and naive. Strong and naive were his Gods."
Here we notice the change from boy to
youth, here also he finds his first pure love.
Again in his Greek diary he is reminded of his
first love-scene in his uncle's orchard, where he
paces up and down at the side of a seventeen-
year-old maiden. The love idyll is suddenly
interrupted by urchins popping over the fence
and throwing stones. The hero gets violent, but
6 Gerhart Hauptmann
the lovely maiden mildly appeases him as well
as the intruders. One feels in his later writing
how happy he felt then — thirty years ago !
But again Gerhart did not stay here. He
i loved nature, he revered the piety of his rela-
tives, he revelled in music. But his life's
aim was higher. He could not become a
peasant. After two years he revisited Breslau,
this time to study Art, especially sculpture.
So many poets in their years of preparation
have gone through the same course ; for
instance, the Swiss writer, Gottfried Keller,
perhaps the greatest German novelist of the
nineteenth century, and Henrik Ibsen. Their
artistic soul smoulders within them ; it
demands an outlet, and the flame leaps at
everything ; but at last it bursts forth. The
poet has discovered his realm.
So Gerhart Hauptmann went to the Art
School in Breslau. But soon he was in trouble
again, and had it not been for one friend
amongst the professors, he would have been
rusticated after four months. He stayed
another year, until April, 1882, modelling and
His Life from 1862-1889 7
writing youthful, historical dramas. Then he
left to follow his brother Carl as a student at
the University of Jena. Philosophy and
Natural Science were his main subjects of study,
but he did not forget his sculpture. Needless^
to say, a world-renowned scientist like Haeckel
attracted him. The talk of the circle in which,
he lived was centred in scientific and socialist^
ideas, and both these tendencies find theic-
way into his later dramas. But he had not yet
settled down, or steadied himself to express
them. The unsatisfied, surging desire still -
drove him onward. In spring, 1883, he visited
his eldest brother George, then newly married,
in Hamburg, and started from there on a sea
trip to the Mediterranean. He followed in the
wake of Childe Harold, and perceived, like
him, the discrepancy between the beautiful
lands and the creatures therein :
" Oh Christ ! It is a goodly sight to see
What Heaven hath done for this delicious land :
What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree !
What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand I
But man would mar them with an impious hand :
8 Gerhart Hauptmann
And when the Almighty hfts his fiercest scourge
'Gainst those who most transgress his high
command.
With treble vengeance will his hot shafts urge
Gaul's locust host, and earth from fellest foemen
purge."
In Marseilles Hauptmann left the boat and
travelled by train along the Riviera to Genoa,
where he met his brother Carl. Together they
went to Naples and spent six happy weeks in
Capri. They parted, Carl going back and
Gerhart remaining in Rome till the malarial
fever drove him home also.
The fruit of this long voyage is Gerhart
Hauptmann's first published book, an epic —
" Promethidenlos," 1885. Hauptmann after-
wards withdrew it from sale, so that there
are only a few copies extant. He himself
recognized its deficiencies in metre, rhyme, and
substance. But there are two notes ringing
through the whole epic which sound through
\ all Hauptmann's future work : pity for the
darkness of wretched humanity ; longing for
the light of heavenly beauty. He himself is
His Life from 1862-1889 9
the hero Selin, who shudders at the sight of
the misery in the slums of Naples, whose heart
bleeds for those wretched creatures who sell
their bodies and kill their souls. Here he pro-
nounces the beautiful words :
" Die Dichter sind die Thranen der Geschichte :
Die heisse Zeiten mit Begierde schliirfen."
But Hauptmann had not yet found his calling,
whether to follow the Muse with the chisel
or with the lute. The hero Selin of his epic
cannot decide — his end was a grave at sea.
Meanwhile Hauptmann hurried back to a
house set high among the Thuringian moun-
tains. Four sisters, bereft of their father, lived
here an idyllic existence. The eldest had already
been carried off by George, the eldest brother of
Gerhart. Carl carried off the brunette Martha,
and young Gerhart felt drawn towards the
southern beauty of Mary. Long afterwards he
describes the sisters, the beautiful seclusion of
their lives, and their wooing. In 1891, when
travelling by train along the base of the moun-
tain, he called out to his companion : " Should
lo Gerhart Hauptmann
I ever write a Midsummer Night's Dream, it
could only have its setting over there." Four-
teen years afterwards, in 1905, he reedly wrote
it. It was published in 1907, and soon with-
drawn from the stage. It certainly had its
deficiencies, but yet I should sadly miss, in a
collection of Hauptmann's works, his " Jung-
fern vom Bischofsberg " — " The Maidens of
Bischofsberg." It is bathed in a lyrical,
harmonic atmosphere, which is expressed by
one of its characters : " Beautiful, camerado,
but also melancholy." Brown-red autumn
colours lend to it their tones. A romantic
dreamland rises before us. Four sisters live
and are wooed by their suitors in ancient
Gothic halls surrounded by parks and vine-
yards. The end of the Midsummer Night's
Dream is : All's well that ends well. There is
little action, but exquisite sentiment. We
listen to Hauptmann's half-melancholy, half-
humorous recollections of the happy days he
spent there, and seem to Usten to a delightful
and romantic fairy tale.
To this place — " Hohenhaus " — Gerhart
His Life from 1862-1889 1 1
went from Italy, where he soon became en-
gaged to Mary. He entered the Art Academy
of Dresden to continue his studies in sculpture,
and returned to Rome in 1884, but severe fever
confined him to bed. Nursed by his betrothed,
he recovered, and once more went back to
Hohenhaus in spring.
In May Gerhart, now twenty-two and
still undecided which Muse to follow, married
his bride in Dresden, whence they went to live
in Berlin. There, following Richard Wagner's (
theory of the " work of art of the future,"
he thought to unite plastic art and poetry
by becoming an actor, and he took up serious
studies. Again he gave it up, and feeling
oppressed by the stone walls and the stifling
air of the town, fled once more to the healthy,
regenerating countryside. He went with his
young wife, his brother and a friend, to Riigen
to breathe the sea air. The atmosphere of the
island is felt in his latest published drama —
" Gabriel Schilling's Flight."
In the autumn they returned to live in Erkner,
a pleasant suburb which is to Berlin what
1 2 Gerhart Hauptmann
Chislehurst is to London. There he at last
found rest and stayed for four happy years,
during which time three sons were born to
him respectively in 1886, 1887, and 1889— the
great year of Hauptmann's life, when his first
drama was published and staged.
CHAPTER B
LITERARY TENDENCIES OF HIS TIME
During those four years at Erkner Hauptmann
acquired his dramatic ideals and technique.
Here he came into close contact with all the
new tendencies which were then current in the
literary life of Germany. Various forces
were at work. In the middle of the century,
what is commonly known as the breakdown
of German idealism had numbed all enthusiasm
for philosophy and poetry. As the great
historian of literature, Gervinus, expressed it :
The time of fiction and idea had passed ; the
time of will and deed had come. It is the time
when Schopenhauer at last gained the fame so
long delayed. His pessimism, which Eduard
von Hartmann had made the fashionable
philosophy, was only too effective to turn the
mind aside from lofty speculation to the world
13
\
14 Gerhart Hauptmann
of hard facts. The glorious rise of empirical
science contributed to the same end. Not
ideas, but matter, counted. Materialism held
sway.
These decades after 1850 are as philistine
as any in the history of German literature, in
spite of the names of Keller, Fontane, Rabe,
Heyse. What was looked for in the theatres
was amusement, and nothing but amusement.
Not that I denounce this as an absolutely in-
artistic aim. But their amusement consisted
in the flattest satisfaction of superficial senti-
mentality and sensuality. Black and white
drawings became a requirement on the stage ;
fair heroes and black villains ; reward to the
former and punishment to the latter. Poetic
justice triumphed. Fiat justitia, pereat mundus.
Displays of feelings were welcomed, so long as
they were not rooted in the fathomless depths
of human nature. Dramatic Art gives ex-
pression to its creations through an exalted
language.
But there will always be times of decadence
In Art when the artistic diction as a means is
Literary Tendencies of his Time 1 5
confused with the artistic creation as an aim.
These are the barren times of the rhetorical
drama, which instead of a Hving creation gives
a dead and hollow pathos. In those epochs
the artist has to seek for the true springs
of creative art. It might have been expected
that the Franco-German War, which at last
brought the realization of the long-desired
ideal of a German Empire, would have inspired
the dry poetic brains with jubilant enthusiasm.
It failed to do so, for the materialistic fetters
were too strong to be shaken off. The result
of the union was a grand display of energy in
the fields of industry and commerce. That
great practical genius, Bismarck, by the
example and success of his life-work, inaugu-
rated a period of intense practical activity
throughout the nation. Positivism was its
domain, together with historical science with
the minuteness of its methods adapted from
the rising natural sciences, and finally psy-
chology with its empirical foundation.
Gradually the crude materialistic Weltan-
schammg gave way. There was as yet only
1 6 Gerhart Hauptmann
a general ferment which awaited the leaven
of new ideals. These could not be wholly
created from within ; the new forces which
at the end of the seventies and the beginning of
the eighties slowly created new convictions of
literary aims, came chiefly from outside. As
the age was inclined through historical and
scientific reasons to disregard the political
boundaries, as it, in fact, tended to cosmo-
politanism, artists looked abroad for what
. they could not find at home.
The intellectual life of France had undeir
gone a complete change between 1850 and
1870, and it is atjincfi. felt in poetry in the
widest sense^^^^t is the age of Naturalism
in literature. Balzac, Flaubert, the brothers
Goncourt, and finally Zola, are known well
enough as both the founders and masters of
the new Realism in Art. Comte's Positivism is
strongly alive in it. The new Art obtained
j its material from nature and experience, its
^principle of selection and its aim are Reason
and Truth, its method is borrowed from the
dominating Natural Sciences. The sponsors
Literary Tendencies of his Time 1 7
of the marriage between Uterature and science
are Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. It
often seems as if novels and dramas were only
written to exemplify their theories ; natural-
istic poetry and natural science cannot be
separated. Xs it a wonder, then, that the
young German writers who had most of them, ]
like Gerhart Hauptmann, sat at the feet of the^
great scientific theorist Haeckel in Jena,
who had studied under Forel and others in
Zurich, at once felt jtroijgl^,,(toWB^^^^
this Naturalism ?
From its outset Naturalism is connected^
with ^of^^alism. Xhey. rise. jon the same basis —
the minute investigation into the atomistic y
iiature of reality^ ^ Socialism was founded in
Germany as early as 1863 by Ferdinand
Lassalle. Checked by the patriotic wave of the
war, it sprang up again after the terrible crash
of the Griinderjahre — those years of reckless
speculation — and was kindled to a blaze by the
anti-socialist legislation after 1878. Naturally,
this forceful movement lound . channels into
hteratjar£U-_and_fl.Q5dSiijit. We have already
/
1 8 Gerhart Hauptmann
heard that the eadiest pubHcation of Haupt-
\^ mann bears full witness to this in its keynote
of sympathy with the poorest of the poor.
Those various tendencies were focussed in
two centres of Germany — in Munich and
Berlin. In the latter town it was chiefly the
work of the brothers Hart, who set forth the
new literary ideals in their *' Critical Duels " of
1885. They felt they could never sufficiently
admire Zola's devotion to truth, his realism ;
this must be the leaven of all poetry. But on
the other side, they were independent enough
to point out the deficiencies of his theories.
They firmly denounced the identification of
poetry with psychological science as Zola had
expressed it : '* Le retour ^ la nature, revolu-
tion naturaliste, qui emporte le si^cle, pousse
peu a peu toutes les manifestations de I'intelli-
gence humaine dans une meme vie scientifique."
They emphatically enunciated in accord with
Zola that no matter, not even the vulgar
and immoral, is in itself unpoetical. " What
x/ the poet represents is indifferent ; it only
matters that he represents it as a poet." " The
Literary Tendencies of his Time 1 9
how, not' the what, tells." But even here we
find the connexion with Zola who expressly
stated the substance of poetry and fiction
to be '* un coin de la nature vu a travers un
temperament." There we have already the
recognition of the ultra-naturalistic and indi- '^
vidual moment in artistic production.
However, the brothers Hart did not state the
principle that form is the fundamental element
in literary work. Their guiding principles were /
social and ethical rather than aesthetic. They
wrote : *' Our combats do not decide between
the Ugly and the Beautiful, but between
Good and Evil ; our Weltanschauung is not
optimistic hke the Greek, and our ideal is not
the a'wrSoi/, the becoming, the harmony of the
formal, but the love, which descends to the
depths of human nature and knows how to
glorify misery and sickness."
In 1886, a year after the appearance of the
" Critical Duels," a literary club was formed
in Berlin, where these fundamental principles
of Hart were matured and reduced to a
more precise and lucid statement. The Club
20 Gerhart Hauptmann
'^^D]ji;^lLlLia.Df the greatest importance in the
yatfilX-SLlfladern (idiniin literature. Soci^t^
igts, indiyiduahsts, ncitiiral scientists, all jouud
themselves united in their endeavour to further
their Hterary aims, and, Hke most of his frienda*__
Gerhart. Hauptmann joined it in May^ 1887,^
after having celebrated its first anniversary in
his house at Erkner. The general trend of the
minds assembled therein was towards a combina^*
tion of social ethics with profound psychology.
They could not look for better exponents than
were to be found in Russian and Scandinavian
hterature. One has only to think of Tolstoy,
Dostoyevsky, Ibsen, to be convinced of the
height of their almost religious attitude in
social ethics and of their unrivalled power of
psychological characterization. Their works
were leavening the entire production of modern
German writers.
It is true that at first they were hailed in
Germany under rather a misapprehension.
They were looked upon as faithful adherents
to the dogma of Naturalism, whichJustJJien
took its finaLiorm in the work of Arno Holz,
Literary Tendencies of his Time 21
the originator of the so-called " consequent
naturalism. ' ' Holz widens the ' ' milieu " theory
of Hippolyte Taine and the Aristotelian
mimesis to an absolute photography of nature.
He coins — in rather clumsy style — the defini-
tion : "Art tends to revert to Nature. It
becomes Nature in proportion to its respective
conditions of reproduction and their treat-
ment." A purely atomistic and mechanical
nature is reconstructed by the most exact
scientific method to give a complete empirical
understanding of world and nature as it is —
in his eyes. As a fruit of his minute investiga-
tion into everyday life, he, together with a
colleague of his, Johannes Schlaf, published a
small volume of sketches entitled " Papa Ham-
let," which appeared in 1888 as a translation
from a Norwegian author.
A year afterwards, in i88g, a drama was
pubhshed and dedicated to this supposititious
Bjarne Peter Holmsen. It is the first published
drama o^ Gerhart Hauptmann, and has the
title " Vor Sonnenaufgang " — ** Before Sun-
rise." There would have been no chance of its
\,
22 Gerhart Hauptmann
production in any of the then existing muni-
cipal or state stages. But just previously the
Parisian Theatre Libre of Andre Antoine
had visited Berlin and influenced some
literary men there, among them Hart, Theo-
dore Wolf, now the editor of the " Berliner
Tageblatt," the well-known Maximilian
Harden, Otto Brahm, now Director of the
famous Lessing Theater in Berlin,* and Paul
* After this essay had been written the news arrived that
Otto Brahm had died suddenly. Modern German drama
loses in him one of its prominent leaders. Endowed with
thorough scholarship which qualified him to write the best
biography of Kleist existing, he was gifted with an unerr-
ingly keen feeling for dramatic value. It was this which
made him recognize Hauptmann's dramatic power from the
first. He brought Hauptmann's plays before the public long
before the ordinary theatres were open to them. He was the
practical genius among the circle of the ardent supporters of
Hauptmann's art. He staged all his plays in the best pro-
ductions they have had. At first he threw open to them the
" Freie Biihne," then the ** Deutsches Theater," and in the
last years the "Lessing Theater," of which he was the most
famous Director and will be for a long time to come. His
name is inseparably connected with the rise of the modem
German drama. Gerhart Hauptmann, at the bier of Otto
Brahm, on Sunday, ist December, said : ** The work of this
man was partly my work, and my work was partly his. This
profoundly valuable man was distinguished by the special
German qualities of idealism, not of a vague idealism, but
of a firmly founded one, produced by fulfilment of duty and
circumspection." Requiescat in pace I
I
Literary Tendencies of his Time 23
Schlenther, afterwards Director of the Vienna
Court Theatre, to follow its example, by
founding a so-called free theatre — " Freie
Biihne/' In September, 1889, it was opened
with Ibsen's '* Ghosts." The second drama
to be produced was written by an unknown
author ; it was Gerhart Hauptmann's " Vor
Sonnenaufgang " ; it was the rise of his
dramatic sun.
CHAPTER C
GERHART HAUPTMANN's WORK FROM 1889-I912
I. Dramas
I. Social Dramas
" VoR SoNNENAUFGANG " was produced on
- October 20, 1889, amidst unprecedented stormy
scenes both of approval and dissent, and at
once put its young author in to the foremost
rank of German playwrights. It focussed in
itself all those various literary tendencies of
, which we have been speaking. During his years
(f in at Erkner Hauptmann read almost every book
V a) on sociological problems he could get hold ci^
\i and naturally his drama is a proof of it^ The
^^^ chief interest is in social-ethical problems.
^it>^^ By the discovery of coal on their property
a peasant family has come to immense wealth,
and thereby to unaccustomed luxury. In-
His Work from 1889-1912 25
- stead of giving up their life to daily work as
r previous generations had done, they spend it
- in idleness, and in consequence are driven
to all sorts of base vices. Immorality rules
- the house, i The eldest daughter is married to
a low, mean, and sensual character. At the
opening of the play his former schoolfellow,
Loth, who has come to study labour and
housing conditions in the Silesian mountains,
enters the house. He at once starts to preach
his idealistic creed of abstinence and morality.
The youngest daughter, by being brought up
in the Moravian community, has been kept
/ clean from the contamination of a home, where-
in the father is a drunken beast and the step-
mother is as coarse and brutal as she is vain.
She is to be married to the idiot son of a neigh-
bour who lives in adultery with her mother.
This horrible milieu reminds us of Tolstoy's
grand and sinister drama " The Power of Dark-
ness." It was due to this portrait of the lowest
immoraHty that Hauptmann was hailed as the '
hero of Naturalism. It remained unnoticed
that he already had departed from naturalistic
26 Gerhart Hauptmann
dogma by depicting the growing love between
the young girl Helen and the idealist Loth, in
the course of which Hauptmann gives us, in
the fourth act, the most charming love-scene
which has been written in modern German
drama. His own soft nature in its overflowing
wealth of feeling breaks through. The portrait
of Helen is one of his finest creations, and
ranks with the best to be found in German
literature. Her partner. Loth, on the other
side, is an absolute failure. He is a blubbering
theorist, invented to put forth the sociological
problems the author has at heart, which are
clearly indicated by the milieu. When hearing
^ that his chosen bride, who desires to be rescued
from the squalor of her parental home, belongs
, to a family of hereditary drunkards, he de-
1 parts, leaving her without explanation, without
I consolation. The play ends in tragedy for the
vpoor girl, who commits suicide. Thus, by
the strength of his artistic individuaHty,
Hauptmann has himself crossed his aim of
\ creating a " social drama," which denomination
he chose as sub-title of his work.
His Work from 1889-1912 27
The next social drama is the greatest he has
written — " The Weavers," written in 1892, in
broad Silesian dialect — in EngHsh the York-
shire dialect would best correspond to it — and
produced on the Free Stage on February 26,
1893. It had a tremendous success, due to its
own artistic merits, but also to the blind
futility of the censor who forbade its produc-
tion. In purely dramatic. technique it is perhaps
Hauptmann's boldest attempt, and in that he
fully succeeded it shows his dramatic power.
Instead of selecting one individual as^-hero-oi,
the tragedy, to bear his message, he does not
hesitate to make the whole mass of weavers
the focus of _ the drama. They sing, as he
once put it in one of his few lyrical attempts,
" mit Donnergeton, das Lied, so finster und
doch so schon, das Lied von unserm Jahr-
hundert." Their unlimited misery is the
theme. Hauptmann having grown up in
the weaving centre in Silesia, knows it well.
He dedicates the drama to his father, who
had told him the tale of his own father,
of how he had to work and to suffer as
/
28 f*^ Gerhart Hauptmann
a poor weaver himself. It is the expression
of his deep pity, and sincere concern, for the
wretched conditions of those people who work
from early morning to late at night until
they become bent and blind, and yet are
half-starved, have no money to buy bread, or
to buy medicine for^ their sick, although the
sick-bed is never empty. Instead of food
they have stones to satisfy their hunger,
and if they kill a dog their starved stomachs
cannot digest it. The drama opens with
the situation arising from a proposal to
reduce their wages. They can endure it no
longer, and still are too weak to rise up
against it. But gradually even they become
possessed with the spirit of revolt. A young
man, just home from his military service,
tells them of the life in the town out-
side their wretched hovels. A song is circu-
lated among them, called the Blood Justice —
" Das Blutgericht." It is their confederate
song, it becomes their creed, prayer, and
symbol. In a grand scene at the close of
the third act, all of them, poor, ragged,
/
His Work from 1889-1912 29
half-starved creatures as they are, burst
out with the revolutionary tune. It rings
through the streets, and they march to their
employer's house and demolish it just after he
has escaped. In the fifth act soldiers come to
restore order, but the v/eavers stand up against
them, and succeed in driving them back ;
at that moment a volley is discharged, and a
stray bullet flies through a window, hitting
the only man who has not taken part in the
rebellion. He was sitting throughout behind
his loom, working, and praying most devoutly
to the Almighty. Here the curtain drops.
Hauptmann had made profound studies for
this work, and besides his own knowledge of
the actual condition, he consulted the records
of the weavers' revolt in the forties, a story
which he adapted for his drama. It consists
of successive pictures and situations, and yet
it is an inseparable unity and entity, by reason
of the atmosphere which pervades it from
beginning to end. I repeat — "The Weavers" U
is Gerhart Hauptmann's greatest social drama.
Two years before this play Hauptmann
/
30 Gerhart Hauptmann
wrote an interesting novel : " Bahnwarter
Thiel" (Thiel the Railway-Guard). A simple
railway-guard is left a widower with an only
child, who was specially entrusted to his care
by the dying mother. To fulfil his promise
he marries again, a strong, robust lass who
soon has the command of the house. More
and more drawn to her by mere sexual attrac-
tion, he has not the power to resist the ill-
treatment of his child. Finally, through her
carelessness, it is killed by a train. His passion
suddenly rises to frenzy. He kills her and
her child. The neighbours discover him and
find him mad. Naturalistic in structure, there
are almost lyrical descriptions of the beautiful
forests round Berlin, and passages almost
psychic when the simple-minded railway-
guard gives himself up in his solitude to the
worship of his deceased wife.
Eleven years afterwards, in 1898, Gerhart
Hauptmann took up this story again and
welded it into one of his best social dramas —
" Fuhrmann Henschel." Again the technique
is of naturalistic exactitude, filled with re-
His Work from 1889-1912 31
miniscences of Hauptmann's own home. Here
a dying wife makes her husband promise
not to marry again. Yet he finds it
necessary to break his promise, the woman
being the very servant girl to whom his
former wife had objected. The buxom wench
has a past, and soon turns her attention to
another man. In the meantime, just as in the
novel, the man's appetites more and more
take possession of him. But there is a differ-
ence between the novel and the drama : the
former treated of a purely individual psycho-
logical problem ; here we have a social problem.
Henschel's existence is inseparably bound up
with his social respectability. By his wife's
reckless effrontery and his own pitiful weakness
it is gradually destroyed. We have here a
character like the father in Hebbel's " Maria
Magdalene." Henschel's fate is the more
tragic because he feels himself responsible
for his lost social honour and even, perhaps,
for the death of his first child, who follows
its mother to the grave in a short time. He
has broken the word he had pledged,-4ie has
32 Gerhart Hauptmann
violated his honour. Again we are confronted
with occult elements which already appeared
in the short story. The departed wife's
shade haunts him, he blames himself for all
that has happened, and finally he dies. With
great skill Hauptmann has contrived to weld
together the social miUeu and the portrait of
an individual driven step by step to his own
destruction.
He set himself a similar task five years after-
wards, in 1903, in " Rose Bernd." Again we
see an individual character, this time a woman
is indissolubly connected with its social milieu,
and its whole structure predestined by it to its
own doom. It is again the story of Hebbel's
" Maria Magdalene." A full-blooded young
woman, instinctively resenting marriage with
her destined suitor, who is a consumptive,
becomes involved with the bailiff of the village.
He is a man in the prime of life, whose wife
has been bedridden for ten years, and he
sincerely loves the strong and healthy girl. To
cover her fall, she yields to a sensual villain,
thereby injuring her social honour in the
y
His Work from 1889-1912 3^
attempt to shield it. The villain boasts of his
success, and her honest, somewhat pharisaical,
father insists on a libel action. She commits
perjury, and finally ends as the murderess of
her newly-born babe. By an absolutely irre-
sistible necessity she is driven onand,
she comes to this final deed. / This development
of character within the iron confines of her
socialjbasi^ is most perfect dramatic art, and
what is more, (J&auptmann's characters are
living beings of flesh and bone, and not mere ^
exemplifications of ideas. In creating them,
Hauptmann can avail himself of the fruits of '^
his long-continued studies in sculpture. His !>
artistic eye sees men and situations corporeally,
not as mere shadowy spectres. It may happen
that they are only carved out in relief, but
they are always individual and characteristic. .
Plastic imagination which he once pronounced,/
tobe " the essential happiness of human , f^
cognisance," is also the essential feature of his^^^
mind. <^
The best example of it is perhaps the chief
female character in Hauptmann's recent play,
34 Gerhart Hauptmann
which may also be called a social drama, " Die
Ratten " (The Rats), produced in 191 1 in
Berlin. It clearly shows how the social sur-
roundings influence the character, the whole
attitude towards life and its most profound
problems. The longing of a mother for a child
to replace her first-born which had died soon
after birth, strengthened by the concurrence
of the wishes of her dearly-beloved husband,
grow more and more, and finally gain
possession of all her thoughts. She contrives
to get a newly born, fatherless babe, and at
last connives at the death of the rightful
mother when she asserts her claim to the child.
The discovery of the whole tragedy involves
her own death. The story is curiously and,
it must be said, often too lightly linked with a
parallel story in the play of a stage Director,
his daughter and her lover. But this parallel
story in its humorous structure adds the most
effective contrast to the sombre tragedy we
witness. Besides, it affords us the most in-
teresting information about Hauptmann's own
life. In more than one way he is the lover
His Work from 1889-1912 35
of the Director's daughter. The model for
the father is his own teacher, Hessel, with
whom he studied acting when he came to
BerHn. He himself is Spitta, the lover with
the defect in speech, who resents all hollow
rhetoric. Brahm, the first discoverer of the
genius in *' Vor Sonnenaufgang," late manager
of the Lessing Theater, where all the plays of
Hauptmann are first produced, did not allow
it in his theatre. The character of Spitta in
the play enunciates Hauptmann's conception
of Art, when he considers acting to be a
" valueless accident in the drama," when he
negatives " poetic justice, guilt and punish-
ment," when he thinks that * '(According to
circumstances a carter or a charwoman from
the slums may be just as good a subject for
tragedy as Lady Macbeth and King Lear/^
*' Before Art, as before Law, all men are
equal." Of course, there is not an absolute
identification of Spitta and Hauptmann, but
only of an epoch in Hauptmann's Hfe,
namely, in 1885 when he intended to become
an actor, and had the same convictions as
36 Gerhart Hauptmann
those put forth by H. Hart, in the *' Critical
Duels/' of the same year — " return to young
Goethe, to Lessing, to Diderot." Both have
the same emotional basis, that effervescence
for the " Special, Sombre, Great," and that
confidence that " In ourselves He the germs."
But especially the ethical structure of both is
alike. Spitta feels the same burning pity for
the poorest on earth which we have noted
already in Sehn, the hero of the " Prome-
\- thidenlos." These religious ethics pervade
Hauptmann's character and determine his
attitude towards life. Thus the " Ratten,"
excellent as it is in its relentless tragedy, in its
most pathetic and yet most human portrait of
Frau John, is of great personal value.
The comic element here is well used to set
forth the chief tragedy. The play is called
" Tragicomoedie." But Hauptmann has also
V treated social problems in purely comic
technique, and in this way gave us what may
well be called the best modern comedy in
German literature — " Der Biberpelz " (The
Beaver Coat). The contrast of bare reahty
His Work from 1889-1912 ^^^
with the presumptuous honesty of the heroine
of the play, the washerwoman, Mrs. Wolff,
produces the most comic effect. Hauptmann
realizes that the field of the comic is the in-
tellect, and he contrives to raise the aspect of
all actions to this level, in order to prevent any
ethical and moral ill-feeling from damaging its
humour. He therefore chooses an old literary
device — a scene in court — to form the setting
of a comedy. The contrast of the blind and
pretentious judge with the clever washerwoman
who is the moving spirit in everything and
pretends to know nothing, is perfect comedy.
All thefts, at first the wood — the policeman
unwittingly assisting the thief — then the fur
coat, are committed by Mrs. Wolff, and yet the
honest soul is never suspected. It is a scene
of thrilling humour, when we see together
in court the judge, the thief, the owner of the
stolen goods, its receiver, the wrongly suspected,
and the thief, Mrs. Wolff, the only calm one
of the lot, domineering by her acknowledged
respectability.
Eight years afterwards, in 1901, Hauptmann
38 Gerhart Hauptmann
took up this subject again, and wrote the
tragi-comedy " Der Rote Hahn " (The Red
Cock). It naturally loses in comparison with
the former play, which lifted the spectator
up to the serene sphere of humour, from which
lofty point of vantage everything in the seg-
ment of the world which the poet shows us
looks small and trifling, and where our feelings
find vent in joyous and cheerful laughter.
In the new play Hauptmann deliberately sets
himself another aim — he emphasizes much
more the ethical aspect of Mrs. Wolff's charac-
ter, and thereby leads us into the field of
tragedy. This, of course, is artistically fully
justified. But he does not fully succeed in
bringing out the tragedy, and loses the effect
of the comedy. On the other side, it must be
acknowledged that we are biassed by the
strength of the former comedy to expect the
old Mrs. Wolff in her cherished portrait, and
arc disappointed when we discover features
unknown hitherto.
His Work from 1889-1912 39
2. Family Dramas
These social dramas form one part of
Hauptmann's art. But his is a strong in-
dividuality. And he had not in vain lived
among those young Berlin writers of the
Club " Durch/' on whom Max Stirner, that
famous individualist, already exerted a
great and deep influence, and where, later,
the star of Nietzsche's individualistic creed
rose to unparalleled heights. It is only
natural then that Gerhart Hauptmann should
take a profound and serious interest in the
handUng of individuahstic problems. JQie
outcome of it is a series of-so^called Family
Dramas. The first of them is " Das Friedens*.
fest " (The Coming of Peace), dedicated to the
great German novelist, Theodore Fontane,
who, from the outset, had recognized Haupt-
mann's genius. As its motto it bears on the
title-page a passage from Lessing : ** They
find action in no tragedy but that in which
the lover kneels down, etc. It has never struck
\
40 Gerhart Hauptmann
them that every internal conflict of passions,
every sequence of antagonistic thoughts, where
one annihilates the other, may also be an
action ; perhaps they think and feel too
mechanically to be conscious of any activity.
To refute them seriously were fruitless labour."
These words of Lessing approach very closely
to those which Hauptmann himself uses in the
preface to the first collected edition of his works
in 1906. It shows how much the young play-
wright of 1890, whom everybody believed to be
a revolutionary in dramatic art, was in accord
with the classical exponent of dramatic tech-
nique. TAfter October 20, 1889, however, Gerhart
Hauptmann's name stood for that of the prophet
of naturalism and the apostle of ugliness^ " Das
Friedensfest," his second drama, was pubhshed
in 1890. He takes up the problem of heredity,
already touched upon in his first play, and
handling it with perfect technique, focusses
all the interest on one family.
Later on, in the diary of his Greek voyage,
Hauptmann reiterates the problem in another
connexion, showing how deeply he was affected
His Work from 1889-1912 41
by it. — " I am convinced that deep antagonism
between near relatives is to be counted amongst
the most gruesome phenomena of human
psychology. In such struggles it may happen
that ardent love and ardent hatred run parallel
— that love and hatred are to be found in each
of the combatants at the same time and of the
same strength. This produces the exquisite
tortures and the endlessness of such conflicting
emotions. Love makes them eternal, hate
alone would soon bring them to decision. What
could be more terrible than the strangeness of
those who know each other."
No doubMn these family dramas_Gerhart
Hauptmann is the best disciple of Henrik X*
Ibsen. In the play in question various
members of a family who have been scattered
all over the world by their irreconcilable
individual hereditary characters, meet together
to celebrate Christmas, the day of peace.
All at first seems to be harmonious, but.
immediately the different characters move
one against the other. There is an atmo-
sphere throughout the play, like a heavy.
42 Gerhart Hauptmann
summer day, the clouds veiling the sky more
and more like a black, impenetrable wall,
until the flash of lightning disperses them.
The unique tragic effect is unrivalled in
Hauptmann's other plays.
" Das Friedensfest " is the best example of
how the naturalistic drama drifts against the
iron limits of the rules of French classical drama.
Within a few hours, from afternoon to eveuing,
in the same room, the tragedy develops and
comes to an end. In dramatic concentration
it is only to be compared with Ibsen's best
plays. It also shows Ibsen's technique in
throwing light from opposite sides on the same
problem in successive dramas. In Haupt-
mann's first drama the healthy Loth forsakes
Helene, who is foredoomed by heredity.
Now the pessimistic gloom is inverted. Wilhelm
is the son of his broken-down father with all
his morbid nervousness. His brother Robert
openly tells him of the taint. He himself
despairs ; but his betrothed, who is strong
and healthy, trusts him entirely. She throws
in her lot with his, and declares herself de-
His Work from 1889-1912 43
pendent on him. This unwavering confidence
will restore his strength and health, if this be
possible. Of course, Hauptmann does not
bluntly tell us it does, but we are impressed
with this absolutely optimistic conviction.
He leaves room for the wiseacres to discuss the
issue and future development. Perhaps it would
have been more discussed than it actually was
if they had not got weary of such problems
after the storm Ibsen's " A Doll's House "
had excited. If nothing else, the principle that
to support the weak strengthens the supporter
himself, clearly proves that Hauptmann did
not absolutely side with the selfish considera-
tions of Loth in his first play. It is a principle
of truly Christian ethics. Hauptmann, even
then, does not seem to have been much im-
pregnated by the anarchical doctrines of Max
Stirner, Nietzsche's forerunner, who, however,
had ardent supporters in the Club " Durch,"
as for instance John Henry Mackay, the lyrical
poet of Scotch origin. There is some relief
in this Christian optimism from the sombre,
tragic"^tmosphere which enshrouds the^glay.
Il^a
44 Gerhart Hauptmann
which is never cleared, not even by
charmingly simple song as :
*' Wenn im Hag der Lindenbaum
Wieder bliiht,
Huscht der alte Friihlingstraum
Durch mein treu Gemiit ! '*
It is like a sudden blue speck in the over-
clouded sky. Asensitive nervousness domi-
nates the various characters. This too is a
sign of that time.
It comes out more strongly in the next play,
" Einsame Menschen " (Lonely Lives), of 1891,
where the contemporary nervous strain senilis
to be concentrated in the hero, Johannes
Yockerat. Gerhart Hauptmann prefixed to it
the sombre dedication, " I put this drama
into the hands of those who have hved it."
He has lived it. It has already been remarked
how long he had to struggle until he found his
own vocation. A good deal of himself lives
in this Johannes Vockerat. He has broken the
tradition of his paternal home, and thro\yn
overboard his old beliel, ..iiit „^.whi^ was.
His Work from 1889-1912 45
broi^jpl up. He turned to the new gods
hima up by natural science, by men like
Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, and Herbert
Spencer. He is the type of those unsettled
years_in_ the eighties and nineties. His wife is
a tender, loving woman, who in vain struggles
to free herself from the traditional bonds,
to be to him the companion for whom his
artistic soul is longing. And when he finally
finds one in the student, Anna Mahr, he
himself feels too weak to shake off the shackles,
and drowns himself. Hauptmann himself has
been strong enough to live the new life, he has
fulfilled what Spitta promised. But it was
not without the hardest of fights, just as it is
foreseen at the close of the fragment " Aus den
Memoiren eines Edelmannes " (From the
Memoirs of a Nobleman), which Hauptmann
published in the " Tag " on December 25,
1907.
Here Jn our play there is already raised the
same problem which was to be of the utmost
significance for Hauptmann's own life — the.
problem of the man placed between two women.
46 Gerhart Hauptmann
Here Johannes solves it in favour of his legal
wife. But he perishes. A few years after-
wards Hauptmann had to fight it out for
himself. In 1905 he was divorced, and he
subsequently married Margarethe Marschalk, an
actress and violinist ; their son is now thirteen
years old. It is obvious what a man of Haupt-
mann's sensitive and impressionable character
must have suffered in the preceding ten years,
when he almost gave up talking to anybody —
when even he would hardly see his most in-
timate friends. At last, when all was over in
1905, he set out for his long-desired Greek
voyage, and we can now understand his hidden
meaning as we read the passage quoted above.
The problem did not leave his mind. He made
another attempt to dispose of it in Goethe's
manner. It was in 1907 that he wrote " Gabriel
SchiUing's Flucht " (Gabriel SchilHng's Flight).
When it was first published, in January, 1912,
in the journal *' Die Neue Rundschau," it was
significantly prefaced by the words : " The
following drama was written in the year 1906.
I have rather feared than desired its production.
His Work from 1889-1912 47
therefore it has not taken place. To-day I
should not like to put the work to the hazard
of a production. It is no affair for the general
public, but for the purely passive and intimate
attention of a small circle. My desire, which
cannot be fulfilled, is for one single performance
in the most perfect style, in the most intimate
theatre." His desire was granted, for in the
small theatre of Goethe, in Lauchstedt, his
play was produced in the summer of 1912,
before a select audience, by a perfect cast of
actors, with scenery painted by the greatest
living artist of Germany, Max Liebermann. It
is now produced everywhere in Germany. An
artist stands between his commonplace wife,
whose interests are petty and materialistic,
and the Russian, who has a son by him, and
to whom he feels irresistibly drawn, although
he acknowledges his own weakness. Haupt-
mann himself had lived on the island of Riigen,
to which Gabriel Schilhng fled to start a
new and healthier life ; the catastrophe over-
whelms him.
There are singular beauties in this play,
t^
48 Gerhart Hauptmann
such as the meeting of the rival women before
the door of the dying artist. This spontaneous
outburst of human nature reveals the great
dramatist. But what I like best in the play is
its unique and even atmosphere, like bracing
sea air which enwraps the whole drama, as if
^ it were a lyrical poem.
y. \ Again, Hauptmann shows that his eye is
;■, not only quick to see the tragic element in
individual problems, but that he knows how
to raise these problems to the level of humour. /
His first comedy, ** Kollege Crampton," which
he wrote in a few weeks during the year 1891,
and which was inspired by Moli^re, is full proof
of it. In most determined realism — he does not
even disdain to give the broadest hints of the
real persons standing behind the characters of
the play — he draws the portrait of the Professor
of Art in the Academy of Breslau, where he
himself had been studying, and gives us the
most delightful Rembrandtesque picture we
could desire. Again, we see an artist descend-
ing lower and lower and blaming his material
istic wife for it. But yet there is hope. His
His Work from 1889-1912 49
guardian angel is his daughter, who finally,
with the help of noble-minded friends — they
bear the maiden name of Hauptmann's
mother — rescues the drunkard from the slum
and sets him up in a new life, and we feel con-
fident he will not shame her. It is the lucid
realism, the human sentiment and the deeply
penetrating psychological intuition of Haupt-
mann, as displayed in this comedy, that attract
us so much.
Once more it is the profound psychology
which is prominent in the next drama of this
series, "Michael Kramer," 1900. It is a double
tragedy — the tragedy of ugliness and the
tragedy of misunderstanding between father
and son — again the horrible " antagonism of
near relatives." The son is ugly and shuns
society, as did Hauptmann himself, at that
time feeling himself dishonoured and isolated.
And yet in that ugly body there lives a burning
desire for love. Everywhere rejected, by father
and by the girl he loves, he despairs and dies.
And the awakened father has to look into his
grave and feel the great truth : " Death is
50 Gerhart Hauptmann
the mildest form of life : the masterpiece of the
eternal love." The play is technically weak in
some points, and yet its tragedy is overpower-
ing in its prophetic insight into the human
soul.
All these prose dramas show a characteristic
which is one of their most distinguishing-
features in comparison with the works ^ of
preceding playwrights : the dialogue. Per-
haps Ibsen's influence is nowhere more keenly
felt than here. Ibsen, in the conciseness and
pregnancy of his speech, had achieved what
before was as good as unknown. The persons—
of his drama speak as ordinary mortals, jdo ;
there is no stilted rhetoric. They keep won^^
derfuUy clear of the insignificant speech of
everyday life as naturalism demanded it, and _
from the clumsy literary jargon of earher
dramatists. Here Hauptmann is a most
successful follower of the great Norwegian.
His Work from 1889-1912 51
3. Fairy Dramas
Ibsen's influence on Hauptmann's diction is,
indeed, so strongly effective that it might al-
most be said to reach into our author's verse
dramas. For there is another side of Haupt-
mann's dramatic genius which is unfolded in
what he calls his " Fairy Dramas." There the
lyrical strain of his artistic nature appears at its
best. We have not many lyrical poems of his.
An early volume — " Das Bunte Buch " — though
sent to press, was not published. Some of the
poems gathered therein are known — partly by
Schlenther's excellent biography of Haupt-
mann, partly by Fiedler's interesting collection
in " The Oxford Book of German Verse,"
which also contains a preface by Gerhart
Hauptmann — and to them we may add the
charming and simple verses in the " Friedens-
fest."
On the whole, Hauptmann seems to be denied
the gift of purely lyrical expression. His
poems, as far as we know them, fail to carry us
away by an impression of spontaneity and
52 Gerhart Hauptmann
y\/ impetuosity. They are too full of intellectual ^
reflection. It is strange that he should lack
the power of writing lyrics. For his Greek
diary is supreme evidence of the naive and
impressionable nature of his mind. As to the
form, his Fairy Dramas reveal his mastery
of poetic diction. In fact, his drama " Der
Arme Heinrich " contains passages of the
best verse in modern German literature.
, And he certainly has the gift of creating
j a uniform and harmonious atmosphere which,
I after all, is perhaps the highest perfection
i of a lyrical poem. He is so strongly gifted
in this direction that it sometimes even
endangers the realistic development of his
dramatic plot. One might almost be tempted
to divide his plays into two sections — lyrical
and non-lyrical. To the former we would
reckon his Fairy Dramas, but also plays like
*' Die Jungfern vom Bischofsberg," or even
*' Das Friedensfest " and " Gabriel Schilling's
Flucht," in virtue of their unique atmosphere.
Scenes like the love-scene in " Vor Sonnenauf-
gang " are pearls of lyrical feeling. And yet
His Work from 1889-1912 53
Hauptmann will never rank with such true
lyrical poets as Stephan George, or Rainer
Maria Rilke.
One of his best lyrical attempts is a poem of
1887, " Im Nachtzug " (In the Night Express).
There is plenty of power and splendid rhythm
in it ; we read on and on, and are enraptured by
the strength of its imaginative impulsiveness.
Yet it cannot be denied that it has much more
epic quality than lyrical delicacy. The epic
stands much nearer to his profoundly in-
tellectual genius. He himself declares that
the dramatic and the epic are never clearly
separated, just as little as the tendencies of
time and space. (Greek Spring, p. 222.)
This declaration is at the same time a refuta-
tion of some of his biographers, like Bartels
and Sulger-Gebing, who maintain that his
special talent lies in the epic much more than
in the drama. We might equally well conclude
from the above-stated evidence that his
chief gifts are for lyrical poetry. Gerhart
Hauptmann is a dramatist, but he is more
than that. He is a dramatic genius. If needs
54 Gerhart Hauptmann
be, he knows how to convey his message in
epics as well as in lyrics.
We have noticed how within the stereo-
typing tendencies of naturahstism and the
social tendencies of the age, a craving arose
for the valuation of personality. The import-
ance of the individual will power in an age
of highly strung and practical activity must
i^ necessarily lead to an artistic subjectivism.
The strong-willed individual masters reality.
Consequently the artistic personality scorns
the observance of the external ; his own
individuality gives aims and laws to his
art. Art is the expression of the individual.
This individualistic conception of Art is funda-
' mentally romantic. And as the ideas, often only
imperfectly felt and dimly conceived, cannot
bear the cold dayhght of reaHty ; the artist
creates and peoples a new world, and so sym-
bolism comes into favour. Again, this new
development, especially in its emphasis on
formalism, was greatly assisted by foreign
influence — Verlaine, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck,
became known ; and in Italy too, Gabriele
His Work from 1889-1912 55
d'Annunzio. To the deep-rooted religious I
sentiment of Gerhart Hauptmann symbolism, jr
with its mystic elements, was bound to appeal. '
His feelings, especially in the years of
inward conflict, strove for dramatic lyrical
expression. The first play of this series is f
"Hannele's Himmelf ahrt " (Hannele) of 1893 ;
which he dedicated in beautiful words to j
his first wife. It is permeated by the sincerity j/
of his social compassion. The simple story
is of a motherless and cruelly treated child,
who is driven to death, and in her last hours
sees in visions the heavens open and the angels
with the Saviour Himself descending to take
her up to happier regions. The intermingling |
of the crude reality and the golden vision is \
so artistic that we feel transported to the \
heavenly spheres, and we listen enraptured j
to the song of the angels at the close of
the play :
" Auf jenen Hiigeln die Sonne,
Sie hat dir ihr Gold nicht gegeben ;
Das wehende Grun in den Talern,
Es hat sich fiir dich nicht gebreitet."
56 Gerhart Hauptmann
(On yonder hills the sun,
Hath given his gold but not to thee ;
The waving green in the dales,
It is not spread for thee.)
But it must be admitted that it requires a very
fine and skilful staging to produce the full
artistic effect of the play.
The next play, in 1893, is on a broad his-
torical basis and falls out of the series. It is
more a fragment of dramatised history than
historical drama. The hero, the focus of the
various dramatic tendencies, stands rather in
the middle ground, whilst the foreground is
\^occupied by a broadly-drawn movement of
the Peasant Revolt during the Reformation.
Hauptmann has devoted most earnest work
to this play, and it abounds in elaborate and
carefully studied details. This, in fact, rather
damages the dramatic effect, as it takes away
the bracing air of nature which such a subject
demands, and leaves us the impression of study
atmosphere. But it is a great, perhaps too
great, conception to concentrate dramatically
the antagonistic religious and social forces,
His Work from 1889-1912 57
and to focus them in the one towering
personahty of the peasant leader, Florian
^ Geyer, whose name gives the title to the play.
It must be admitted that Hauptmann's genius
has fallen short — he has failed to convey to
us the grandeur of this leader. His strength
was his weakness. His power of psychological
insight misled him into giving us a line
and most captivating study of a singular
individuality, but perhaps he would have done
better to draw an al fresco portrait. The play
is full of the most exquisite beauty, and yet
we sometimes feel that we hear mere words
and miss the strong active personality behind
them. It also is the best proof of Hauptmann's
extraordinary conscientiousness in writing,
Which we notice throughout his works, and
which is shown by the innumerable sketch-
books, " Cahiers '* bound in grey Hnen, and
piled up in order round the wall of his high-
vaulted study in Agnetendorf .
Three years later Hauptmann published a
sequence of six scenes, adapted from Grill-
parzer's novel " Elga." Like Hannele, it is
58 Gerhart Hauptmann
a dream vision, framed in two scenes of
reality. The four remaining scenes render
most effectively the tragic fate of a husband
too deeply in love with his idolized wife. He
is betrayed by her and revenges himself on
her and her lover. A simple story rendered
thrilling by the vivid rapidity of the succession
of events and by the impressive lucidity with
which the figures stand out from the back-
ground of dreamy vision.
" Elga " is followed by *' Helios," in the
same year — a dramatic fragment but a perfect
treasure house of diction, permeated by deep
pessimism, and yet filled with burning desire
for strength, beauty, and freedom. " Helios "
is the author's poetical confession, which is
more clearly and concisely repeated in one of
his few lyrical poems reprinted in Professor
Fiedler's Anthology :
" Wie eine Windesharfe sei deine Seele
Dichter !
Der leiseste Hauch bewege sie ;
Und ewig miissen die Saiten schwingen im Atem
des Weltwehs>
His Work from 1889-1912 59
Denn das Weltweh ist die Wurzel der Himmels-
Sehnsucht.
Also steht deiner Lieder Wurzel begriindet im
Weh' der Erde,
Doch ihre Scheitel krone t Himmelslicht.'*
Hauptmann's worldly woe is the root of his ^
longing for heaven.
His third publication of the same year is
the great drama " Die Versunkene Glocke '* *"
(The Sunken Bell). This mirrors in wonderful ,
verse the inner conflict Hauptmann had to go
through. It is again the artist with his soul's
desire for all that is high, good, and beautiful,
misunderstood by his associates, and most
of all by his honest, commonplace wife.
In the mountains, in the realm of spirits, he
finds a companion, but the ties which hold
him to the earth, and to his legal wife, are
too strong for him ; he cannot liberate him-
self ; he cannot fulfil his divine artistic mission.
His great work of art, his bell, lies deeply
buried in the mountain water. It will
never be kissed to life by the golden sun.
6o Gerhart Hauptmann
His soul goes from him and his body dies.
In death he finds his loving spirit ; the
night is long, but the sun comes. The
drama is Hauptmann's human and artistic
confession.
It is followed two years later by the " Hirten-
lied " (The Song of the Shepherds), again a
dramatic fragment. The longing soul of the
artist leaves his swamp of pessimistic despair
and strives upwards towards the light of the sun.
His ideal cannot be reached by resignation, it
must be gained daily by the hardest endeavour
and by self -conquest. But with his will his
strength grows, and he lifts aside the heavy rock
which prevents the parched crowd from satisfy-
ing their thirst. " Hirtenlied " is the high song
of Hauptmann's artistic longing. We hear iter-
ated the note which is ringing through all
Hauptmann's plays — the longing for the road
"^ to freedom. So many may confess with the
artist : ** Ich kann den Mut nicht finden, den
mancher fand, den letztcn Mut ins Freie."
The world of dreams may recompense us for
the cruel reality as it does for poor Hannele.
His Work from 1889-1912 6i
Yet it is only meagre amends. The artist begs
of the angel :
" Willst Du mich fuhren, leite mich ins Helle !
Ins klare Sonnenlicht des frischen Tages !
Mit Traumen schreckst du mich. Lass endlich
mir
Den starken Morgan alles Traumgewolk
Durchtrennen ! Gib mir jenes ganze Sein,
Das keines Traums bedarf."
(Wilt thou guide me, lead me to the light !
Into bright sunlight of gladsome day !
With dreams thou dost appal me. Let at last
Strong morning part all dreamy clouds.
Give me that whole existence,
Which needs no dream.)
In the next play of this series, published in 1900,
Hauptmann again tries his power in comedy.
In " Biberpelz" he followed his greatest German
example, Kleist's " Der Zerbrochene Krug,"
and in " Kollege Crampton " the greatest
French writer of comedy, Moliere, — now he goes
back to Shakespeare and his " Taming of the
Shrew." The motto on the title-page is the
62 Gerhart Hauptmann
translation of the last words in Shakespeare's
Induction :
'' Sly : What, household stuff ?
Page : It is a kind of history.
Sly : Well, we'll see't. Come, madam wife,
sit by my side.
And let the world slip : we shall ne'er
be younger."
The motive which since the " Arabian Nights "
has run through the literature of the world —
the deception of a peasant, so that he believes
himself to be lifted to a high social sphere — is
made use of by Hauptmann in his *' Schluck
und Jau," a play of two simple-minded
vagabonds who in their drunkenness are made
to believe themselves princes whose every wish
is fulfilled at once. There is closer kinship to
Holberg's than to Shakespeare's treatment of
the same subject. We must not criticize it too
sharply, as the prologue itself says that it is
only " the child of an easy humour." But the
interweaving of reality and illusion shows great
skill, and what raises the farce to a higher level
His Work from 1889-1912 63
is the undercurrent of Hauptmann's sincere
sympathy with the poor and outcast. Haupt-
mann seems to give himself up to con-
tented resignation, and yet this note is
not so strongly expressed as to interfere
with the artistic aim, the hilarity of the
comedy.
C Two years later Hauptmann again pub-
lished a confession. He himself is " Der
Arme Heinrich." It is the outcome of his
family conflict. We saw his portrait in the
artist, Arnold Kramer. Like him Prince
Heinrich is hideous in his illness and shuns
human society. How deeply Hauptmann was
affected is proved by this self-portraiture,
where he describes the prince as a leper, an
outcast whose vicinity everybody fears, and
whom they hunt down like a wild beast. But
his salvation came. The pure maiden, Ottegebe,
who in her disinterested, innocent love is
willing to sacrifice herself to save him, is the
only one who never forsakes him. He has days
and weeks of deepest despair. She is always
his angel, and finally he throws aside his self-
64 Gerhart Hauptmann
confidence and self-reliance, and puts his
whole fate in those fair hands. Through her
he is purified, and gains new confidence for
a fresh beginning : *' Let my falcons, my
eagles, soar again ! " The play, which goes
back to a legend of the Middle Ages, derived
from Hartmann von Aue, is perhaps in beauty
of diction and verse the most perfect of all
Hauptmann's dramas. To give only one
example, we quote the words Heinrich speaks
to the monk Benedikt, to whom he has come
in order to see Ottegebe :
" Zum letzten Male denn : Monch, dieser Tag
Hat mich gelehrt : so arm ist keiner, Gott
Kann ihn noch armer machen. Denn wo nahm
Ein Rauber je dem alios, der nichts hat ! ? —
Wohl, wohl, das Kind ist tot ! sie ist gestorben,
Ist hin. — Als mir ein weisser Lazarus
Die Mar*, wie sie gestorben ist, erzahlte —
Dass ihr das Herz brach um den siechen Herm ! —
Da stiess ich mit der Macht des Wahnsinns nieder
Den furchterlichen Schrei, der in mir rang,
Und schwieg — und glaubt' es nicht. Dann aber
fiogen
His Work from 1889-1912 65
Die Fusse mir ! Wohin ? Ich wusst' es nicht :
Durch Felder, durch Gestriipp, bergauf, talunter,
Durchs Rinnsal wild geschwoUener Bache, bis
Ich hier an dieser letzten Schwelle stand.
Warum denn lief ich ? — Welcher goldener Preis
Liess mich so springen, einem Laufer gleich ?
Was dacht* ich hier zu finden ? War es nicht,
Als riss' ein Feuerwirbel jah mich fort ?
Als war ich selbst ein Brand, ein wilder Haher,
Der schreiend und brennend durch die Walder
f ahrt ?
Mir war . . . rings klang die Luf t : sie ist nicht
tot!—
Sie lebt ! — Dein klein Gemahl ist nicht gestor-
ben ! —
Und dennoch . . . dennoch starb sie."
In Robert Browning's poem " Pippa Passes *'
we read : " Cannot you tell me something of
this little Pippa I must have to do with ? One
could make something of that name." Haupt-
mann did make something of it, and gave
us in 1906 what is, in spite of certain short-
comings, a beautiful fairy drama, " Und Pippa
Tanzt " (And Pippa Dances). There is not
much relation between Browning's and Haupt-
66 Gerhart Hauptmann
mann's creation, and it is futile to trace
parallels. Hauptmann's drama is the un-
restrained revelation of his never-dying, ardent
N desire for beauty. He is the young, dreamy
and visionary lad who follows Pippa, the ideal
of beauty, catches her and loses her again, and
will go on in search of her to his life's end.
Hauptmann himself has told us much of his
conception. " I wanted to put the symbol of
beauty in its power and transitoriness in the
centre of the play. That this symbol symbol-
ized itself for me in ghttering, fragile glass,
iridescent, and ever changing, that I created
this fairy tale merely depends on the im-
pressions which I received from the land
on which I was born, in which I grew up
and lived. The chief character is called Pippa ;
involuntarily I thought hereby of the most
famous of all dancers, of Pepita ; her father
was called Tagliazoni ; the similarity of name
with Taglioni is an accidental one, for I have
never heard anything of this dancer before.
My work deals, in spite of its fairy dress,
with dramatic happenings which may, and
His Work from 1889-1912 67
must be, kept separate from all symbolism.
Pippa is the daughter of an Italian glass-
blower, an evil type of man whom she,
although he is her father, cannot love. From
the fields of Venice, from Murano, the place
of the noblest art in glass, they were driven
to the rough North, and the young, graceful,
and beautiful creature charms all who approach
her. The manager of the glassworks, who brags
of his money, courts her ; the old, poor, robust
Huhn wants to get possession of her ; the
travelhng artizan, Michel Hellriegel, is fasci-
nated by her, and he wins her heart, since her
father, the cheat, is slain by those whom he
has cheated in the game, and the old Huhn
forcibly carries her off to his decayed glass-
works. Michel becomes her rescuer ; he liber-
ates her from the power of the giant, and flies
with her in storm and rain into the mountains.
The fugitives reach a snow-covered hut, in
which Wann, a mild and wise old man, lives,
and he too, the enlightened man who has done
with the charms of life, succumbs to the power
of Pippa. Then Huhn enters : by his brutal
68 Gerhart Hauptmann
force he crushes, and kills the tender Pippa; and
poor Michel, who becomes blind from grief,
sees, in his fancy, in the snowy desert of the
Silesian Mountains the golden palaces, the
emerald beauties of Venice for which he has
been unconsciously longing." So far the
actual contents as the play is seen on the stage.
But then Hauptmann gives us the key to the
hidden meaning underlying it.
" In all of us there lives something for which
our souls desire ; we all seek for something
which dances to and fro before our souls in
beautiful colours and graceful movements.
This something we will call Pippa. She is a
young beauty, for whom are seeking all in
whom imagination has not yet been extirpated.
The manager of the glassworks who desires her
dreams of Titian, who is supposed to have a
likeness to his uncle, the head forester ; the
old Huhn is a primitive strong nature, a great
artist, a brutal fellow, with brutal instincts
for the enjoyment of beauty, an old corybant
— thus I call him purposely — and the young
travelling artizan, Michel Hellriegel, he is the
His Work from 1889-1912 69
symbol for that which lives in the soul of the
German nation. He is the youth full of nawete
and humble humour, full of hopes and longing,
the youth who yields with humour to his tragic
fate but who does not lose his illusions, for he
lives on in them. The brutal force in my fairy
tale, as so often in life, vanquishes the tender
beauty, and, as if hypnotised, Pippa follows
the ardent desire of Huhn, and dances and
dances until she falls down, and is shattered.
How many thousands of young, beautiful
girls are in profane reality desired by old
corybants and destroyed ? But Michel lives ;
he it is who is nearest to our nation ; he will
continue to seek for the ideal of beauty. And
the beauty who, like Pippa, must expose her-
self and dance before the mob, is slain by the
mob as Pippa is by the old Kraftmensch Huhn.
And Wann, whom I have designated as a
mythical personality, he, the old man, who
lives alone in the mountains, who, enlightened,
looks down on things and men, he, the sage,
who knows the depths of the earth and of
mankind, he, too, still feels joy at youth
70 Gerhart Hauptmann
and beauty. He takes her up to protect her,
but he cannot save her, since brutal force
makes Pippa dance to death.
" I did not want sophisticated reasoning, nor
can others comprehend my fairy poem through
it ; I wanted to express what I felt, what
hovered aroimd me, what my imagination
evoked of fairy charm and the long-
ing for beauty, what captivated my soul.
The external did not and does not matter to
me ; I wanted only to liberate myself from
what was rooted firmly in my mind ; I wanted
to free myself from it when I wrote the poem,
not by cool reflections, but in such a way as to
make everything that lives in my heart rise
ghtteringly by the charm of the ideal of beauty
in many colours and in images of light. Now my
dream has become reality and this forms my
happiness ; perhaps someone may at some time
understand fully my dream and my happiness ;
perhaps the soul of the German nation will
apprehend what I especially wanted to symbol-
ize by the character of Michel. Yea, what
was not hovering around me ! I thought of a
His Work from 1889-1912 71
marriage between the German genius, in the
person of Michel, and the ideal of southern
beauty as it is embodied in Pippa." So far
Gerhart Hauptmann himself. (Printed in
the " Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, January 20th,
1906.)
<iMl this, however, does not matter so much
as the fact that whoever sees or reads the
play is deeply impressed by its singular beauty
which lies beyond the world of hard fact,
and lives in the realm of unintelligible, ir-
rational feeling.
Here we have the conception of the ideal
love problem. In the next drama of 1908,
" Kaiser Karl's Geisel " (Charlemagne's
Hostage), Hauptmann handles the sex prob-
lem. On one side we see the greatest man
of his time, Charlemagne, on the threshold
of old age. Yet he is a strong man, upright
and proud. But advancing age — he is sixty
— throws its shadows on his heart. He
meets young Gersuind, the Saxon hostage, a
wild daughter of nature. She is love itself.
With all the superb freshness of girlhood she
72 Gerhart Hauptmann
is a mature woman, longing for the man. She
does not meet the strong man who conquers
her by his brutal, natural force. She gives her-
self to all sorts of people, and yet does not find
the only man for whom her womanly soul and
body are crying. Charlemagne could be this
man, but he feels constrained by his dignity.
And here we see the tragedy of his greatness.
Spring with all its desires once more comes
over one who is sixty years old. Love in
Gersuind, tempts him with all her charms,
and he feels irresistibly drawn towards her.
Yet he conquers himself, and by this act kills
his rejuvenated feelings and the cause, the
love, which aroused them. Gersuind disgraces
both herself and the Kaiser, who neglects his
duties owing to his partiality for her. She is
poisoned by the Chancellor, and Charlemagne
has to stand at her bier, as Michael Kramer
stood at his son's. The psychological repre-
sentation of these two characters is singularly
convincing. The strength of the undirected
craving of the woman in her prime, which
pours forth like a mighty torrent, is in-
His Work from 1889-1912 ^^
stinctively felt ; and the tragedy of the great
man, who, just at the decline, has to sacrifice
his second youth, is most pathetic. The
humaneness of the great character appeals to
us, and we admire him when we see that he is
broken down but rouses himself and once more
returns to active service in his calling. Haupt-
mann found the subject of this " Legenden-
spiel," as he calls it, in "Le sei giornate" of
Sebastiano Erizzo, a sixteenth-century writer.
He himself tells us in the words, with which he
prefaces his drama : " Scrivesi adunque, che
il re Carlo, il quale il Francesi col cognome di
Magno agguagliano a Pompeo ed ad Alessan-
dro, nel regno suo ferventemente s'innamoro
d'una giovane, la quale, per quanto agli occhi
suoi pareva, ogni altra del regno di Francia di
bellezza in quei tempi trapassava. In questo
re di si fervente amore acceso di costei, cosi
perduto, ed ebbe Tanimo cosi corrotto dalle sue
tenere carezze e lascivie, che non curando il
danno, che per tal cagione nella fama e nell'
onore ricevea, ed abbandonati i pensieri del
governo del regno ..."
74 Gerhart Hauptmann
A similar problem is treated in " Griselda "
of 1909. The strong woman must be captured
by the strong man. It is the old saga of
Brynhild and Siegfried. Nothing and nobody
is allowed to stand between them. Man's love
is unrestrictedly egotistic ; woman's love is
wider — the problem of motherhood enters
into its realm. Out of this difference arises
the conflict. But Griselda's love for her
husband proves to be strong enough to over-
come all his egotistic doubts. The husband
and wife join again after their cruel separation ;
cruel to both of them. How deeply Haupt-
mann looks into the problem ! Their too in-
tense love inflicts infinite harm upon each of
them. It has been said that our author depicts
here a pathological extravagance of matri-
monial love, yet an authority like Ellen Key
says, when speaking of Maeterlinck's and
Verhaeren's perfect married lives : ** Maeter-
linck's as well as Verhaeren's marriage is
childless. This, perhaps, is a reason for the per-
fection to which these marriages have attained,
a perfection which, elsewhere, is only shown
His Work from 1889-1912 75
in the poems and letters of the Browning
couple. For it is due to the consequences of
Hmitation in time and space, which no love
can annihilate, that where there are children
the married people can rarely cherish and
cultivate their love in every detail." And
besides, an author is surely entitled to show us
exceptional characters, exceptional here in
their overflow of mutual love. Hauptmann
treats the story of Boccaccio in most effective
realistic scenes. Like the preceding dramas,
" Griselda " is rather loose in its structure and
not mature enough. Yet he who can write the
opening scene of " Griselda " with its realistic
colouring of overflowing vitality cannot be
denied the gift of true dramatic genius.
These are all of Gerhart Hauptmann 's
dramas. We may confidently look forward
to a new play with the Greek Odysseus
Legend as its basis. Already he has given a
public reading of the Telemachus scene, which
he wrote in a sort of trance when on his voyage
to Greece he visited in the spring of 1906 the
beautiful island of Corfu. On what we know
76 Gerhart Hauptmann
of it from his own words in his Greek diary,
we may base great expectations, especially in
regard to the scenes of the shepherd Eumaios,
which may show his power of depicting quiet
rural scenes.
4. Survey of Hauptmann' s Dramatic Art
Surveying the dramatic development in the
nineteenth century, we find apparently the
old truth that history repeats itself. The
years 1830 and 1880 are both landmarks which
indicate a new era. The fourth and the ninth
decade of the last century are revolutionary
periods in the history of German literature.
In 1834 L. Wienbarg published his new code of
literary conviction, the " -Esthetic Campaigns "
(^sthetische Feldzlige) ; in 1882 the brothers
Hart did the same in their ** Critical Duels "
(Kritische Waffengange), followed three years
later by Karl Bleibtreu's " Revolution der
Literatur." In both cases, the young genera-
tion consciously broke away from the old
ideals to hail the new. But there is a fun-
His Work from 1889-1912 77
damental difference between these epochs
— 1830 marks the end of a development,
1880 the beginning. 1832 is the year of
Goethe's death, and with it synchronizes the
reverberating death-knell of romantic litera-
ture. In 1 83 1 the last great representative
of German idealism, Hegel, died. Gradually
this grandest treasure which German thought
had ever acquired faded away after his death.
Materialism took its place. Such men as
Moleschott and Biichner dethroned Kant and
Goethe. The ebb of the tide was about 1880.
The strong will-power embedded in Bismarck's
life-work began to tell. As 1830 saw the be-
ginning of the end of German idealism, so 1880
saw the beginning of its revival. In 1850 it was
dead, in 1900 it was alive and is still flourish-
ing. The period of German classical literature
preceded 1830, the period of utter drought
preceded 1880. Therefore the revolution of
1830 in its literary achievement failed, as
it was doomed to fail from the outset. The
circumstances accompanying these revolu-
tions are different in each case. The more
J
78 Gerhart Hauptmann
they differ the brighter are the auspices of
the result, and Gerhart Hauptmann is a strong
warrant.
The great triumvirate, Friedrich Hebbel,
Otto Ludwig, Richard Wagner, all of whom
were born in 1813, belong, of course, with
their works to the barren epoch from 1830 to
1880. But their actual fame only dawned
towards the end of that period, and more
strongly after 1880. Franz Grillparzer's name
must be linked to theirs. These are the men
who carried on the great tradition. Gerhart
Hauptmann is their heir. He availed him-
"^ self of the indisputable enrichments which
materialism had produced: the careful ob-
« servance of detail. Naturalism is the daughter
of materialism and, together with Ibsen's
influence, is the most important element in
^ shaping Hauptmann's style. It seems to
me idle to discuss whether his talent lies
more in the realistic or in the romantic drama,
more in prose dramas or those which are in
^ verse. His mastery of diction, be it prose or
verse, is perfect, and in this he is indebted to
His Work from 1889-1912 79
Naturalism and to Ibsen. Its concise pregnancy ^
is unthinkable without them. His early ^
dramas are the best proof of this. In their real-
istic style monologues and asides are tabooed.
But just as we saw the naturalistic drama drift
toward the stringent rules of French classical
tragedy, so this realistic style drifts towards
symbolism. Complete sequences of thought ■ X
cannot be expressed by words. They have to
be acted. The pantomime enters into the play. ^ y
The author has to write long stage directions. '
These are significant of all naturalistic or ^.-
reahstic dramas. An attempt has been made
to prove, by their evidence, that Hauptmann's
best talent lies in the epic field. All play-
wrights of modern realistic dramas side with
him in this. I will refer, for example, to
Granville Barker's "The Voysey Inheritance,"
and to Galsworthy's " Justice." But the idea
is not new. Diderot, to whom the brothers
Hart, in their *' Critical Duels," refer often
enough, had already recognized the great
emotional power that lies in mute acting on
the stage. And it is not a bad sign that modern
\^
80 Gerhart Hauptmann
German literature in general, and Gerhart
Hauptmann in particular, should definitely go
back to Lessing and Diderot, who heralded the
classical period of German literature. It is
their uncompromising sincerity which reigns
throughout Hauptmann's works. In the rela-
tively short period of the twenty-three years
from 1889 to 1912, he has published no less
than twenty-two dramas, besides other works,
and we are never struck by an insincere note
in them or by a feeble and shallow com-
promise. Although he does not, as we have
seen, sacrifice " carrement I'humanite a I'ar-
tiste," he does not neglect the artistic require-
ynents. Assuredly his works are not all of
equal merit. It is true that he sends works to
the press which ought to have been retained
longer and which are not ripe for publication in
all their details. These faihngs are the result
of an overflowing wealth of productive power,
but they are failings nevertheless. " Die Jung-
fern vom Bischofsberg," '* Kaiser Karls
Geisel," " Griselda," and others, with all their
undeniable artistic qualities, afford proof
His Work from 1889-1912 8i
enough of this. Yet there is no better exponent
of Zola's demand that there must be a person-
ality in a work of art, or else it is none : "II
faut que je retrouve un homme dans chaque
oeuvre, ou I'oeuvre me laisse froid."
II. Novels
/ But the dominant chord of his soul is his I /
sympathy with the poor and unfortunate* The \J
sincerity of his social and ethical feelings gives ^
them the dignity of religion. * In his young
days at Erkner Hauptmann called himself zxy^
atheist. And yet there could hardly be found
a more religious character than his. We have
noted how in his youth he was impressed by
Moravian surroundings. Afterwards he may be
said to have been influenced, probably uncon-
sciously, by the strong wave of modern Spinoza-
ism. Just as Spinoza was charged with irreligion,
though the fundamental ethical bias of his
life and theory is of such profound sincerity
that one is entitled to identify his ethics with
religion, so Gerhart Hauptmann in the ethical
82 Gerhart Hauptmann
\^i basis of his character may truly be called
I religious. In various other ways, too, parallels
-could be drawn between Spinoza and Haupt-
\niann. To note only one — I will refer to their
love of nature. We need only think of the great
scientist and founder of the monistic creed,
Haeckel, who so deeply influenced Hauptmann,
to see at once how and by whom Gerhart
Hauptmann was led to Spinoza. In the thought
of Spinoza lay perhaps the strongest inducement
\ for Hauptmann to leave the purely materialistic
creed, or rather to permeate it with spirit-
ualism. In this respect he is a true adherent
to the newly-revived German idealism as
founded by Lessing, Herder, Kant, Goethe,
Schiller. The same undogmatic pietism
which in its union with Leibnitz's philosophy
created the so-called German idealism, was
equally an influence on his mind. And we also
^aw that he regained the practical and social
(interest which is inseparable from the en-
hghtenment of the eighteenth century, and
which it had so soon lost in Germany. How
this affects him we may see in his dramas. In
V
His Work from 1889-1912 83
" Before Sunrise " Helene lives in her Moravian
reminiscences ; we experience the religious
conflict in " Lonely Lives " ; we are thrilled
by the pathetic portrait of the pious weaver
who is shot in '* The Weavers " ; we see poor
Hannele's heavenly visions ; the grand struggle
of the Reformation rises before us in " Florian
• Geyer " ; the " Sunken Bell " chimes in with
its religious tunes ; and so it goes on.
But Hauptmann has also directly attacked
this religious problem in his great novel
" Emanuel Quint, Der Narr in Christo " (The
Fool in Christ). Nowhere in the whole range
of modern German fiction do we see greater
power of psychological insight than here.
All his knowledge and understanding of his
native Silesian country is welded together in
an unrivalled study of the wretched social
conditions of the poor weavers. In these sur-
roundings Emanuel Quint grows up, one of the
poorest of the poor. Early in his youth he
feels himself impelled by an inner force to
preach the Gospel of the loving Saviour.
Soon he finds followers. The utter poverty
/
84 Gerhart Hauptmann
and distress of the weaving district is the best
soil to foster the longing for heavenly love.
^The disinherited expect the coming of the
• Lord. Their dearth of material comforts
makes them long for the reign of heaven. The
inner voice of the leader and the confidence
of his followers strengthen each other. Gradu-
ally religious mania takes possession of Quint's
whole personality. Persecution only deepens
his self-confidence and increases the number
of his disciples. In the prison cell his
mania reaches the climax when in a
vision he sees the Saviour Himself entering
his own body. He is now Christ Himself.
This vision, essential as it is for the psycho-
logical development of the present novel, is
already anticipated in Hauptmann's early short
story " Der Apostel " (The Apostle), where he
sketches a religious maniac. The end of the
novel perhaps falls off somewhat, but it never
lacks interest. Hauptmann here lays down
the principles of his religion, which is a
sort of primitive Christianity on a demo-
cratic, social basis. He preaches the religion
His Work from 1889-1912 85
of pure, disinterested love, which SeUn, the
hero of his first pubHshed work, " Promethi-
denlos," had offered to the outcasts of the
NeapoHtan slums. Hauptman's whole Hfe
and work seem to be mirrored in this novel,
just as his pious aunt JuHe Schubert is the
model of the " vivacious Christian," Julie
Schneibler. He himself appears in the story
as the faithful chronicler, who is supposed to
tell us Emanuel Quint's life just as it happens.
He is that Kurt Simon who feels drawn so
irresistibly to poor Emanuel, the seeker after
God. In one of his early poems, reprinted by
Paul Schlenther, he asks :
" Nie noch sah ich unsre Gottheit,
Die uns schiitzt und die uns fiihret.
Sage mir, wie denk ich jenen
Gott mir ? Zeige mir den Gott ! '*
It would lead us too far afield to comment on
every character of the novel, which is the
confession of our author, and shows at its
best the brilliancy of his art. We can only
notice the pathological truth of the portrait
of Ruth, the gardener's daughter, or of the
86 Gerhart Hauptmann
unparalleled and convincing characters of the
brothers Scharf, who stand out like a Rem-
brandt portrait. There is too great a plenitude
of beauty to permit of a detailed consideration
of the novel. One has to read and re-read
it, and even what at first seemed to be
dragging will be found to be full of wisdom
and suggestive remarks. The more we read it,
the more we unmask the chronicler who stands
behind it, and the more we recognize what a
profound and sincere thinker Gerhart Haupt-
mann is. We begin to understand the source
of his dramatic genius. He himself has said :
*' Thinking is fighting; therefore dramatic."
The next and last novel of Gerhart Haupt-
mann's is again entirely personal. Its title is
*' Atlantis," partly because its scene is on the
Atlantic and in America, partly because it
reveals the longing of the central figure for
a new country, hidden as yet like simken
Vineta. The novel is loose in its construc-
tion and, in various places, lacks motive;
it is artistically deficient, yet it compensates,
as Hauptmann's works always do, by its
His Work from 1889-1912 ^y
personal value. Hauptmann is more than
merely the possessor of an artistic technique ;
he is a man. He longs to solve the riddle of the
universe and, to this end, the riddle of his own
life. He sounds his own theme when the hero
of the present novel proposes, as his future task
in life, to explain the words Schopenhauer
has left open in " Die Welt als Wille und Vor-
stellung " : " Behind our existence there is
hidden something which is made accessible
to us only if we shake off the world." All his| .
works are more or less confessions. Haupt-
mann's artistic character is above all condensed ^
humanity. In order to lay bare the psychology
of his own mind, he disregards the laws and
principles of artistic structure. Reverting to
our criticism on " Florian Geyer," we may say
that his weakness in the one is his strength in
the other. " Atlantis " is the faithful descrip-
tion of the crisis in Hauptmann's hfe, when,
in 1892, he suddenly left Europe to cross
the ocean for America. It also recalls
Hauptmann's severe illness in the years 1904
and 1905, when death was quite as near to
J
&S Gerhart Hauptmann
him as it is to Friedrich in the novel. " At-
lantis " leaves the impression of being almost
a medical report. Friedrich von Kammacher
is the Hauptmann of the nineties. In the
account of his marriage we read Haupt-
mann's confession of the circumstances of
his own married life, even in detail. Eva
Burns may have been drawn largely from
Margarethe Marschalk, Hauptmann's second
wife.
Although " Atlantis " is deficient from the
artistic point of view, yet it proves to be
the work of an artist. Hauptmann gives us a
description of the storm in the middle of the
Atlantic as if he had been an eye-witness. We
have lately read the terrible account of one
of the greatest of ocean disasters. The
novel was written before it. And yet,
somehow, it seems as if its accoimt were
inspired by those sombre reports. The pre-
sentiment of danger oppressing everybody and
causing a nervous tension approaching almost
breaking point, and then the actual an-
nouncement of real danger ; a sudden calm
His Work from 1889-1912 89
spreading in the first moment, a sense of
unreality in face of the gravest possible reality
— this is more than learned philosophy. It
is the clairvoyance of genius. The intuitive
psychical knowledge which Hauptmann pos-
sesses is astonishing. He describes the feverish
hallucinations of Friedrich, or his long dream
with its intermingling of reality and illusion
so truly that no psychologist could find fault
with him. This, of course, is due to the fact
that Hauptmann writes what he himself has
lived through. Quite a series of autobio-
graphical references might be gathered from
" Atlantis," from which we quote only one on
pages 18 and 19 :
** It seems that the life of uncommon men
with each decade enters a dangerous crisis.
In such a crisis the accumulated germs of
illness are either overcome and secreted, or
the organism which carries them succumbs.
Often such a succumbing is bodily death, but
sometimes, too, only mental. And again, one
of the most important and, to the observer,
most marvellous crises is that at the turn
90 Gerhart Hauptmann
from the third to the fourth decade. The
crisis hardly starts before the thirtieth year
but it often happens that it is retarded till
the middle of the thirties, and even beyond
that ; for it is at the same time a great settle-
ment of accounts, a fundamental balance of
life which one will rather willingly defer as
long as possible than tackle too early."
The personal meaning of this remark is not
hidden to those who have read our study. To
confirm this assertion I quote a passage from
" Greek Spring," where Hauptmann alludes to
his previous journey to America : "I lived,
then, through stormy weeks on two seas, and I
knew perfectly that, even if we on our Bremen
steamer actually reached the harbour, this
would not be the harbour for my own fragile
vessel."
Since this study was written, Hauptmann
has published the story of " Lohengrin," told
for the young. He dedicated it to his son
Benvenuto. To tell a story for young people
is a task which I hardly thought Hauptmann
His Work from 1889-1912 91
fit for. And yet his version of the " Lohen-
grin " legend is so attractive in its simpHcity,
and yet so artistic in its well-balanced struc-
ture, that it is certain to command admira-
tion. Of course, Hauptmann cannot suppress
himself. His technique, sprung from realistic
soil, manifests itself in the psychology of the
story. The old folk-lore legend, hke the ballad,
brings forth only the main stages of the
story's progress. The hnks are left to the
imagination of the reader, and thus they
appeal so much to the young naive mind,
which is more imaginative than the sophisti-
cated adult mind. It is in this respect, per-
haps, that Hauptmann forgets that he is talking
to the young.
We recognize everywhere the f amihar charac-
teristics of the artist, the psychological deepen-
ing for realistic interpretation, the humanizing
of conventional figures through compassion,
and finally the powerful dramatic gradation in
the description of single scenes. The story
winds up with the profession of what we
noticed to be a basis of Hauptmann's writing :
92 V Gerhart Hauptmann
the longing for beauty : *' Mankind had again
driven out noblesse, beauty, goodness, love
from their world into the deserts of maternal
nature, into the fluctuating realm of infinity,
wherein, if God will, they may yet steer
towards their origin."
III. Theory
As Henrik Ibsen used to treat problems from
various standpoints in successive dramas, so
we have seen Hauptmann return again and
\ again to the problems which arise before his
pensive eye. He is a great sentiment aHst ;
\ his wealth of feeling, as we noticed, is bound-
less. But he is also an earnest and deep
thinker. He is a personaHty, and he wants his
plays "to be understood as the natural ex-
pression of a personality.'* He pronounces
his dramatic creed in his " Griechischer
Friihling " (Greek Spring), but more definitely
in the preface to the edition of his collected
works in 1906 :
" I believe the drama to be the expression of
His Work from 1889-1912 93
genuine mental activity, in a stage of high
development. . . . From this aspect there re-
sults a series of consequences which enlarge
endlessly the range of the drama beyond that
of the ruling dramaturgies on all sides, so that
nothing that presents itself, either outwardly
or inwardly, can be excluded from this form
of thinking, which has become a form of art."
We have already noted how much these words
are akin to Lessing's own conception of drama.
Gerhart Hauptmann is a truly artistic genius.
His technical execution may sometimes be
lacking, yet the inner vision is always perfect
and definite, and it is irresistibly felt through-
out his works.
The spontaneity of his artistic nature reveals
itself at its best in the diary he kept on his
Greek voyage. In the spring of 1907 he em-
barked to set eyes on the treasures of Greek
nature and art, for which his soul had longed
ever since he had grown up. The naivete of
the great poet is alive in them, and responds
to every new impression. He sees the beauty
of Greece and he sees it with his own eyes.
/
94 Gerhart Hauptmann
He has come " to see visions, to hear voices "
(p. 176). He has preserved the soft im-
pressibility of a childlike and an artistic mind,
unhardened by learning. Yet he is not Greek,
he is German. His deep-rooted nationality
makes itself felt. Homer's Odyssey accom-
panies him, but he reads it with the eyes of
Goethe, who wrote the " Nausikaa." There
exists an excellent Germkn translation of
Homer by Voss, but Goethe says : '* It is
possible to think that somebody possesses a
more naive and truer feeling for the original."
Gerhart Hauptmann possesses this genuine
affinity, although the national hue of his im-
W)ressions is not to be disputed. We feel the
kinship of one genius with the other, though
they are separated by centuries and conti-
nents. The national elements of Haupt-
mann's art are so strongly felt that it is
difficult even for a kindred nation like the
English to appreciate his works at once. He
acknowledges himself that he is fully aware of
the Teutonic stamp of his artistic individuality :
** A slim, tall English lady, handsome in her
His Work from 1889-1912 95
youth, with the noble features of classical
portraits, is on board. Strangely enough, I can
only imagine from such a race the Homeric
ideal of woman, a Penelope, a Nausicaa '*
(p. 64-65). We have only to think of " The
Weavers " or of *' Emanuel Quint " to realize
that Hauptmann actually is " the elevated
expression of the national soul " — in these
cases of the soul of his own Silesian people —
which he declares (p. 103) to be the indispen-
sable characteristic of every poet. He is very
often said to be too sombre, his outlook on life
too gloomy. There is no doubt that he can
*be sombre and gloomy. He finds sacrificial
homicide to be the root of tragedy. ** It
cannot be denied, tragedy means hostility,
persecution, hate and love as the rage of life I
Tragedy means anxiety, disaster, danger, pain,
torment, torture ; it means malice, crime,
abjectness ; it means murder, bloodthirsti-
ness, incest, and butchery " (p. 171).
Yet we have only to look into his dramas
to be convinced that Hauptmann is far from
wishing tragedy to be a mere pile of melo-
■y
/
96 Gerhart Hauptmann
V dramatic cruelties. What he wants to impress
on our minds is that " tragedy and comedy do
not originate in feebleness and flight from
life" (p. 92). If he asserts that no tragedy is
without murder, this murder is that guilt with-
out which life itself cannot continue ; it is in
itself the crime and the punishment (p. 170).
This is a strong and powerful Weltanschauung
in which the final, ethical, and metaphysical
results of Darwinism and Nietzsche's doctrine
are alive. But, just as Nietzsche's superman
sings the song of supreme joy and dances the
dance of Mistral, so Hauptmann's heart rejoices
in serenity. We feel in his work that profoimd
^^ and sincere compassion with people in misery
\ and wretchedness. And yet he is fully in
accord with Nietzsche's Zarathustra in placing
" Lust " high beyond " Weh " :
" Weh spricht : Vergeh !
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit —
Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit."
I The liberation of mankind is the ever-
^ repeated song of his dramatic muse. Often
the bonds and fetters are too strong to be
His Work from 1889-1912 97
broken. Helene dies, Vockerat finds his grave
in the lake, Florian Geyer perishes ; and yet
there is hope. Heinrich returns to new hfe,
Crampton awakens ; even poor Hannele can
reahze that " there is no deadly enmity
between a healthy mind and reality ; and
what it perhaps destroys it helps to build
up again the more strongly" (p. 68), namely,
in dreamy vision. This last quotation shows
us how thoroughly optimistic Hauptmann's
views are. He is no more a pessimist than
Ibsen, who indeed may stand as the ideal
optimist. Of course he had long years of
personal gloom, when his outlook upon life
seemed to be overshadowed by heavy clouds.
But in 1907 these clouds had passed, and
when he visits Olympia the soul of Aristo-
phanes is much nearer to him than Homer's
and the tragedians*. The highest form of
human life seems to him to be "serenity,
the serenity of a child, which in an aged man
or nation either dies away, or rises to the power
of comedy" (p. 90). In this sense, he con-
tinues, tragedy and comedy have the same
\l
MJJL ^ mf^^efdff^ tMA^e^
98 Gerhart Haiiptmann
material to deal with, just as Socrates in
Plato's banquet declares that one and the same
author should be able to write comedies and
tragedies, and that the poet of tragedy should
/be also the poet of comedy. Hauptmann's
artistic belief, as confessed here, is a thoroughly
strong and healthy one. He has often been
condemned for a failure to create strong per-
sonalities as did the classical writers in ancient
and modern times. The overpoweringly strong
will of the hero, crushed only by external
and divine fate, seems to be lacking in his
dramas. It does not lie with us to refute this
accusation by citing characters hke Prince
Heinrich or Charlemagne, who surely conquer
themselves, and who when judged by the end
of the drama can never be called weakHngs. It
would be useless hair-splitting to attempt to
acquit the author of this accusation : Dr.
Vockerat, Meister Heinrich, Gabriel SchiUing —
they, all prove it to be true. And yet what
does this prove against Hauptmann's genius ?
Every age has its own drama. Shakespeare's
tragedy is different from the Greek, Goethe's is
His Work from 1889-1912 99
different from Shakespeare's. Again we repeat
Hauptmann's words that the poet is the elevated y^
expression of the people's soul. The epoch he
lives in differs fundamentally from preced-
ing ages. The poet is the mouthpiece of the /
Zeitgeist. The characters of his drama are the y
types of his age. Every great poet is a sincere
realist. Even if we had no documents of
the English Renaissance, we could trace the
psychology of the Renaissance type from
Shakespeare's plays. Hauptmann draws the
realistic portrait of man at the threshold of the
twentieth century. We cannot blame him
for the nervous character of his age. The in-
tellectual revolution caused by the inventions
of modern technique, and by the doctrines of
modern science, has not yet subsided. The \ ;
confidence in the individual will-power lias been ^
shaken. It is gradually beginning to form
and strengthen again. We are really too close
to judge, but it seems as if we are now living
in an age of convalescence. This convales-
cence is, in Germany, inseparably allied with
German idealism, of which Gerhart Haupt-
icxD Gerhart Hauptmann
mann is a pronounced adherent. He has lived
through the nervous and unstable times of
the last decades of the nineteenth century.
But when we follow him in his " Greek Spring,"
where he unreservedly gives us his impressions
at first sight, he stands before us as a strongly
built and strongly-willed personality. It is
evidence of superb strength and health when
he writes : " Tragedy as well as comedy have
nothing to do with weak, super-sensitive
nerves, and as little as they, have their
writers — but least of all, their audience '*
(p. 91). Such an utterance makes us look for-
ward to the future productions of Hauptmann's
genius with the greatest confidence, with the
highest expectation.
The artist Hauptmann is ever awake. He
never contents himself in telling us what every-
body knows. He wrestles with life to force it to
yield its secret. He is a seeker after truth.
" The bell is more than the church, the call to
dinner is more than the food," says Michael
Kramer. The burning desire of his heart to
announce inspired messages is urging him on
His Work from 1889-1912 loi
to ever new attempts. Often he seems to be
possessed with the idea of a new drama before
the old one is off his hands. Hence the im-
maturity of some of his recent dramas. But
mature or not, his new plays invariably tell
us something, something which we did not
know before. The Faust-like words Prince
Heinrich speaks to Ottacher, his servant, are
a very suitable motto for Hauptmann's own
artistic personality :
'* Du rangst ! Dein Ringen hab ich wohl erkannt.
Die Ringenden sind die Lebendigen, und
Die in der Irre rastlos streben, sind
Auf gutem Weg."
CONCLUSION
The embarras de richesses in publications on
Gerhart Hauptmann proves that he undoubtedly
is a powerful factor in modern German civiHzation.
He is fundamentally involved in it. It cannot be
thought of without him. It may be said of Goethe
that his age bears his stamp. We cannot say so
much of Hauptmann. But he gives voice to his
time ; he is, as we have already expressed it,
the mouthpiece of the Zeitgeist.
I naturally cannot enumerate all the articles
on the subject which have been published in
periodicals. Poole and Fletcher, in their admirable
" Index to Periodical Literature," give rich
materials ; the " Spectator," in 1893 (p. 436),
gave the first notice of Hauptmann's works.
Since then almost every journal seems to have
had at least one article on the German play-
wright.
The " Atlantic," in 1897-8, by T. F. Coar ; in
1900 by M. Miiller.
102
Conclusion 103
The " Nation " (New York), in igoo-i, by Kuno
Francke ; in 1901 by C. Harris ; in 1898 by
Kuno Francke ; in 1902-3 by Kuno Francke.
The " Fortnightly Review," in 1901, by B. Mar-
shall.
The " Quarterly Review " in 1 899-1900.
The " Edinburgh Review," in 1903.
The " Saturday Review," in 1904-5, by M.
Beerbohm.
Most of these articles appeared in " Poet-Lore."
1905, '* Bulthaupts Interpretation of Gerhart
Hauptmann," by P. H. Grummann, No. 2,
p. 117.
1908 (March), "German Drama, Poetry, and Fiction
in 1908," by AmeHa von Ende, p. 120-8.
1909 (May), " The Assumption of Hannele,"
p. 161-91.
1909 (July), " Before Dawn," p. 241-315.
1909 (May), "The Standpoint of Pippa Dances,"
by P. H. Grummann, p. 129-34.
1910 (July), " Dramas of Gerhart Hauptmann,"
by P. H. Grummann, p. 285-99.
The year 1912 has naturally witnessed an enor-
I04 Gerhart Hauptmann
mous increase in Hauptmann literature. But as
far as I have seen none of the first-rate monthly
and quarterly periodicals of England has an
article celebrating Hauptmann 's fiftieth birthday.
The admiration of the dramatist is much greater
in America, where the first dissertation in English
on Hauptmann was published.
Carl Albert Krause, " Gerhart Hauptmann's
Treatment of Blank Verse." New York
Dissertation, igio.
For biographical purposes, I mention Modern
Dramatists. MuUiken, C. A., Reading Hst on
modern dramatists. Bulletin of Bibliography
pamphlets. No. i8, 1907.
CHAPTER D
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. General publications on modern German
literature
Albert Sorgel, " Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit."
Leipzig, igii.
Rich. M. Meyer, " Die Deutsche Literatur des 19
Jahrhunderts." 4th edition. Berlin, 1911.
Georg Witkowski, " Das Deutsche Drama des
19 Jahrhunderts." 3rd edition. The 2nd
edition of 1906 is translated by L. E. Horning
and was pubHshed in 1909 by George Bell
and Sons, London.
Georg Witkowski, " Die Entwicklung der Deut-
schen Literatur seit 1830." Leipzig, 191 2.
O. E. Lessing, " Masters in Modern German
Literature." Dresden, 1912.
Otto Doell, " Die Entwicklung der naturalistischen
105
io6 Gerhart Hauptmann
Form in jiingstdentschen Drama. Hamburg,
1908.
Richard Huneker, "Iconoclasts" [contains an
essay on Hauptmann.]
There are many other pubHcations ; every
history of German Uterature, brought up to date,
deals with Gerhart Hauptmann. In Enghsh I
mention J. G. Robertson's thorough "History of
German Literature," and his very useful "Out-
lines " [191 1]. Other histories are those by
Kuno Francke [1901], and by Calvin Thomas,
[1909]. I also mention T. F. Coar, "German
Literature in the 19th Century" [1910], and Ashley
Duke's " Modern Dramatists " [191 1].
For a general survey of the history of German
thought in the 19th century I refer to W. Windel-
band's excellent lectures on " Die Philosophie im
deutschen Geistesleben des I9ten. Jahrhunderts,"
Tubingen [1909], and to the copious volume of
Th. Ziegler, " Die Geistigen und Sozialen Stromun-
gen des 19 Jahrhunderts." Berhn [191 1].
B. Biographies of Gerhart Hauptmann
Adolf Bartels, " Gerhart Hauptmann." Weimar,
[1897].
Bibliography 107
U. C. Worner, " Gerhart Hauptmann," 2nd
edition. Berlin [1901].
Paul Schlenther, " Gerhart Hauptmann : sein
Lebensgang und seine Dichtung." Berlin
[1898].
This book is indispensable for everybody who
studies Hauptmann's life, as it is the best-informed
of all his biographies. Fortunately it has now been
brought up to date in the new edition of igi2.
Albert Hanstein, " Gerhart Hauptmann." Leipzig
[1898].
Valuable as written by a witness of Hauptmann's
start.
Sigmund Bytkowski, " Gerhart Hauptmann's
NaturaHsmus und das Drama." Hamburg
[1908].
Gerhart Hauptmann, " Kritische Studien."
Special number of the Journal " Zeitschrift
fiir Schlesische Kultur." Ed. by Dr. O.
Reier [Vol. H, No. 12, 1909].
E. Sulger-Gebing, " Gerhart Hauptmann." Leip-
zig [1909].
Kurt Sternberg, "Gerhart Hauptmann. Der
Entwicklungsgang seiner Dichtungen " [1910].
io8 Gerhart Hauptmann
Julius Rohr, ** Gerhart Hauptmann's Dramatisches
Schaffen." Dresden and Leipzig [1912].
Erich Wulffen, " Gerhart Hauptmann's Dramen,"
2nd edition. Berhn [191 1].
Interesting studies in the criminal psychology
and pathology of Hauptmann's characters ; not
very satisfactory.
There are many articles scattered throughout
German and English periodicals. To name one, I
refer to Robert Petsch, " Gerhart Hauptmann
und die Tragodie des XIX Jahrhunderts." Neue
Jahrbiicher, 1908, I. Abt., XXI Bd., 8 H.
CHAPTER
E
TABLE OF WORKS
I.
" Promethidenlos " .
" The Collection of
Lyrics " (Das Bunte
DATB OF
PUBLICATION
1885
PAGB
8
Buch) .
(unpubUshed) 51
2.
"BahnwarterTheil"
1887
30
3.
" Vor Sonnenaufgang " ^
1
( 21-23,
(Before Dawn)."
Poet - Lore in July
> 1889
! 24-26,
1 42,43,
(1909), p. 241-315 . ,
1
I 52
4.
"DerApostel"
1890
84
5-
" Das Friedensfest."
Translated as '* The
Coming of Peace,"
by Janet Achurch
and C. E. Wheeler
(1910) .
1890
39-44, 52
109
no Gerhart Hauptmann
6.
" Einsame Men-
DATE OF
PUBLICATION
PACK
schen." Translated
as " Lonely Lives/*
by Mary Morrison
(1898) . . .
I89I
44-46
7.
"Die Weber" (The
Weavers). Trans-
lated by Mary Morri-
son (1899)
1892
27-29
8.
" Kollege Crampton '*
1892
48,49
9.
" Der Biberpelz " .
1893
36-38
10. " Hannele's Himmel-
fahrt " (Hannele).
Translated by
William Archer
(1894). " Assump-
tion of Hannele,'*
Poet -Lore in May
II.
12.
13-
(1909), p. I6I-9I .
1893
55-56
Florian Geyer "
1896
56-57
Elga" .
1896
57-58
Helios '*
1896
58-59
Table of Works 1 1 1
DATE OF
PUBLICATION
14. " Die Versunkene
Glocke " (The Sun-
ken Bell). Freely
entered into English
verse by Charles
Henry Meltzer (1907)
1896
59-60
15.
" Das Hirtenlied " .
1898
60
16.
" Fuhrmann Hen-
schel " .
1898
30-32
17.
"Schluckundjau" .
1900
61-63
18.
'' Michael Kramer " .
1900
49^50
19.
" Der Rote Hahn " .
1901
38
20.
" Def Arme Hein-
rich" .
1902
52, 63-65
21.
" Rose Bernd "
1903
32.33
22.
" Und Pippa Tanzt ! " |
" Gesammelte Werke" J
1906
{ 65-71
23.
" Die Jungfern vom
N
Bischofsberg "
1907
52
24. " Aus den Memoiren
eines Edelmanns " . 1907 45
" -^-^ .
112 Gerhart Hauptmann
DATE OF
I'UBLICATIOK
25. " Kaiser Karl's
Geisel " . . 1908 7^-73
26. " Griechischer Friih-
ling" . . . 1908 53
27. '* Griselda " . . 1909 74
^ 28. *' Emanuel Quint."
English Translation
(1913) . . . 1910 83-86
29. " Die Ratten " . . 191 1 34
30. " Gabriel Schilling's 1 Jii, 46-48,
Flucht" . . 1 ^^^^ I 52
J 31. '' Atlantis " . . 1 f ^^
* ^ I 1912 \ 86-90
" Gesammelte Werke" J [
32. " Lohengrin " . . 1913 90-92
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