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The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946)
Hauptmann, Gerhart (houpt’män). A German dramatist and poet; born Nov. 15, 1862, in Obersalzbrunn, Silesia; died in 1946. He was a scholar of solid attainments at Jena and Berlin. His taste for practical sociology comes out strongly in his intense and powerful poems and dramas; he settled on a small Silesian farm solely to study peasant life. His first play, ‘Promethidenlos’ (1885), was conventional; but he soon broke away from the old lines, producing ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘A Family Catastrophe,’ tragedies presenting the conditions of proletarianism. To this group belong ‘The Weavers’ (1892); ‘The Beaver Coat’ (1893); ‘Drayman Henschel’ (1898); ‘Michael Kramer’ (1900); ‘Rose Bernd’ (1903). A second group of plays deals with historical subjects: ‘Schluck and Jau’ (1899); ‘Henry of Aue’ (1902); ‘Charlemagne’s Hostage’ (1908); ‘The Bow of Odysseus’ (1914). Whimsicality and symbolism characterize this group, as well as ‘The Sunken Bell’ (1896); ‘And Pippa Dances’ (1906). (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).