Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946), German dramatist, novelist, and poet, who became the principal interpreter of the naturalist movement in German literature.

He was born on November 15, 1862, in Obersalzbrunn (now Szczawno-Zdrój, Poland). After spending a short time studying sculpture in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) and Jena, he turned to writing. Hauptmann was greatly influenced by the realist works of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and after experimenting with various literary forms, he also adopted the drama as his prime medium of expression. In his first play, Before Dawn, (1889; trans. 1909), Hauptmann shares Ibsen's concern for social problems by realistically portraying the problems of the working class. The play traces the moral disintegration of a group of peasant families who have suddenly become wealthy when coal is discovered on their land. In its concern for the environmental and hereditary factors that shape the life of the individual, the play is the first example of naturalistic drama in Germany. Hauptmann continued to show a deep concern for the life of the lower classes. The fate of a group of Silesian weavers is depicted in his greatest work, The Weavers (1892; trans. 1899). In this drama of social protest, Hauptmann introduces a new literary vehicle: he portrays conflict by making the class of peasants, rather than an individual, the protagonist of the play.

Hauptmann soon abandoned the purely naturalistic drama. In Hannele (1893; trans. 1894), he combines naturalistic elements with a more romantic and highly symbolic verse form. This trend toward romanticism is fully realized in his verse play, The Sunken Bell (1896; trans. 1898), an almost mystical and symbolic fantasy of the struggles of an artist. In the same year, Hauptmann turned again to the realistic drama, but instead of emphasizing social issues he traces the effects of moral corruption in the individual. In Drayman Henschel (1898; trans. 1913) and in Rose Bernd (1903; trans. 1913), he traces the tragic theme of an individual who is destined to be destroyed by his own innate shortcomings. Hauptmann gives his fullest treatment to the problem of fate and free will in a series of plays based on the ancient Greek legend of the doomed House of Atreus, The Tetralogy of the Atrids (1941-1945).

Hauptmann also wrote The Beaver Coat (1893; trans. 1912), a comedy satirizing the Prussian officials of imperial Germany; a novel, The Heretic of Soana (1918; trans. 1923); and epic poems. He was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in literature. Hauptmann died in Agnetendorf on June 6, 1946.