Hermannsschlacht, Die, a play by C. D. Grabbe, completed after prolonged revision in July 1836, some three months before he died, and published in 1838. The play is divided into eight sections (Eingang; Erster Tag; Erste Nacht; Zweiter Tag; Zweite Nacht; Dritter Tag; Dritte Nacht; Schluß), and describes the central action, the battle in the Teutoburger Wald (ad 9), in a series of short episodes. Grabbe knew Kleist's Die Hermannsschlacht, but to him the fascination of the subject lay in its association with his native landscape, the scene of the battle and the home of those who fought it.

Hermann follows Varus with the intention of betraying him as soon as he feels sure that his countrymen have suffered enough injustice and contempt from their Roman overlords to be prepared to fight for their liberation. There are various pitched battles in drenching rain in the dense woods, into which Hermann lures the enemy, and the losses on both sides are considerable. On the third night Hermann is victorious, and Varus kills himself to escape surrender. The battle costs Rome three legions, and in the last section the dying Emperor Augustus predicts to Tiberius the decline of Rome, the emergence of the Germanic realm as a rival power, and the advent of a new religion through Christ. Apart from Fürst Hermann and his wife Thusnelda, Grabbe portrays a variety of characters which emerge less as Tacitean figures from a distant past than as Grabbe's own fellow-countrymen.

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