Die Tat des Dietrich Stobäus

Tat des Dietrich Stobäus, Die, a novel by M. Halbe, published in 1911. The narrator of the frame (see Rahmen) purports to have discovered in the 1890s the Stobäus papers of 1859-62. The story proper is told in the first person by Dietrich Stobäus, a Danzig patrician, and centres on his passion for the young actress Karola, who repeatedly deserts him and each time returns. She refuses to marry him and falls from the cliff edge into the sea. She drowns, and Stobäus is accused of her murder; he is acquitted, but the ending suggests that not all circumstances leading to her death have been revealed. A feature of the book is the atmospheric description of the landscape around Danzig.