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The German dramatist and novelist Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann (1862-1946) is best known for his pioneering naturalistic dramas. His subsequent work treats in various forms and styles the role of the individual in an apparently deterministic universe.
Gerhart Hauptmann as naturalist, was the leader of the literary school which flourished especially from 1880 to 1900, a period coinciding with German imperialist expansion and industrialization. The naturalists reflected with photographic and frequently harrowing realism the resultant dislocations in a society that confused material progress with its destiny. Scientific and political theorists drew attention to the formative effects of heredity and environment, the exploitation of workers, the subservient role of women, and the general decay of moral fiber. In treating such themes, the naturalists hoped to alert their contemporaries to the need for reform.
Hauptmann was born in Obersalzbrunn, Silesia, on Nov. 15, 1862, the son of a hotel owner. As a dreamy and restless young art student in Breslau, he experienced lean and frustrating years after a decline in the family fortunes. His marriage to Marie Thienemann brought financial independence and made possible his studies at the University of Jena and journeys to Italy (1883).
Upon his return Hauptmann produced an autobiographical epic poem, Promethidenlos (1885), anticipating the materialistic-idealistic conflict prominent in his subsequent work. Settling in Berlin, he studied Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and contemporary schemes of social reform and developed an interest in Henrik Ibsen. The result was the pioneering naturalistic drama Vor Sonnenaufgang (1889; Before Dawn), which caused a sensation and inaugurated a series of related dramas.
Naturalistic Dramas
Vor Sonnenaufgang, first performed in Berlin on Oct. 20, 1889, supported by the society Freie Bühne, typifies Hauptmann's naturalism with its "analytic" technique, the "completed" characters, the stifling force of milieu and heredity, and the incompetence of the "savior" from the outside world. For a time it appears that the arrival of the socialist reformer Alfred Loth means for the virtuous Helene salvation from the degradation of a family utterly corrupted by sudden wealth and now burdened by alcoholism, infidelity, and other vices. But when Loth becomes aware of this domestic situation, he abruptly breaks with Helene and departs, unwilling to risk deeper involvement with one who, he fears, may later fall victim to a hereditary taint. In despair Helene commits suicide.
The "analytic" technique thus reveals not a development in response to conflict, but rather the static situation created by forces and events preceding the opening of the play. Similarly, the characters respond to situations in a manner preordained by immutable forces.
A comparably burdened and flawed family group is displayed in Das Friedensfest (1890), while Hauptmann's third drama, Einsame Menschen (1891), presents another incompetent and "misunderstood" central character. Johannes Vockerat harbors scientific and scholarly ambitions, but his loving wife, Käthe, who supports his life of scholarship, is intellectually incapable of understanding him. His own capacities appear paralyzed in consequence. The arrival of Miss Anna Mahr, a student who shares Johannes's interests, creates a triangular impasse. Johannes and Anna fall in love, but he cannot bring himself to choose between the two women and the sharply differing life-styles that they represent. Anna departs, and Johannes commits suicide. (Similarly flawed and "misunderstood" husbands appear in the "artist dramas" - Kollege Crampton, 1892; Michael Kramer, 1900; and Gabriel Schillings Flucht, 1912.)
Die Weber (1892; The Weavers), based on a historical incident of 1844, established Hauptmann's international reputation. Here the sociological problem overshadows the personal - machines are replacing the handwork of the weavers - and the mass of exploited Silesian workers emerges as "hero, " taking on a character and identity of its own: a novelty in German drama. The workers' revolt is put down, but it is clear that their cause is just.
A similar attention to the psychological implications of the mass characterizes the broadly conceived drama Florian Geyer (1896), based on the ill-fated 16th-century Peasant Revolt. The peasant troops represent the tragic hero, whose fate is paralleled in Geyer, the well-intentioned leader who lacks the ruthless will to act.
Three further naturalistically oriented plays represent a climactic achievement, although they transcend strict naturalistic technique. In Fuhrmann Henschel (1898) a lowly trucker takes his own life, consumed by remorse at breaking a solemn oath to his wife on her deathbed that he would not marry Hanne, their unpleasant maid. (The situation is similar in an early novella - Bahnwärter Thiel, 1887.) In Rose Bernd (1903), however, the shame and remorse of an unmarried mother guilty of infanticide are assuaged by the forgiveness of her fiancé. In Die Ratten (1911) a comic element is overshadowed by the tragedy arising from Frau John's pathologically intense and frustrated maternal instinct. The work reveals expressionistic elements and symbolizes the ethical brittleness of imperial Germany's social fabric. (In one of German literature's outstanding comedies - Der Biberpelz, 1893; The Beaver Coat - Hauptmann had already satirized a prominent flaw of the Prussian establishment: its stiff-necked and ethically myopic officialdom.)
The drama Vor Sonnenuntergang (1932) closes the naturalistic cycle. Here the hope of the aging Clausen for happiness in marriage to his young secretary is thwarted by the ungenerous conniving of his children by a previous marriage. The grasping materialism of the new generation drives the humanistic Clausen to suicide.
Neoromanticism and Legend
With his most successful fairy-tale drama, Hanneles Himmelfahrt (1893), Hauptmann transcends the naturalistic limits. In this work a young girl who despairs because of mistreatment by her stepfather attempts to drown herself and is rescued, but her ensuing fever is fatal, and her fantasies as death approaches are realized onstage - the language reflects the transition in passing from lowly prose to exalted verse - projecting her attainment of the fulfillment impossible on the plane of reality.
Hannele provides a bridge between naturalism and the neoromantic myth drama in verse, Die versunkene Glocke (1896; The Sunken Bell), in which the bell caster (artist) Heinrich, though incapable of living on the normal plane of reality, is made tragically aware that the artist cannot attain the life of pure spirit. The conflict mirrors a similar struggle in Hauptmann's own career, climaxed in 1904 by his decision to divorce his first wife and marry a gifted musical artist. The prose drama Und Pippa tanzt! (1906) projects the fragile quality of beauty, or of longing, pursued and victimized by crass reality.
The epic element characterizes three dramas: Der arme Heinrich (1902) reworks the themes of blood sacrifice and compassion in the old legend; Kaiser Karls Geisel (1908) treats the love of the 80-year-old emperor Charlemagne for the 16-year-old Saxon hostage Gersuind, while Griselda (1909) examines the patience of this legendary figure in terms of abnormal psychology.
Comparable treatments of legendary and historical themes are found in the drama Der weisse Heiland and the dramatic poem Indipohdi (both 1920), which protest the inhumanities of the Spanish in their New World conquests. The dramas Winterballade (1917) and Veland (1925) offer analyses of abnormal or morbid psychological states.
Narrative Work
Hauptmann's 20 novels and narratives develop similar psychological themes, frequently combined with an autobiographical element. Der Narr in Christo Emanuel Quint (1910) treats the messianic complex and the conflict of spirit and flesh in modern terms. Atlantis (1912) reflects Hauptmann's own struggle to choose between two women of sharply differing qualities.
Der Ketzer von Soana (1918) and Die Insel der grossen Mutter (1924) celebrate the overpowering force of the erotic impulse. Das Buch der Leidenschaft (2 vols., 1929-1930) analyzes the psychological complexities for the man torn between two women, while Mignon (published posthumously in 1947) recreates, with demonic overtones, this remarkable figure from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. In Im Wirbel der Berufung (1936) the basic pattern is again the triangle, and opportunity is created, again as in Wilhelm Meister, for a long analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Classical Epilogue
Classical settings and themes predominate in the four verse dramas of the late Atriden tetralogy, in which Hauptmann seeks to interpret the events of the Greek past in terms of a catastrophic present (Nazi domination and World War II). The results are at best ambiguous and the prospect for man's further development clouded.
In Hauptmann's literary output one finds a compendium of the contending forces, from materialism to mysticism, active in German literature during his long career. In his lifelong efforts to encompass them in art, the view of man as a powerless victim of higher forces is balanced in some measure by a recurrent faith in the redemptive power of human compassion.
Hauptmann died on June 6, 1946, and was buried on the Baltic Island of Hiddensee, his favorite summer retreat. His extensive travels included two trips to America (1894 and 1932). He received the Nobel Prize in 1912.
Further Reading
Informative older studies of Hauptmann are Otto Heller, Studies in Modern German Literature (1905; repr. 1967), and Camillo von Klenze, From Goethe to Hauptmann: Studies in a Changing Culture (1926). The sociological implications of Hauptmann's work are stressed in Margaret Sinden, Gerhart Hauptmann: The Prose Plays (1957), and Leroy R. Shaw, Witness of Deceit: Gerhart Hauptmann as Critic of Society (1958). A good general analysis is by Hugh F. Garten, Gerhart Hauptmann (1954). Hauptmann and his times are well treated in Jethro Bithell, Modern German Literature 1880-1950 (1939; 3d ed. 1959).
Additional Sources
Holl, Karl, Gerhart Hauptmann, his life and his work, 1862-1912, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1977.
Maurer, Warren R., Understanding Gerhart Hauptmann, Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1992.
| Fairy Tale Companion: Gerhart Hauptmann |
Hauptmann, Gerhart (1862–1946), German dramatist and Nobel Prize winner. Though Hauptmann was regarded as the leading representative of German naturalism, he was deeply influenced by the traditions, myths, and legends of his Silesian home. Having become famous for his naturalist dramas, he increasingly integrated mystical and fairy‐tale elements in his work. This development led to the dramatic fairy tale Die versunkene Glocke (The Sunken Bell, 1896), telling of the enchantment and rescue of the bell‐founder Heinrich in a region populated by wood‐ and water‐sprites; and the glassworks fairy‐tale drama Und Pippa tanzt! (And Pippa Dances, 1906). Towards the end of his life he wrote ‘Das Märchen’ (‘The Fairy Tale’) as a conscious attempt to vary Goethe's ‘Das Märchen’ for the purpose of criticizing fascism. Yet his tale about Theophrast, a wandering pilgrim, remains too obtuse to be considered effective.
Bibliography
— Caroline Schatke
| German Literature Companion: Gerhart Hauptmann |
Hauptmann, Gerhart (Obersalzbrunn, Silesia, 1862-1946, Agnetendorf, Silesia), son of a hotelier and younger brother of C. Hauptmann, took to farming on leaving school, but abandoned his training to attend the Breslau Academy of Art with the intention of becoming a sculptor (1880-2). He spent the winter semester 1882-3 at Jena University, where he was influenced by the lectures of E. Haeckel. In 1883 he visited Italy with the hope of settling in Rome as a sculptor, but returned home by the summer of 1884. After a short spell at the Dresden Academy, this time working at graphic art, he studied history for a year at Berlin, and took lessons in acting. A turning-point in his life was his marriage in 1885 to Marie Thienemann, whose wealth made him independent. They settled at Erkner about 15 miles from Berlin, where Hauptmann began to write.
Hauptmann's first production was an unoriginal epic in ottava rima, Promethidenlos (1885). About this time he made contact with other writers, notably with the Naturalists of the newly founded group Durch and the Friedrichshagener Kreis, which together comprised most of the advanced writers of the day. The tale Fasching appeared in 1887 and his outstanding narrative work Bahnwärter Thiel in 1888. In the autumn of 1889 his first play, Vor Sonnenaufgang, was privately produced by the Freie Bühne, and this performance made him famous overnight. In that year he moved to Charlottenburg, and two years later also bought a house at Schreiberhau in Silesia. He moved from Schreiberhau to Haus Wiesenstein, in Agnetendorf, which remained his Silesian residence.
Hauptmann quickly showed his ability to handle the new Naturalistic idiom in a succession of plays, Das Friedensfest (1890), Einsame Menschen (1891), the unexpected comedy College Crampton (1892), the novel social play in which a group of weavers takes the place of an individual character as the hero, Die Weber (1892), and the Berlin dialect comedy Der Biberpelz (1893). The next play, Hanneles Himmelfahrt (1893), startled his admirers, for it set Naturalistic and visionary elements side by side. Florian Geyer (1896) reassured them, but was not entirely successful in mastering the problem of the Naturalistic treatment of history. With Die versunkene Glocke (1896) Hauptmann moved towards neo-Romanticism, writing a verse parable on the artist's lot (see Künstlerdrama). Since 1894 he had been involved in a marital crisis, which was not to be solved until 1904, when his first marriage was dissolved, and he married Margarete Marschalk.
Hauptmann's personal difficulties did not stem the flow of his writing. One of his most impressive tragedies, Fuhrmann Henschel (1899), reverted to the Naturalist vein; as did also Michael Kramer (1900), which resumes the problem of the artist. At this time he began to adapt older literature. Schluck und Jau (1900) reflects his interest in Shakespeare (traits of The Taming of the Shrew and even As You Like It are recognizable), and Der arme Heinrich (1902) is based on Hartmann von Aue's verse tale Der arme Heinrich. Elga (1905) is a dramatization of Grillparzer's story Das Kloster bei Sendomir. Meanwhile he had returned to the characters of Der Biberpelz in Der rote Hahn (1901), but with a less assured touch. He again fully vindicated his capacity to write serious and compassionate Naturalist drama in the rural play of sexual attraction, Rose Bernd (1903). In the strange visionary fantasy of Und Pippa tanzt (1906) he mingled myth, earthiness, and sentimentality into a concoction which puzzled its audience. The comedy Die Jungfern vom Bischofsberg (1907) was found amusing, but showed signs that his dramatic powers were falling away.
In the spring of 1907 Hauptmann paid a three-month visit to Greece, which inspired Griechischer Frühling (1908), a fresh and enthusiastic response to the landscape of antiquity. With Kaiser Karls Geisel (1908), Hauptmann, using the gossip of a 16th-c. Italian (Sebastiano Erizzo), wrote an inflated blank-verse play representing the elderly Charlemagne's supposed irresistible infatuation for a young girl. Griselda (1909), a half-length play in seven scenes, is a feeble treatment of a traditional story of loyalty and devotion (see Griselda). Hauptmann's long and ambiguous novel on the theme of religious delusion, Der Narr in Christo Emanuel Quint, appeared in 1910. This was his first narrative work since the short Der Apostel of 1890. Another novel appeared in 1912, Atlantis, a story of the wreck of a liner, to which is incongruously attached a double love-story. In between these second-rate narrative works, Hauptmann made a surprisingly successful return to Naturalism with the socially critical tragicomedy of Die Ratten (1911). The play Gabriel Schillings Flucht (1912), also in the Naturalist manner, reverts to the overworked treatment of the exceptional individual, an artist, entangled between the women in his life. Peter Brauer, written in 1911, but not published till 1921, is a routine tragicomedy in prose, faintly recalling College Crampton and certainly more comic than tragic.
In 1912 Hauptmann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Das Festspiel in deutschen Reimen (1913), specially commissioned for the centenary celebrations of Napoleon's expulsion from Germany in 1813, surprised its sponsors by its levity in presenting the stirring times of the Wars of Liberation (see Napoleonic Wars) as a puppet-play, and by its unassertive but firm negation of war. Der Bogen des Odysseus (1914), a blank-verse classical play in five acts said to have been conceived in 1907, brings little that is new to the theme except an unfavourable reinterpretation of Penelope. The bloody legend presented in the play (dramatische Dichtung) Winterballade (1917), derived from the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf, shows Hauptmann in a phase of fascination with savagery. In striking contrast is the sun-drenched pagan atmosphere of the Novelle Der Ketzer von Soana (1918).
Der weiße Heiland and Indipohdi (both 1920) embody Hauptmann's response to the 1914-18 War. The former play (Phantasie) treats the story of Montezuma in trochaic verse; Indipohdi (Dramatisches Gedicht) places Prospero in a Renaissance Mexican setting, and shows him confronting the measureless evil of the world. To the end of his life Hauptmann remained irrepressibly productive, but the flashes of inspiration became rarer, the repetition of earlier motifs and the resuscitation of worn subject-matter more noticeable. Two exercises in epic poetry came between the wars, Anna, a rural idyll (ein ländliches Liebesgedicht) in Goethean hexameters (1921), and the lengthy comedy of human life, set in the same measure, Des großen Kampffliegers, Landfahrers, Gauklers und Magiers Till Eulenspiegel Abenteuer, Streiche, Gaukeleien, Gesichte und Träume (1928). The novels Der Phantom (1923) and Die Insel der großen Mutter (1924) miscarry, the Nordic mythical flights of the verse tragedy Veland (1925) show him at his worst. The tragedy Dorothea Angermann (1926) returned to Naturalism and the representation of intense sexuality. Das Buch der Leidenschaft (1929) adapts personal records of a period of divided love (1894-1904). Vor Sonnenuntergang (Schauspiel, 1932), treats an old man's love without bringing the theme to life. Hamlet in Wittenberg (1935), an attempted prelude to Hamlet, draws what little vitality it has from Shakespeare, and is written in brittle verse. Im Wirbel der Berufung (1936) and Das Abenteuer meiner Jugend (2 vols., 1937) are autobiographical, the latter ending with a reading of his first play in 1889 Mention should also be made of the drama Das Hirtenlied (published in part in 1921, completed in 1935), the novel Wanda (1928), the short plays Die schwarze Maske and Hexenritt, grouped as Spuk (1929), the Novellen Die Spitzhacke (1931), Der Schuß im Park (1941), and Mignon (posth., 1947), and of the plays Die goldene Harfe (1933), Die Tochter der Kathedrale (1939), Die Finsternisse (1947), and the fragment Herbert Engelmann, which C. Zuckmayer completed (1952). The chief work of Hauptmann's last years was the Atriden-Tetralogie (1941-8), his response to the 1939-45 War, seen in the light of fate and Nemesis. Two further works mark these years, the pre-eminently mystical epic poem in terza rima (a deliberate echo of Dante's Divina Commedia), Der große Traum (1942), and Der neue Christophorus, an (inherently) unfinished novel at which he worked even after his flight from his homeland, in which it is set. Hauptmann's esoteric philosophy involving ancient myths and rites aims at the creation of a new image of man.
Hauptmann had many of the gifts of the great dramatist, but he had not in sufficient measure the intellectual power, the depth of vision, or the integrity of spirit which could develop those gifts to their full advantage. His prose dramatic work particularly is impressive in power and scope. Hauptmann died in his home in Agnetendorf, but was buried on the Baltic island of Hiddensee near Rügen.
In 1932 and 1935 appeared a Gesamtausgabe, Das dramatische Werk (6 vols.) and Das epische Werk (6 vols.) to mark Hauptmann's 70th birthday; the Centenar-Ausgabe, ed. H. E. Hass, was published in 11 vols., 1962-74, Diarium 1917-1933 in 1980, Notiz-Kalender 1881-1891 in 1982, and Tagebuch 1892-1894 in 1985 (all ed. by M. Maschatzke). Correspondence with O. Brahm, Otto Brahm—Gerhart Hauptmann. Briefwechsel 1889-1912, ed. P. Sprengel, appeared in 1985.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Gerhart Hauptmann |
Bibliography
See study by P. Mellen (1983).
| Wikipedia: Gerhart Hauptmann |
| Gerhart Hauptmann | |
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| Born | November 15, 1862 Obersalzbrunn, Silesia, Prussia |
| Died | June 6, 1946 (aged 83) Agnetendorf (Jagniątków), People's Republic of Poland |
| Occupation | dramatist |
| Nationality | German |
| Literary movement | Naturalism |
| Notable work(s) | The Weavers, Die Ratten |
| Notable award(s) | Nobel Prize in Literature 1912 |
Gerhart Hauptmann (15 November 1862—6 June 1946) was a German dramatist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.
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Hauptmann was born in Obersalzbrunn, a small town of Silesia, now known as Szczawno-Zdrój and a part of Poland.
He was the son of a hotel-keeper. From the village school of his native place he passed to the Realschule in Breslau, and was then sent to learn agriculture on his uncle's farm at Jauer. Having, however, no taste for country life, he soon returned to Breslau and entered the art school, intending to become a sculptor. Here he met his life-long friend Josef Block. He then studied at Jena, and spent the greater part of the years 1883 and 1884 in Italy. In May 1885, Hauptmann married and settled in Berlin, and, devoting himself entirely to literary work, soon attained a great reputation as one of the chief representatives of the modern drama.
In 1891 he moved to Schreiberhau in Silesia. Hauptmann's first drama, Vor Sonnenaufgang (1889) inaugurated the naturalistic movement in modern German literature. It was followed by Das Friedensfest (1890), Einsame Menschen (1891) and Die Weber (The Weavers 1892), a powerful drama depicting the rising of the Silesian weavers in 1844. Of Hauptmann's subsequent work, mention may be made of the comedies Kollege Crampton (1892), Der Biberpelz (1893) and Der rote Hahn (1901), the symbolist dream play The Assumption of Hannele (1893), and an historical drama Florian Geyer (1895). He also wrote two tragedies of Silesian peasant life, Fuhrmann Henschel (1898) and Rose Bernd (1903), and the dramatic fairy-tales Die versunkene Glocke (1897) and Und Pippa tanzt (1905).
Hauptmann's marital life was difficult, and in 1904 he divorced his wife. That same year he married the actress Margarete Marschalk, who had borne him a son four years previously. The next year, his second marriage was interrupted by an affair with the 17-year-old Austrian actress Ida Orloff, whom he met in Berlin when she performed in his play The Assumption of Hannele. Orlov inspired characters in several of Hauptmann's works, and he later referred to her as his muse.
In 1911 he wrote Die Ratten. In 1912, Hauptmann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "primarily in recognition of his fruitful, varied and outstanding production in the realm of dramatic art."
During the First World War Hauptmann was a pacifist. In this period of his career he wrote several gloomy and historical-allegorical plays, like Der Bogen des Odysseus (1914), Der weisse Heiland (1912–17), Winterballade (1917). After the War, his ability was clearly on the wane. There are two full-length plays which are similar to the early successes, but with a little Realistic taste: Dorothea Angermann (1926) and Vor Sonnenuntergang (1932). He remained in Germany after Hitler's Machtergreifung and survived the fire storm of Dresden. His last bow is the Atriden-Tetralogie (1942–46).
Several of his works have been translated into English. These include the plays which he wrote till Veland (1925), except Elga, an earlier fairy play and Festspiel in deutschem Reimen, a festival play. His works were published by S. Fischer Verlag.
Hauptmann died at the age of 83 at his home in Agnetendorf (now Jagniątków, Poland) in 1946. Because of German atrocities committed in Poland during World War II, the Polish communist administration did not allow Hauptmann's relatives to bury him in Agnetendorf although even the Soviet military government recommended it as they admired the work of Hauptmann, his body was transported in an old cattle wagon to occupied Germany more than a month after his death. He was buried near his cottage on Hiddensee.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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