Gerhart Hauptmann

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Gerhart Hauptmann (November 15, 1862 - June 6, 1946) was a German dramatist.

Hauptmann's playwright-career

Hauptmann was born in Obersalzbrunn, a small city of Silesia, now known as Szczawno-Zdrój and a part of Poland.

He was the son of a Prussian 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 henceforth entirely to literary work, soon attained a great reputation as one of the chief representatives of the modern drama.

In 1891 he retired 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 (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), a "dream poem," 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). 1911 was the zenit: he wrote Die Ratten, therefore he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.

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 "Machtsergriefung". His last is the Atriden-Tetralogie (1942-46).

Several of his works have been translated into English. (All 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 Jagniatkow, Poland) in 1946.

Other works

• Plays: Michael Kramer (1900), Schluck und Jau (1900), Der arme Heinrich (1902), Die Jungfrauen von Bischofsberg (1907), Kaiser Karl Geisel (1908), Griselda (1909), Festspiel in deutschen Reimen (1913), Magnus Garbe (1914, second version: 1942), Indipohdi (1920), Peter Brauer (1921), Veland (1925), Herbert Engelmann (1921-26), Spuk (two plays: Die schwarze Maske and Hexenritt, 1928), Die goldene Harfe (1933), Hamlet im Wittenberg (1935), Die Finsternisse (1937), Ulrich von Liechtenstein (1939), Die Tochter der Kathedrale (1939).

• Novels: Der Narr in Christo Emanuel Quint (1910), Atlantis (1912), Phantom (1923), Der Dämon (1926), Die Insel der grossen Mutter (1928), Um Volk und Geist (1932), Der Abenteuer meiner Jugend (1937) etc. etc.

• Verse novels: Anna (1921), Till Eulenspiegel (1927) etc. etc.

Sources

External links

• [Authors' Calendar]

References

 

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