Hauptmann, Gerhart

Hauptmann, Gerhart (gĕr`härt houpt`män), 1862–1946, German dramatist, novelist, and poet. He showed the influence of the theories of Zola and the plays of Ibsen in his play Before Dawn (1889, tr. 1909), which inaugurated the naturalistic movement in the German theater and won overnight fame. His other realistic plays include the famous tragedy of the working class, The Weavers (1892, tr. 1899), the comedy The Beaver Coat (1893, tr. 1905), and the tragedies Drayman Henschel (1899, tr. 1913) and Rose Bernd (1903, tr. 1913). Responsive to changing moods in literature, Hauptmann reflected the trend away from naturalism with the dream play Hannele (1893, tr. 1894) and the popular romantic play The Sunken Bell (1897, tr. 1898). His prose works include the novel of a modern mystic, The Fool in Christ, Emanuel Quint (1910, tr. 1911) and The Heretic of Soana (1918, tr. 1923). Till Eulenspiegel (1928) is an epic of postwar Germany. A leading figure in German literature for three generations, Hauptmann received many honors, notably the 1912 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Bibliography

See study by P. Mellen (1983).

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Hauptmann, Gerhart (Johann Robert)

Gerhart Hauptmann, etching by Hermann Struck, 1904; in the Schiller-Nationalmuseum, Marbach, Ger.

(credit: Courtesy of the Schiller-Nationalmuseum, Marbach, Ger.)

(born Nov. 15, 1862, Bad Salzbrunn, Silesia, Prussia—died June 6, 1946, Agnetendorf, Ger.) German playwright and poet. He studied sculpture before turning to literature in his early 20s. His first play, the starkly realistic social drama Before Dawn (1889), made him famous and signaled the end of highly stylized German drama. His naturalistic plays on themes of social reality and proletarian tragedy, including The Weavers (1892), The Beaver Coat (1893), and Drayman Henschel (1898), made him the most prominent German playwright of his era. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1912. In his novels, stories, epic poems, and later plays, he abandoned naturalism for mystical religiosity and mythical symbolism.