Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946) was a German dramatist and novelist and one of the leading figures of literary naturalism. He was born in Obersalzbrunn, in Lower Silesia, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia, and lived through the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912, and his name is still tied above all to a theatre that looks directly at social misery.

His youth was unsettled. After attending the Realschule in Breslau, he spent time on his uncle's farm, gave up his training because of ill health, and tried to become a sculptor in Breslau and Rome, without success. For much of this period he was supported financially by Marie Thienemann, whom he married in 1885 and with whom he settled in Erkner, near Berlin. Their three sons were born there, and it was there that he began to write seriously, in contact with younger naturalist writers who made him aware of what theatre audiences needed.

The staging of Before Sunrise in 1889, directed by Otto Brahm, inaugurated naturalism in modern German literature. The play shows the moral decay of a Silesian mining community that has grown rich overnight. It earned him the hostility of conservative critics and the enthusiasm of young writers. Lonely People (1891), influenced by Ibsen, followed soon after; its protagonist, an idealist without willpower, ends his life.

His breakthrough came with The Weavers (1892), which depicts the rising of the Silesian weavers in 1844. Hauptmann dispensed with a central individual hero: the true protagonist is an exploited social class. Kaiser Wilhelm II considered it politically dangerous and banned it. He then expanded his method of crowd scenes in Florian Geyer (1895), about the Peasants' War, a work of over four hours that failed at its first performance and was later a success. He also wrote social comedies such as The Beaver Coat (1893) and symbolist plays such as The Sunken Bell (1897).

Around the turn of the century his work became more mystical. In 1904 he married Margarete Marschalk, with whom he had lived since 1901 in Agnetendorf, Silesia. In 1910 he published The Fool in Christ, Emanuel Quint, his first full-length novel. During the First World War he signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three, which backed German military action, and after the defeat he took refuge briefly in Switzerland. In the Weimar years he was a prominent public figure and received many honours. Under Hitler he allowed himself to be courted by the regime while secretly writing an anti-Nazi play that was only published after his death.

He died in 1946 in Agnetendorf. His coffin was reportedly removed from Silesia, a sign of the postwar border changes. His legacy is twofold: he was one of the driving forces behind the modern social theatre, and, it is said, Thomas Mann drew on some of his personal traits for the character of Mynheer Peeperkorn in The Magic Mountain.