Gerhart Hauptmann

Abstract

Gerhart Hauptmann’s contribution to the modern theatre would be more obvious if his plays were better known outside the German-speaking countries. He was born in 1862 in a small spa town in Silesia, where his father was the proprietor of a hotel. From earliest childhood his surroundings made him aware of the different levels in society: on the one hand there were the locals, simple folk for the most part, who earned their living from weaving, mining and the tourist trade and spoke a Silesian dialect of German; on the other, there were the hotel guests, many of them titled people from Eastern Europe; and somewhere between came people like himself and his family, with roots in the hard-working weaving and farming communities of the area but with partially fulfilled aspirations to higher economic and social status. The stratification of society in general and the social mobility of individuals within it were to become central and complementary themes in his dramatic work; so, too, were the tensions he sensed between traditional attitudes and ways of life and the pull of the modern world, tensions which are often presented in his plays in terms of town and country or of the friction between the older generation and its successors.

Hauptmann on Theatre

My ambition is to break new ground as regards dramatic technique. I want to free myself from the insistent claims of theatricality for its own sake, so as to get to something simple and totally true. In concentrating on theatrical effectiveness, many people lose sight of what is truly dramatic. True drama is found in human encounters and in the expression of relationships, in the movements of people in relation to each other as they meet, clash and circle round one another according to laws as natural as those governing the stars and planets. My starting-point must not be a preconceived formula put forward by others and not properly thought out; I must start out from my own experience, which for me is the only reality. This in all its complexity must be my basis, not artificially contrived plots, which are essentially false because they never happen in real life and cannot happen in plays if the characters are to remain consistent. Should today’s men and women be excluded from drama just because they are unsuitable for plots of the traditional kind? No: today’s drama must be provided by the men and women of today, just as earlier drama was provided by the men and women of the past. Everyone is potential material for drama. (Diary entry, 1906)

Wedekind on Hauptmann

What is lacking in everything I have written so far is the human warmth to which Hauptmann owes his powerful appeal.

(Letter, 1904)

Schnitzler on Hauptmann

Once again it is clear enough that of all the poets and playwrights at work in Germany or indeed in the world today, unquestionably the most gifted is Hauptmann.

(Diary entry, 1915)