THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 J. Lorenz Sporer
 
 STUDIES IN MODERN 
 
 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 SUDERMANN HAUPTMANN WOMEN WRITERS OF 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 OTTO HELLER, PH.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN 
 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. Louis 
 
 GINN & COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO LONDON
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1905 
 BY OTTO HELLER 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 55-5 
 
 l)c &t&en*tira 
 
 GINN & COMPANY- CAM- 
 BRIDGE- MASSACHUSETTS
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 >5' 
 
 TO 
 M. S. H. 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY 
 DEDICATED
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The reader of these studies will be likely to feel a 
 certain disappointment at finding them distinctly unscho- 
 lastic in form as well as in substance. Yet a frank dec- 
 laration of the author's aim may vindicate him in the 
 judgment even of those who have themselves dealt with 
 similar subjects in a more academic fashion. His car- 
 dinal purpose has beenjp draw attention afresh_tp a 
 phase of contemporary culture thus far not sufficiently 
 heeded by the En^h^h^s^akmg..vfQrld. He has written 
 with the hope of cooperating,, in-however modest a meas- 
 ure, with abler and better known writers who are striv- 
 ing to bring the German and the American into more 
 genuine sympathy with each other. 
 
 The usual way of revealing the spirit and temper of 
 a people through their literature is by an interpretative 
 survey of the entire output. This course, if applied to 
 modern literatures, involves the application of historical 
 method to present-day things and persons. Many critics 
 have deemed their powers adequate to grapple with such 
 an enormous difficulty. But although they have had 
 the advantage of an already well-informed reading public, 
 their performances, as a rule, have fallen so far short 
 of their aims that a less self-assured reviewer shrinks 
 from the undertaking. With the exception of one or
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 two brilliant achievements, the existing works of the 
 sort render at most the limited service of catalogues 
 raisonn/s, arranging the facts with different degrees 
 of reliability, and tracing with more or less fallibility the 
 general drift of modern, or, better, recent, literature. 
 For an alien reader, unacquainted with the material 
 under discussion, they are ill adapted. The novice natu- 
 rally enough is much more interested in the aesthetic 
 and ethical maxims of leading individuals and their con- 
 crete works than in any abstract creeds and doctrines of 
 the schools. But the "history" of literature, or even of 
 single literary periods, necessarily depends for the char- 
 acterization of eminent writers upon condensed synopses 
 and brief and usually dogmatic estimates, while for the 
 expounding of the sociological bases from which liter- 
 ary currents ever spring, it must fall back on comment 
 which for the greater part lies beyond the ken of all 
 but the specialist. 
 
 Withal the historical method in this field of work is 
 hardly safer from the danger of subjective treatment 
 than is a more frankly "impressionistic" form of criti- 
 cism. So soon as the "general" reader turns for con- 
 firmation of its verdicts to the full bench of critical 
 authority, he is confused by a diversity of opinion which 
 extends even to the estimates of the master spirits of 
 the age. Like less imposing mortals, the historiogra- 
 pher of contemporary events cannot get away from his 
 own shadow.
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 The author of this book, not unconscious of the sub- 
 jective warp in his own judgment, has considered it more 
 to his purpose to show in a series of unconstrained mono- 
 graphs the chief aspects of modern German literature 
 than to construct a general guidebook for that subject. 
 By dint of detailed analysis he has sought to convey 
 the gist of the two leading writers even to such of his 
 readers as might be debarred from first-hand acquaint- 
 ance with them. 
 
 Just why Hauptmann and Sudermann were chosen to 
 represent the modern tendencies in the drama and in 
 fiction is stated fully in the early part of the first sketch. 
 The paper on Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century, 
 although broader in scope and consequently less intensive 
 in treatment, was joined to those on Sudermann and 
 Hauptmann for the simple reason that it seemed practi- 
 cal to select out of the fullness of the available material 
 just those topics which for people outside of Germany 
 possess the keenest actuality. Should this beginning 
 prove not altogether abortive, it is the author's intention 
 to follow up the present volume with further groups 
 of studies, and he even hopes by this means to round 
 out, less unmethodically than would appear at first blush, 
 the story of the growth, ascendency, and, if signs may 
 be believed, the decline, of naturalism in German litera- 
 ture under the new Empire. 
 
 As for the style, or, should that be a misnomer, the 
 linguistic make-up, of these studies, the author, alas,
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 may not appease the sternly disposed among his readers 
 with rueful promises of future improvement. Yet the 
 much-tried leniency extended to writers, whether alien 
 born or not, by a public with whom this form of gener- 
 osity amounts almost to a national fault, relieves him of 
 the need for prolonged apology. 
 
 OTTO HELLER 
 MAY, 1905
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HERMANN SUDERMANN i 
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 117 
 
 WOMEN WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY . . . 229 
 
 INDEX 297
 
 MODERN 
 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 HERMANN SUDERMANN
 
 HERMANN SUDERMANN 
 
 It is a striking coincidence that the most sig- 
 nificant figures in the history of German literature 
 have appeared upon the scene two by two. As far 
 back as the ninth century we find side by side 
 as its greatest poetic monuments two religious 
 epopees of almost equal importance, the Heliand 
 and the Evangelienbuch ; among the popular epics 
 of the Hohenstaufen times the German Iliad, 
 the Nibelungenhed, is matched off by the Lay of 
 Kudrun as by a German Odyssey; and among 
 the chivalric poems of the same period the pre- 
 eminent works of Wolfram von Eschenbach and 
 Gottfried von Strassburg lend expression to dia- 
 metrically opposite views of life. 
 
 After the literary life had lain in catalepsy for 
 many generations it was reawakened in the eigh- 
 teenth century through apparently antipodal forces 
 which may perhaps be most fitly brought to mind 
 by the mention of Klopstock and Lessing. Then 
 the dazzling flood of light and life which at the 
 close of that century suffused the culture of Ger- 
 many was shed from the twin luminaries Goethe 
 
 3
 
 4 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 and Schiller. For the people, even to-day the 
 name of Goethe hardly enjoys the same lonely emi- 
 nence in German letters as does Homer's in Greek 
 or Shakespeare's in English literature. Although 
 in the ensuing century the catalogue of the poetae 
 Germaniae grew to an unexampled magnitude, its 
 best known names at successive periods stood in 
 contrasted couples: Kleist and Korner, Uhland 
 and Hauff, Heine and Lenau, Geibel and Freilig- 
 rath, Grillparzer and Hebbel, Reuter and Schef- 
 fel, Freytag and Keller, Heyse and Spielhagen, 
 Wilbrandt and Wildenbruch, Marlitt and Werner, 
 and, if the truth must be confessed, Hacklander 
 and Gerstacker. We are therefore not surprised 
 to find ourselves once more contrasting two leaders 
 this time within the Moderne. Now that the 
 new school has issued from its turbulent infancy 
 it has become legitimate for us to ask: What 
 have these new writers done for German litera- 
 ture, in what have they enriched the national 
 art and culture? To the great mass of the peo- 
 ple the literature of the post-Bismarckian era 
 seems epitomized in two names, Gerhart Haupt- 
 mann and Hermann Sudermann, for undeniably 
 these two have exercised the greatest formative 
 influence on contemporaneous German letters.
 
 SUDERMANN 5 
 
 Literary criticism, ever inclined to juxtaposition 
 and antithesis, has quickly adopted the dualism 
 of the public taste in its attitude toward Suder- 
 mann and Hauptmann. 
 
 To trace out the artistic and intellectual growth 
 of these two leading spirits as manifest in their 
 works is an attractive and instructive task. To 
 be sure, their careers show in the main features a 
 certain external similarity, a similarity which has 
 been strikingly emphasized through the circum- 
 stance that they have been simultaneously swept 
 onward to the very pinnacle of fame. Yet though 
 their great successes have very nearly tallied in 
 point of time and measure, one can scarcely im- 
 agine two more dissimilar natures. Scherer's 
 ingenious but somewhat strained theory which 
 accounts for the main tendencies of German liter- 
 ature through the underlying competition of rival 
 forces, a masculine and a feminine, is well illus- 
 trated in these two writers. Hauptmann, high- 
 strung, responding with nervous sensibility to the 
 mildest stimulus, is possessed of a reproductive, 
 feminine talent, a talent raised, to be sure, to the 
 power of genius ; whereas Sudermann is a robust 
 masculine personality made of coarser stuff, not 
 subtle enough to penetrate the inmost privacies
 
 6 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 of the human heart. Withal he is not the lesser 
 artist, for to offset Hauptmann's fineness of per- 
 ception he has the advantage of a stout self-confi- 
 dence and broad knowledge of the inner and outer 
 facts of life. 
 
 The fame of Hermann Sudermann is no longer 
 confined to his own country, since most of his 
 novels have been translated into several languages 
 and a number of his plays performed in the more 
 dignified theaters on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 His successes, won in the face of a determined 
 opposition both from the old school of writers and 
 the new, since neither will acknowledge Suder- 
 mann as of their own, have been phenomenal, and, 
 if the question can be decided by the evidence of 
 publishers' and library statistics and the frequency 
 of Sudermann's plays in the repertory of leading 
 theaters, it may be safely assumed that his present 
 great popularity is in no danger of decline in the 
 near future. This popularity is unquestionably 
 connected with the fact that in each of his works 
 a living issue is sharply defined. Sudermann is 
 above all things a writer with a distinct pedagog- 
 ical task to which he brings a complete intellec- 
 tual and moral equipment. His bold and positive 
 utterances have awakened a ringing echo, because
 
 SUDERMANN 7 
 
 they have imperatively called the attention of the 
 world to social and intellectual undercurrents of 
 extraordinary persistency and unknown power. 
 
 To determine one's attitude toward the upset- 
 ting doctrine preached by Sudermann, with the 
 approval of a large portion of the best lettered 
 and intellectually most fastidious of living nations, 
 would seem to be almost a duty for the thoughtful. 
 If the code of ethics he accepts and proclaims is 
 asserted with justice to be a source of peril to the 
 vested social order that most of us would defend, 
 is it not the part of wisdom to measure the dan- 
 ger by looking the enemy manfully in the face ? 
 New thoughts are not killed off when fine indig- 
 nation virtuously conspires to smother them in 
 their cradle. In a free country it is worth while to 
 examine new teachings. As for those of Suder- 
 mann, most Americans will gasp at their import 
 and unhesitatingly reject them, yet few readers, if 
 they study his books to a purpose, will refuse their 
 respect to the sincerity and moral earnestness of 
 the man. 
 
 It shall be the aim of this chapter to discuss the 
 works thus far produced by Hermann Sudermann, 
 to review their chief contents and trace out their 
 ethics, marking with heavier lines those features
 
 8 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 which have divided the opinion of the German 
 public. But since a fruit of experience is caution, 
 the execution of this plan needs to be preceded 
 by a word of explanation. People often do the 
 critic the unintentional honor of holding him 
 accountable for the views of the eminent writers 
 whom he expounds, only because, out of sheer 
 respect for his readers as well as his subject, he 
 modestly abstains from the promulgation of any 
 personal theory of life that he may hold. To all 
 eventual charges of heresy and sedition the defense 
 therefore enters a general plea of " not guilty." 
 The writer does not pose as Hermann Sudermann 
 nor as his keeper. He does not necessarily cham- 
 pion Sudermann's ethics simply because he does 
 not consider it his business forever to make war 
 upon them. It is enough for him to sound this 
 rich personality, to communicate its message, and 
 to furnish thereby, if he may allow himself the 
 hope, some food for serious reflection. 
 
 The German people have displayed in their 
 literature as a whole a certain severity of temper. 
 Where this literature runs in a humorous vein 
 it passes easily into rough persiflage and cutting 
 satire. Satire is the dominant note not only in 
 the bulky controversial literature of the sixteenth
 
 SUDERMANN 9 
 
 century but also in a not inconsiderable portion 
 of the classic writings of the eighteenth. Les- 
 sing's critical activity, sublimely constructive 
 though it is, is pervaded by rankling animosity 
 against every form of intellectual sloth and 
 artistic barrenness. The youthful Goethe directs 
 his boyishly harsh censure against the prevailing 
 vices of philistinism and hypocrisy. Schiller, in 
 his youth still more vehement than either of his 
 two great predecessors, hurls bowlderlike invec- 
 tive against the existing political and social order 
 of things. The Romantics, priding themselves on 
 their greater delicacy of feeling, seek to refine 
 satire into the gentler art of irony. But even 
 among them it never dies out in its poignant form. 
 In the period of reaction " Young Germany " 
 resorts to merciless scorn as the only weapon 
 available against despotism. Ludwig Borne and 
 Heinrich Heine are the greatest satirists of 
 "Young Germany." They deal havoc differently, 
 the shafts of Borne's sarcasm hit and pierce, 
 while those of Heine's touch and poison. Later 
 on Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the famous writer 
 on aesthetics, subjects his German countrymen to 
 Aristophanic censure in his Faust, the Third 
 Part of the Tragedy. And that entire faction
 
 10 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 who are commonly designated as " Youngest 
 Germany," or Die Moderne, are fain, in order it 
 may be to facilitate their analysis, to saturate 
 the actualities of modern life with a corrosive 
 mockery. Although a certain realism usually 
 serves as the basis of satire, it is the nature of 
 satire to overstep the literal truth. In order to 
 show up a thing as deserving our contempt or 
 ridicule authors present a distorted picture of it. 
 Thus the realism which obtains in caricature is 
 one which depends less on correspondence to 
 facts than on suggestive association. The satir- 
 ist, be his love of truth never so great, seeks not 
 to present things just as they really appear to 
 him from without, but to draw a convincing like- 
 ness of that which they suggest to his inward 
 experience. This object he achieves by exagger- 
 ating or overaccentuating their sinister or mean 
 aspects. He retouches the picture of reality, but 
 never for the purpose of embellishment or ideal- 
 ization. These distinctions it is necessary to hold 
 fast in order to understand why the most distin- 
 guished living satirist, Hermann Sudermann, 
 although he has been so often called modern 
 from top to toe, is at most a half-hearted " realist." 
 He does not conform to the naturalist's supreme
 
 SUDERMANN 1 1 
 
 demand that the writer must not permit his 
 personality, and above all things his philosophy, 
 to shine through his work. On the contrary, it 
 is not at all difficult to get a satisfying glimpse 
 of the man Sudermann through the medium of 
 his writings. He is a typical modern man, city 
 bred, sagacious, and sophisticated to a degree, 
 knowing the world so thoroughly that few things 
 in it can baffle, puzzle, or even surprise him. 
 Such, I think, is the first impression formed of 
 him. Next we observe the open-mindedness of 
 the man, the broad liberality of his sympathies. 
 Soon we discover that his cosmopolitanism has 
 in no way denationalized him or, as is apt to be 
 the case, made him an utter worldling. For with 
 his world-citizenship is coupled a strong family 
 feeling for the German land and people and 
 a deep religious sense. Sudermann, in these 
 days of national self-assertion and spiritual path- 
 seeking, is neither a scoffer nor an indifferent. 
 His skepticism does not assail any noble human 
 ideals, for by these he is himself deeply inspired ; 
 but he is distrustful of men's motives, and espe- 
 cially of the stereotyped moral notions unthink- 
 ingly accepted by one generation from the other. 
 Morality one may so interpret Sudermann
 
 12 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 must be earned, not inherited; personally differ- 
 entiated, not typified. How a person wins or 
 loses his moral salvation is the problem whose 
 fascination sets Sudermann to work, for, although 
 a doubter by temperament, he clearly perceives in 
 human nature latent moral forces which if set free 
 will let it rise above the stale, warmed-over moral- 
 ity of workaday life. It follows naturally that a 
 writer of this temper should be concerned with 
 a dual purpose, rudely to shake the decaying 
 structure of social morality now resting largely on 
 hollow conventions and compromises, but at the 
 same time to stay the total collapse of society 
 and invigorate it with his own sustaining aspira- 
 tions. As his attempts toward these ends are not 
 wholly free from theatricalities, the unthinking 
 complaint that Sudermann is a poseur has passed 
 into the stock in trade of contemporary criticism. 
 He does not parade his personality, he is simply 
 not quite artist enough always to hide it. To be 
 sure, a few of his characters, notably Count Trast 
 in Die Ehre, have a strong affinity with Suder- 
 mann himself. Yet they were never intended for 
 self-portraits. In fact, not caring to admit the 
 throng into his intimacy, he rather barricades 
 himself defiantly behind his works. From this
 
 SUDERMANN 13 
 
 position he falls savagely upon that painted, slink- 
 ing, day-shunning society which for him is the 
 object of deep detestation and drags it from the 
 privacy of its nocturnal haunts into the pitiless 
 glare of the sunlit street. Sudermann, then, is 
 and can be no dreamy minstrel nor yet an utterer 
 of the "lyric cry." He is a calculating man of 
 action, a self-conscious altruist agitated by deep- 
 est sympathy for all souls that are in distress and 
 by implacable hatred of every form of tyranny. 
 Fortunately this determined judge and resolute 
 avenger is also an artist of uncommon power. 
 His plays belong probably, his novels beyond a 
 doubt, to the best that German literature has to 
 show in these genres. 
 
 Before Hermann Sudermann leaped into fame 
 through the performance of Die Ehre (at the Les- 
 sing Theater in Berlin, November 27, 1889) he had 
 struggled with hardships in obscurity, support- 
 ing himself variously as a private tutor, journalist, 
 and story- writer for family magazines ! He was 
 born in 1857, the son of a brewer in a small vil- 
 lage of East Prussia, where brewers are not ex 
 officio millionaires. Sudermann's father, in greatly 
 straitened circumstances, contrived to maintain the 
 talented boy at school with a brief interruption,
 
 14 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 during which the fourteen-year-old Hermann 
 shared by force of poverty the early fate of Ibsen 
 and Fontane in being apprenticed to an apothe- 
 cary. Returning to his books, Sudermann was 
 graduated from the Gymnasium at Tilsit, and 
 then undertook work in philology and history at 
 the University of Konigsberg. In 1877 he came 
 to Berlin to continue his studies and has since 
 then made the Prussian capital his permanent 
 home. His importance as a leader in the modern 
 literary movement dates properly from the year 
 1887, when, besides a collection of short stories 
 entitled Im Zwielicht ("In the Gloaming"), he 
 produced his first work of real significance, the 
 novel Frau Sorge ( "Dame Care"), which revealed 
 him at once as a writer of exceptional force and 
 skill and also as a mature philosopher. 
 
 " Dame Care " is a somber book. The hero is 
 a man who has led a joyless existence. He has 
 never been young, since upon his early childhood 
 wretched parental strife had sprinkled its poison- 
 ing mildew. The beginning reads not very un- 
 like Reuter's great book, Ut mine Stromtid; but 
 how different is Reuter's noble portrait of Carl 
 Havermann from the picture drawn of Paul May- 
 hbfer's father, the East Prussian squire, who,
 
 SUDERMANN 1 5 
 
 uprooted from his easy mode of life, thenceforth 
 spins out his days in apathetic stupor! Young 
 Paul, who assumes all the obligations of his bank- 
 rupt father, is not only borne down with the 
 weight of excessive exertions, but burdened also 
 with the still heavier responsibility for the moral 
 safety of his family. After the death of his mother 
 no ray of light ever pierces the veil which, woven 
 by Dame Care, is drawing closer and closer round 
 the slow, shy, and rather unwinsome boy. Cheer- 
 lessly, almost mechanically, he performs his mo- 
 notonous work, in order to provide comfort for 
 the father now sinking into dotage and the reck- 
 less twin sisters. Success crowns Paul's labors; 
 but no sooner has the lost credit of his name been 
 recovered through untiring labor than it is again 
 disgraced in a still more painful manner. To 
 repair the damaged honor of his sisters is a 
 sacred debt which Paul owes to the memory of 
 his mother. After summoning up in vain the full 
 measure of his moral heroism for an appeal to 
 the seducers, he intimidates the cowards with a 
 brutal threat and forces them to make good their 
 promises of marriage. But after this one resolute, 
 blood-cleansing deed he relapses into dull, ox- 
 like resignation. His business prospers more and
 
 1 6 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 more, but to no purpose, since now the sisters are 
 married, and Paul is no longer buoyed up by his 
 guardianship. He is enslaved by a false, a cheer- 
 less conception of life. It must be said that the 
 road by which he ultimately reaches liberty takes 
 a most incongruous course, for it leads through 
 the penitentiary. In order to preserve the prop- 
 erty of a neighbor from the incendiary hands of 
 his degenerate father, Paul sets his own premises 
 on fire, and having thus reduced himself to pov- 
 erty, he must in addition atone for his act by two 
 years of penal servitude. When at last he steps 
 from his prison the love of a true woman awaits 
 him at the gates, seeking him out with a happi- 
 ness that he had been too awkward to pursue. 
 This solution of the psychologic problem is not 
 satisfying because it does not appear as inevitable. 
 From the gray web of Phantom Care why did not 
 Paul extricate himself for good, when, pistol in 
 hand, he set his face against the defilers of 
 his home ? Sundry other technical objections 
 might be raised against Sudermann's first famous 
 novel ; but in spite of its faults, Frau Sorge is 
 among the noblest works of modern German fic- 
 tion. This is not saying that it is a book to be 
 recommended without caution. As a keen and
 
 SUDERMANN 17 
 
 fearless scrutinizer, Sudermann naturally draws 
 into the sphere of his novels some discussions 
 not intended for the ears of the "young miss," 
 or of her worthy progenitor utterly indisposed to 
 endure in fiction the undeniable facts of life. 
 The careful parent does not always remember 
 that the young person in question has already a 
 considerable library of her own. Sudermann is not 
 a competitor of Mmes. Wildermuth, Polko, and 
 Heimburg in Germany, or in America of the manu- 
 facturers of such brummagem historical fiction as 
 Richard Carvel and The Crisis, or in England of 
 the writers of such unliterary trash as The Pris- 
 oner of Zenda. Of this, new evidence is furnished 
 in Die Geschwister (" Brothers and Sisters "), two 
 tales published in 1888, in both of which the 
 same problem is handled. In the first story, 
 Geschichte einer stillen Muhle (" History of a 
 Lonely Mill"), one brother loves the wife of the 
 other. The tragedy is heightened by the deep 
 attachment the wrongdoer feels for the wronged, 
 and it ends with their common death. The second 
 story deals with the growing passion of a girl for 
 her sister's husband; for one moment she gives 
 room to a wish for the invalid sister's death, and 
 for this platonic crime she voluntarily pays with
 
 1 8 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 her own life. The right of untrammeled liberty, it 
 will be noticed, is not asserted. The moral code 
 is sustained by the tragic issue as firmly as in 
 Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften, to which the 
 story bears a certain inner resemblance. But no 
 insipid matrimonial amity is preached when the 
 ill-starred heroine Olga speaks in defiance of the 
 convention as follows : " I should love differently 
 from you two; I should not be faint-hearted; I 
 should not sneak away as you do saying, ' 'T is bet- 
 ter thus.' I should subdue her with the fire of my 
 soul, vanquish her with the strength of my arms. 
 I should snatch her to my breast and carry her off, 
 no matter whither, out into the night, into the 
 desert, if no sun were willing to shine for us, no 
 house to offer its shelter. I would rather starve 
 with her by the roadside than ask the slightest 
 favor of the world that would separate us. This 
 is what I should do if I were you, Robert. And 
 if I were she, I should throw myself on your breast 
 laughing, and say, ' Come, I will beg for you when 
 you are without bread, my lap shall be your couch 
 when you are without a bed, your wounds I will 
 bathe with my tears, a thousand deaths I will suf- 
 fer for you and thank the Lord that He permits 
 me.' See, Robert, this is my idea of love."
 
 SUDERMANN 19 
 
 Reserving Sudermann's epoch-marking play 
 Die Ehre (" Honor ") for discussion in connec- 
 tion with the other dramas, we turn to his next 
 novel. 
 
 Der Katzensteg (in the English translation 
 "Regina") (1889) is a great book in nearly every 
 sense. Among its many distinctive merits it 
 teaches us to appreciate a profound historic sense 
 in this true son of the modern era. The action 
 is laid in the year 1814. With a distrustful eye 
 Sudermann subjects that glorious chapter of Ger- 
 man history to a thorough scrutiny. Unbribed 
 by the verdict of patriotic tradition or by his own 
 strong instinctive love of his country, he scans 
 the records of the past. And he finds his mis- 
 givings confirmed. A sad disillusionment indeed, 
 and a heavy blow for many a patriotic soul. " That 
 year," he says, as a result of his unprejudiced 
 investigation, " that year whose name rings in 
 the ears of us children of a later day like one grand 
 harmony woven of paeans, organ peals, and the 
 clanging of bells, witnessed more violence and 
 crime than any other year before or since." 
 
 As has been said, the tragedy is brought to a 
 head in the glorious year 1814, but it was engen- 
 dered fully seven years before. In 1807 Napoleon
 
 20 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 had subdued Prussia; the Baron von Schranden, 
 a Prussian nobleman who from his mother's 
 breast had imbibed Polish sympathies, now seeing 
 in the rising star of Bonaparte a gleam of hope 
 for his beloved Poland, at the prompting 1 of this 
 hope becomes guilty of high treason. A French 
 detachment being quartered in his castle, Schran- 
 den forces the fifteen-year-old Regina Hackelberg, 
 as an obedient tool of his felony, to guide the 
 French troops over the so-called Katzensteg ("cat's 
 trail ") up to the rear of the Prussians. These, sud- 
 denly attacked, are massacred to a man. When the 
 facts come out, a savage wrath rises up against 
 the baron. His castle is stormed and burned by 
 the furious peasants. On his crumbling manor 
 he lives henceforth in dismal isolation. Mantraps 
 and spring guns barely safeguard his life ; from 
 all communion with men he is banished. He is 
 an outlawed man. Nobody will or dares work for 
 him, and his estates are of no use to him. But 
 two more victims are doomed through his crime : 
 Regina, who remains with the baron, his drudge 
 and mistress, and Schranden's son Boleslav, at 
 school in Konigsberg, who finds himself suddenly 
 avoided by all his associates. He leaves the 
 school as soon as he learns the reason, and under
 
 SUDERMANN 2 I 
 
 an assumed name enters the corps of LUtzow's 
 famous volunteers in the warfare against the 
 French. But the curse has fastened itself to him. 
 The arrival of a former chum causes him to 
 decamp for fear of discovery. He next joins a 
 militia regiment, is wounded in a most hazardous 
 war adventure, held prisoner, and at last, when 
 peace has been made, returns to his home. At 
 this point begins the story of Regina. Boleslav's 
 father has just died, and the villagers refuse de- 
 cent burial to his body. Arriving on the scene, 
 Boleslav finds Regina in the act of digging a 
 grave. Schooled in rigid self-discipline, and in 
 his misfortune upheld by unflinching self-respect 
 and a lofty sense of duty, he sees in Regina only 
 the vile accomplice of the wretch for whom he 
 has come to perform the last filial office. He 
 accordingly treats her with rude contempt. His 
 comrades in arms have come at his call to help 
 him inter his father, but they leave him in ominous 
 silence as soon as the business is over. Then 
 Boleslav is brought face to face with the awfulness 
 of his future fate : "And his hand will be against 
 every man, and every man's hand against him." 
 While waiting to decide about his future, he tol- 
 erates Regina and allows her to minister to his
 
 22 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 wants, which she does with a brutelike attach- 
 ment. Soon touched by her supreme self-oblivion, 
 he feels himself more and more attracted by the 
 native charm of the strange creature, who through 
 self-surrendering obedience was beguiled into 
 shame and crime in early years, and yet has pre- 
 served intact her truest character, unswerving 
 loyalty and chaste dignity. Quelling his waken- 
 ing passion for her, Boleslav throws himself into 
 his work. Intrepid he stands, in single-handed 
 defiance of the patriotic mob. Patriots indeed 
 they who show their teeth and foam at the mouth 
 in their frantic eagerness to punish the third, nay 
 even the fourth, generation for every affront offered 
 their hollow idols ! A true hero, he routs the 
 cowardly pack, and strives and strains and slaves 
 to win back his own in the teeth of persecution, 
 until the blast of the war trumpet is heard once 
 more. Without a moment's hesitation, as though 
 it were the only natural course of action, he throws 
 to the winds the fruit of his herculean efforts, 
 responds to the call of his country, and after bury- 
 ing Regina, who has laid down her life for his, dies 
 an obscure but glorious death for his fatherland. 
 It is readily seen, even from this bare outline, 
 that Der Katzensteg is strongly touched up with
 
 SUDERMANN 23 
 
 romantic tints; a fuller study would make it 
 equally evident that in spite of the thrilling in- 
 terest in the story as such, and the gusto with 
 which the figures and their setting are treated 
 on their own account, Der Katzensteg is also a 
 vigorous sermon, as all of Sudermann's books are 
 in their last analysis. The theme of this sermon 
 is patriotism, true and false. Only once again, 
 in the one-act play Teja, does Sudermann glorify 
 the genuine patriotic spirit. There, as in Der 
 Katzensteg, patriotism appears but as a necessary 
 phase of the categorical imperative which dictates 
 the conduct of the hero. What greater contrast 
 could be imagined than that between Boleslav, 
 who, martyred by the gross injustice of society, 
 upholds and defends the sacredness of his manly 
 duties towards that same society, and Haupt- 
 mann's self-seeking, self-losing Master Heinrich, 
 who sacrifices all society, even his own family, 
 to the chimera of a duty towards himself or his 
 fancied genius. 
 
 Sudermann's next novel is neither romantic 
 nor is it a " novel with a purpose." The breezy 
 story of lolanthes Hochzeit (" The Wedding of 
 lolanthe ") (1892) is generally underrated, largely 
 because narrative art is not in itself sufficiently
 
 24 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 appreciated by Germans (nor, for the matter of 
 that, by Americans). Readers are apt to value a 
 story wholly for the incident ; and in this respect 
 lolanthes Hochzeit does not offer anything that is 
 striking. It tells how a grim old bachelor makes 
 a belated and abortive attempt at matrimony. He 
 is no sooner married than he is so panic-stricken 
 at the changed aspect of life that on the evening 
 of his wedding day he solemnly betroths his newly 
 acquired wife to the other man in the case; and 
 then he rubs his hands in Mephistophelian glee 
 over his singular disencumberment from the rose- 
 ate chains so irksome in the very anticipation. 
 Surely the plot is slight. Yet Sudermann has 
 succeeded in fashioning out of the meager story 
 a cabinet piece of vernacular art worthy of a 
 Fritz Reuter. The right note has been happily 
 struck from the first and it is sustained to the end. 
 The story is fairly redolent with the racy savor of 
 provincial life in the north of Germany. Suder- 
 mann has never been excelled in his portraiture 
 of the most singular product of East Prussia; 
 I mean the Krautjunker or country squire, a 
 puzzling mixture of thick-headedness and jovial 
 humor, generosity and crude bigotry, caste conceit 
 and patriotic devotion, materialism and stanch
 
 SUDERMANN 25 
 
 belief in ideals. This novel fully reveals along 
 with Sudermann's well-known critical tendency 
 the dramatic bent of his narrative. Somewhat 
 surprising from this master of scathing sarcasm 
 is the subtle irony that hovers over the narrative 
 like an ethereal gauze. 
 
 In judging of Sudermann's next novel, Es War 
 ("Once upon a Time") (1894), which in some 
 respects is inferior to " Dame Care" and " Regina," 
 it ought to be remembered that it was written 
 fully ten years before publication. It too, never- 
 theless, gives ample evidence of the author's 
 extraordinary faculties and forces, which have 
 contributed in equal shares to its excellence. 
 For the better understanding of the book, a limi- 
 tation needs now to be put on the statement that 
 Sudermann is a pessimist. Pessimism appears 
 plainly enough in his analysis and diagnosis of 
 things, yet far is it from him to look into the 
 future through smoke-bedimmed spectacles. He 
 does not view the moral attainments of the living 
 generation with contentment. But his belief in 
 the transmission of character is not that of the 
 determinist, and he does not believe uncondition- 
 ally in the power of the past over the future. A 
 guilt committed cannot be undone, to be sure,
 
 26 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 yet a strong will may come out victorious in the 
 fight with the threatening consequences of past 
 error. This, however, cannot be through remorse, 
 so Sudermann teaches. Like Nietzsche, he casts 
 sterile repentance overboard. The world can be 
 moved not by tears but by deeds. Only it is 
 needful and this is the central lesson of the 
 novel Es War that a man break with his guilty 
 past irrevocably by unqualified, fearless, and 
 unsparing avowal. In Es lebe das Leben ("The 
 Joy of Living"), act iii, scene vii, Richard, 
 in his perplexity, exclaims : " Ah, Beate I Truth, 
 Truth ! To be once more at peace with oneself ! 
 For the bare privilege of having a conviction I 
 would throw down joyfully everything, my paltry 
 private existence, my life everything." A man 
 must make a clean sweep of his past if he would 
 recover the mastery of his fate. Not until the 
 hero of Es War learns to understand this can 
 he redeem himself, make good the past as far as 
 that is ever possible, and become again an active 
 man. Leo Sellenthin is one of those broad-chested 
 giants, ruthlessly egoistic and full of go, whom 
 we meet frequently in Sudermann's works. An 
 affair of honor in which his part has been that of 
 the doubly guilty offender and slayer takes him
 
 SUDERMANN 27 
 
 to America, whence he is drawn back by the char- 
 acteristic attachment of the East Elbian to his 
 native heath. At home again, he meets the com- 
 panion of his past wrong, now the wife of his 
 most devoted friend. Leo himself is responsible 
 for the ill-fated union, for when Felicitas' present 
 husband, disquieted by rumors, once put the 
 direct question, Leo lied away his liaison with 
 her. Now he is lured back by the unprincipled 
 wretch, loses his poise and self-respect entirely, 
 and, in his own words, is fast going " to the dogs," 
 till finally the woman, exasperated at his resolve 
 that they shall die together, precipitates an expla- 
 nation between Leo and her wronged husband. 
 The issue does not result in the usual exchange 
 of pistol formalities so gratifying to the logic of 
 the habitual novel reader, for Ulrich, with a mag- 
 nanimity quite unbecoming a German gentleman 
 and an officer, pardons his " friend." On the Ger- 
 man Becky Sharp's fair shoulders falls all the 
 punishment, whereas Leo strides out afresh into 
 a future promiseful of fortune and love. To our 
 ethical conceptions the end is far from satisfying, 
 but Sudermann and this dogmatism constitutes 
 one of his weaknesses is bound to prove a the- 
 sis. His characters may fitly be divided into two
 
 28 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 classes: the active or potent, and the passive or 
 impotent, the driving and the drifting. To the 
 former goes out the writer's approval, regardless 
 of fine moral distinctions ; to the latter, his sym- 
 pathy, pity, blame, or contempt. In order to com- 
 pel Sudermann's respect a man must, above all 
 things, possess an imperturbable individuality, an 
 ego of his own making. There is at least noth- 
 ing mysterious, nothing unpractical, in this robust 
 doctrine. 
 
 The same idea is preached in Sudermann's plays 
 even more emphatically and drastically than in his 
 novels. Most of these plays are social plays, even 
 as the novels were social novels. With fists of 
 iron they hammer at the bars of the protecting 
 fence which the old use-and-wont of society has 
 drawn round its ancient structure. If in Frau 
 Sorge and in Es War the great satirist has 
 wielded a scourge, he chastens with scorpions in 
 Die Ehre ("Honor"), in Heimat (called in the 
 English translation " Magda "), and in Sodoms 
 Ende (" The Destruction of Sodom "). In turning 
 our interest to these and the other problem plays, 
 let us bear in mind that behind the dramatis per- 
 sonae in them stand living social questions of our 
 time. To show the common ground from which
 
 SUDERMANN 29 
 
 the conflicts spring in his dramas, the means 
 by which they are driven to a climax, and, lastly, 
 the method by which they reach solution, is the 
 purpose of the following epitome of Sudermann's 
 social philosophy. Sudermann sees in human 
 society not a firm conglomerate, but rather, 
 as it were, a stratified formation of which each 
 layer is a separate world in miniature. To him 
 the eternal warfare of human interests is thus 
 a struggle between contiguous strata of society. 
 Whether the war be waged between the aris- 
 tocracy and the middle class, or between the 
 propertied class and the proletariat, or whether 
 the parties to the conflict be the employer and the 
 employed, the producer and the middleman, the 
 soldier and the civilian, or lastly, to use a term 
 become famous through Sudermann, the front- 
 house folk and the rear-house folk, there is, in 
 all these cases, a necessary contact of some sort 
 which causes friction. The insularity of the social 
 groups is even greater than this fact alone would 
 explain. For each caste in its intimate soul life 
 stands solitary, not only over against the adjacent, 
 but over against every other caste. It cannot 
 understand the others and is not understood by 
 them. It is perfectly true, as the veteran novelist
 
 30 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Spielhagen urges, that this is not a new discov- 
 ery; but who before Sudermann had ever clearly- 
 made it the thesis of a play? 
 
 Now it often happens that an exceptional indi- 
 vidual in the course of developing his superior 
 gifts steps beyond the circle assigned him by the 
 accident of birth. Woe betide such a man if the 
 severance of the ties that hold him to his native 
 circle be incomplete, if by a sense of duty and 
 piety he retain allegiance to the narrower province, 
 and if habit and family affection stay the hand that 
 would burst its own shackles ! To conclude from 
 these premises that Sudermann's warning finger 
 points the way back for him who has strayed from 
 his home would be misinterpreting his central 
 lesson. On the contrary, he urges declass'es of this 
 sort unmistakably to the path that leads to free- 
 dom. In his earlier works, at least, he cares more 
 for the individual than for the social group; and 
 his favorite hero seems to be the person who 
 fights for the higher place for which he is fitted. 
 
 The drift of Sudermann's first drama, Die Ehre 
 ("Honor") (1890; performed November, 1889), 
 which brought him sudden fame, opposes the 
 common sentiment that honor is a supreme ideal 
 possession in which all men can share ; more in
 
 SUDERMANN 31 
 
 particular, the play goes to refute the prevalent 
 German notions upon the subject of personal 
 honor. Count Trast, the counseling friend of 
 the leading character, who would drive out that 
 phantom and have men's conduct ruled instead 
 by a high sense of justice, probably articulates the 
 author's ethics in branding conventional honor as 
 one of the conventional lies. It is perhaps not 
 without a deep significance that on the stage the 
 distinguished cosmopolite bears a marked external 
 resemblance to the author. At any rate, Trast is 
 not really and seriously bound up with the plot, 
 and serves in the main only to promulgate the 
 above-sketched philosophy, which task he accom- 
 plishes by a flow* of eloquence richly besprinkled 
 with bonmots. Our sympathies are won, in greater 
 measure even than by his role as Robert Hei- 
 necke's mentor, by the precious manner in which 
 he plays havoc with the vacuous Kurt Miihlingk 
 and his boon companions, and at no stage is he 
 so sure of our applause as when amid sardonic 
 laughter he rakes the fashionable young libertines 
 over the undying coals of his satire. Throughout 
 the play Trast creates the impression that the play- 
 wright himself has in this thin disguise mounted 
 the stage and is moving with characteristic aplomb
 
 32 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 among his own creatures. This importance of 
 Count Trast as the exponent of Sudermann's 
 philosophy makes it proper, though he is not 
 the hero, to speak of him before all the other 
 characters of Die Ehre. When a mere stripling 
 of a lieutenant he was discharged mit schlichtem 
 Abschied, i.e. he left the regiment under a cloud. 
 The reason was a by no means uncommon one. 
 The trouble had grown out of his inability to 
 pay a gambling debt on short order, but the 
 real crime was that he declined the brotherly 
 invitation to make use of a loaded pistol which a 
 committee of his fellow-officers had generously 
 provided for his suicide. Now after a lapse of 
 time he comes back, an Indian "coffee king" of 
 vast wealth and commercial influence. The tri- 
 fling debt of ninety thousand thalers he has long 
 ago discharged, without in the slightest degree 
 reinstating himself in the good graces of his own 
 father, much less rehabilitating himself with the 
 exclusive coterie to which he formerly belonged. 
 A checkered experience has taught him not only 
 to look beyond the restricted horizons of his 
 former and his present social positions, but also 
 to shake himself free of every class prejudice 
 whatsoever. He is a completed Lebenskunstler,
 
 SUDERMANN 33 
 
 a past master in the art of living, a man who, like 
 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, has at last learned to 
 shape circumstances to his own needs instead of 
 allowing himself to be shaped by them, has learned 
 to be the hammer rather than the anvil in the 
 forge of life. In the portrayal of this imposing 
 personage Sudermann furnishes proof that with 
 all his congenital love for his fatherland he is in 
 truth a citizen of that larger home which is not 
 defined on the map with colored inks. This is 
 revealed in Trast's rare freedom from the provin- 
 cialism which insistently crops out in Germans in 
 ever so many little ways, even if they have trav- 
 eled. Trast is first and last a man of the world, 
 equally at his ease with the German merchant and 
 the Indian Rajah, in the London club and the 
 continental Casino, amid the gayety of the Latin 
 Quarter of Paris and the busy hubbub of down- 
 town New York. It has been stated that before 
 justice this man bows as to his ruling power; he 
 recognizes no other moral law. Naturally he 
 makes strong enemies. But he is callously indif- 
 ferent to public opinion. As a rule he is let alone, 
 because he keeps disagreeable persons at a dis- 
 tance with a tone and gesture which he holds in 
 reserve for the purpose. For the rest he has perfect
 
 34 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 polish and self-control, is proud but not arrogant, 
 always disposed to be considerate, but prone to vent 
 his sarcasm, which is cutting and slightly cynical. 
 Under the tutelage of this well-balanced man, 
 Robert Heinecke, the youthful hero of the play, 
 has progressed considerably in worldly knowledge, 
 though he still lacks the poise that is needed in 
 his predicament. Sprung from very lowly stock, 
 he has raised himself through signal ability and 
 perseverance, not without the aid of favoring for- 
 tune, to an important mercantile position. After 
 many years of tireless work in the service of 
 his former benefactor Kommerzienrat Muhlingk, 
 Robert has just returned to Berlin from the Indian 
 branch of the firm. Through all these years abroad 
 how deeply has he yearned for his parents and 
 sisters ! On arriving, however, he feels at once, 
 though he is slow to admit it to himself, that he 
 has become unused to the spiritual atmosphere of 
 his domestic circle. The chasm between Robert 
 and his family is plainly hinted, in a cleverly casual 
 way, through an episode in the first act. A man- 
 servant of the Mlihlingks, who reside in the front- 
 house (the Heineckes are living in the rear), has 
 assumed a tone of insolent familiarity in delivering 
 a message to young Heinecke. Robert's mother
 
 SUDERMANN 35 
 
 invites the messenger to sit down with them: 
 " Won't you eat a piece of coffee-cake with us, 
 William? There is some left." 
 
 Robert: Pardon, mother (lie hands him a coin}', 
 the man has his pay. Say to the Herr Kommer- 
 zienrat that I hope he will do me the honor of 
 receiving me at one o'clock. I shall call at that 
 hour with the Count von Trast-Saarberg. (Exit 
 the flunky} 
 
 Robert had come home without the slightest 
 suspicion of the state of things, though Trast had 
 forewarned him. Now as the truth begins to dawn 
 on him he has to listen to Trast's lecture: " Un- 
 happy is the man who has fallen out of his caste 
 and has not the courage to cut loose his conscience 
 from it also." For each caste, according to Trast- 
 Sudermann, has a different morality, in particular 
 a special sense of honor. Robert learns to his hor- 
 ror that under the protectorate of her older sister, 
 the younger, Alma, has been maintaining illicit 
 but profitable relations with young Kurt Muhlingk. 
 In his first access of anger he demands from Kurt 
 the restitution of his family honor ; but after a night 
 spent in tormenting sorrow his better judgment 
 prevails. He will lift his family out of the mire 
 and make for them a new home in some far-away
 
 36 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 corner of the world. It is now that the vulgarity 
 of his family is brought home to Robert, and he 
 grows fully ashamed of the class with which birth 
 has thrown him, for he learns how comfortably 
 happy his nearest and dearest of kin feel in their 
 bottomless slough. The parents are blunted to a 
 true sense of their daughter's disgrace. Miihlingk 
 senior plasters their wounded honor with a good- 
 sized check, and Alma, but now threatened with 
 a melodramatic paternal curse, is overwhelmed 
 with clamorous gratitude by the honorable family 
 conclave. Her own matrimonial future lies bright 
 before her, since with her sinful fortune she has 
 now become a far better match than if her dowry 
 had consisted of a complete assortment of the 
 womanly virtues. Robert can do no better than 
 turn his back on the despicable tribe. After a 
 stormy scene in the front-house, where he gives 
 a very mauvais quart d'heure to the Miihlingks, 
 father and son, he goes away, taking with him as 
 his bride Lenore, the noble-minded sister of Kurt. 
 This " heart-story," too palpably grafted on to the 
 stock of the play, is one of several complications 
 which are highly improbable and too plainly de- 
 signed for effect On the whole, the motivation is 
 somewhat commonplace, and the exposition of the
 
 SUDERMANN 37 
 
 Vorfabel, i.e. the action precedent to the play, 
 rather violent. In its technic this play, which 
 with its parallelism of corrupt wealth and corrupt 
 poverty as in other respects is reminiscent of 
 Anzengruber's Das Vierte Gebot (" The Fourth 
 Commandment "), does not concert with the natu- 
 ralistic movement which simultaneously with Die 
 Ehre scored its first triumph in Hauptmann's 
 "Before Sunrise." Monologue, that traditional 
 makeshift of psychologic exposure, is not scorned, 
 and even the notorious trick of " asides," so utterly 
 discredited by the moderns, is employed in Die 
 Ehre, which from its combining the methods of 
 the French drama of the second empire with a 
 greater realism has been properly termed a com- 
 promise play. The best merits of Die Ehre are 
 its clever argumentation and the telling seizure of 
 the milieu. But it is far inferior to later plays, and 
 especially inadequate in its conclusion, which is 
 brought on rather forcibly by that cleaver of all 
 Gordian knots, the Count Trast-Saarberg. All 
 the events make for a tragedy: it is averted by 
 nothing but the good nature of the playwright 
 and his alter ego, the inimitable count. 
 
 Much more " naturalistic " in its technic is 
 Sudermann's second play, Sodoms Ende (" The
 
 38 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Destruction of Sodom") (1891), a Juvenalian satire 
 on the wickedness of the modern Berlin. The 
 hero of this tragedy if, remarks some German 
 critic, a wash-rag may even technically be termed 
 a hero reminds us in some respects, notably in 
 his morbid incapacity for work, of Oswald Alving 
 in Ibsen's " Ghosts." A talented young fellow has 
 painted a picture dealing with the destruction of 
 Sodom, which more through its cynical candor 
 than by virtue of its intrinsic merit makes him 
 famous at a single stroke. There is in the play a 
 certain Dr. Weisse, who resembles in a perverted 
 way the celebrated Konrad Bolz in Frey tag's Die 
 Journalisten, a flaneur of much wit and clear 
 sight, but morally decrepit and inert. This man 
 remarks about the picture : " A thousand times 
 the subject has been worked, but in what fashion ? 
 In the foreground, on a rock, good Master Lot, 
 surrounded by other oxen and asses ; a little farther 
 back his spouse, devotedly petrified into a pillar 
 of salt ; and in the distance something which looks 
 like three burning matches ! " Willy Janikow has 
 touched the tradition-worn subject with the flames 
 of his lurid fantasy; in his painting it becomes 
 the ghastly allegory of delirious sensuality and the 
 whirling chase after frantic pleasures. Such a
 
 SUDERMANN 39 
 
 picture as that cannot fail to seize upon the fancy 
 of the Stock Exchange aristocracy for whom ex- 
 citement and enjoyment are almost synonymous. 
 Accordingly, the Tiergartenviertel, always glad to 
 patronize that art which tugs hard at the nerve 
 cords, has received the new-fangled genius in its 
 lion cage and pampered and petted his consider- 
 able talent to death. Among us barbarians of the 
 West, with our still half-savage notions about the 
 superfluousness of art, such treatment does not 
 come to an aspiring artist. Nor need any Ameri- 
 can artist I mean a real artist, not an artificer 
 sigh for the hardening discipline of public indif- 
 ference. In a city like St. Louis or Chicago the 
 ingenious Willy would, in all probability, have 
 gone through a protracted and rather inconvenient 
 regime of penury and semistarvation, instead of 
 falling into lassitude and luxurious ennui. Things 
 are different in Berlin, W. Dr. Weisse in his hey- 
 day fared equally well or ill : " Look at me ! In 
 the province they call me a celebrity, and if you 
 open any newspaper you are sure to find my name. 
 One day I have been decorated with an order, an- 
 other day a horse has run away with me and 
 sundry other accidents of the sort. And yet I 
 am wretchedly gone to seed. My lyrics have all
 
 40 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 vinegared this long time ; no new ideas come to 
 me." But he knows how to accommodate himself 
 to the change: "So I have gone in for criticism. 
 The howling dog has transformed himself into 
 the biting dog." However, his pristine glory has 
 departed: "Ah! what a great fellow I was in those 
 days, when in every German bookcase the place of 
 honor next to Henrietta Davidis' cookbook was 
 reserved for me!" We know Sudermann's attitude 
 towards such parasitic existences. In polar oppo- 
 sition to their moral apathy stands honest Profes- 
 sor Riemann, the sane and sober maker of fair to 
 middling pictures, a man who closes his unspoiled 
 heart hermetically against all wicked eccentrici- 
 ties. Riemann has no use for Nietzsche with his 
 maxim, so alluring and convenient, of the " Beyond 
 Good and Evil." " Let me alone with your gospel 
 of vice, if you please," he remarks to the inverte- 
 brate Willy. In nearly every play of Sudermann 
 some character seems to be authorized to speak 
 for the author. Unquestionably Riemann in " The 
 End of Sodom" is that special ablegate. Suder- 
 mann condones many sins in a man who, despite 
 failures and downfalls, has at last attained a clari- 
 fied, definite individuality ; he esteems a powerful 
 "Will to Live"; but his pity is as deaf for the
 
 SUDERMANN 41 
 
 self-appointed " overman " as it is for the cry, 
 Oest plus fort que moi, that eternal appeal of 
 the worm-eaten weakling. Sudermann is wholly 
 free from decadence. Although much obloquy 
 has been heaped on him for depicting such scan- 
 dalous conditions and such a corrupt society as 
 in Sodoms Ende, he derives the right to deal with 
 them from the very fact that he has observed 
 them at a very close range, yet has proven him- 
 self immune against moral infection. True it is 
 that familiarity with the seamy side of life has 
 stripped him of many illusions, and surely it is a 
 matter for regret that because of his thorough 
 sophistication he is rather unsuccessful in the 
 dramatic presentment of innocence. Fritzchen in 
 Sodoms Ende is as insufferable a specimen of the 
 stage child as William Tell's precocious Walter. 
 Equally infelicitous is the portrayal of Klarchen 
 Frohlich, the naive victim of Willy Janikow. Much 
 more successfully drawn by contrast is Kitty, who 
 though for a while too close to the vortex of ques- 
 tionable gayeties, and engaged in some rather risky 
 flirtations, has remained sound at the core. Suder- 
 mann loves to operate with contrasting milieus. 
 In Die Ehre we had the Vorder- and the Hinter- 
 haus ; in Sodoms Ende the cramped snuggery of
 
 42 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Willy's impoverished, hard-working parents is held 
 up by the side of the splendid establishment of 
 Barczinowsky the speculator. This household is 
 a typical abode and rallying place of brazen up- 
 starts and reckless voluptuaries. Dr. Weisse, that 
 " incarnation of impertinence," says with a cynical 
 boast : "One is entirely sans gene in these houses. 
 Here we talk like hostlers. That is the fine fleur 
 of social culture nowadays." That young Jani- 
 kow is so easily infected by the pestilent moral 
 atmosphere which circulates in this den of arrant 
 luxury is perhaps proof sufficient that there is not 
 much to the man. And so it is difficult to under- 
 stand why mature Frau Adah, her piquant niece 
 Kitty, and poor Klarchen Frohlich fight for him 
 so madly. For a while things go swimmingly. 
 Willy is not really a bad man, for to be bad is 
 at least to have some character. He merely com- 
 bines the traits of a thoroughgoing lazzarone and 
 an unqualified egoist. Nothing could be worse for 
 him than the adulation which greets him at every 
 turn, from his poverty-stricken parents and his 
 unreasonably faithful friend Kramer at home, and 
 in the mansion of the rich stock gambler from the 
 seductive lady of the house. A stronger head than 
 his might be turned by so much frankincense and
 
 SUDERMANN 43 
 
 myrrh. The impudent fellow indulges in liberties 
 which loudly call for a flogging, but behold all 
 the world throws bouquets at him. A glaring in- 
 stance is his declaration of his so-called love to 
 Kitty. Is he, after all, but a harmless idler? Far 
 from it. Sudermann holds that he who has been 
 left at the wayside because he missed the train 
 that was to speed him onward to his proper des- 
 tination will, as a rule, bring destruction not only 
 upon himself but on others also. And so Willy 
 Janikow, that shining specimen of prurient genius 
 who once expresses a passing curiosity to know 
 " how an honest fellow feels," crushes the happi- 
 ness of six human lives in the brief space of five 
 theatrical acts, with about as much compunction 
 as that with which a man swallows his half dozen 
 oysters by way of prelude to dinner. Yet towards 
 the end, after committing a twofold villainy against 
 Klarchen and his loyal Kramer, he whines and 
 whimpers, "Do me the last favor and kill me." 
 Kramer, who has the tender sensibilities of Adam 
 Bede and the " Manxman," cannot nerve himself 
 to the deed. And so, as his hero cannot rise to the 
 opportunity for a decent suicide, the playwright is 
 compelled to invoke a most improbable, but for- 
 tunately fatal, hemorrhage.
 
 44 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 We cannot help admiring the lifelike picture 
 of that class of society which dances in Berlin 
 and elsewhere too not, as the saying has it, on 
 the edge of a crater, but rather on the thin sur- 
 face of a foul morass. Even more admirable is 
 the technical mastery shown in the construction. 
 The motivation of Kramer's threatening ven- 
 geance, the manner in which Willy Janikow's 
 mother discovers that Adah is her son's mistress, 
 these and other incidents are unexcelled examples 
 of intelligent dramatic composition; and our grate- 
 ful appreciation for these may make us indulgent 
 to the disgusting scene which presents Janikow 
 father and son both hopelessly the worse for 
 liquor, and to the somewhat theatrical soliloquy 
 which brings the piece to a close. Sodoms Ende 
 though realistic is not true to life; a satire is 
 always an exaggeration. Still, although the con- 
 ditions of life which are presented in this play 
 do not impress one as actual or probable, they 
 do not seem impossible. The author has simply 
 culled the ingredients out of which the work is 
 distilled from a far greater area of observation 
 than is brought to view. He makes no effort to 
 palm it off as a piece of life. Even in this, the 
 most uncompromisingly realistic of his longer
 
 SUDERMANN 45 
 
 plays, he does not attempt to reproduce the jargon 
 of the every-day. The greater, then, the power 
 of his craftsmanship, since he succeeds in spite of 
 this in giving to his play such a considerable sem- 
 blance of dramatic truth. I say truth advisedly, 
 but do not mean the literal truth of life; of that 
 even the most thoroughgoing realism is bound 
 to fall short. The truth of a play consists in the 
 playwright's power to make us accept illusions 
 for facts. 
 
 Two years after Sodoms Ende, in 1893, Heimat 
 (" Magda ") was performed for the first time, a 
 play in which the eclectic method of Die Ehre is 
 again employed in preference to the greater natu- 
 ralism of Sodoms Ende. The subject dealt with 
 in " Magda" has been treated in a humorous vein 
 by another modern writer, Ernst von Wolzogen, in 
 his comedy Die Kinder der Excellenz. It in fact 
 contains a strong serio-comic possibility. How- 
 ever, in " Magda " what humor there is, is episodic, 
 incidental. The main drift is opposed to any form 
 of levity, the satirical spirit held firmly in check 
 by the serious purpose. " Magda" is the most bril- 
 liant defense of Sudermann's sociological thesis. 
 A social conflict lies at the basis of the tragedy. 
 The author resumes the subject already once
 
 46 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 treated in Die Ehre, viewing it from a different 
 point under altered circumstances ; carrying it, 
 in my estimation, to a more natural, or at any 
 rate to a more probable, conclusion. The olden 
 time, incarnate in the retired Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Schwartze, is in conflict with the new. Throne 
 and altar are struggling with new-bred ideals for 
 ethical supremacy. The form of the conflict may 
 seem antiquated in its poignancy, but thus the 
 clash in the tragedy is all the better prepared. 
 Now from this dramatic substructure arises the 
 private tragedy of a spirited individual revolting 
 against the caste in order to enforce a right to in- 
 dependent happiness. In the act of self-liberation 
 which necessitates the painful severing of sacred 
 ties, the play culminates. We have seen Robert 
 Heinecke in the throes of the same ordeal, but 
 he fought his battle by the side of a trusty and 
 powerful ally ; moreover, the loathsome vulgarity 
 of his own people made the separation relatively 
 easy. It is different in Heimat. The hero this 
 time is a woman, a woman who is put altogether 
 on her mettle. Do not think for a moment that 
 Sudermann's play deals with woman's " emanci- 
 pation," as the word was understood twenty-five 
 years ago. For a modern writer of his way of
 
 SUDERMANN 47 
 
 thinking the woman question has passed beyond 
 that theoretical stage. Since the overwhelming 
 majority of progressive-minded men has pro- 
 nounced in favor of the admission of women to 
 higher studies and to the practice of arts and 
 professions, the ground is nearly cut out from 
 under the feet of the adversaries of the move- 
 ment. Even for the German woman the realiza- 
 tion of her claims to equality has begun under 
 propitious auspices. It is quite in vain that 
 the little god to whom the male philistine has 
 erected an altar in his stomach still struggles 
 against the coming certainty, and questions with 
 an anxious sigh who is going to cook for him 
 after that. 
 
 Magda has left the paternal roof many years 
 ago in order to save herself from the crushing 
 tyranny of her father, a man who brings up his 
 family after the fashion of a petty sovereign, 
 instilling by rigid discipline, along with a rever- 
 ence for his ideals, a thorough respect for the 
 great military phantoms of Pride and Honor. The 
 immediate cause of the rupture was Magda's refu- 
 sal to marry young Pastor Heffterdingk. She 
 goes to Berlin, first as companion to an old lady. 
 After a year she decides to go on the stage. The
 
 48 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 news of this disgracing step so shocks the old offi- 
 cer that he has a paralytic stroke, from which he 
 never quite recovers. He is compelled to quit the 
 service, a terrible blow for him. Thus Magda 
 is the cause of all his misfortunes. Meanwhile 
 what is her own fate ? Utterly disowned by her 
 father, all alone in Berlin, where she struggles to 
 open a career for herself, the impulsive girl suc- 
 cumbs to the blandishments of a young barrister. 
 After he abandons her, she passes through the 
 vicissitudes of an artist's career to ultimate tri- 
 umph. Now a famous prima donna, she has 
 returned under her stage name for a passing visit 
 to her native town, where she is to be the star in 
 a great music festival. The remembrance of her 
 father's despotism is still vivid within her and her 
 resentment unbroken. Nevertheless, she yields 
 to the persuasion of the unselfish Heffterdingk 
 and patches up a peace with her father, who, like- 
 wise through the pastor's efforts, though at first 
 terribly stirred, consents to receive her. Know- 
 ing that there can be no entente between her and 
 her people, that only a sense of piety still attracts 
 her to her home, Magda has no business to move 
 from the hotel to the paternal rooftree merely to 
 gratify her father's unreasonable whim. On this
 
 SUDERMANN 49 
 
 point the old man really acts like a monomaniac. 
 If Magda should only stand her own ground 
 there would be no tragedy. Nobody knows this 
 so well as Sudermann, and that is just why she 
 must make the fatal concession. A mere removal 
 from hotel to house is made responsible for the 
 sequel ! The problem of Die Ehre is here re- 
 stated, but this time it is viewed on the obverse 
 side, the spiritual reaction of the home people 
 under the contact with the " outsider " furnishing 
 the dramatic motive. That there must be a clash 
 is clear. The very contrast between Magda's free 
 mode of life and the narrow-gauge track along 
 which the family life is trailing, the contrast 
 between their straitened decorum and her some- 
 what stagy sans gene, is bound to produce it. 
 Still, Magda may not stay long enough to make 
 serious trouble. But then there is Magda's past. 
 We understand that she is not a common adven- 
 turess, but shall we expect her father to draw 
 nice distinctions ? Magda therefore sets the con- 
 dition that her past life must not be stirred up by 
 any questions, and thus makes her entry into her 
 father's home with a stipulation which borders 
 dangerously on a jeu de theatre. When I last 
 saw the play it was certainly either a symbolic
 
 50 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 coincidence, or an intentional hint between acts, 
 that after the drop of the curtain, immediately 
 after Magda's injunction is laid down, the or- 
 chestra struck up the Lohengrin motive, " Nie 
 sollst du mich befragen!" The question now 
 is, How long will the unreasonable old gentle- 
 man, whom the very condition has put on the 
 alert, live up to his promise and leave his daugh- 
 ter unmolested? In the third act he is the horri- 
 fied earwitness of Magda's secret. Events now 
 follow one another with sweeping force. The 
 old soldier, beside himself with grief and shame, 
 loses his head. It never occurs to him that if he 
 would keep silence and allow Magda to go her 
 way, he would be no worse off than he long had 
 been. She has been a stranger to him for many 
 years. He has not cared to know what has 
 become of her. Even the mention of her name 
 has been forbidden in his house. But as he has 
 worn His Majesty's uniform, his sense of honor is 
 always on the verge of an explosion. His only 
 care is to scour the blot from his scutcheon. One 
 hope only is left. Dr. Keller, Magda's seducer, 
 who is at present a close political friend of 
 Schwartze, a prominent member of a religious 
 circle, and a conspicuous defender of the Good,
 
 SUDERMANN 5 1 
 
 the True, and the Noble, must marry Magda; 
 then her family will all be rehabilitated. Keller 
 is a true representative of that detestable tiptoe 
 pharisaism known in Germany as Strebertum. 
 He is not troubled by the fact that Magda de- 
 spises him from the bottom of her heart as a 
 hypocrite who took advantage of her inexperi- 
 ence. He considers only his career, which would 
 be shattered by the scandal consequent upon 
 a duel with Schwartze. An understanding is 
 reached by his proposal of marriage. Through 
 the friendly mediation of Pastor Heffterdingk 
 Magda accepts the proposal. Keller then comes 
 out with conditions. Magda must leave the stage. 
 That he takes for granted with cavalier impu- 
 dence. But he demands further that she shall 
 permanently separate from their child. This is 
 the last straw. She orders him out of the house. 
 But the old colonel stands determined to compel 
 her to yield to the cruel demand. Now Magda, 
 realizing that she has again put her neck into 
 the iron collar of paternal authority from which 
 she had once freed herself, rises in revolt; her 
 child at least she will not sacrifice to such des- 
 potism. Her motive in this decisive fight for 
 liberty is not selfish. Magda's proud exclamation,
 
 52 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 " I am myself and must not lose myself," must 
 not mislead us. We have seen her ready to 
 submit, to suffer abridgment of her personal 
 freedom, even to relinquish her brilliant career, 
 all for the sake of her old father, to whom she 
 feels that she owes reparation. But now her 
 maternal instincts rebel ; and when she reflects 
 that such a heinous sacrifice is sanctioned by the 
 general code of morals, she tramples that code 
 into the dust. In her deep provocation she no 
 longer takes heed of the father. "Und wenn er 
 nicht der einzige ware / " she exclaims. To make 
 that marriage impossible she hints at liaisons 
 (probably fictitious) with other men. The father, 
 desperate, raises the pistol against the self- 
 declared courtesan, when a fatal stroke of apo- 
 plexy arrests his hand. Over his dead body 
 Magda steps again to her former freedom ; not 
 without a share of punishment, for her con- 
 science will never entirely acquit her of blame 
 for her father's anguish and death. Yet the way 
 in which Mrs. Patrick Campbell at the end of the 
 play kneels in the center of the stage, crying in 
 contrite tones, " My God ! what have I done ! " 
 is not true to the spirit of Magda. The heroine 
 of Heimat in this hour of agony must stand
 
 SUDERMANN 53 
 
 forth it is thus that Sarah Bernhardt interprets 
 the part solitary, in lugubrious magnificence. 
 The opposite of Magda in conduct is Eliza- 
 beth, the central figure in the drama Das Gluck 
 im Winkel ("Happiness in a Nook") (1896). 
 Elizabeth, named rightly (by Bulthaupt) "a Bac- 
 chante with a Madonna-soul," looks upon mar- 
 riage as an asylum wherein the respectable may 
 seek refuge and safety when beset by temptation. 
 Else how could she ever have consented to marry 
 an elderly schoolmaster, unlovable in spite of his 
 kind heart and many sterling qualities? When 
 temptation returns, with the appearance in her 
 home of the man from whom she has fled, she 
 lacks the strength either to bear with quiet 
 endurance her self-inflicted martyrdom or vio- 
 lently to throw down her yoke like Magda. To 
 decide her fate requires the superior moral forti- 
 tude of another personality. Although what has 
 been said does not reflect against the nobility of 
 Elizabeth's character, it is somewhat difficult to 
 call her the heroine. Who then fills the principal 
 part? Can it be Rocknitz, the East Elbian ath- 
 lete, the " strong man " of the play, with his enor- 
 mous chest expansion and dwarfed conscience? 
 He cheekily poses as the Ubermensch, but is a
 
 54 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 flat failure in the role. The real trouble with 
 him is that, far from being overman he is not 
 man enough, so that we wait in vain for an ex- 
 planation between him and Elizabeth's husband, 
 Wiedemann. His grandiloquent boast that he 
 will not steal the latter's happiness, but boldly 
 take it, " face to face," etc., when does he make 
 it good? I suspect that if Elizabeth, prevented 
 from self-destruction by her husband, resigns her- 
 self to the " happiness in a nook," her change of 
 heart is due to disappointment in Rocknitz to 
 disillusionment fully as much as to the con- 
 quering generosity of Wiedemann's love. In the 
 final explanation between husband and wife the 
 playwright has, to my feeling, gone too far in an 
 endeavor to win sympathy for the man's high- 
 mindedness. It transpires that Wiedemann had 
 proposed to Elizabeth, the homeless "poor rela- 
 tion " of the Rocknitzes, mainly from a phil- 
 anthropic motive; because he had suspected, 
 wrongly, that she had been ruined by a faith- 
 less lover. Would it hot be natural for Elizabeth 
 in her innocence and womanly dignity to resent 
 the suspicion ? We look into the deep well of 
 Wiedemann's compassion with a mingled feel- 
 ing of admiration, wonderment, and contempt; I
 
 SUDERMANN 55 
 
 doubt if, on the whole, the revelation heightens 
 our liking for him. At any rate, the domestic 
 drama seems hardly concluded. Elizabeth has 
 learned to despise Rocknitz, whom she had 
 secretly loved all her life. That danger is moved 
 out of her path. But will she learn to love her 
 husband simply because by the author's fiat she 
 sees him in a new halo? It taxes our credulity 
 too much to believe in the possibility of such a 
 woman's happiness in her union with a plain and 
 elderly man who can have little to his credit in 
 her eyes beyond a good measure of kindliness 
 and a certain sort of latent moral heroism. And 
 is there in Elizabeth's temperament the possi- 
 bility of complete renunciation ? Why should we 
 assume that the old regret will trouble her no 
 more, of which she says : " And then come the 
 winter evenings when one stares into the lamp, 
 and the summer nights when the linden before 
 the house is in bloom. And you say to yourself, 
 Yonder somewhere lies the world and happiness 
 but you sit here and knit stockings." Behind 
 Elizabeth's happiness looms a huge question mark. 
 Sudermann's own philosophy prompts our doubt 
 whether she will ever be happy with this hus- 
 band. The two belong to different worlds.
 
 56 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Their love is a compromise love. We feel there 
 is a sadly damaged spot in this marriage. It has 
 been covered with a patch, but will the patch 
 stick forever? 
 
 " Magda " is Sudermann's most successful play. 
 Das Gliick im Winkel stands far behind it in 
 point of popularity. This may be because Eliza- 
 beth's character appeals less to the imagination of 
 the star actress. But the play is very significant 
 indeed; for its lesson is that the powerful indi- 
 viduality of Magda hews out its own fate, while 
 Elizabeth's lesser personality has to be content 
 with the lot assigned by the conventions. Das 
 Glilck im Winkel also marks a distinct turn in 
 favor of the accepted morality and therefore a 
 step in the ethics of the author. Similarly, it is 
 the last treatment of one of his artistic problems, 
 the impact of two diverse spheres henceforth 
 ceases to be of immediate interest to him. 
 
 In point of time between the two plays 
 last named lies Die Schmetter lings schlacht (" The 
 Battle of the Butterflies") (1895), a comedy, but 
 by no means a pleasing one, and, in my opinion, 
 without enduring worth. I dispense, therefore, 
 with a detailed analysis. Still, as a piece of real- 
 istic milieu painting, this work surpasses all
 
 SUDERMANN 57 
 
 previous efforts of Sudermann. The intimate life 
 of the lesser official class is completely exposed 
 to view, the contrast between its decorous penury 
 and the quite different tribulations of the manu- 
 facturing class being strikingly expressed through 
 the families Hergentheim and Winkelmann. Max 
 Winkelmann, the idealist, finds himself placed 
 between and above the two classes, somewhat as 
 Robert is in Die Ehre, since in respect to senti- 
 ment and conduct he stands on a higher level 
 than either. The plot of the play is entirely 
 subordinate to the characterization of the people 
 involved. The latter is exceedingly clever, espe- 
 cially in the case pf the many-daughtered Widow 
 Hergentheim and the commis voyageur Kessler, 
 with his practical wisdom, gift o' gab, and non- 
 interfering conscience, a classic type of one kind 
 of successful business man. The difficulty is that 
 the details in this comedy are obtrusive,, and the 
 humor too much acidulated. The dramatist, again 
 over-anxious to point his moral, is too liberal with 
 his scorn, in consequence of which the work loses 
 much of that " high and excellent seriousness " 
 which should underlie every true satire. 
 
 Another point of resemblance with Die Ehre is 
 the outcome of Die Schmetterlingsschlacht. The
 
 58 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 oldest of the Hergentheim girls, Elsa, a young 
 widow, has been carrying on a love intrigue 
 with Kessler. Rosi, the youngest sister, is the 
 innocent go-between. These clandestine rela- 
 tions are kept up even after Elsa has succeeded 
 in capturing Max Winkelmann, the son of the 
 rich manufacturer by whom the sisters are em- 
 ployed at decorative art work. The situation is 
 all but discovered by the prospective husband. 
 The Hergentheims, desperately loath to let go of 
 Max, on whom hangs their salvation from pinch- 
 ing poverty, resort to a most cruel measure. Max 
 is to be made to believe that not Elsa but her 
 youngest sister is Kessler's paramour. Rosi, who 
 is hardly more than a child, is forced by the 
 rest of the family to incriminate herself so as to 
 clear the reputation of her sister. In spite of her 
 piteous entreaties, the vicarious sacrifice is actu- 
 ally extorted from her, and that in the presence 
 of Max, whom she secretly loves. To me this is 
 the most revolting scene in any modern play. 
 However, the ruse is thwarted, and Max and Rosi 
 are allowed to make each other happy. This sat- 
 isfactory ending does not make a comedy, or 
 Die Ehre would have to be so classed. Cer- 
 tainly Die Schmetterlingsschlacht is a comedy
 
 SUDERMANN 59 
 
 only in name. It is too grim in its humor, too 
 acrimonious in its mood, to dismiss the reader 
 with that serenity or satisfaction which is inva- 
 riably derived from a true comedy. In spite of 
 the happy issue the play is unquestionably very 
 depressing. 
 
 The two plays that have just been discussed 
 conclude in a way the series of Sudermann's 
 social dramas, strictly so called. Though social 
 questions are by no means banished from subse- 
 quent plays, they are henceforth not treated with 
 exclusive reference to a special case in hand, nor 
 even to our own time ; rather they are considered 
 from a higher, more general human outlook, sub 
 specie aeterni. This larger view, which in itself 
 need not be optimistic, is plainly indicated in 
 Morituri (1897), a collection of three one-act 
 plays without any organic interrelation, but deal- 
 ing variously, as we shall see, with one and the 
 same psychologic theme. 
 
 The first of the series is named Teja. It is the 
 first work of Sudermann that does not mirror a 
 view of modern German life, for it throws on the 
 stage a segment of that Germanic antiquity with 
 which we have become fairly familiar through the 
 writings of Gustav Freytag, Felix Dahn, William
 
 60 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Morris, and others. The hero of the dramolet is 
 that last stern king of the Ostrogoths who, in the 
 lengthy, changeful struggle for existence forced 
 upon the Gothic tribes by Rome and Byzantium, 
 laid down his life, together with the lives of his 
 men. 
 
 Sudermann has brightened up the tragedy of 
 Teja's end and at the same time raised it to a 
 nobler pitch. This is the story as told in the play. 
 The Gothic host has dwindled down to a mere 
 handful of half-famished warriors who, intrenched 
 in their impregnable position, confidently await 
 the arrival of supplies. Every minute the pro- 
 vision ships are expected to heave in sight. At 
 this time of breathless suspense the Goths, obe- 
 dient to an ancient law, have chosen a wife for 
 their king. The gloomy Teja has submitted with 
 resigned indifference to the will of his people. 
 This is his wedding day. Bishop Agila has just 
 finished the marriage sermon. But all through 
 the ceremony Teja's thoughts have wandered out 
 to the ships that are so eagerly watched for. For 
 them, and the fate of his people, for nothing else, 
 does he care. Almost immediately after the wed- 
 ding he learns that treachery has delivered the 
 fleet into the hand of the enemy. There is no
 
 SUDERMANN 6 1 
 
 hope left for the Goths to grasp at. They have 
 only one alternative: they may slowly and igno- 
 bly perish of hunger among the rocky hollows of 
 Vesuvius, or they may make a sortie and be 
 slaughtered like cattle by the Hunnish butchers. 
 Of course they choose the battle. The brave little 
 band makes ready to seal with their blood the 
 death warrant of their race. Dulce est pro patria 
 mori ! But they cannot go joyfully to their death, 
 for they are a vagabond tribe; their only home is 
 the camp, where dwell also their wives and chil- 
 dren. These they are permitted to visit for the 
 last time. But they are enjoined to take silent 
 leave, for the king would not have even one of 
 them unstrung by the tears and wailings of 
 the women. The sequel shows that the woman- 
 hating king does injustice to the Gothic maids 
 and matrons. The first to convert him to a better 
 opinion is his lovely Queen Bathilda. The whole 
 pathos of Teja's life is compacted into the brief 
 scene. In the eleventh hour the doomed man has 
 learned for the first time to know happiness. He 
 has laughed and frolicked with his bride till the 
 moment when she must be told. She accepts the 
 inevitable with nai've heroism; without any wild 
 outburst of grief and despair she calmly kisses her
 
 62 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 husband's brow, thus consecrating him to death. 
 Teja's eyes are opening more and more. In the 
 last scene he says to the bishop : " I have insulted 
 you this evening. Forgive me and accept my 
 thanks, for now I also know why the Goth loves 
 death." He seizes his sword, then to his men : 
 "Well, are you ready? Is the farewell over? " 
 
 Theodemir : My lord, we have acted contrary 
 to your orders. Which of our women guessed 
 it and which one of us told it is hard to say. 
 Enough, they all know it. 
 
 Teja: And so they set up a great lamenta- 
 tion? 
 
 Theodemir: My lord, they silently blessed us 
 with the kiss of death. 
 
 Teja (startled, half to himself}: They too! 
 (Aloud} Verily, we are a race of kings. Oh, the 
 pity of our fate ! Forward ! (He walks towards 
 tlie background. The rest follow. The curtain 
 falls amid the deafening cheers of the people greet- 
 ing its king} 
 
 The theme of the masterly dramatic anecdote 
 may be said to be the psychologic reaction of 
 a character under the sudden certitude of death, 
 and by this general problem Teja is closely inter- 
 linked with the second, and, in my judgment,
 
 SUDERMANN 63 
 
 the best part not only of the collection but of 
 Sudermann's dramatic work in its entirety. 
 
 It is entitled Fritzchen, deals with the present, 
 and serves as a species of epilogue to Die Ehre. 
 A boy lieutenant of the Prussian army, a good- 
 natured, happy-go-lucky sort of a chap, has a 
 liaison with a married woman. The wronged hus- 
 band horsewhips him out of the house. Under 
 the code of honor which obtains in the German 
 army nothing can now avert a catastrophe. This 
 code of honor, as everybody knows, does not 
 shine for its logic. It generously condones many 
 sins and peccadillos. The violation of the seventh 
 commandment would not of itself hurt Fritzchen 
 greatly in the eyes of his comrades. But the code 
 never relents towards the officer who has suffered 
 chastisement without taking bloody personal 
 revenge. The still-remembered Affaire Briise- 
 witz and sundry like occurrences have served 
 to enlighten the uninitiated as to the reason why 
 the German officer in times of peace carries a keen- 
 edged blade in the scabbard which we have heard 
 clatter so smartly on the sidewalks of German 
 cities. Now Fritzchen has been punished shame- 
 fully, and has not defended himself, because his 
 saber was not at hand. He may therefore thank
 
 64 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 his lucky stars if the verdict of the regimental 
 Council of Honor to which the affair has been 
 referred is in favor of a duel ; for an adverse deci- 
 sion would signify undying disgrace for Fritzchen. 
 He has come on a hurried farewell visit to his 
 home. Here, by prearrangement, he receives the 
 message : A duel has been decided on and must 
 be fought early on the morrow. Herr von Lanski 
 is a superior marksman and, as the challenged, 
 will lead off in the exchange of bullets. Fritzchen, 
 accordingly, is a doomed man. Moreover, it is 
 plainly hinted that he has made up his mind to 
 fall in the duel. With consummate skill and, as 
 one German critic well puts it, " unexampled dra- 
 matic laconism," the author now undertakes to 
 show how the pampered young viveur, who in 
 pursuance of his father's fatal advice has early 
 sown his full measure of wild oats against the 
 time of his manorial existence, turns sober in the 
 face of death. In his hour of gloom his manly 
 virtues come to the fore. As he hurriedly reviews 
 his squandered life there flits across his vision a 
 picture of that domestic happiness he would have 
 elected had he not allowed himself to be swerved 
 aside from his natural bent by the traditions of 
 his house. His home, his love, his prospects, they
 
 SUDERMANN 65 
 
 are all in this sphere. But he is done with pros- 
 pects, with love, with life itself. The brief tragedy 
 speeds from scene to scene, with a terrible incre- 
 mental force, till the climax is reached in the expla- 
 nation between father and son; thence without 
 a halt to the most painful ordeal reserved for 
 Fritzchen, the leave-taking from his invalid 
 mother, from whom the truth must be carefully 
 kept. The pathos of this parting is unspeakable, 
 the poor boy striving heroically to hide his heart- 
 ache under a boisterous feigned merriment ; then 
 at last with tender deception leaving home, a merry 
 tune on his lips, as he goes straightway to his death. 
 Das Ewig-M'dnnliche (" The Eternally-Mascu- 
 line "), which is the last of the Morituri collec- 
 tion, is designated by the poet as a fantasy (Spiel). 
 And, to tell the truth, it has no more realism 
 than the fairy plays (Mar chendr amen) which came 
 into vogue about the time of its origin. In its 
 baroque costuming, this one-act comedy brings 
 to mind the preciosity of the age of Louis XIV, 
 immortally satirized by Moliere. As, however, 
 Sudermann's satire is not directed against any- 
 body in particular, the dramatis personae are 
 labeled in a general way as " Queen," " Marshal 
 of the Court," " Ladies-in-waiting," " Marquis
 
 66 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 in pale blue," " Marquis in pink," " Painter," 
 etc., very much as in Goethe's Die naturliche 
 Tackier. 
 
 In contradistinction to all previous plays of 
 Sudermann, Das Ewig-M'dnnliche is written in 
 verse, nay more, in rime. The example of the 
 author's ingenious friend, Ludwig Fulda, may 
 have had something to do with that. As in the 
 rimed comedies of Fulda, it should be added, 
 so here the language fairly scintillates with epi- 
 gram and witticism. The play deals apparently, 
 like its two companion pieces, with the spiritual 
 state of a character unexpectedly confronted with 
 death. An artist who is painting the Queen's 
 portrait is made bold by the provoking coquetry 
 of the royal model. She listens, alarmed but 
 not displeased. The scene is interrupted by the 
 Marshal, who, himself in love with the Queen, 
 is ordered by her with great presence of mind to 
 cool his rival's ardor. The two men face each 
 other after the manner of Tasso and Antonio 
 in Goethe's Torquato Tasso, the part of greater 
 practical wisdom falling this time to the politic 
 artist. As a sensible man he realizes that he has 
 no better chances against the Marshal's sword 
 than the latter would have against his paint brush.
 
 SUDERMANN 67 
 
 And so he proceeds cleverly to enlighten the love- 
 blind warrior on the un worthiness of his idol. 
 With the Marshal's consent and cooperation he 
 improvises a little tragi-comedy ; and when the 
 Marshal, feigning death, gets a humiliating insight 
 into the true inwardness of the adored woman, 
 artist and courtier, arm in arm, go merrily into 
 exile, leaving the handsome Jean, the Queen's im- 
 pudent waiting-man, alone in the field as repre- 
 sentative of the " Eternally-Masculine." 
 
 It has been shown that the three dramas do not 
 constitute, in any dramaturgic sense, a miniature 
 trilogy. The collective title is justified by a cen- 
 tral idea; the difference hinges on the relations 
 of men to ideals which vary with clime and time. 
 In Teja we see the manifestation of a wholly ethnic 
 consciousness, in Fritzchen the hero's conduct is 
 inspired by sectional or specific class ethics. Das 
 Ewig- Mannliche is an almost cynical reversal of 
 the Fritzchen tragedy, two men of force and value 
 barely escaping the social folly of sacrificing life 
 and limb to a vapid convention. 
 
 Sudermann's next play brought a surprise to 
 his friends as well as to his adversaries. It was 
 a biblical tragedy. It had become the fashion at 
 that time, when literary art had practically passed
 
 68 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 out of extreme naturalism, to nose around for hid- 
 den symbolism in every new work of fiction. To 
 seek any esoteric meaning in Johannes (1898), 
 however, is to look for disappointment. Suder- 
 mann's hero is he of whom it is written in the 
 third chapter of the Evangelist Matthew: "In 
 those days came John the Baptist, preaching in 
 the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye: 
 for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this 
 is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, 
 saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
 Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths 
 straight. And the same John had his raiment of 
 camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins ; 
 and his meat was locusts and wild honey." In 
 the New Testament the tragic ending of John the 
 Baptist is subtly hinted rather than fully motived. 
 Enough is left unexplained in the conduct of all 
 concerned to have tempted more than one writer 
 to venture an elaboration of the brief account. 
 Sudermann's aim in treating the subject is to 
 secure for the unfortunate preacher in the wilder- 
 ness the fullest measure of our human sympathy. 
 Let us see to what extent his purpose is attained. 
 The forerunner of the gentle Nazarene is a hard- 
 and-fast-bound Puritan, chained and paralyzed by
 
 SUDERMANN 69 
 
 his inflexible asceticism, without real understand- 
 ing of the human heart, and therefore without com- 
 passion and charity. With a delicate psychologic 
 instinct Sudermann explains the fall of the fanat- 
 ical prophet through his spiritual awakening. John 
 at first imagines the Messiah whom he heralds 
 to be a kingly lord : " And wouldst thou know, 
 woman, how he shall come ? " proclaims the Baptist 
 in act iii, scene x; "as king of the hosts, cov- 
 ered with an armor of gold, his sword uplifted 
 over his head, he will come to save the Lord's 
 own people. His enemies he will trample under 
 the hoofs of his steed, but the young men of Israel 
 will greet him exulting. Behold, O woman, thus 
 shall he arrive." The Baptist's fundamental mis- 
 conception of his mission works his destruction 
 so soon as he, the fanatic of rabbinical lore, loses 
 the absolute faith in himself; so soon as the 
 Mightier One cometh after him, the latchet of 
 whose shoe he is unworthy to unloose ; so soon as 
 he shudderingly opens his eyes and finds himself 
 unequal to the work he has set out to do. John's 
 fate is akin to Hamlet's: destiny has imposed a 
 task upon him for which he is morally unpre- 
 pared. The gradual conversion of such a char- 
 acter from mere virtuous rigor to real humanity
 
 70 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 supplies a theme not only of dramatic but of 
 intense religious interest. Sudermann's play may 
 be called, by a figure of speech, a tract raised to the 
 power of art, a comparison borne out, among other 
 ways, by the archaic solemnity of its language. 
 The story of John the Baptist as told in the Gos- 
 pels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is greatly elab- 
 orated for the psychologic purpose of the play. 
 The following is an outline of the plot. 
 
 The Jewish people writhes in the fetters of a 
 twofold tyranny. Whatever of vitality is left to it 
 by the Roman oppressors is slowly sapped by the 
 Jews' own theocratic "Law," debased by bigotry 
 and priestcraft to a heart-and-soul-killing ritualism. 
 The mass of the people, instead of being quick- 
 ened at the fount of a living religion, are put off 
 with empty formulae ; thus they have turned into 
 a race of pessimists who, despairing of their power 
 of self-redemption, strain their longing eyes to 
 descry the Messiah of the prophetic message, 
 " whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly 
 purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his 
 garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire un- 
 quenchable" (Luke iii, 17). John himself is held 
 by a portion of the people to be the prophesied. 
 But his own consciousness tells him better: he is
 
 SUDERMANN 7 i 
 
 but the harbinger of the Saviour. In this convic- 
 tion the other-worldly man assumes provisionally 
 the part of a popular leader for which he is so ill 
 made. We find him at Jerusalem, inciting the 
 populace against the Tetrarch who, with brazen 
 adultery, has just flung a fatal insult at the pure 
 family morals of the Israelites. But at the very 
 start the hermit pines for his desert : " Am I set 
 as a lord over this people? Let the shepherd 
 drive his flock through thorns or flowers. I thirst 
 for solitude. I long for my rocks." Only by stern 
 constraint from within and without does he remain 
 at the head of the insurrection, a general without 
 a plan of campaign, a leader who knows not the 
 way. While he broods in this state of uncertainty 
 the word of Simon the Galilean strikes root in his 
 soul: "Higher than law and sacrifice is love," and 
 there is implanted in his soul the leaven of destruc- 
 tion; for the same message which paves for him 
 the way to a riper understanding unmans him 
 completely for his political enterprise: "Ye chil- 
 dren of men, there is in your souls a roaring as of 
 many waters clear and troubled ; I am to gather 
 all these into a mighty river, and I feel that I shall 
 drown therein." Even yet he remains unyieldingly 
 loyal to the old Messianic illusion, till he learns
 
 72 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 with dismay from the lips of a beggar woman that 
 his message holds no comfort for them that labor 
 and are heavy laden, that these do not want his 
 golden-panoplied Messiah. 
 
 Mesuhmeth: Take thy message elsewhere. I 
 will none of it. 
 
 John: What? You will none of the Messiah? 
 
 Mesulemeth : Not him, not that one. For so 
 many have come before clad in golden panoplies 
 and have raised the sword so often that Israel 
 bleeds like a sacrificial beast. Nor shall he be a 
 king. When kings come, they come for the kings. 
 To us poor none has ever come. Begone, O 
 stranger ! Thou strikest at my remnant of hope. 
 Go ! thou art a false prophet. Go ! let me lie by 
 the wayside. 
 
 The sting of this rebuke rankles in John's 
 troubled soul. Just as he is making ready to lead 
 the people against the sinful Tetrarch, the com- 
 mandment that we should love our enemy, pro- 
 claimed in the land of Galilee by Jesus whom he 
 baptized, comes to John and makes his hand drop 
 the stone already raised against Herod. And this is 
 the end of his leadership. In my opinion the whole 
 plot gravitates toward this internal conflict, and 
 not, as some have thought, about the temptation
 
 SUDERMANN 73 
 
 of the Baptist by Salome. In the soul of John the 
 Baptist the same struggle goes on between the 
 old time and the new which we have already wit- 
 nessed in Sudermann's social plays ; but this time 
 the issue involves the fundamental history-shaping 
 attitude toward life, and the decision is therefore 
 wider in its bearing. The drama attains its pur- 
 pose so soon as the power of the new spiritual 
 interpretation of life which we call Christianity 
 has conquered the theocratic world view in the 
 sentiment and will of the hero; then John may 
 calmly yield up his life for the new certainty : " I 
 hear all around me a mighty roaring, and the 
 blessed light well-nigh envelops me. ... A throne 
 has descended from the heavens with pillars of 
 fire. And on it sits, clad in white raiment, the 
 Prince of Peace. And his sword is named ' Love,' 
 and 'Charity' is his battle cry." It is a fitter close 
 for this tragedy of a human soul than any other 
 Sudermann might have invented, that directly after 
 the beheading of John the Baptist loud, exultant 
 hosannas announce the entry of the Nazarene 
 into Jerusalem. 
 
 With all his force and skill and depth of con- 
 viction Sudermann does not fully attain his im- 
 mediate object of compelling a fellow-feeling for
 
 74 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Johannes on the part of the beholder, and thus he 
 misses, in part at least, the object of all tragedy, 
 which is to awaken pity and fear. Only when, 
 through the unraveling of the human fate to 
 which we are made privy, we are made to beat 
 our breasts, and when the Mahavakya, the " great 
 word " of the Vedas : Tat tvdm asi (" This is thou "), 
 rises spontaneously to our lips, only then may the 
 poet glory in having set free those potent emo- 
 tions. We of the twentieth century have too little 
 in common with a man who in his far-off desert 
 has weaned himself from all passion and frailty, 
 whose nature is steeped in a frigid, forbidding vir- 
 tue, and whose personal purity is but the lusterless 
 reflection of a gloomy, loveless self-righteousness. 
 Herodias speaks from our own hearts when she 
 hurls her rebuke against the unapproachable saint: 
 " He who would presume to be a judge over men 
 must have a share in their lives and be human 
 with his fellows. But thou seemest to dwell in 
 regions so far away that even the throbbing of 
 the human heart seems to thee a folly. . . . Thou 
 hast timidly shrunk from every sin, retiring like 
 a coward into the solitude, and now crawlest forth 
 to call others guilty. Maybe the fiery winds of 
 the desert have taught thee to hate ; but what
 
 SUDERMANN 75 
 
 knowest thou of those who live and die for the 
 sake of their love ? " 
 
 For yet another reason John the Baptist is unfit 
 to be the hero of a tragedy. In the crisis of his 
 dramatic development, when at last the true 
 humanity fires his whole being, he cannot lead 
 mankind forward and up to better, higher things, 
 for his spiritual energy does not become kinetic, 
 he is only a passive, uncreative character. 
 
 The most imposing figure in the play is the 
 woman Herodias. Like Lady Macbeth, she is an 
 incarnation of ruthless, violent ambition. She has 
 lent a willing ear to the wiles of Herod, not in 
 order to earn by fawning and begging a daily 
 offering of caresses, not for the gratification of 
 her feminine vanity, but in order to have absolute 
 power over him: to be not his mistress but his 
 master. John shall be for Herodias the ardently 
 desired tool of her political aggrandizement. To 
 purchase so rare an instrument even the youthful 
 charms of her daughter seem not too high a price 
 to her. It is seen at this point that Sudermann, 
 like others before him, seeks to motive the part of 
 Herodias in the fate of John. In this he is success- 
 ful, but far less successful is he in his interpretation 
 of Salome's ready acquiescence in her mother's
 
 76 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 design. To the adolescent Salome John the Bap- 
 tist is primarily a male, no more, no less. In her 
 veins the wayward blood of her race runs riot. 
 Her premature, unwholesome sensuality is directed 
 upon the shaggy apostle, not despite but because 
 of his singularity. Thus she appears tainted with 
 a pathologic perversity and seems to belong not 
 properly to the world of the New Testament, but 
 rather to the morbid vaporings of an August 
 Strindberg, Marcel Prevost, or Catulle Mendes. 
 Quite as diseased as her infatuation for the wild 
 man from Judea is her revulsion against him when 
 he scorns her, her truculent revenge, and her sav- 
 age triumph over the victim's severed head. 
 
 The Herod of the play scarcely deserves men- 
 tion : a slinking, venal degenerate ; the fox of the 
 Scriptures (Luke xiii, 31-32), not sly enough to 
 be more than a cringing pander to the insolent 
 Roman, and a callow puppet in the hands of his 
 concubine. 
 
 Despite the freedom with which the story of 
 the Baptist as told by the Evangelists is treated, 
 Sudermann's Johannes is in form and substance 
 a biblical play; hence it is a natural desire to 
 draw from it some inference as to the poet's 
 relation to the Christian faith.
 
 SUDERMANN 77 
 
 In this regard too, as in all others, Sudermann 
 is found to be a modern man. The time is hap- 
 pily past in Germany when to rail or sneer at 
 every positive religious belief was to give evidence 
 of polish and intellectual distinction. On the 
 other hand, too, the divines and laymen of every 
 creed have gradually adopted a more respectful 
 and tolerant tone toward their honest adversaries. 
 The disposition of the modern German who lays 
 claim to real culture that is to say, not education 
 of the mind alone, but also of the sensibilities is 
 to bow in reverence before that genuine piety in 
 which the orthodox Christian and Jew, the liberal, 
 the dissenter, and the earnest agnostic have a 
 common meeting ground. And that is, at the 
 last, the religion of St. John the Baptist. It con- 
 sists in the same genuine godliness which was 
 upheld in the sixteenth century by honest, simple- 
 hearted Hans Sachs, when during the high tide of 
 religious strife he naively gave it as his opinion 
 that " the ancient test of a Christian is charity, 
 and not the eating of flesh, for cats and dogs can 
 do that too." 
 
 Sudermann's next play, Die drei Reiherfedern 
 (" The Three Heron-Plumes") (1898) differs curi- 
 ously from all its predecessors. The author calls
 
 78 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 it "a dramatic poem"; in reality it belongs to the 
 class of the fairy play and may be grouped with 
 Hauptmann's Die versunkene Glocke and Fulda's 
 Der Talisman, albeit the M'drchen in Die drei 
 ReiJierfedern is constructed by Sudermann's own 
 fancy, unaided by any relationship to folklore or 
 mythology, and must therefore depend upon its 
 intrinsic fascination for whatever interest it may 
 enlist. Once before, in Das Ewig-M'dnnliche, 
 Sudermann strayed into the world of poetic ca- 
 price. The dramatic plot in " The Three Heron- 
 Plumes" is the mere vehicle of an allegory, and 
 the technical treatment is in frank contravention 
 of the naturalistic prescript. Here, as in " The 
 Eternally-Masculine," we find types and not real 
 individuals, if we except at most Prince Witte's 
 fiercely faithful retainer, the rough, colossal Hans 
 Lorbass, baumlang und ungeschlacht, as he is de- 
 scribed in the play. The hero himself lacks dra- 
 matic personality; he is but the shadowy symbol of 
 the restless, insatiable cravings of an idealist with 
 those same emotional aspirations which so many 
 German poets have felt tempted to fathom. " The 
 tireless child of Desire" he calls himself, and he 
 is, indeed, a literary cousin of Faust, Don Juan, 
 and Master Heinrich the bell-founder.
 
 SUDERMANN 79 
 
 It is his tragical destiny to spend his life in a 
 forlorn chase after the happiness which all the 
 time he holds unwittingly in his grasp. Sent on 
 an adventurous expedition by the graveyard witch 
 (Begrabnisfrau\ a character that calls to mind 
 Hauptmann's Granny Wittichen, Prince Witte 
 takes from a sacred white heron three feathers 
 which possess magic power. If he throws the 
 first of them into the flames, Witte will behold 
 the dim likeness of his ideal woman, the blessing 
 of whose love is to illumine his existence. When 
 the second feather is burnt that woman shall ap- 
 pear before him, walking in her sleep. But when 
 the third feather falls to ashes that embodi- 
 ment of his ideal love must die. Prince Witte, 
 just returned, puts the first feather to the test ; the 
 vague outline of a gigantic woman appears on the 
 horizon and slowly vanishes into the air. Her 
 features Witte has not been able to see. If ever 
 he meets her, how shall he recognize her? Soon 
 he comes to the court of the beautiful widowed 
 queen of Samland, who, for the sake of her people, 
 has promised to marry him who shall overcome 
 all other suitors. She falls in love with Witte 
 even before he enters the lists to win her, but he 
 is felled to the ground by the Duke Widwolf, his
 
 80 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 bastard brother, the same who drove him from 
 his inherited dukedom of Gotland, and who now 
 claims the hand of the queen as his right. How- 
 ever, Lorbass, with the queen's warriors, sets upon 
 the insolent usurper, putting him and all his fight- 
 ing men to flight. The queen, contrary to her 
 sworn promise, marries Prince Witte, who is to 
 rule over the land until his little stepson shall 
 have come of age. But to Witte's hazy longings 
 after the unknown love and his disgust with the 
 commonplace are superadded the pangs of con- 
 science because of his own and his consort's per- 
 jury. Under the weight of remorse his activities 
 slacken, and gradually his better nature falls into 
 a torpor. He neglects his royal office, surrenders 
 himself to wild revelries, and allows the royal 
 sword to grow rusty. Yet his soul continues to 
 yearn for its ideal. While in this torn state of 
 mind he burns the second plume in the dead of 
 night. To his amazement his own wife appears, 
 walking with eyes closed in sleep. On Witte in 
 his blindness the coincidence makes no impres- 
 sion. He bitterly upbraids the queen, whom he 
 suspects of spying on his nightly carousals, and 
 draws away from her farther than ever. Sinking 
 deeper and deeper in his sloth, he at last refuses
 
 SUDERMANN 8 I 
 
 to head his people against Widwolf, who has come 
 to wreak his vengeance. As a last heroic remedy 
 against the lethargic apathy of the king the rude 
 giant Lorbass, in this play, with a possible 
 significance, the morals of the overman are dele- 
 gated to a subsidiary character, having read 
 the king's mind, determines to kill the young heir 
 apparent. With the prince out of the way, so 
 he reasons, the king will rise to his ofHce, for 
 he will then have to fight for his own, not for a 
 " borrowed" kingdom ! But even as Hauptmann's 
 Poor Heinrich gains a saving triumph over his 
 selfishness, so King Witte is roused at last from 
 his culpable indolence, not through a crime but 
 through his better nature. The grim Hans Lor- 
 bass, having softened at the critical moment, 
 returns with the boy. At this sight the king, 
 who has been crazed by self-accusations, recovers 
 himself. With zeal he assumes his royal task in 
 the nick of time. His valiant arm soon lays low 
 the enemy who storm the palace. The kingdom 
 is safe. And Witte ? Errette mich vom Alltag! 
 (" Deliver me from the everyday ! ") With this 
 exclamation he demands the freedom of which he 
 has dreamed for years. Together with his faithful 
 Lorbass he leaves his " purloined " grandeur and
 
 82 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 resumes the aimless pursuit of his hazy ideal. 
 After fifteen years spent in a vagabondage full of 
 hardship and disappointment, the aging, thor- 
 oughly disillusioned man finds himself again near 
 the hut of the graveyard hag, broken in spirit 
 and weary of life. His eyes have begun to open 
 to the fact that he threw away his happiness 
 when he should have held it fast. He grasps the 
 whole truth when the queen appears on the scene, 
 full of love and forgiveness. Now when his course 
 is nearly run he realizes that he has misspent his 
 life in the childish pursuit of a bubble. In order 
 at last to cast off the spell which he now regards 
 as the source of his failure, he throws the third 
 feather into the fire. As the flames blaze over 
 the mystic plume the queen sinks to the ground 
 dying. And with the cry "Duwarst'sf" Witte 
 breaks down over her body. 
 
 We do not fail to notice a certain parallel 
 between this play and the tragedy of John the 
 Baptist. Both men are led into destruction by a 
 false idealism. As John still looks expectantly 
 for the coming of the gold-clad Messiah when all 
 the while Christ in his spiritual glory is walking 
 on earth, so Prince Witte consumes himself in the 
 idle search after that which he already possesses,
 
 SUDERMANN 83 
 
 the magnanimous love of a perfect woman. " The 
 Three Heron-Plumes" is a work of great poetic 
 merit. And yet, despite its many beauties, it 
 is, on the whole, Sudermann's least successful 
 work, if we except his latest, Der Sturmgeselle 
 Sokrates, compared to which everything else 
 he has ever written is a masterpiece. Versatile 
 though he is to an unusual degree, his genius is 
 hardly adapted to romance and fairy tale. Suder- 
 mann is too much a man of the modern world, 
 too much a Northerner and a Prussian. As he, 
 possibly more than any other writer of the new 
 generation, draws intellectual breath from the 
 atmosphere of criticism which pervades our times, 
 he is at his best when dealing with those ques- 
 tions which have the greatest moral actuality, and 
 with which it is consequently wholly legitimate 
 and proper that the modern play and the modern 
 novel should mostly concern themselves. 
 
 The plays which still remain for discussion 
 afford Sudermann that opportunity. The first 
 bears the symbolic name Johannisfeuer (" St. 
 John's Fire") (1900). The meaning of the sym- 
 bolism in the play is made clear by the follow- 
 ing declamatory outpouring of the leading male 
 character. "In every one of us there smolders
 
 84 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 a spark of heathenism. This has outlasted the 
 thousands of years since the old Germanic times. 
 Once a year it bursts into a high flame and 
 then it is called Johannisfeuer. Once a year 
 there comes a night of liberty. Yes, yes, a night 
 of liberty. Then the witches ride with mock- 
 ing laughter up the Brocken on their broom- 
 sticks, the same broomsticks with which at other 
 times their witchcraft is cudgeled out of them. 
 Then the Wild Chase passes over the forest ; 
 then awaken in our hearts the wild desires 
 which life has not fulfilled and which, mark me 
 well, it could not fulfill. For no matter what be 
 the name of the law that for the time happens 
 to rule in the world, in order that the one 
 wish may be realized by whose grace we can 
 spin out our existence, a thousand other wishes 
 must perish miserably: some, possibly, because 
 they were forever unattainable, others well, 
 others because we have allowed them to flit away 
 like wild birds over which our hand was too slow 
 in closing. ... Be this as it may, once a year 
 comes the night when we are free, and do you 
 know what it is that blazes yonder? do you know? 
 It is the phantoms of our deadened desires; it is 
 the red plumage of the birds of paradise which
 
 SUDERMANN 85 
 
 perhaps we might have cherished all our life long, 
 and which have taken wing from us; it is the 
 old chaos; it is the heathenism within us. And 
 be we never so happy in the sunshine and accord- 
 ing to law, this is St. John's Eve. To its old 
 heathen fires I pledge my glass; this night may 
 they blaze high and higher. 1 Will no one touch 
 glasses with me ? " (act iii, scene iii). We can well 
 understand why, after this somewhat extravagant 
 tirade of Georg von Hartwig, an embarrassing 
 silence ensues round the board of Squire Vogel- 
 reuter. This is broken at last by the heroine, 
 Marikke, who with trembling hand touches her 
 glass to Georg's as she says " I will," and looks 
 him firmly in the eye. 
 
 In two breasts the fire of St. John breaks out in 
 this play, which ends tragically enough. Though 
 its pages flow not with blood, yet two lives 
 herein lies the tragedy are consumed as a sac- 
 rifice savory in the nostrils of that ruling power, 
 the law, the morals which " happen for the time 
 to rule the world." 
 
 Ethically considered, the play may or may 
 not mark a step in the direction of the author's 
 
 1 The pun on Hoch, the customary ending of a German toast, is 
 lost in the Englishing.
 
 86 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 philosophic reconciliation with that power. That 
 would depend on the interpretation of the out- 
 come. Dramatically considered, it certainly gives 
 no proof of advance. The play suffers from the 
 fact that Sudermann has this time yielded too 
 freely to his strong liking for effects. Certain 
 melodramatic elements, called in merely for deco- 
 rative purposes, have unfortunately sneaked into 
 the inner mechanism of "St. John's Fire." These 
 ornamental features include more than the double 
 entendre in the name of the play, the importation 
 of symbolical illustrations, and notably the facti- 
 tious interspersion of the dialogue with bits from 
 the author's commentary on his own work, such 
 as we hear in Die Ehre from Count Trast, and 
 in Sodoms Ende from Dr. Weisse and Professor 
 Riemann, or in Die Schmetterlingsschlacht from 
 the invaluable Kessler. 
 
 With these, on the whole, 'we need have no 
 quarrel in a dramatist who does not pose as a 
 naturalist and probably has no special aptitude in 
 that direction. The ideal drama, of course, should 
 be self-explanatory. But even greater playwrights 
 than Sudermann and that is saying not a little 
 have fallen back on the same devices as he. 
 Within aesthetic limits a writer is privileged to
 
 SUDERMANN 87 
 
 introduce Stimmungsmittel, that is to superin- 
 duce artificially the effect of his work. At most 
 we may raise an objection against his almost in- 
 sulting plainness in the explanation of things that 
 are sufficiently clear in themselves. Georg's toast 
 certainly verges dangerously on the haec fabula 
 docet. Besides, the parallelism between fact and 
 symbol need not be accentuated so much through- 
 out the drama. The story gains nothing in prob- 
 ability from the circumstance that the outbreak of 
 Georg's and Marikke's mutal infatuation is made 
 simultaneous with the bonfires of St. John's Eve. 
 It is sufficiently dramatic in its true inwardness. 
 The picture could have well dispensed with the 
 excessive ornament of its symbolic frame. Let 
 that pass. But Sudermann, as was said above, 
 goes to obnoxious lengths in touching up the 
 sober tragedy of this play with melodramatic 
 effects. He ransacks the Thespian van of itiner- 
 ant barn-stormers, where he discovers his female 
 tramp, the Weszkalnene. He stirs up the lumber 
 room of Italian opera and culls a meaning refer- 
 ence to the fatal Mancheneel-tree of Meyerbeer's 
 L 1 Africaine. He even plants an exotic tree of 
 his own, the Liriodendron Tulipifera of the second 
 act, and he shows half a mind to turn its blossoms
 
 88 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 to tragic account ; but remembering, it may be, that 
 he himself has done his share towards destroying 
 the credit of fate-bringing vegetables and similar 
 stage properties, he happily desists from the pur- 
 pose. For after the flowering twig is dropped 
 and the tarred barrels are burnt out, real forces, 
 potent and plausible, are seen to be responsible 
 for the sequel. 
 
 First of all is the moral organization of the 
 two central figures, their temperament, by which 
 their fall and fate are predetermined. Here it is 
 heredity that reveals itself as nowhere else in 
 Sudermann's plays. Georg comes of a master- 
 ful race, hence he belongs to the " Herren- 
 menscken" albeit he is a weak specimen of this 
 strong modern genus. Marikke, on the other 
 hand, being the daughter of a drunken, thievish 
 beggar woman, it follows, according to Suder- 
 mann's theory of the transmission of traits, that 
 she must steal. But whereas the old Lithu- 
 anian wretch, her mother, is principally out for 
 food and underclothing, the daughter what a 
 singular form of kleptomania! cannot resist an 
 impulse to steal her portion of happiness. Meine 
 Mutter stiehlt. Ich stehle auch ! It is with these 
 words that she throws herself away. The sweet,
 
 SUDERMANN 89 
 
 housewifely girl whom they all call Heimchen 
 (" the cricket on the hearth"), and who, though a 
 poor foundling, has been tenderly reared by the 
 Vogelreuters, is driven to her ruin by a mingled 
 feeling of love, sensual impulse, generosity, and 
 this is the element incongruous with the gen- 
 eral view of her character reckless, fatalistic 
 insouciance. The outlines of these two principal 
 characters as sketched in by the author are 
 plainly discernible. Unfortunately the figures do 
 not fit themselves to the contours. Georg has 
 no true kinship with the " Master Folk." At bot- 
 tom he is a boastful, vacillating, and selfish phil- 
 istine. This, his real nature, is not disclosed to 
 those about him, nor to himself, if at least the 
 playwright saw through him ! But we have the 
 feeling that such is not the case, hence our own 
 puzzled state. It must be admitted that just as 
 there are inscrutable characters in life, so certain 
 dramatic characters of great depth, like Hamlet, 
 Faust, Wallenstein, baffle offhand interpretation. 
 As a rule, however, the character that fails to body 
 forth unquestionably the author's real conception 
 is to be regarded as a dramatic miscarriage. 
 
 Beside the not altogether adequate account- 
 ing for the tragedy through the driving force of
 
 90 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 congenital character, there is put in commission 
 an auxiliary course of events which leads the prin- 
 cipals straight to the trapdoor of destiny. Georg 
 von Hartwig is, like Marikke, a Notstandskind 
 laid under an oppressive debt of gratitude. After 
 his father's suicide Georg has been educated 
 through the generosity of his uncle Vogelreuter. 
 While yet a schoolboy he has fallen in love with 
 Marikke. She, however, has not realized the depth 
 of his affection for her, and he has imagined 
 himself scorned. The play opens four days prior 
 to the marriage of Georg to Trude Vogelreuter, 
 a sweet, clinging damosel with a heartful of love 
 and a thimbleful of brains. The match, as far 
 as Georg is concerned, is to be conceived partly 
 as a requital of past benefits received from his 
 uncle, and partly as a mariage de deft, to spite the 
 Heimchen. The dramatic argumentation of both 
 points, however, is unsupported by cogent evi- 
 dence. We only learn that in those past days 
 Marikke has repelled with natural pride the 
 demonstrations of the youngster's callow affec- 
 tion. So, for instance, one day when he followed 
 her into the cellar she managed to lock the 
 ardent lover in for a whole night, with the hope, 
 possibly, of reducing his spirits to the temperature
 
 SUDERMANN 91 
 
 and harmlessness of the milk stored there. After 
 that the facile psychologist considered his fate 
 as sealed. " And since things had come to such 
 a pass that I could not get you," he explains 
 in act iii, " I afterward took Trude." Then this 
 brilliant reader of the feminine mind adds, won- 
 deringly, " Have you never realized that this 
 was the way things hung together ? " At the 
 critical moment, when the Heimchen's repressed 
 temperament is set aflame by the reappearance 
 of Georg, two events ripen the catastrophe : the 
 discovery of Georg's early love for her through 
 some boyish poetry that turns up in an old 
 drawer ; and the arrival of her mother, the dis- 
 solute Weszkalnene, by which Marikke is thrown 
 into a state of the utmost self-depreciation. 
 
 Marikke, then, " steals " her bit of happiness, 
 but magnanimously rejects Georg's half-hearted 
 offer to break off the marriage with Trude. It 
 is at this point that the internal dramatic work- 
 ings seem leavened with the ethical policy of the 
 author, in that Georg and Marikke subordinate 
 their love to a tender regard for their responsi- 
 bilities to the family. The play ends with Georg 
 and Trude going to the altar as if nothing had 
 happened, while Marikke looks after them, her
 
 92 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 handkerchief between her teeth to stifle the out- 
 cry of her anguish. If there is any " lesson " in 
 this bourgeois ending, it seems to the superficial 
 observer as though it can hardly be other than 
 approbation, for once, of social authority, and a 
 rebuff for insubordination of the individual. A 
 play with such a message would seem to show the 
 author of "Magda" and "Honor" in the attitude 
 either of a convert or of a renegade. Before we 
 jump to such a rash conclusion, however, it is 
 well to pause before two other possibilities. May 
 it not be that the ending of the play is either 
 a grim satire or an uninterpreted illustration of 
 reality? The last is certainly the least probable, 
 for we have seen heretofore that Sudermann is 
 not in the habit of keeping back his opinion. 
 Johannisfeuer is weaker than it would be if this 
 large question were not left open. Yet even now, 
 if we look in some detail at the remainder of 
 Sudermann's recent works, they may help to dis- 
 close the real meaning of this one. 
 
 The moral tone of the tragedy Es lebe das 
 Leben ("The Joy of Living") (1902) argues con- 
 clusively against a radical change of front in the 
 current ethical phase of Sudermann's literary 
 activity.
 
 SUDERMANN 93 
 
 Its burden is the exaltation of a life intense 
 and personal over the drag of an existence con- 
 ducted by rule of thumb in the interest and for 
 the convenience of the species. Yet Sudermann 
 indorses very positively the just claims of society 
 upon the individual. There is abundant happi- 
 ness to be found beyond the pale of the law, but 
 the purchase price is so high, fortunately, as to 
 frighten off all but a few. 
 
 For the first time Sudermann in " The Joy of 
 Living" takes us into German high life. Count 
 Kellinghausen, prominent member of the conserv- 
 ative party, has laid down his electoral mandate 
 and used all his influence for the election of his 
 friend, Baron Richard von Volkerlingk. The sac- 
 rifice of his own political preferment has been 
 made at the prompting of his wife, Beate, who 
 is the Egeria of the party, and at whose table, 
 " entre poire et fromage" the fate of many a par- 
 liamentary bill has been sealed. She has per- 
 suaded Count Michael of his own unfitness for 
 parliamentary life, and has convinced him that 
 the highest interest of the party demands that he 
 decline his reelection in favor of his more brilliant 
 friend. Under her wise direction Richard von 
 Volkerlingk has fully developed his rare political
 
 94 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 powers. His son Norbert, under the same in- 
 fluence, has matured into an earnest sociological 
 thinker. Norbert loves Countess Beate better 
 than his own mother and is tacitly accepted as 
 the prospective husband of her daughter Ellen. 
 The love of the young people only supplies the 
 rather hackneyed underplot. The pivotal figures 
 of the main plot are Richard von Volkerlingk 
 and Beate von Kellinghausen. They have known 
 each other for fifteen years. From the start 
 they have been intimate friends, soon becoming 
 lovers. To the quiet little woman that Beate 
 used to be, Richard's superior mind has unlocked 
 the wealth of a new and larger life ; under his 
 guidance she has grown to be a woman of strength 
 and purpose, able to repay in kind by becoming 
 a wise counselor to Richard, and forming the 
 character of his boy. Their culpable relations 
 have mellowed after a short time into a fraternal 
 affection, a soul companionship from which both 
 draw the courage to continue their lives. Beate 's 
 ambition dreams of a great future for Richard, 
 and because she cannot bear to see his talents 
 lying fallow, she creates the opportunity for him 
 to exercise them. Richard's conscience naturally 
 recoils from so great an indebtedness to the man
 
 SUDERMANN 95 
 
 whom he has betrayed. But he has yielded to 
 Beate's persuasion and has just been returned 
 to Parliament. In the impending debate on the 
 divorce question he is to raise his voice as the chief 
 spokesman of his party in defense of the sacred- 
 ness and indissolubility of marriage. His sense 
 of honor is greatly disturbed at this ; he is not 
 a man who can make shift with the assumption 
 that people will be guided by his public words, 
 not by his secret actions. He feels that whatever 
 he says in his political capacity should be uttered 
 without an inward contradiction. Withal he is 
 heart and soul in his task. The suggestion of 
 a tragical ending arises spontaneously. Richard 
 may appear as the champion of morals but once. 
 By a great speech he may decide the victory of 
 the cause. Then in the midst of his triumph he 
 may certify to its truthfulness by his death. To 
 a fecund inventor of plots like Sudermann this 
 single thread seemed too slender, so it is ree'n- 
 forced by a political intrigue and at the same time 
 by the frustration of Richard's suicide through the 
 ingenious self-sacrifice of Beate. For her action, 
 of course, the author must furnish a strong motive, 
 and thus Beate becomes from this point on the 
 real heroine of the play.
 
 96 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Count Michael is accidentally informed of what 
 he firmly believes to be a groundless defamation 
 of his house, and decides to punish the slanderer. 
 He has perfect confidence in his wife and his 
 friend, but lest some triviality be puffed up into 
 a serious accusation against them, he wants to 
 know if they have any recollection of any detail 
 in their mutual relations which might lend the 
 slightest color of truth to the charge of undue 
 intimacy. Finally he asks for Richard's word of 
 honor that nothing need be feared in the way of 
 evidence. Thus very unexpectedly the climax is 
 brought on. Richard starts to "perjure himself 
 like a gentleman," but Beate prevents. " Now he 
 will give you his word of honor and then he will 
 go home and put a bullet through his head." At 
 this moment she stakes, nay more than that, she 
 surrenders her all in order that Richard may again 
 be at one with himself, once the great lie is ousted 
 from his life. And she explains to her husband 
 in this confession scene why she has lived the lie 
 at his side for half a lifetime. Suppose she had 
 obtained her freedom, and Richard his too, would 
 she not have completed the wrecking of his life 
 if she had stuck to him as the relic of a past 
 scandal ? Count Michael von Kellinghausen, after
 
 SUDERMANN 97 
 
 this crushing exposure, is not in a position to exact 
 the customary satisfaction; the playwright has 
 crossed his purpose, for reason. Before Michael 
 entered upon the prosecution of the slanderer he 
 had to pledge his word to his political friends that 
 the party should be carefully protected against 
 the taint of scandal. Accordingly a settlement 
 between him and Richard in conformity with the 
 ordinary rules of the code of honor is practically 
 impossible. By a dramatic coup de force Volker- 
 lingk junior much earlier in the play has unwit- 
 tingly pronounced sentence of death on his father. 
 Being the author of a pamphlet on the question 
 of dueling which evinced a liberal tendency quite 
 at variance with the views of his social circle, he 
 was upholding the thesis of his pamphlet against 
 Count Michael and Baron Richard, who both 
 maintained, from different positions, that in cer- 
 tain cases, when irreparable offense has been 
 given, gentlemen must appeal their dispute to the 
 decision of arms. Norbert expressed the opinion 
 that the offender, if he be a man of honor and 
 willing to make atonement, would do best to act 
 as his own judge. 
 
 The two men now fall back on Norbert's ver- 
 dict. Richard takes a reprieve of forty-eight hours
 
 98 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 to arrange his affairs in a way to leave no clew to 
 the motive of his suicide. 
 
 The dramatic problem in the last two acts is 
 to bring the affair to a conclusion in such a man- 
 ner that Beate's great sacrifice shall not have been 
 in vain. The tremendous effect of Volkerlingk's 
 speech on the sanctity of marriage has opened 
 before him the possibilities of a career than which 
 no living man has achieved a more splendid; a 
 career which nothing but a scandal can blast. 
 He is universally regarded as the coming man. 
 Beate realizes that Richard has paid, with his 
 resolution to die, for the right to speak as he 
 has on that subject, and she also knows that by 
 his first great success life has been endeared to 
 him, and he is full of a secret avidity to live. 
 Her mind is made up to save him. Her own 
 life, in constant jeopardy on account of heart 
 disease, seems to her a more suitable sacrifice. 
 If she dies, so Beate calculates, Volkerlingk is 
 bound to live in order to save her reputation and 
 the happiness of the young couple. She induces 
 her husband to invite Richard to a gentlemen's 
 gathering so as to nip in the bud any rumors of 
 a scandal. Then she secures Richard's promise 
 to attend.
 
 SUDERMANN 99 
 
 In the fifth act, which is marred by some glar- 
 ing theatricalities, Count Kellinghausen's break- 
 fast party is represented. Beate, who is the only 
 woman present, proposes a somewhat exorbitant 
 toast to the joy of living. With the words "Es 
 lebe das Leben /" she drains a poisoned cup. A 
 letter left behind explains to her husband the 
 purpose of her death. Michael and Richard now 
 realize that their covenant is void. Richard may 
 nay, must live, and Michael offers no opposition 
 to the union of Ellen and Norbert. And yet it 
 cannot be asserted that the end of Beate's self- 
 destroying act is wholly attained. " And you 
 understand " these are the closing words of 
 Richard to Michael " that I must live, though 
 I do not care to must live because I am 
 dead. Farewell." 
 
 Nearly all the characters in " The Joy of Liv- 
 ing" are conventionalized, a fact which explains 
 in a great measure the friendly acceptance of the 
 play in England and the United States, where 
 the public shows such conservative aversion to 
 the admission of strangers into stage land. The 
 heroine, however, forms a notable exception. 
 
 The Countess Beate, who has become a favorite 
 star part for traveling tragediennes, is not the sole
 
 100 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 specimen of her kind. On the contrary, she be- 
 longs to a numerous sisterhood. Nevertheless 
 she has a personal note which separates her from 
 the magnanimous adventuresses of French drama, 
 and from all the heroines of Ibsen, and Pinero, 
 and Sudermann himself. She is distinguished 
 by a consuming " will to live," in gratifying 
 which she is not hampered, as is her lover, by any 
 moral scruples. In the words of Thomas Carlyle, 
 she conquers remorse by avoiding it. This is not 
 to say that she is without a moral conscience; 
 rather she has one all her own. By the code of 
 morals which as social and political beings we 
 confess, the Countess Beate von Kellinghausen 
 stands condemned, and not even by her many good 
 deeds can she be recommended to mercy. Yet 
 inasmuch as it is our laudable custom to relax the 
 check upon our generous impulses when viewing 
 conduct not in life but on the stage, the Rhada- 
 manthine judgment on the sinning Beate softens 
 greatly before the pleadings of her palliating traits. 
 She is guilty beyond a doubt, and her guilt is 
 largely aggravated by her remorseless, jubilant 
 spirit. In this she is of the Nietzschean mold, 
 and resembles Magda pointing out with shocking 
 pride the connection between her trespasses and
 
 SUDERMANN IOI 
 
 her vital sense of freedom. Beate, indeed, cherishes 
 a passionate love of life in its rich and variegated 
 fullness. But she loves it not only for what it holds 
 for herself: she is even ready to fling her own 
 share away in order to secure for her best beloved 
 a greater participation in the joy of living. She 
 has been so far a seeker after happiness for others 
 that when we examine the portion that she has 
 kept for herself it will be found to consist in the 
 self-imposed martyrdom of love. And so, with the 
 footlights marking off a safe distance between 
 Beate and ourselves, since it seems that human 
 compassion must keep a distance, " her sins which 
 are many are forgiven, for she loved much." 
 "The Joy of Living" has been treated here at 
 greater length than many of Sudermann's plays. 
 The reason was partly the success that play has 
 experienced on the English as well as on the 
 German stage, and partly the fact of its being an 
 important document in Sudermann's ethics. 
 
 It confirms, in a sense, the moral individualism 
 observed throughout his career as a writer. At 
 the same time it shows a fair acquiescence in the 
 restraint put upon individual conduct by the 
 common agreement of society. However elating 
 Beate's joy of living, the wages of her sin, after
 
 102 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 all, is death. The two sentiments, as has been 
 already mentioned, are not necessarily contra- 
 dictory. Sudermann, to put it plainly, was from 
 the beginning, and has remained to this day, a 
 believer in the exception by which the rule is 
 proved. 
 
 Whenever a contemporary writer who has 
 shown the strength requisite to divide public 
 opinion as to his true importance passes through 
 the temporary eclipse of a real failure, a self-con- 
 stituted coroner's jury of his enemies will inevit- 
 ably pronounce him dead from exhaustion. They 
 knew all the while, it goes without saying, that he 
 was growing decrepit; that his triumphs were 
 only the galvanic signs of life produced by ingen- 
 ious self-advertisement; they had predicted that 
 sooner or later the bottom would be knocked out 
 of the workbox from which came all the flimflam 
 of his cheap effects. They had looked forward 
 with alacrity to the future which would bear out 
 their forecast that the reputation of the writer in 
 question was wholly evanescent. 
 
 In Germany more than in any other country 
 great importance is attached to questions of lit- 
 erature ; consequently a writer like Sudermann 
 cannot wonder at having a multitude of critics.
 
 SUDERMANN 103 
 
 Without invoking the apologetic Quandoque bonus 
 dormitat Homerus, it may be said in a spirit of 
 justice that no attitude on the part of a critic can 
 be more petty and unfair towards an earnestly 
 striving artist than the malignant appraisal of his 
 worth on the basis of the least creditable of his per- 
 formances. Hermann Sudermann has been sig- 
 nally unsuccessful with his last play, the comedy 
 Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates (1903). That even his 
 stanchest adherents will have to admit. And the 
 failure was not confined to a single feature of 
 the play; the entire work in regard to structure, 
 form, and substance, plot, language, and characters 
 is past saving. Worst of all, the spirit in which 
 it is written is to be unequivocally condemned. 
 Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates is a libelous carica- 
 ture on the lofty political idealism that inspired 
 the so-called Volkerfruhling, the outbreak of the 
 German love of liberty in the year 1848. The 
 story of the play not really being worth the tell- 
 ing, it is sufficient to touch upon its main points. 
 In a small East Prussian city, by which is doubt- 
 less meant Tilsit, there exists in the middle of the 
 seventies a club called Die Sturmgesellen, "the Fel- 
 low Stormers." It is composed of five or six old- 
 time chums, nearly all eccentric and wrong-headed
 
 104 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 old codgers, who meet once a week in a dingy 
 public house and pass the evening with beer, 
 tobacco, and political drivel. They are the innoc- 
 uous remnant of a secret society founded in the 
 early fifties, soon after the suppression of the 
 revolution, one of the many which in the period 
 of reaction kept alive clandestinely the democratic 
 hopes. The solemn absurdities of this obsolete 
 conspiracy are kept up with ludicrous punctilious- 
 ness. The puerility of the old Fellow Stormers is 
 not without its touch of pathos. While they still 
 throw around at a lively rate their high-sounding 
 balderdash about liberty, equality, and fraternity, 
 their political creed has gone out of date and lost 
 its meaning, and they appear to be blind to the 
 fact that a new era has realized many of their 
 ancient dreams. So far so good. The ludicrous 
 yet touching loyalty to the moribund idols of 
 one's generous youth might have proved a fruit- 
 ful theme for a serio- or even a tragi-comic play. 
 And such an one was probably in the author's 
 mind. Unfortunately Sudermann committed a 
 double error. In the first place, he took the 
 tempora mutantur altogether for granted and 
 emphasized unduly the et nos mutamur in his 
 characterization of the Sturmgesellen, by making
 
 SUDERMANN 105 
 
 them out, with a single exception, as a set of 
 thorough-paced idiots and hypocrites. Their con- 
 duct is for the most part utterly inconsistent with 
 their professed high principles, besides being dis- 
 creditable to their intellects. One of them is a 
 sordid timeserver; another, a scandalous rake; 
 the third, a malicious intriguer; the fourth, and 
 relatively most relishable of the company, Rabbi 
 Markuse, is an amiable enough person and fairly 
 well-conducted citizen, but childishly self-indul- 
 gent in little things and, although he poses as a 
 modernized Nathan the Wise, a coward before pub- 
 lic opinion. To show up by such farcical exam- 
 ples the wide discrepancy between profession and 
 practice of the men of '48 is like waving the red 
 flag in the faces of the survivors of the revolution. 
 The other error, however, is of a still graver nature. 
 In the fifth of the Fellow Stormers, Dentist Hart- 
 meyer, who has the principal part, the old-time 
 idealism burns on with undiminished fervor, and 
 Sudermann, by making this one the most prepos- 
 terous among the fantasts, with his objectless, 
 querulous enthusiasm and quixotic lack of com- 
 mon sense, lays a hurtful finger on a very sensi- 
 tive spot in the national consciousness of his 
 countrymen. The German people are rightly
 
 106 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 proud of their idealism. It is bad form and bit- 
 terly unjust for Sudermann to hold up the old 
 ideals of '48 to the scorn of the modern genera- 
 tion. It is difficult to see what good turn can be 
 served either the human or the national cause by 
 a political comedy which seems to point out the 
 harrowing lesson that democracy is half villainy, 
 half folly. And the representatives of the new 
 epoch, the sons of the Fellow Stormers, being with 
 one exception contemptible and vicious, are not 
 calculated to show that vigorous ideals of any sort, 
 old or new, serve as lodestars for the guidance 
 of the men who are young to-day in Imperial Ger- 
 many. One might condone the pessimism shown 
 in the historical retrospect in spite of its indis- 
 creet expression. Der Katzensteg contained the 
 proof that such dissent from the generally accepted 
 patriotic tradition may go hand in hand with a 
 confidence in the existence of a truly efficacious 
 national idealism. But to judge from Der Sturm- 
 geselle Sokrates it almost looks as though, in a 
 fit of disgust, Sudermann had shifted his moral 
 perspective. To the defense raising its faint voice 
 here and there and offering the objection that 
 Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates must not be received 
 as an attack on cherished national ideals there
 
 SUDERMANN 107 
 
 is but one answer. The ethics of every drama 
 must stand trial on their plain appearances, 
 nothing else. 
 
 After this outspoken condemnation of Suder- 
 mann's latest play a warning will be in place that 
 we should not lend a serious ear to his obdurate 
 detractors. It would simplify the study of a great 
 writer if ethical and aesthetic development were 
 necessarily following a straight line up or down. 
 As a rule, however, great writers are so consti- 
 tuted or circumstanced that an occasional slipping 
 back from their path of ascent or a not too frequent 
 recrudescence into a past phase of endeavor need 
 not be taken as a symptom of decay. We must 
 let them take their own time and their own way 
 to reach the summit of their art. Thus as in con- 
 clusion we sum up the results of Sudermann's 
 work during this decade and a half of his rich 
 literary activity, we may in good faith eliminate 
 from the estimate the two or three books that 
 are distinctly inferior in value to the rest of the 
 imposing series. 
 
 The art of Hermann Sudermann, notwithstand- 
 ing the range of its capabilities, is fundamentally 
 simple in its character. Its purpose is direct, its 
 form clearly defined, incisive, at times lapidary.
 
 108 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 It is an art that reposes on a well-poised, full- 
 orbed, full-veined personality. His failures refute 
 the groundless charge that Sudermann truckles 
 to the dominant literary taste of the hour. He 
 fashions from a deep artist's conscience and out of 
 the fullness of a strong outspoken temperament. 
 Again and again he has been reviled as a mechan- 
 ical imitator of the French W^-dramatists. It is 
 perfectly certain and greatly to his credit that he 
 has learned much from older and contemporary 
 masters, both in respect to the general principles 
 and the minor managements of dramatic art. 
 Why should not an artist, in order to reach a 
 higher position, mount on the shoulders of emi- 
 nent predecessors? It is not true, however, that 
 Sudermann has schooled his craftsmanship exclu- 
 sively after the French pattern. The fact is, he 
 studied in the same places as most of his com- 
 petitors, but he has proved himself an apter pupil. 
 To Ibsen and Bjornson he owes probably more 
 than to any other living writers for the technic, 
 the subject-matter, and even the ethics of his 
 works. Undoubtedly he has, besides, acquired 
 constructive details from the older school of 
 French dramatists, maybe he has also been in- 
 fluenced by them in giving room to some of those
 
 SUDERMANN 1 09 
 
 things which for the lack of a better word we 
 must term with his detractors " theatricalities." 
 Spielhagen may be right in claiming for Count 
 Trast a lineal descent from the Count of Monte 
 Cristo. Yet with rare exceptions these "theatri- 
 calities" are not used as a claptrap for a gullible 
 public, for it should be remembered that Suder- 
 mann writes for a nation to whom the drama is 
 something far higher than a mere " show." They 
 are in all likelihood the spontaneous outflow of a 
 dramatic disposition. On the whole Sudermann 
 indulges with discretion his natural propensity for 
 the spectacular. As an instance, take the recep- 
 tion prepared for the prim a donna Maddalena dall' 
 Orto (Magda) in a city which may constructively 
 be called Konigsberg, the capital of East Prus- 
 sia. The streets and houses are decked with gar- 
 lands, rugs, and flags ; crowds surge in front of 
 her house, and so forth. These things do not 
 pass on the scene and therefore cannot enhance 
 the stage effect of the play, but they betray the 
 author's penchant for picturesque exaggeration to 
 which he yields now and then when he thinks 
 himself unobserved. Examples of the same kind 
 might easily be multiplied. Theatrical rather than 
 dramatic are likewise the ablegates, as we have
 
 HO MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 called them, or mouthpieces of the author's pri- 
 vate opinion. In the novels as well as in the plays 
 there is a superfluity of speech-making and other 
 declamation. There is also in both kinds of works 
 a regular return of the " grand scene." But these 
 things which fly in the face of naturalism do 
 not constitute, as the enemies would have it, a 
 cardinal dramaturgic vice of Sudermann. They 
 merely prove that he aspires to no high place 
 among the naturalists. 
 
 A play or a novel may be lifelike without being, 
 true to life. Sudermann is less concerned with 
 external accuracy than with internal truth. The 
 things which he depicts on the stage and in the 
 pages of his books are not soulless copies from life, 
 nor yet are they, on the other hand, mere inven- 
 tions of the imagination. They are fragments of his 
 own inner experience, composed and interpreted 
 for others. Herein consists the convincing power 
 of his art. He has had the courage from the begin- 
 ning to brave the naturalistic despotism, and to 
 hold out for the conviction that, as Amiel has it 
 in his Journal intime, " the ideal, after all, is truer 
 than the real ; for the ideal is the eternal element 
 in perishable things: it is their type, their sum, 
 their raison cTetre, their formula in the book of
 
 SUDERMANN 1 1 1 
 
 the Creator, and therefore at once the most exact 
 and the most condensed expression of them." 
 For this reason it is that such figures as the plod- 
 ding Paul Mayhofer, the robust Leo von Sellen- 
 thin, the feline Adah Barczinowsky, the blond 
 serpent Felicitas von Kletzing, or the roughshod, 
 blustering, golden-hearted Squire Vogelreuter, 
 and many another figure of Sudermann's are 
 more than ephemeral creations. They are last- 
 ing contributions to the history of contempo- 
 rary morals and manners, and therefore may be 
 fairly ranked with such imperishable products 
 of the writer's art as Captain Dobbin, Rawdon 
 Crawley, the Marquis of Steyne, or even the in- 
 comparable Becky Sharp herself. Though com- 
 parisons in the domain of literature are especially 
 odious, yet one feels strongly tempted to spin out 
 somewhat further the comparison between Suder- 
 mann and England's greatest novelist, Thackeray. 
 The stinging lash swung by both is in appointed 
 hands; it is wielded by righteous indignation in 
 the name of a higher morality. And that is good 
 additional reason why we pardon Sudermann's 
 occasional undramatic preachments. He is not 
 an artist for art's sake alone ; he is also a vigorous 
 reformer. Yet again like Thackeray, he is not
 
 112 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 perpetually plying the scourge of scathing sar- 
 casm. He is also richly endowed with real benig- 
 nant humor, a gift of the gods which no great 
 writer can spare, and one which can make even 
 an out-and-out realist almost endurable. 
 
 The art of Sudermann is simple also in that it 
 applies itself almost invariably to a single group 
 of problems. The keynote to the great majority 
 of his works is the world-old conflict which is 
 daily bred anew in the life of a progressive people: 
 the tragic struggle between the old and the new; 
 between the pious clinging of the soul to long- 
 recognized creeds and the imperious claims of a 
 nascent era. 
 
 In his attitude towards these grave questions 
 Sudermann is consistently conservative so far as 
 the general status of society is concerned ; he is 
 liberal, radical, nay anarchistic, in his pleas for 
 special cases. Yet he is not stubbornly marking 
 time on the standpoint of any one doctrine. We 
 find, on the contrary, in his dramatic career the 
 evidences of a growing, maturing, and refining 
 philosophy. Roughly speaking, three phases may 
 be distinguished. At first, the class conftict fter se 
 is in the foreground, the fates of the individuals 
 are of secondary interest. The type of these
 
 SUDERMANN 113 
 
 dramas is Die Ehre. In that play the final des- 
 tinies of Robert and Lenore, Alma and Kurt, 
 are disposed of with a nonchalant wave of the 
 hand. The most interesting part of Die Ehre 
 is the perambulating social commentary of the 
 author, here represented by the Count von Trast- 
 Saarberg. 
 
 It is not long, however, before the major sym- 
 pathies of Sudermann are transferred from the 
 sociologic class phenomena in the abstract to the 
 concrete, living individual. The first play of this 
 second phase is " Magda." The connection with 
 the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche is obvious. 
 The highest duty of the exceptional type is to cul- 
 tivate its true genius, regardless of the statutes 
 and by-laws of society. The exceptional man 
 or woman must therefore follow the pathfinding 
 instinct. Such is the prime consideration. The 
 most sacred bonds must be severed as soon as 
 they become a hindrance to the free unfolding 
 of individuality. At the same time, genius may 
 not, after defying the conventions and thus secur- 
 ing its own higher form of happiness, expect to 
 participate with equal shares in the happy lot of 
 the throng. Thus every genius is placed in the 
 ancient Sapphic dilemma.
 
 114 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 There is a third class of plays by Sudermann 
 representing a yet higher stage of ethical concep- 
 tion. A person may be at the same time sover- 
 eignly independent and sovereignly unselfish. 
 Teja is an apotheosis of civic martyrdom, Johannes 
 a glorification of the gospel of love. Marikke, too, 
 and Beate in their way show their strength not so 
 much in self-assertion as in self-abnegation. 
 
 And it may be that Sudermann as an ethicist 
 has not yet spoken his final and decisive word. 
 At any rate, so far as his social plays are con- 
 cerned, his work up to the present time shows 
 him only twice as the reckless satirist, in Sodoms 
 Ende, where he puts profligacy into the pillory, 
 and in Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates, meant as a 
 warning either against false idealism or against 
 want of idealism. At all other times Sudermann 
 maintains the helpful attitude of a sober, deter- 
 mined reformer. He handles his chosen problems 
 not, as so many modern writers do, for the sake 
 of pleasing the caprice of a frivolous public, nor 
 to gratify any morbid curiosity or idiosyncrasy of 
 his own, but because they have come to distinct 
 public consciousness, and because he personally 
 is deeply stirred by them. As a novelist he has 
 reached true greatness. In the drama he falls
 
 SUDERMANN 1 1 5 
 
 short of it because his strong pedagogic bent 
 warps his plots from their natural course, not 
 letting fate arise wholly out of the characters, and 
 because, moreover, in his plays the horizon of the 
 " idea " and the circle of action are not always 
 coextensive. 
 
 Nevertheless, if we have outgrown that pedantic 
 narrowness which approves or disapproves of a 
 writer in proportion as he happens to agree or 
 disagree with our own views of things, and if in 
 judging him we turn from the sundry crudities 
 and blemishes of which hardly any work of art 
 can be wholly free, and fix our attention on 
 his honest aims and high merits, we shall gladly 
 acknowledge Hermann Sudermann as one of the 
 foremost exponents of the modern novel and 
 drama.
 
 MODERN 
 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 
 
 117
 
 GERHART HAUPTMANN 
 
 A census taken at any time during the past 
 decade or so to determine whom the present 
 generation regards as the greatest living drama- 
 tist of Germany would result beyond a perad ven- 
 ture in the overwhelming triumph of Gerhart 
 Hauptmann. 
 
 How much this well-nigh unanimous judgment 
 may portend for Hauptmann's ultimate position 
 in German and European literature, how much 
 or how little warrant there is for already assign- 
 ing to him a well-defined historic personality, will 
 be a matter for speculation until the literary or 
 cultural movement to which his works and his 
 fame owe their origin shall have receded from 
 the field of blurred contemporaneous vision and 
 appear to the eye in the distinctness of historic 
 perspective. 
 
 On the other hand, there can be no doubt that 
 the general appreciation of Hauptmann signifies 
 for our own time the victorious penetration of 
 
 certain aesthetic principles into the art conception 
 
 119
 
 120 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 of a vast majority of the Germans. These prin- 
 ciples, which may be summed up in the well- 
 known term " naturalism," came into vogue, so 
 far as Germany is concerned, about fifteen years 
 ago, at first among a small group of young writers. 
 Before they had spread so widely as finally to win 
 for the new art gospel wide circles of society high 
 and low, they had undergone a number of modifi- 
 cations, the leading writers of the school passing 
 through an almost radical change in their artistic 
 conviction. It is evident to us at this distance 
 that the extreme naturalism of Hauptmann's first 
 play in 1889 represents merely a played-out epi- 
 sode in the consistent movement of the modern 
 drama towards greater truthfulness. The abiding 
 service of naturalism to the higher realism into 
 which it is now merged consists in the accom- 
 plished reunion of dramatic art with actual life 
 after a long and disastrous period of separation. 
 In its results this reunion means no less than 
 that the theater to-day occupies in the national 
 consciousness of the Germans a place such as 
 throughout the history of mankind it has been 
 known to command only once before, at the time 
 when Greek tragedy was in its flower. To con- 
 vert a place for the entertainment of the well-to-do
 
 HAUPTMANN 1 2 1 
 
 lazy into a serious institution for the deepening 
 of the public art intelligence it was needful to 
 work a series of reforms. Already the method 
 had been laid out by Emile Zola in his Le Roman 
 experimental, by which the epic form of letters 
 was to be brought into an organic touch with 
 life. By the same or a closely similar prescrip- 
 tion the drama was now to be remade. The 
 naturalists felt that the drama should be a repro- 
 duction of the actual, unaltered by any embellish- 
 ment/or idealistic additions of any kind. Hence 
 it is necessary to learn to observe the actual in a 
 scientific way ; and as the phenomena under scru- 
 tiny are manifestations of organic life, the natural- 
 istic dramatist should strive to fathom them by 
 methods akin to those employed in the biologic 
 pursuits. However, the most painstaking registra- 
 tion of data does not produce a drama, because 
 the social processes are too composite and slow- 
 working for the limited possibilities of the stage, 
 and too subtle for the offhand comprehension of 
 the public. So, by analogy of natural science, the 
 dramatists segregate relatively small groups of fac- 
 tors and study experimentally their mutual reac- 
 tions. This at least is their theory, and here is not 
 the place to combat the fallacy which it harbors.
 
 122 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Two corollaries of this alleged scientific method 
 have to be mentioned : The " passion of veracity " 
 implies the preponderance of the commonplace in 
 the looks and acts of the characters and notably in 
 their speech, and thus makes among other things 
 the use of dialect and jargon indispensable. The 
 environment of each individual must be accurately 
 rendered ; hence a mass of epic detail is conveyed 
 through the medium of stage directions, which thus 
 become an intrinsic part of the play. It was on 
 the perfection of these and other technical matters 
 that naturalism at first took its stand ; the higher 
 object of the drama was wholly submerged under 
 its minutiae. 
 
 This higher object for the naturalist was to 
 show through a multiplicity of examples that 
 man's destiny is unalterably shaped by his in- 
 herited character in conjunction with his environ- 
 ment; human fate proceeds from a parallelogram 
 of forces extrinsic rather than volitional. So 
 much, in passing, for the naturalistic creed. How- 
 ever, even the author of Le Roman experimental, 
 the gospel of the naturalists, had declared that art 
 is a segment of the world seen through a tempera- 
 ment. In truth, the temperamental or subjective 
 coloring can never be absent from a work of art.
 
 HAUPTMANN 123 
 
 So far as it goes, it will set apart the work of 
 one writer from the work of all others. For this 
 reason we find that with his peculiarly lyric tem- 
 perament it is no easy task for Hauptmann, even 
 in the beginning of his career as a dramatist, to 
 conform strictly to the tenets of the new art code, 
 and that occasionally he breaks away altogether 
 from allegiance to the school. 
 
 In the preceding chapter Sudermann was de- 
 scribed as a writer of the masculine type. Haupt- 
 mann is the opposite. Sudermann's pen is guided 
 by a theory of life. Hauptmann apparently has 
 not yet evolved one for himself. Whenever he 
 departs from the visible model and follows either 
 an imaginative or a speculative bent, it at once 
 becomes apparent that his poetry is not moored 
 to a definite, consistent philosophy. Hauptmann 
 as a thinker, say in Einsame Menschen or Die 
 versunkene Glocke, is handicapped by the same 
 intense impressibility that enables him in Die 
 Weber or Der Biberpelz to show among all his 
 contemporaries the greatest skill in the art of 
 accurate and minute milieu painting. The spe- 
 cific nature of his prodigious lyric gifts, notably 
 the lilting melody of his verse, which so often 
 asserts itself triumphantly over the doctrinal
 
 124 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 veto, springs from a decadent predisposition. The 
 much-abused word decadent is to be taken not at 
 all in a sinister meaning, but to denote a state of 
 overrefinement manifesting itself in a subtle yet 
 sterile receptivity, brooding pensiveness, and 
 perhaps the chief criterion in a certain debility 
 of the volitional energy, which leaves this poet in a 
 condition of tormenting doubt on major questions 
 of life, and which even in his pursuit of an art ideal 
 makes him seem vacillating and visionary. Haupt- 
 mann, too, is apparently as incapable of the higher 
 self-discipline as are his heroes. With his pecul- 
 iar mental and temperamental equipment he might 
 well have become the foremost lyrist of his gener- 
 ation. When he leaves free rein to his poetic 
 fancy (as here and there already in Hannele and 
 throughout Die versunkene Glocke] he gives being 
 to poems of exquisite beauty, veritable asphodel 
 blossoms, fragrant with a delicate and melancholy 
 sweetness. 
 
 More than that, there is a fine lyric quality 
 in all of Hauptmann's plays, a Stimmungszauber 
 unmatched by any other modern dramatist ; even 
 the most crassly naturalistic among them, Vor 
 Sonnenaufgang, contains one such scene of great 
 beauty. In this power of drawing the spectator
 
 HAUPTMANN 125 
 
 at will into the mood of the play lies Haupt- 
 mann's real strength. It is not, however, for his 
 lyric genius but as a dramatist pure and simple 
 that Hauptmann is worshiped by his contem- 
 poraries. And with the exception of an epic 
 (later withdrawn from the book market), a few 
 desultory novel fragments, a number of wholly 
 unknown poems, and a couple of short stories, his 
 published work consists of a long and altogether 
 remarkable series of plays. Like most continental 
 writers of to-day Hauptmann craves the quick 
 and tumultuous response of the living generation. 
 This may be secured only in the theater. So 
 Hauptmann writes plays, and through a natural 
 fallacy of public opinion he has been proclaimed 
 Germany's greatest living dramatist. Yet it may 
 be severely questioned whether he should be 
 considered for that place of honor. A dramatic 
 writer may be a great poetic genius and an in- 
 different maker of plays. Had Goethe given 
 us nothing else but Faust we should neverthe- 
 less accord him readily the first position among 
 modern poets; but should we in that case be 
 justified in calling Goethe the greatest modern 
 dramatist just because Faust is cast in the 
 dramatic form?
 
 126 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Judged by a just dramaturgic standard, Haupt- 
 mann is deficient in three essentials. In the first 
 place, he is weak as regards his dynamics. The 
 characters are stationary, incapable of any real 
 development. In a certain way they are very true 
 to life, thanks to their author's prodigious power of 
 observation and his absorbing attention to detail. 
 They are gotten up regardless of pains. Not the 
 wart on the nose, not the speck of dust on the 
 coat, is overlooked. Of the very definite im- 
 pression their prototypes have made on his eye, 
 Hauptmann renders such accurate account that 
 when his men and women make their first appear- 
 ance their verisimilitude elicits our highest admi- 
 ration. After a while, however, the interest in 
 them flags, owing to their persevering sameness. 
 Neither literally nor figuratively do they ever 
 change their clothes. They evolve no new ideas 
 from within, they admit none from the outside, 
 and they never relent in their stubborn adherence 
 to what ideas they happen to possess. The orig- 
 inal stock, moreover, with which the author has 
 set them up is so limited as to constitute another 
 weakness of Hauptmann's plays. For truth to tell, 
 the characters are wanting in ideas chiefly because 
 the author has not much of this commodity to
 
 HAUFJTMANN 127 
 
 spare. Now fixed ideas are a dangerous equip- 
 ment in proportion as they are few in number, 
 and one is tempted to think that the characters 
 in Hauptmann's plays meet their defeat through 
 their own unyielding devotion to the single fixed 
 idea that forms the dramatic viaticum of each. 
 To come to the third defect : Upon the glorious 
 authority of the ancients and of Shakespeare, we 
 feel justified in demanding of a dramatist that in 
 manipulating a theme of his own deliberate choice 
 he shall turn his subject-matter to full account 
 and make the most of the dramatic data it pre- 
 sents. Of this reasonable demand Hauptmann 
 falls short. He does not convert all his metal into 
 coin. His art is imposing but fragmentary. His 
 pieces are counterfeits of life, but for the greater 
 part they are not dramas ; each constitutes a series 
 of living pictures succeeding each other without 
 an inevitable causal connection, coming somehow 
 to a stop but often lacking finality. 
 
 Naturalism is obviously self-contradictory in 
 that it prohibits poetic eclecticism in the present- 
 ment, and at the same time relies upon the selec- 
 tive power of the playwright to pick from a 
 human history a few brief scenes that shall of 
 themselves coalesce into a full drama.
 
 128 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 As a matter of fact, the plots of Hauptmann 
 are structurally weak and do not even present a 
 firm and definite outline. This may be a virtue 
 in the eyes of some naturalists, yet the suspicion 
 is strong that it is a virtue made of necessity. 
 
 Hauptmann is not primarily cut out for a 
 dramatist. But there is a species of drama which 
 is not at all conterminous with life, and in which 
 a first-rate poet may excel even without any supe- 
 rior dramatic power. Over the domain of the 
 fairy-tale play Hauptmann might wield an abso- 
 lute sovereignty, were it not for that deep-seated 
 lack of a consistent theory of life which debars 
 him from interpreting the nature and destiny of 
 man through symbolism of the grander stamp. 
 
 Hauptmann has up to this time given us fifteen 
 specimens of his dramatic art. Obviously they 
 belong to two essentially different, nay contradic- 
 tory and hostile, spheres. Between these, how- 
 ever, they are not cleanly divided ; for in several 
 of the plays the attempt is made at least to bridge 
 the chasm that separates the worlds of fact and 
 figment. The first six plays, closing with Kollege 
 Crampton, are patterned throughout after the 
 extreme naturalistic precept. In Hannele the 
 poet swerves aside from this path of unalloyed
 
 HAUPTMANN 129 
 
 naturalism or " verism," to return to it again tran- 
 siently in Der Biberpelz (" The Beaver Coat "). In 
 Die versunkene Glocke (" The Sunken Bell ") he 
 once more turns into another road and finds the 
 way, so it would seem, to the true sanctum of his 
 genius. But the half dozen plays that have fol- 
 lowed " The Sunken Bell " are so evenly divided 
 between the realistic and the idealistic spheres 
 that it would be obviously unfair to regard Haupt- 
 mann either any longer as an obdurate disciple of 
 naturalism or as an apostate from its principles. 
 As to the form to be taken by his future works 
 we are not in entire darkness. Yet it is not easy 
 to derive his developmental curve from the analy- 
 sis of his works in their chronological order, for it 
 is Hauptmann's habit to carry on simultaneously 
 several dramatic works, and the technic of each 
 is to a great extent predetermined by the aesthetic 
 convictions that swayed the author during the 
 nascent stage of the composition, which may lie 
 farther back than the actual beginnings of works 
 published earlier. However, when all is said, an 
 important distinction will be drawn between the 
 naturalism of the earliest plays, which poses as 
 its own excuse, and that of Fuhrmann Henschel, 
 Michael Kramer, and Rose Bernd, which has
 
 130 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 become subservient to an ulterior psychological 
 theme supplying to the play its real content. It 
 is wisest to abstain from prophecy. This much, 
 however, it seems safe to predict : Hauptmann 
 will continue to exercise his double talent. He 
 will take his material, on the one hand, from his 
 own experience and acquaintance. Here the dra- 
 matis personae will be imitations of life, without 
 the playwright's deeming it necessary to return 
 to the sickening coarseness of his first effort. On 
 the other hand, he will sojourn from time to time 
 in his beloved fairyland where he feels so much 
 at home. At any rate, it is certain that he will 
 continue to grow in independence and be bound 
 down less and less by the narrow aesthetic code 
 of " Youngest Germany." 
 
 Before passing under review the plays of 
 Gerhart Hauptmann in the order of their publi- 
 cation, it seems appropriate to sketch briefly his 
 early personal history previous to his recognition 
 as the leading exponent of realistic drama in Ger- 
 many! GerhaTFTTa/Uplmann was born in 1862 in 
 
 Obersalzbrunn, a small Silesian watering place, 
 where his father kept at one time the three prin- 
 cipal hotels. The hotel keeper Siebenhaar in 
 Fuhrmann Henschel is said to be modeled after
 
 HAUPTMANN 131 
 
 Hauptmann's father. The poet's grandfather on 
 the paternal side, who was in his early years a 
 poor linen weaver, also became a well-to-do inn- 
 keeper. 1 On the maternal side as well Hauptmann 
 is a son of the people. In 1874 he was sent to 
 the capital city of Breslau, where he attended the 
 Realschule. To the disappointment of his father, 
 whose business had taken an unprosperous turn, 
 he proved an unsatisfactory student, so that three 
 years later it seemed wise to take him from school 
 and try to make him turn his attention to agricul- 
 ture. Soon he returned to Breslau, this time to 
 study art, for which he had displayed a prom- 
 ising talent. His chronic rebellion against the 
 discipline of the Royal Art School brought his 
 connection with that institution to an early close. 
 Although not qualified, technically, to enter a 
 university, he was by special act admitted as a 
 student of history at Jena. He was then, at twenty 
 years of age, undecided between following the fine 
 arts or literature as his vocation, and remained 
 in this state of indecision for a number of years. 
 After a few semesters at the university we find 
 him at work, now in his sculptor's studio at Rome, 
 
 1 In this connection it deserves to be noticed, perhaps, that the poet 
 is a " total abstainer " and a professed enemy of strong drink.
 
 132 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 now in Germany, drawing and modeling from life. 
 Then again he discovered a still more congenial 
 calling and entered upon a course of conscientious 
 preparation to become an actor. This purpose he 
 had to give up, partly because of an inability to 
 overcome the lisp in his speech. In the mean- 
 time he had married, and by his wife's considerable 
 fortune was freed from the anxieties of bread- 
 winning and the necessity for compromise which 
 poverty is so apt to impose on the artist. From 
 1885 began his relations with the rising literary 
 generation, he had removed to a place in the 
 vicinity of Berlin, and about that time also 
 began his career as a writer. Of his first efforts 
 but little has been preserved. As far as can be 
 judged from fragments and snatches, they were 
 not fundamentally at variance with the established 
 literary routine against which his later works were 
 to furnish such a vigorous protest. Therein lies 
 probably one reason why Hauptmann has repudi- 
 ated these utterances of his early apprenticeship. 
 But most likely the principal reason is the low 
 opinion the author now holds of the artistic worth 
 of those firstlings of his genius. In a lengthy 
 epic poem entitled Promethidenlos (" The Fate of 
 the Children of Prometheus ") he recorded the
 
 HAUPTMANN 133 
 
 variegated impressions and experiences of a voy- 
 age from Hamburg along the western coast of 
 Europe and through the Mediterranean. He had 
 journeyed in the tracks of " Childe Harold," and 
 beyond a doubt his own poem is strongly colored 
 by Byron. The epic, published in 1885, was soon 
 withdrawn from circulation. The few copies that 
 have not been remade into pulp are now high- 
 priced curios of the book world. A collection of 
 lyrics, Das bunte Buck ("The Motley Book"), 
 had got as far as the page proof when the obscure 
 publisher went into bankruptcy. The few samples 
 cited by Hauptmann's biographer, Paul Schlen- 
 ther, are not especially calculated to deepen our 
 regret at the suppression of these verses. Not 
 all, however, are as hopelessly commonplace as 
 the one which commences with the best-known 
 line of Heinrich Heine : 
 
 Ich weifinicht, was soil es bedeuten, 
 DaC meine Trane rinnt 
 Zuweilen, wenn feme das Lauten 
 Der Glocke, der Glocke beginnt. 
 
 In 1889 Hauptmann formed the acquaintance 
 of Arno Holz. Holz impressed him very much 
 with his clear, incisive analysis of the literary- 
 conditions, and gave him the final impetus
 
 134 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 towards "realism," Hauptmann for some time hav- 
 ing strongly tended in that direction. Holz and 
 his equally talented friend, Johannes Schlaf, were 
 the joint authors of a number of photographically 
 lifelike sketches named Papa Hamlet, after an 
 old play actor who is the subject of the leading 
 story in the collection. This book seemed then 
 to Hauptmann the very acme of consistent nat- 
 uralism. The lesson it taught him he valued so 
 highly that he dedicated his own first realistic 
 play, which appeared soon after, to " Bjarne P. 
 Holmsen," which was the partnership pen name 
 of Holz and Schlaf. This play of Hauptmann's 
 is called Vor Sonnenaufgang (" Before Sunrise "). 
 It appeared in book form in the summer of 1889 
 and was first performed under the auspices of 
 the Freie Biihne (" The Free Theater," a private 
 organization not harassed by censorship) on Octo- 
 ber 20 of the same year. From this play, which 
 at once divided the play-going public into two 
 camps, dates Hauptmann's fame. Its plot and 
 manner of presentation struck the audience dumb 
 with admiration or aroused it to an indignant 
 protest, according to the literary party allegiance 
 confessed by each person present at the perform- 
 ance. Fifteen years have passed since that time ;
 
 HAUFfMANN 135 
 
 in Germany the extreme naturalism for which Vor 
 Sonnenaufgang supplied the paradigm has run 
 its course, but as the United States participates 
 so little in the literary movements that sway the 
 European intellect, the contents of Vor Sonnen- 
 aufgang may still be a novelty to most American 
 readers. I must state at the outset that in sketch- 
 ing out the contents of Hauptmann's first play 
 I shall be obliged to pass over more than one 
 important detail out of deference to the conven- 
 tional laws of decorum. 
 
 Through the discovery of a rich coal seam in 
 his land Farmer Krause becomes unexpectedly 
 a very rich man. He forthwith conceives some 
 mild social ambitions for his family, to gratify 
 which he marries his elder daughter to a civil 
 engineer and sends the younger to a Moravian 
 boarding school. Not being ambitious on his 
 own account, he proceeds to indulge his one con- 
 genital passion, a ceaseless craving for alco- 
 hol. His normal condition is that which with 
 characteristic injustice toward the dumb animals 
 we call a state of beastly drunkenness. Let the 
 quotation-worn slander for once be repudiated. 
 Even Mr. Thompson-Seton, who surely knows 
 stranger things about the wild animals than
 
 136 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 philosophy and natural history e'er dreamt of, 
 would agree that no animal lower than man 
 revels in such degradation as Farmer Krause. 
 The precious home circle over which this hope- 
 less sot presides includes his infamous rake of 
 a son-in-law, Hofmann. A choice quartet is com- 
 pleted by Krause's hopelessly depraved wife and 
 her cicisbeo, a lecherous hostler. Into this de- 
 lightful company the younger daughter, Helene, 
 a girl of education and fine feelings, is thrown 
 on her return from school. She could hardly be 
 expected to feel at home in it. The clammy, 
 reeking filth of her surroundings, pressing for- 
 ward and onward round her, must needs darken 
 her pure girlhood. Her heart loudly counsels 
 her to fly from the importunities of her amorous 
 brother-in-law as well as from other evils but 
 whither? She loves Alfred Loth, a socialist so 
 stanch that he has spent two years in jail for 
 the sake of his convictions. Is this for Helene 
 the call of fate ? Almost it would seem so, as 
 Loth returns her love. But it avails naught, 
 for Loth under his hygienic flannel shirt is the 
 possessor of a coarse-grained socialist conscience 
 and peremptory principles. Like most men of 
 his political faith, he has read an alarming deal.
 
 HAUPTMANN 137 
 
 Accordingly he has, among other things, very 
 decided views on marriage ; to put it shortly, to 
 him no daughters of tainted parents need apply. 
 Without losing much time over the customary 
 conflict bred of such a predicament, Loth gives 
 up Helene. The socialist dogma is safe ! And in 
 order, probably, to save herself from an unspeak- 
 able assault by her own ribald father, Helene stabs 
 herself to death Before Sunrise. 
 
 There are not many books in the literature of 
 the world which spread about them an atmos- 
 phere so reeking with vice and horror as this 
 socialistic drama. Tolstoi's The Power of Dark- 
 ness and Zola's LSAssommoir and La Terre are 
 its nearest of kin. But even these, in spite of 
 their dread aspect, do not present such a spec- 
 tacle of condensed hideousness. A confirmed 
 drunkard committing suicide at the age of 
 three! a father who lusts after his own daughter! 
 (When we encounter such things, do we not feel 
 like apologizing to Dr. Alfred Loth for our 
 sentimental disapproval of his course towards 
 Helene ?) the distressing cries of a woman in 
 labor issuing from an adjacent room ! for the 
 full-fledged " naturalist " physiological details like 
 these have no horrors : it is otherwise with the
 
 138 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 spectator. When after coming home from the 
 revolting entertainment he has thoroughly dis- 
 infected himself by a hot tubbing, a man will 
 naturally ask, Does such a degenerate assort- 
 ment of the species man have any place on 
 the foreground of the stage? Granted that the 
 play is " true " ; for it will not do to affirm, as has 
 been done by the unsophisticated, that such 
 scum of society does not really exist, because 
 forsooth Rosegger and Anzengruber, Auerbach 
 and Fritz Reuter have portrayed peasant life in 
 such different colors; or that such pest-holes as 
 Farmer Krause's home are never found in rural 
 parts, and that Vor Sonnenaufgang is the prod- 
 uct of a pure culture of rustic vice raised by 
 Hauptmann in the coziness of his Berlin work- 
 room. Still we may in fairness inquire of the 
 naturalist, Why this surfeit of ugliness when life 
 is not ugly a potiori? Or are we to believe that 
 the Krauses and their tribe form not an excep- 
 tion but the rule ? In such a case what were 
 there left for us city dwellers to do but wage 
 a holy war against all country folk ? The lan- 
 guage of the drama is as disgusting as the inci- 
 dents; in no other play has Hauptmann sinned 
 so unpardonably against common decorum, for
 
 HAUPTMANN 139 
 
 he soon realized that the naturalistic method 
 can be applied to a higher order of social pro- 
 cesses. 
 
 The foregoing must not for a moment be 
 taken as an unduly biased judgment. Nothing 
 could be more alien to the spirit of this book 
 than factious or dogmatic opposition to " mod- 
 ernism." Hauptmann's Vor Sonnenaufgang, how- 
 ever, was felt to be an overdose which the 
 moderns themselves could not altogether stom- 
 ach. One of their chieftains, Conrad Alberti, 
 burlesqued this sordid tragedy of gin and lust. 
 His skit bears the alluring title Im Suff (" In 
 Booze"), and the charming motto Die Liebe 
 und der Suff, das reibt den Menschen uff (" Twixt 
 love and booze, one goes to the deuce "). Haupt- 
 mann's pedantically circumstantial stage direc- 
 tions are capitally taken off. " Dr. Krawutschke " 
 is thus presented to the reader : " He wears 
 striped trousers, a checked jacket, and soiled 
 linen. The left shoe is down at the heel, but not 
 noticeably so. He speaks very rapidly in abrupt 
 sentences, with a decided touch of the Saxon 
 dialect (he was born in Scheffel Street, Dres- 
 den)." At the close Alberti makes the ghost of 
 Lessing appear and say, " Is this a theater or a
 
 140 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 pigsty ? " This product, coming from one of the 
 apostles of the new art-creed, deserves attention 
 if only for the sake of the epigram with which it 
 dismisses the reader : " To befoul Art is not to 
 free it " (Die Kunst beschmutzen heifit nicht sie 
 befrei'it], 
 
 Such, then, was Hauptmann's first play. His 
 next, Das Friedensfest (" The Feast of Peace ") 
 (1890) the title is an abortive attempt at grim 
 irony deals not with the degeneration of a 
 whole family, as Vor Sonnenaufgang, nor with 
 any deep-reaching human depravity, but with 
 the supposedly inevitable fate of a certain group 
 of pathologically predisposed individuals who 
 are thrown together as a family. Held against 
 its predecessor, this play does not present any 
 essentially new features. Again it has to do with 
 a segment from a family history which, so far 
 as it goes, unrolls itself in a series of imper- 
 fectly dovetailed scenes, although there is, all 
 doctrinaire assertions to the contrary notwith- 
 standing, not absent a constructive groundwork. 
 Once more the havoc wrought by alcohol forms 
 the foregone refrain of the sad old story. Once 
 more we learn with dismay how loosely, accord- 
 ing to a modern view, the bonds of family life
 
 HAUPTMANN 141 
 
 are tied, and how wantonly they are ruptured 
 by straining egoism. Fritz Scholz, M.D., and 
 Minna, by twenty-two years his junior, are part- 
 ners in an uncongenial marriage. The doctor, a 
 hypochondriac by constitution, takes it much to 
 heart that his wife fails to understand him. We 
 shall have occasion to observe that many of 
 Hauptmann's heroes keep him company in this 
 form of misery. Indeed, this failure to be under- 
 stood, like the curse of alcohol, is one of the 
 fixed motives in his dramaturgy. In the present 
 instance the two are connected as cause and 
 effect in that Dr. Scholz seeks consolation in 
 winebibbing. Already we are sufficiently con- 
 versant with a third leitmotif, that of heredity, 
 to foresee that at least one of the children must 
 have a fondness for liquor. There are three of 
 them : a pinched old maid of a daughter and two 
 sons. Robert, aged twenty-eight, has the physi- 
 cal and moral earmarks of a degenerate ; along 
 with a predilection for strong drink he owes to 
 his progenitor a morbid excitability ; of his bodily 
 infirmities youthful dissipations are the direct 
 cause, but, naturally, the real blame for these 
 falls also on his ancestry. (At Jena Hauptmann 
 had become deeply interested in Darwinism, and
 
 142 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 in his plays he frequently draws the bold infer- 
 ences characteristic of the layman.) The second 
 son, Wilhelm, aged twenty-six, has by virtue of 
 a powerful constitution escaped the consequences 
 of youthful excesses; but to prove that he also 
 has come in for his share in the patrimony, he 
 shows, besides a vehement temper, promising 
 symptoms of persecution-mania. While still very 
 young both boys had run away from the unbear- 
 able tyranny of the father and learned to shift for 
 themselves. Later the family was reunited, when 
 a terrible catastrophe again drove them apart. 
 In his unjustifiable jealousy of a visiting musician 
 old Dr. Scholz wrongfully accused his wife of 
 infidelity ; for this he was punished by the hands 
 of his own younger son. He then left his home, 
 the sons following his example separately. This 
 chapter of history now six years old is unrolled 
 with great skill after the Ibsen fashion in the 
 course of the first act. The curtain rises on the 
 Christmas preparations of the Scholz household. 
 The festival of " Peace on Earth " brings a gen- 
 eral family reconciliation. The father, who in the 
 meantime has undergone a severe nervous crisis, 
 returns unexpectedly and joins the reunited circle. 
 Wilhelm, in a scene of frightful pathos, receives
 
 HAUPTMANN 143 
 
 his father's forgiveness. His promised wife, Ida 
 Buchner, dispels by her firm love and confidence 
 his intermittent scruples about drawing her into 
 his sullied existence. So things look wholly aus- 
 picious to the unscientific observer. Suddenly, 
 and for no visible cause, jarring discords destroy 
 the precarious harmony and the family feud 
 breaks out afresh. The barely reconciled brothers 
 clash again; the father banishes the diabolic 
 Robert from his house, then relapses into his 
 mania and disappears (end of act ii) from the 
 scene. At the conclusion of the third act he dies. 
 The kindly, resolute Frau Buchner has had am- 
 ple opportunity during her brief visit to repent 
 of her purpose to bring peace into the family so 
 haplessly torn by incessant strife ; and we won- 
 der greatly at her consent to the marriage be- 
 tween Wilhelm and Ida. The author apparently 
 feels obliged to account for her readiness, and he 
 does it strangely enough by showing that Frau 
 Buchner is, in the depths of her resigned heart, 
 herself in love with her daughter's betrothed 
 and more solicitous about his future happiness 
 than about her own daughter's. This fruitful 
 motive is not further exploited, nor is that other 
 world-old one of the rival brothers more than
 
 144 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 suggested in the evident infatuation of Robert 
 for his brother's fiancee. Towards the end Wil- 
 helm suffers a rather telling attack of persecu- 
 tion-mania, which sets him thinking and again 
 makes him waver in his resolution to marry Ida; 
 but being without Alfred Loth's oversensitive 
 conscience, he will marry all the same and take 
 his chances on Ida's future happiness. 
 
 The play thus terminates in one of those large 
 question marks with which the works and the 
 heads of the modern school are so abundantly 
 equipped. 
 
 The next play, Einsame Menschen (" Lonely 
 Souls") (1891), is better rounded out. Things 
 are this time carried to a final issue in that the 
 hero, Hans Vockerat, perishes after Hauptmann's 
 favorite method by suicide. Nevertheless, it is 
 a question whether the definite problem of mod- 
 ern life which is here tackled in good earnest is 
 fairly worked out. How, indeed, is such a thing 
 possible without the use of psychologic resources ? 
 And we know that these are eschewed by the 
 rigid naturalist ! 
 
 What, then, is the theme of Einsame Menschen? 
 The inner dissonance of a man torn betwixt 
 religion and science, between the duties of son
 
 HAUPrMANN 
 
 and husband and the calling of the inner voice, 
 a struggle forsooth from which an unstable nature 
 like that of Johannes Vockerat may well seek 
 escape in death. Yet Hauptmann, by adding still 
 another pang to his hero's sufferings, has weak- 
 ened the probability of the tragic end. For be it 
 remembered that, dramatically speaking, only that 
 ending seems probable which we accept as neces- 
 sary. And there is no compelling reason for 
 Johannes' drowning himself because the Russian 
 student Anna Mahr, for whom he has conceived a 
 crotchety sort of love, prepares to go out of his 
 life. The fact is, Johannes dies because from the 
 very beginning he is under irrevocable sentence of 
 death pronounced by the author, a decree which 
 furnishes the greatest weakness in Einsame Men- 
 schen. In all other technical respects the play 
 marks a considerable progress. In the first place, 
 the details of the new technic are now handled 
 with much greater freedom ; consequently they 
 do not have to monopolize the author's attention. 
 He is at liberty to bestow greater care on the 
 larger features ; and it must be said that Einsame 
 Menschen is one of the best-composed plays of the 
 modern stage. The events shape themselves with 
 a very fair show of natural, intelligent sequence.
 
 146 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Much critical capital has been made out of the 
 resemblance of Hauptmann's piece to Ibsen's 
 Rosmersholm. Undeniably Hauptmann has stud- 
 ied to good effect the style and method of the 
 great Norwegian, and there is analogy in the sit- 
 uations too. To me the German play appeals as 
 the truer of the two so far as the humanity of the 
 characters goes. Psychologically these characters 
 are certainly better founded than those in Haupt- 
 mann's own earlier plays, a circumstance which 
 may safely be attributed to the author's better 
 acquaintance with the social class to which they 
 belong. When dealing with such people he 
 descends, almost unintentionally, below the crust 
 of appearances to the springs of action. Unfortu- 
 nately the central situation is, as has been hinted, 
 too calculated, too preestablished, to be much 
 affected by the better mind-reading powers of 
 the author. 
 
 The simple action oiEinsame Menschen revolves 
 round one of those persons for whom Goethe dis- 
 covered the appellation Problematische Naturen 
 (problematic characters). Johannes Vockerat is 
 studying to be a theologian, when through Dar- 
 win and Haeckel the drift of the modern scien- 
 tific era is forcibly borne upon him. He forsakes
 
 HAUPTMANN 147 
 
 theology and becomes a philosopher of the psy- 
 cho-physiological school, though the old orthodox 
 Adam is not quite dead within him. For years 
 he has now been fretting over his prospective mag- 
 num opus. But it is safe to say he would never 
 have achieved the work, even if Hauptmann's five- 
 act tragedy had not effectually cut him off from 
 the possibility, for he is a man with a broken will. 
 We meet his brothers and cousins everywhere in 
 Hauptmann's dramatic world. The family type is 
 classically expressed in Master Heinrich of "The 
 Sunken Bell " celebrity. Johannes loves his wife 
 for a while and after a fashion ; but when by 
 chance he meets Anna Mahr he finds that she 
 is more congenial to him. She understands him, 
 and, mark well, he has never been understood 
 before. So he falls in love with her, after a fash- 
 ion, and now we behold him swinging to and fro 
 between two poles of amatory attraction, just as 
 he has all the time been the shuttlecock between 
 the battledores of two opposite philosophies. His 
 curse is indecision ; his only stability is in his self- 
 love, for Johannes Vockerat loves himself at all 
 times and after every fashion. He talks a great 
 deal about himself, a great deal about his work. 
 Somehow he expects all the world to pave and
 
 148 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 smooth the way for it, and as its prospective author 
 deems himself excused from all the practical obli- 
 gations that fall to the head of a well-ordered 
 family. When his poor, loving Kate meekly ques- 
 tions him regarding a vital business matter, he 
 coarsely insults her for breaking in upon his 
 valuable trend of thought. Explicitly he declares 
 that he will regulate his conduct according to 
 this formula: " My work comes first. That comes 
 first and second and third ; the ' practical ' does 
 not come until after that, if you please." A man 
 with such a disposition is foredoomed either to 
 a life of solitude or to a life of failure. There 
 is enough misfortune in Johannes Vockerat's 
 temperament without the supervention of a for- 
 bidden love. The troublous aspect of such Wer- 
 therian characters as Johannes was for a long 
 time of absorbing interest to Hauptmann. He 
 dedicated Einsame Menschen to those who "had 
 lived through" the tragedy. And yet such con- 
 flicts as are here portrayed were then (1891) 
 seemingly foreign to his personal experience. But 
 this need not matter, perhaps, in any literary form 
 save the lyric. Einsame Menschen bodies forth 
 the experiences of another man, " observed," it is 
 true, with a wonderful keenness, yet unfortunately
 
 HAUPTMANN 149 
 
 not in true poet fashion relived by the dra- 
 matist. And so one could not help wishing that 
 this highly gifted man might for once under- 
 take a task the execution of which would vitally 
 involve the cooperation of his own acquired 
 experiences, or at least of deep-rooted, settled 
 sympathies. 
 
 This opportunity offered itself in the natural- 
 istic tragedy Die Weber (" The Weavers"), pub- 
 lished in 1892, first performed in 1893, originally 
 composed in dialect (De Wader), afterwards trans- 
 lated by the author into " literary " German with 
 a still more than sufficient Silesian flavoring. 
 This performance of Hauptmann's is replete with 
 warmest personal feeling and wholly free from 
 mere sentimental zeal, for he himself as the de- 
 scendant of poor labor-driven linen weavers holds 
 their grievance that cries to heaven as part and 
 parcel of his heritage. From this personal par- 
 ticipation in the wrongs perpetrated against the 
 weavers the play derives a strong emotional swing, 
 rising at times to the full height of rhetorical 
 pathos, as in the impassioned tirade of Luise Hilse 
 against the manufacturers. It was simply impos- 
 sible for a subject that yielded so wide a space 
 for personal feeling to be treated without a betrayal
 
 150 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 of the author's social creed. " The Weavers " is 
 the tragedy of hunger driven at last to despera- 
 tion. In Hauptmann's view the responsibility for 
 the wretchedness of his proletarians rests evenly 
 with the manufacturers because they carry on a 
 ruthless scheme of spoliation, and with the state 
 because it stands by and allows the merciless ex- 
 ploitation of the laborer. The workmen who now 
 flock to the performances of Die Weber and wildly 
 applaud its sentiment are very apt to forget that 
 such a simple socialistic analysis of the case will 
 hardly apply to conditions of to-day. That in 
 some parts of the world there still exist such 
 slave drivers as Herr Dreissiger (at first, after 
 the original, he was called Zwanziger) is unfortu- 
 nately not to be denied ; but to regard such a 
 man as the pattern of the propertied class would 
 betray a perilous hastiness of judgment. At any 
 rate, it is certainly unfortunate for the play that it 
 owes its actual interest so largely to the fact that 
 in it the antagonism which in a sufficiently acute 
 form exists at all times between labor and capital 
 here usurps the place of a concrete dramatic hero. 
 In respect to dramatic movement this play is 
 inferior to its predecessors. Each act brings a 
 startlingly vivid scene of life, and yet the whole
 
 HAUPTMANN 1 5 1 
 
 is unsatisfying to the dramatic sense. In the first 
 act we are shown the cruelly realistic picture 
 of an industrious, good-natured, withal stolidly 
 patient people, brought low by grinding toil, and 
 unable to live on its pitiful wage. Unfortunately 
 Hauptmann has not exaggerated. The history of 
 the "famine districts" of Silesia is even more 
 grewsome than his dramatic tale. For nearly 
 three centuries the weavers were fighting against 
 starvation, and only once, in the summer of 1844,* 
 they rose in frenzy against their masters. The 
 rebellion was promptly suppressed before much 
 damage had been done to anybody except the 
 weavers. 
 
 About the middle of the past century the life 
 that these poor folk of the Silesian " Eulengebirge" 
 region led in fairly good times was unworthy of 
 human beings. Their situation in hard times 
 beggars description. Mother Baumert, whom a 
 longish stage direction describes as accurately 
 
 1 Gerhart Hauptmann became familiar with the details of that up- 
 rising through a special history written by Alfred Zimmermann, a 
 political economist, who published in 1885 an exhaustive study of the 
 conditions of the Silesian linen industry. But he had been touched 
 much earlier by the sadness of their lot through stories current in his 
 immediate family, and he declares in dedicating Die Weber to his father 
 that the latter's story of his own father, who had passed his earlier life 
 at the loom, was the real germ of his tragedy.
 
 152 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 as though a warrant were out for her apprehen- 
 sion, gives a fair idea of their physical condition : 
 " A face wasted to the bone, with folds and wrin- 
 kles in the bloodless skin; sunken eyes, watery 
 and inflamed from the dust of the wool, smoke, 
 and overwork by candlelight; a long, scrawny 
 neck with a goiter; a hollow chest swathed in 
 rags and tatters." In the second and third 
 acts the spark of rebellion is carried among the 
 down-trodden weavers from without. A son of 
 the village, having served his military term in the 
 city, returns, bringing with him the spirit of ven- 
 geance, and fires the weavers with enthusiasm 
 for the " propaganda of action"; the bad gin from 
 the tavern infuses additional courage, and they 
 determine to settle accounts with their oppressors. 
 In the fourth act the agitator is arrested and 
 shackled, but on his way to prison he is rescued 
 by the rioters from the grasp of the law, and the 
 revolt breaks out in full force. Dreissiger's house 
 is attacked and ravaged. The life of the usually 
 so peaceful district is thrown into the wildest dis- 
 order. And so, at the end of the fourth act, the 
 patent purpose of the tragedy is accomplished. 
 There is no good reason why the author should 
 not give the word right here for the royal musketry
 
 HAUPTMANN 153 
 
 to rattle the death tattoo for the poor insurgents, 
 since dramaturgically considered there can be 
 no other way out of the chaos. There is, how- 
 ever, yet a fifth act, which practically constitutes 
 a separate play; for the affecting death of God- 
 fearing old Hilse, who to the end refuses to take 
 part in the riot, is not tragic in the sense of dra- 
 matic art, rather it seems a satire on the injustice 
 of fate that the poor fellow is killed by a stray 
 bullet at his loom just when he has so stoutly 
 declared : " Here my heavenly Father has placed 
 me. . . . Here we are going to sit and do what 's 
 our duty," etc. Any one whose critical sense is 
 not entirely blunted by the woeful distress which, 
 as a unique motive with variations, dominates 
 the action from beginning to end, feels, as the 
 curtain finally hides the undying misery from his 
 view, that this play more than any other work of 
 Hauptmann's pen shows that its author follows 
 the drama without a genuine dramatic vocation. 
 Such as it is, without a hero to whom as to the 
 natural center the interest might chiefly gravi- 
 tate, without a more than inferential solidarity of 
 its parts, with its final violent severance of the 
 threads and filaments of the plot, " The Weavers" 
 has aside from its vivacious realism chiefly a
 
 154 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 humanitarian value ; it is, drawn out into five 
 long acts, the blood-curdling outcry of an outraged 
 class of society, who, lacking the leadership of a 
 superior intelligence which might help them to 
 strike off their shackles for good, allow themselves 
 to follow shortsighted ringleaders and to vent their 
 just anger in acts of wanton, insensate destruc- 
 tion, forthwith to acknowledge with thanks the 
 drastic lesson given them by the ruling powers, 
 and under the accustomed yoke to drag on the 
 old calamitous existence. 
 
 Its power to draw forth deep human sympathy 
 is the prime reason why this tragedy, despite its 
 slenderness of incident and its technical short- 
 comings, has established Hauptmann in public 
 opinion as the foremost tragic writer of Germany. 
 And to be sure, for those who have to resort to 
 the theater for instruction regarding the naked 
 facts of common life, or for those who need to be 
 dosed with a literary quintuple extract of human 
 misery because their dyspeptic consciences fail to 
 react under the stimulus of natural aliment, 
 for such " The Weavers " might pass for the very 
 acme of creative power. And as for those who in 
 their own lives have gone through the misery 
 which " The Weavers " demonstrates ad oculos,
 
 HAUPTMANN 155 
 
 the impression made by the tragedy upon them 
 is so self-explanatory that we need not find fault 
 with the censor because, paternally solicitous for 
 the common weal, he failed to fling wide the 
 gates of the playhouses for " The Weavers." x He 
 may have remembered, in these days of labor 
 troubles, that in the good old time the estimable 
 and worshipful aldermen of Leipzig canceled the 
 permit for the presentation of Schiller's " The 
 Robbers " during the annual Fair held in that 
 ancient and honorable town on the ground that 
 there would be enough stealing done at this time 
 anyway. In forming an unbiased estimate of 
 Hauptmann's play, we should not be deceived 
 by its eloquent plea for the submerged portion 
 of humanity into ascribing the deep impression 
 infallibly produced by " The Weavers " to any 
 artistic superexcellence. Hauptmann, to modify a 
 charge once made by Nietzsche against Richard 
 Wagner, entices us into the theater with the 
 promise of a dramatic entertainment, and once 
 he has us securely pinned down into our seats, 
 proceeds so to crush us with the force of a severe 
 
 1 The performance is now licensed in Germany. (See p. 150.) Yet in 
 this country, if I mistake not, the anarchist John Most was enjoined 
 from playing the piece.
 
 156 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 lecture that we forget everything except the elo- 
 quently presented rights and wrongs of the case. 
 
 Structurally "The Weavers" is below the stand- 
 ard of the earlier dramas. As for the diction, 
 Hauptmann still keeps under strict restraint that 
 glorious power of expression by which in his 
 later works he won universal admiration. In his 
 endeavor to make the people talk just as they 
 would in real life, he resists unyieldingly each and 
 every suggestion of stylistic improvement offered 
 by his better artistic sense. Undeniably he is a 
 master of the mean language of the people. Yet 
 the confusing jargon and the copious billingsgate 
 fall strangely from such refined lips. Even now 
 occasionally, in minor ways, we see the irrepress- 
 ible lyrist gain the upper hand, so that we are 
 not wholly unprepared to find the poet giving 
 full rein to his lyric genius in later works. 
 
 The play, even in its "German" translation, 
 loses much through the broad Silesian twang; 
 the relentless accuracy of the naturalist partially 
 defeats its own end when we can only with diffi- 
 culty make out the speeches of his characters. 
 Die Weber has to do with a very much lower 
 stratum of society than either Das Friedensfest or 
 Einsame Menschen, both of which plays were
 
 HAUPTMANN 157 
 
 wholly free from grossness and smut. We are 
 therefore prepared for rather strong things to 
 happen in the speech and doings of these Pariahs 
 of German society ; and the author does not dis- 
 appoint the expectation. To his honor be it said 
 that Hauptmann is one of the most clean minded 
 of men, and that he has never, not even in " Before 
 Sunrise," been a cultivator of the revolting and 
 obscene from sinister motives. While he is un- 
 doubtedly very open to the prepotent currents 
 in the literary taste of his countrymen, owing to 
 his exquisitely susceptive nature, he is, so far as 
 his intentions go, swayed by no mercenary design 
 upon the flippancy and sensational proclivities of 
 the theater-goers. On the other hand, he does 
 not recoil before any ugliness so long as he be- 
 lieves it to be helpful in the dramatic revelation 
 of truth. It seems to me, however, that in " The 
 Weavers," as in " Before Sunrise," he oversteps 
 the limits of the permissible. In the second act 
 we are forced to witness the preparations for the 
 Baumert family's festive dinner. For two years 
 these poor people have had no taste of meat. 
 The roast that is now sizzling on their pan 
 represents the mortal remains of the pet dog. 
 Of this we are informed through our eyes, ears,
 
 158 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 and noses, nay we are not even spared full knowl- 
 edge of the disgusting consequences which the 
 unwonted reception of animal diet has for Father 
 Baumert's enfeebled stomach. I do not think 
 that reportorial conscientiousness need go to such 
 length. Reportorial conscientiousness is said ad- 
 visedly, for unfortunately Hauptmann cannot be 
 accused of exaggeration. 1 
 
 The two short stories, or " novelistic studies," 
 as they are called by the author, Bahnwarter 
 Thiel ("Flagman Thiel "), written in 1887, and 
 Der Apostel ("The Apostle"), written in 1890, 
 may be conveniently mentioned in this place, as 
 they were published together in book form very 
 shortly after " The Weavers " (1892). 
 
 " Flagman Thiel " is unquestionably influenced 
 by Zola, and inspired by Hauplrnann's sympathy 
 for the spiritual life of the lowly, which is so 
 pronounced in the dramas from " The Weavers " 
 on to his last production, the infanticide tragedy 
 Rose Bernd, It is the tragic story of a poor 
 railroad hand who marries a second time for the 
 sake of his idolized boy. The stepmother, a 
 coarse, violent, brutal wench, maltreats the little 
 fellow atrociously. Thiel, who returns only at 
 
 1 See pp. 151 f.
 
 HAUPTMANN 159 
 
 fixed times from his post in the woods, and who, 
 besides, is under the power of his new wife, is long 
 ignorant of the true state of things. When he 
 discovers it he loses all balance. His spiritual 
 disintegration from that moment on to his total 
 collapse over the accidental death of little Tobias 
 and the maniacal killing of the wife and baby is 
 the chief object of the " study." Not only is this 
 object so well attained as by itself to cause a 
 lively regret that the author has not essayed the 
 epic form more frequently; Hauptmann also re- 
 veals, as indeed was to be confidently expected in 
 view of his plays, a rare descriptive gift. The 
 wonderful description of the nocturnal loneli- 
 ness of a landscape gradually set aquiver and afire 
 by the approach of the train is a marvel of lov- 
 ing observation. It is not the conventional ono- 
 matopoeic rhapsody of the puffing and panting 
 engine, the clash and clatter of the wheels and 
 rails; nor the picture of the soulless monster 
 painted so often, perhaps best by Emile Zola in 
 Bete humaine, or of the vitalized machine which 
 from literary over-use has a touch of the stereo- 
 typic, even in Kipling's capital ".007." Haupt- 
 mann's nature-sense seizes upon the finest nuances 
 of light and sound. The music of the whirring
 
 160 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 telegraph wires, the rhythmic welcome sung by 
 the steel tracks and gradually changing into deaf- 
 ening turmoil is caught to perfection. Still more 
 entrancing is the truly realistic and none the 
 less highly poetic depiction of the light-effects. 
 It is a pity that so drastic a power of description 
 must seek its usual outlet in the minion and non- 
 pareil of stage directions. 
 
 Der Apostel gives still wider space to the genius 
 of Hauptmann. Written about the time when 
 the first three plays were completed, it sounds 
 almost like the signal of deliverance from natu- 
 ralism. Hauptmann tries in this study to fathom 
 a finely susceptible but mystically attuned soul 
 gliding by degrees from an exalted religious mood 
 into religious paranoia. Here again he is not 
 without a literary model. The sketch of the poet 
 Lenz by George Buchner serves him as such. 
 And a living model, too, was in his mind : the 
 religious eccentric, Johannes Gutzeit. The frag- 
 ment shows the " Apostle," who was formerly an 
 army officer, in the early morning hour, passing 
 white robed through the streets of Zurich out 
 into the country. In the presence of nature 
 he experiences strange hallucinations and mys- 
 terious raptures. The fragment breaking off
 
 HAUPTMANN l6l 
 
 rather abruptly leaves the Apostle in the ecstatic 
 belief that he is the Christ. This transition from 
 a mere overwrought mental state to one of pro- 
 nounced monomania is developed with consum- 
 mate skill. Yet on the whole Bahnwarter Thiel 
 deserves the prize over Der Apostel, since the 
 latter is in fact only a " study," while the former 
 presents itself as a finished "short story." 
 
 The next drama shows Hauptmann still firmly 
 clinging to naturalism and striking up again his 
 favorite tune, the old yet ever new song of King 
 Alcohol. The central figure in Kollege Cramp- 
 ton (" Colleague Crampton ") (1892) is a talented 
 painter, who has fallen into evil and idle ways, and 
 to whom the whisky bottle has to make amends 
 for all blighted hopes and stunted or shattered 
 ideals. In briefest terms his misfortunes may 
 be diagnosed as congenital instability aggra- 
 vated by domestic woes. At any rate, from the 
 beginning to the end of the play he is a tipsy 
 buffoon and a bankrupt financially, morally, and 
 artistically. The action of the comedy begins on 
 the morning when the reigning duke inspects 
 the art academy where Colleague Crampton (one 
 cannot help wondering why) is still tolerated as 
 a teacher. Crampton, to whom the duke has
 
 1 62 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 formerly been very kind, sets extravagant hopes 
 on this visit. The news that His Highness has 
 left the school without so much as inquiring for 
 him puts the good-natured idler utterly beside 
 himself. Now blow upon blow follows in rapid 
 succession. His wealthy wife leaves him, his 
 goods are attached, he is asked to resign his 
 professorship. He must leave his snug studio, 
 the scene of his protracted inactivity ; with full 
 sail he sets his course towards his inevitable 
 destination the gutter. It must be added that 
 Crampton divides his valuable affections between 
 the aforementioned whisky bottle and his own 
 lovely daughter, Gertrude. At the present junc- 
 ture the whisky bottle accompanies him to cheer 
 his exile, whereas the lovely daughter, who loy- 
 ally sides with him against her mother, remains 
 behind. She is befriended by Max Strahler (Strah- 
 ler was the maiden name of Hauptmann's mother), 
 a favorite pupil of Professor Crampton, who has 
 been expelled from the academy because of fool- 
 ish pranks (an experience which befell young 
 Gerhart Hauptmann himself while an art stu- 
 dent at Breslau), but who, out of gratitude to his 
 former teacher, finds for the daughter a home 
 among his relatives.
 
 HAUPTMANN 163 
 
 Up to this point we have before us the not 
 unskillful exposition of a piece which so far 
 secedes from the accepted code of dramaturgy 
 as to resist classification; judging by this part 
 of the play (acts i and ii) alone, one cannot say 
 for the life of him whether the plot makes for a 
 comedy or a tragedy. From here on things jog 
 along helter-skelter in the naturalistic groove, a 
 course of affairs which does not prevent the 
 remaining acts from bristling with improbabili- 
 ties. For instance, one whole act is taken up 
 with Max's fruitless search for the whereabouts 
 of the jolly old reprobate. We are expected to 
 believe that in a German town of medium size 
 a well-known inhabitant can disappear as quickly 
 and effectually as the proverbial needle in the 
 haystack. Adolf Strahler, Max's older brother, is 
 too sensible to believe as the audience must, and 
 discovers the hiding place of the missing artist 
 without any trouble. In the third act Cramp- 
 ton pops up in a wretched pothouse, hopelessly 
 befuddled, having during all that time assidu- 
 ously soaked his ever thirsty soul. Here at the 
 head of a delegation of merry-making philistines 
 a master house painter makes Crampton, in good 
 faith and with due modesty, the generous offer
 
 1 64 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 of permanent and fairly well paying work. Well, 
 why not ? Many a better man in Crampton's 
 situation has found himself face to face with a 
 similar proposition, and ofttimes the offer has not 
 been scorned. Yet the author of " Colleague 
 Crampton " would have us believe that the 
 painter's harmless though clumsy suggestion is 
 rank arrogance and hollow mockery, and that it 
 conveys an insult so awful that even a Cramp- 
 ton is almost sobered by it. In what we might 
 then appeal from Crampton drunk to Crampton 
 sober does the honest fellow's crime consist? 
 Is his trade in itself dishonoring ? Or does he 
 intend through this offer to lower Crampton's 
 genius in the eyes of the world ? Or are we to 
 regard the scene as symbolic of the sad yoking 
 of the artist's genius by an unfeeling, commer- 
 cialized age ? Certainly this would be reading 
 into the play more of tendency than were good 
 for its realism! And, by the way, how do we 
 know that Crampton is a real genius ? Must we 
 appraise him at his own estimate? 
 
 The above incident marks the tip of the ascend- 
 ing action. Immediately afterward Max appears, 
 pays the debts of his future father-in-law, for 
 this relationship he has diligently prepared the
 
 HAUPTMANN 165 
 
 way, and, having secretly bought up the auc- 
 tioned possessions of the professor, piece by 
 piece, leads him in the last act back to the new 
 studio, furnished precisely like the old one. 
 And what is the first thing Crampton does? 
 He pulls himself together after the agreeable 
 shock, yields to the prompting of his heart, and 
 ferrets out with feverish haste his beloved gin 
 bottle from its familiar hiding place if the 
 actor whom I saw in the part interpreted him 
 aright. 1 Nai've people have wondered why just 
 at the end Crampton should cap his fatherly 
 blessing with an anticlimax by calling young 
 Strahler a blockhead. Probably in his good 
 nature he pities the luckless husband who is 
 saddling himself with such a precious specimen 
 of a father-in-law. The drama " Colleague Cramp- 
 ton " suffers from an incurable weakness, the 
 absolute lack of character in its hero. And like 
 its predecessors it is again without a definitive 
 conclusion so far as it deals with Crampton's fate, 
 because no rational person will be optimistic 
 enough to believe in the permanent reform of 
 the old backslider. 
 
 1 This " business," however, is not indicated in the text of the 
 play.
 
 1 66 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 The next of Hauptmann's works in order of 
 publication is Der Biberpelz (" The Beaver Coat") 
 (1893), a naturalistic comedy of provincial life. 
 Inasmuch, however, as it is linked together with 
 Der rote Hahn (1901) by a sort of personal union, 
 through the identity of the principal characters, 
 we shall postpone its consideration for the pres- 
 ent and turn our attention to another play. 
 
 With Hannele (1893) Hauptmann planted his 
 feet on a different ground from that which he 
 had hitherto stood on. Had he not reverted to 
 naturalism after " The Sunken Bell," we might 
 regard Hannele as the bridge that spans the 
 gulf between his two widely separated phases of 
 artistic creation. That even so this imaginative 
 play betokens an experimental departure from 
 absolute realism is seen at first glance in the 
 outward form, in the shifting from prose to verse, 
 and back again. Who would have expected a 
 concession like that from the associate of Holz 
 and Schlaf, from a dramatist who hitherto had 
 felt obliged utterly to scorn rime, monologue, 
 and many other recognized technical contriv- 
 ances ! And yet one ought to be prepared 
 for abrupt changes in a poet whose fundamental 
 mood results from the commixture of radical
 
 HAUPTMANN 167 
 
 and reactionary tendencies, and has much in com- 
 mon with the cloudy world-conception of the 
 Romantics of old, a poet, moreover, by no 
 means free from vanity, who seems to be inces- 
 santly aiming to surprise the world and chain 
 criticism to his triumphal car. Hauptmann will- 
 ingly lets himself be swept along with the tide 
 of popular sentiment, but feeling himself, justly, 
 a Triton among the minnows, he loves to swim 
 in the lead. 
 
 I have already stated that in the realm of the 
 fairy tale lies the sole territory of which Haupt- 
 mann is lord. Unquestionably, the poet himself 
 never realized this limitation. And it may even 
 be that he would never have exercised his genius 
 in that field had not the Mdrc/iendrama just then 
 enjoyed growing favor as a dramatic specialty; 
 witness the phenomenal success of Fulda's Orien- 
 tally costumed Der Talisman (1893), the homely 
 opera Hansel und Gretel (text by Adelheid 
 Wette, music by E. Humperdinck), and other 
 similar works of legend origin. It is not acci- 
 dental that the commingling of naturalism and 
 fantastic idealism is brought about in Hannele 
 through the poetic device of a dream. That form 
 of all others lends itself most readily to the bold
 
 1 68 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 experiment, for the dramatic reproduction of a 
 dream does not presuppose strict causality and 
 sequence. As every dream is woven of reality 
 and imagination, it thus affords a sort of neutral 
 territory for two forces which are apparently 
 antagonistic in the contemporary practice of art. 
 In the Marchendrama of earlier periods, notably 
 in the efforts of its great masters Raimund 
 and Grillparzer, the dream serves to introduce 
 romantic situations which may be resolved at 
 a moment's notice to give place to the actu- 
 alities of real life. The contrivance is simple 
 enough : at the critical moment the hero is 
 made to return to waking consciousness. But 
 while the trance lasts the poet has a fine oppor- 
 tunity to expose the intimate soul-life of his 
 characters. Usually an allegoric or didactic pur- 
 pose is conveyed ; so in Raimund, Grillparzer, 
 and Fulda. 
 
 By the form chosen, the harsh contrasts pre- 
 sented in Hannele its alternation of prose and 
 verse, vulgar dialect and cultivated speech, its 
 constant clash between the squalor of the milieu 
 and the glorious forms shaped by the poet's 
 vaulting imagination are excused or at least 
 extenuated. We view with easy tolerance the
 
 HAUPTMANN 169 
 
 bold adversative of poorhouse and heaven, pau- 
 pers and angels, of sweet, pious Hannele and the 
 village slattern Hete. The dramatic presupposi- 
 tions are arbitrary, inconsistent, and impossible. 
 It is intended that the entire action should be 
 tangible and each personality stand out con- 
 cretely ; for this the author depends, as usual, to 
 an unreasonable degree on the make-up of the 
 characters. 1 
 
 On the other hand, the center of interest is 
 translated from the actual to a world of appari- 
 tions, and the most powerful imagination of the 
 audience is put into commission to picture Han- 
 nele lying fatally ill in bed and at the same time 
 taking part in a commedia dell' arte born of her 
 feverish visions. 
 
 To account for the astonishing success of 
 Hannele, at first the play bore the title Han- 
 nele s Himmelfahrt ("The Assumption of Han- 
 nele ") it is only necessary to read it in an 
 unprejudiced frame of mind. From every line 
 of it pours forth that rich stream of purest 
 human sympathy, which, flowing from a true 
 
 1 Here is an example : " Enter Magistrate Berger, a Captain of the 
 Reserves, as no one can fail to notice." Is such a stage direction any- 
 thing short of unconscious comicality, in view of the fact that the 
 magistrate is in civilian clothes ?
 
 1 70 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 poet-soul, bubbles up irresistibly even through 
 the naturalistic rubbish of the earlier works. 
 
 The plot in Hannele is almost as lean and 
 somber as in the former efforts of Hauptmann. 
 In his drunken rage a ruffianly stepfather so 
 maltreats his fourteen-year-old daughter that she 
 seeks refuge in death and throws herself into the 
 water. She is pulled out by kindly people and 
 carried to the poorhouse for nursing. Here the 
 village schoolmaster, a deaconess, the country 
 doctor, the magistrate, even several inmates of 
 the poorhouse, take loving care of the unfortu- 
 nate child. But she is past human help. Her 
 terrible agitation and the fever have between 
 them irreparably shattered her frail little body. 
 Delirium colors things and people with the hues 
 of her childish fantasy. The poet with exqui- 
 site touch ushers us into the atmosphere of dream- 
 land. In the dream action the characters are none 
 other than the persons of the sick-room trans- 
 figured by the imagination of the little sufferer. 
 Her desperate act, too, is thus glorified, for she 
 is under the delusion that Jesus himself invited 
 her into the water. All that passes is unreal, 
 and yet in the fantastic action how much of 
 Hannele's soul is revealed ! We descend to the
 
 HAUPTMANN 1 7 1 
 
 depths of her subconscious being, just as by a 
 different process we are led to know the un- 
 guarded souls of the mad Ophelia and Gretchen. 
 The poet has succeeded in making Hannele's 
 hallucinations entirely vivid to the reader, nota- 
 bly when he conjures up before her eyes the 
 terrifying appearance of her bestial stepfather. 
 And at the same time his adequate art has 
 penciled with discreetly delicate lines the first 
 dawning love experience of the ripening young 
 girl. To attain such truly poetic results Haupt- 
 mann had to rise subjectively above his crude 
 material. Therein lies the significance of Han- 
 nele for his art-practice. The naturalists have 
 often proclaimed their self-satisfied belief that 
 it is far more difficult to objectify a transverse 
 section of real life from without than to build 
 up its semblance from the inner consciousness. 
 In Hannele Hauptmann undertakes to expose to 
 view a transverse section, as it were, of a human 
 soul. He makes a practical attempt at psychol- 
 ogy. Certainly this is an infinitely difficult and 
 delicate task, and one which in the present in- 
 stance could be accomplished only with the assist- 
 ance of old and well-tried dramatic expedients. 
 But he has not discarded the modern technical
 
 172 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 acquisitions, either. Hannele, in fact, represents 
 the application of modern technic to an all but 
 obsolete variety of the drama. Or is it other than 
 melodramatic when we see shadowy forms flit, to 
 the strains of soft music, across the simple soul 
 of the little martyr who languishes in rags on 
 her bed of straw, while fever dreams delude 
 her with the fabulous splendor of her celestial 
 reward ? 
 
 Hannele is a melodrama, even in the current 
 meaning of the word, i.e. an Ausstattungsstuck. 
 We see with wonder the stout disciple of Bjarne 
 Holmsen throwing himself into the circles of the 
 spectacular play. The elaborate allegorical ap- 
 paratus readily calls to mind the second part of 
 Faust and Ferdinand Raimund's magic pieces. 
 But more than these plays Hannele is instinct 
 with genuine human pathos. 
 
 True it is, as has been pointed out, that the 
 component elements of the play are at variance 
 with one another, yet in the effect produced by 
 Hannele as a whole the outer visible misery is 
 only subservient to the touching portrayal of 
 Hannele's martyrdom and deliverance. The nat- 
 uralistic part of Hannele is decidedly secondary 
 in importance to the idealistic.
 
 HAUPTMANN 1 73 
 
 The technical treatment of the desolate environ- 
 ment against which the idealized figure of Hannele 
 stands out in shining relief is fully in accord with 
 the method employed in "Before Sunrise" and 
 " The Weavers." In the higher sphere Haupt- 
 mann's genius bursts the somber chrysalis and, 
 spreading its brilliant wings, soars high above the 
 arid sobriety of the actual. Who would have sus- 
 pected so much splendor of rhythm and color in 
 the author of " The Weavers " ? Listen to the 
 entrancing " Song of the Stranger " : 
 
 THE SONG OF THE STRANGER 1 
 
 The City of the Blessed is marvellously fair, 
 
 And peace and utter happiness are never-ending there. 
 
 The houses are of marble, the roofs of gold so fine, 
 
 And down their silver channels bubble brooks of ruby wine. 
 
 The streets that shine so white, so white, are all bestrewn with 
 
 flowers, 
 
 And endless peals of wedding bells ring out from all the towers. 
 The pinnacles, as green as May, gleam in the morning light, 
 Beset with flickering butterflies, with rose-wreaths decked and 
 
 dight. 
 
 Twelve milk-white swans fly round them in mazy circles wide, 
 And preen themselves, and ruffle up their plumage in their pride ; 
 
 1 The translation is from the English version of the play by 
 W. Archer (Heinemann, London, 1898).
 
 174 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 They soar aloft so bravely through the shining heavenly air, 
 
 With fragrance all a-quiver and with golden trumpet-blare ; 
 
 In circle-sweeps majestical forever they are winging, 
 
 And the pulsing of their pinions is like harp-strings softly ringing. 
 
 They look abroad o'er Sion, on garden and on sea, 
 
 And green and filmy streamers behind them flutter free 
 
 And underneath them wander, throughout the heavenly land, 
 
 The people in their feast-array, forever hand in hand ; 
 
 And then into the wide, wide sea, filled with the red, red wine, 
 
 Behold ! they plunge their bodies with glory all a-shine 
 
 They plunge their shining bodies into the gleaming sea, 
 
 Till in the deep clear purple they 're swallowed utterly ; 
 
 And when again they leap aloft rejoicing from the flood, 
 
 Their sins have all been washed away in Jesus' blessed blood. 
 
 InHannele we have seen that Hauptmann takes 
 himself out of the file of the intransigent natu- 
 ralists. It was Karl Gutzkow who once said, 
 " Every true poet becomes a symbolist, but for 
 the poet of masculine temperament history pro- 
 vides the guise." That is to say, for the aspirations 
 of such a poet the historical drama supplies the 
 fittest vehicle of expression. Now it has been 
 stated of Hauptmann, without any disparage- 
 ment of his high poetic virtues, that he is not 
 properly a poet of the masculine type. For this 
 reason his experiment in historical drama mis- 
 carried.
 
 HAUPTMANN 175 
 
 The historical drama, more than any other form 
 of literary production, demands on the part of 
 its author the exercise of hard, uncompromis- 
 ing logic and a keen historical sense ; both are 
 beyond Hauptmann's capacity. Karl Bleibtreu 
 hits the point exactly when he finds in Haupt- 
 mann's Florian Geyer only the outer garb of an 
 epoch, not its flesh and sinew. 
 
 With the first representation on the stage of 
 his one historical play (January 4, 1896) our poet 
 experienced his first and only complete failure. 1 
 From the effects of this blow it is said he has 
 never been able to recover. I believe that Haupt- 
 mann's severance from extreme naturalism was 
 indirectly responsible for this fiasco. While still 
 under the spell of that doctrine the poet had 
 undertaken with might and main the great experi- 
 ment foreshadowed in " The Weavers " of apply- 
 ing the so-called scientific method to a strictly 
 historical subject. He may have anticipated for 
 his work the same explosive effect that was pro- 
 duced in the eighteenth century by Goethe's 
 G'otz von Berlichingen. During the execution of 
 
 1 Very recently the play, in an abridged and somewhat altered form, 
 has been staged again ; at the present writing it is being given with fair 
 success in Berlin.
 
 176 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the project, however, he had begun to recover 
 from naturalism in its acutest form. It is ex- 
 tremely difficult for an artist under the circum- 
 stances either to throw away his work or to 
 recast it. The original notions with obsessive 
 force determine its form. So Hauptmann worked 
 on with broken purpose and laboriously com- 
 pleted the work in the same manner in which 
 it was begun ; the result satisfied neither the old 
 standard nor the new. 
 
 The historic Florian Geyer, 1 who resembles in 
 many points the Knight of Berlichingen, was the 
 ablest and most loyal leader of the insurgents. 
 Had it been Sudermann who handled this theme 
 he would undoubtedly have found the tragedy 
 to consist in the fact that Geyer, who though a 
 noble by birth forsakes his hereditary sphere to 
 champion the rights of the seditious peasants 
 and stand sponsor for their most radical demands, 
 is repudiated by both factions and cruelly hounded 
 to death because he holds right and justice higher 
 than party allegiance. This tragedy of the de- 
 classe Hauptmann barely indicates. The leader 
 of the " Black Band " falls out with his merce- 
 nary fellow rebels and cannot outlive the wreck 
 
 1 See Bensen's History of the Peasant War in East Franconia in JJ2J.
 
 HAUPTMANN 177 
 
 of the ideals he has defended. For the rest 
 Hauptmann is content to paint in broad diorama 
 a succession of impressionistic pictures of the long 
 ago, joined together after a fashion, yet not sum- 
 ming up, somehow, to a full-orbed dramatic action. 
 So far as we are informed through the play alone 
 the end is too much like an unfortunate accident. 
 A true dramatist must be able to persuade us that 
 the end could not possibly have been otherwise. 1 
 Another fault of this much too long tragedy is 
 that it lacks an orderly arrangement. The chaotic 
 action is disconcerting and disturbs the compo- 
 sure indispensable for aesthetic enjoyment. The 
 historic background is woven in with undeniable 
 skill, but in the end one loses the thread in the 
 maze of details. Finally the diction, for which 
 Hauptmann had so diligently scoured the old 
 chronicles, is a stumbling-block for a modern 
 audience. Without at all impugning its accuracy, 
 how much has been actually gained for the 
 realism of the play when the result of repristina- 
 tion is to make the utterance sound strange and 
 harsh to all but to the German philologian ? 
 
 1 The drama should be the place where we may see, more easily 
 recognizable than in actual life, the universal operation and validity of 
 irresistible law. E. WOODBRIDGE, The Drama, its Law and its Tech- 
 nique, p. 44.
 
 1 78 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 In one respect Florian Geyer resembles " The 
 Weavers." In Hauptmann's hands Florian is not 
 the real hero, holding the dramatic interest from 
 beginning to end. The principal role is played 
 by the singular uprising of one whole social estate 
 against another, or if one looks for something at 
 least more concrete, " Poor Conrad," the rebellious 
 peasantry, is the surrogate hero, just as the starv- 
 ing proletariat was in " The Weavers." But the 
 greater dramatic weakness of the newer play comes 
 to light in the fact that the poet is silent as to 
 the cause of the uprising. The rebel peasants of 
 the rank and file do not appear until the fifth act, 
 so that we are not directly moved to pity by their 
 lot; possibly Hauptmann takes it for granted 
 that we remember all about their woes from our 
 high-school days. The cast, by the way, comprises 
 no fewer than sixty-one persons. 
 
 Geyer does not stand out in bold relief against 
 the large and confused living background as does 
 Shakespeare's Julius Caesar or Coriolanus. The 
 attempt to characterize each of so many figures 
 detracts from his due importance as the central 
 figure. Hauptmann is not enough of a dramatist 
 to have succeeded in an indirect characteriza- 
 tion of his hero, such as Schiller gives when he
 
 HAUPTMANN 1 79 
 
 prepares us so happily for the domineering figure 
 of Wallenstein by picturing the spirit that rules 
 in his camp, explaining thus, even before the 
 commander appears, his transgression and down- 
 fall through his forceful, dangerful influence over 
 the masses. 
 
 These various failings effectually blocked for 
 Florian Geyer the way to public favor at a time 
 when amid the exultant joy that greeted Wilden- 
 bruch's trilogy Heinrich und Heinrichs Geschlecht 
 (" King Henry and his House") (1896) it seemed 
 as if ultra-naturalism were now to be marched out 
 of the theater to the familiar beat of Schiller's 
 iambic pathos. 
 
 Hauptmann misconstrued the symptomatic sig- 
 nificance of this defeat, which was a censure less 
 for the man than for the school by which, after all, 
 he stood with but partial allegiance. His sicklied 
 imagination exaggerated the meaning of his failure, 
 as though he had staked all his power on a great 
 undertaking and had found to his utter dismay 
 that his strength was inadequate. 
 
 Out of his ungrounded despondency sprang the 
 germ of a new poem calculated to allay his self- 
 distrust : an allegoric work which, far outstripping 
 anything he had previously performed, insured
 
 l8o MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 for many years, perhaps forever, an honorable 
 place for his name among those who by satisfy- 
 ing the best judges of their own time deserve to 
 live for all ages. 
 
 f Denn wer den Besten seiner Zeit genug 
 Getan, der hat gelebt fur alle Zeiten. 
 
 " The Sunken Bell " is just as little a drama 
 as Hannele, perhaps even less so, but neverthe- 
 less it is an art work of singular beauty, couched 
 in language of a poetic splendor unparalleled in 
 modern letters and fraught with a pure and truly 
 German inwardness. The real worth of this poem 
 does not lie in its far-sought symbolism, but in the 
 wondrous atmosphere suffusing the whole and 
 transporting us by its magic into the heart of 
 the old romantic land of Tieck, Eichendorff, and 
 Fouque, where the brooks babble and the trees 
 whisper and the winds make music to it all. In 
 this fantastic world Gerhart Hauptmann fairly 
 revels, combining in his all-perceptive sense for 
 the beauties and mysteries of nature the eye of a 
 Bocklin with the ear of a Mendelssohn- Bartholdy. 
 Never yet has a poet stood in a more intimate 
 sensuous relation to nature ; at least no poet has 
 been more successful in vivifying her.
 
 HAUFFMANN l8l 
 
 Out of the well among the soughing pines, 
 spluttering and blinking, the Nickelmann (water 
 sprite) pulls himself up, annoyed at first by the 
 unaccustomed glare of the spring sunshine. From 
 the thicket the wood sprite capers into the clear- 
 ing, a comical, carnal-minded fellow, goat footed, 
 horned, and whiskered, pipe in mouth, a swarm of 
 flies buzzing round him. He has broken away 
 for a while from the humdrummery of domestic 
 life, for a change from the boresome Missus and 
 her nine dirty little brats, and now drinks in con- 
 tentedly the joy of May-time. The smell of spring- 
 tide is in the air, as Rautendelein reminds the 
 Nickelmann : 
 
 Ay, ay 
 
 It smells of springtide. Well, is that so strange? 
 
 Why, every lizard, mole, and worm, and mouse 
 
 The veriest water-rat had scented that. 
 
 The quail, the hare, the trout, the fly, the weeds, 
 
 Had told thee spring was here 
 
 What a fascinating familiarity with the noc- 
 turnal gambols of the elfin folk is felt in the 
 charming roundelay ! * 
 
 1 The passages from " The Sunken Bell " are quoted from the excel- 
 lent translation of the play by Charles Henry Meltzer (Doubleday & 
 McClure Company, New York, 1901).
 
 1 82 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 First Elf (whispering) 
 
 Sister ! 
 
 Second Elf (as above) 
 
 Sister ! 
 
 First Elf (as above) 
 
 White and chill 
 
 Shines the moon across the hill. 
 Over bank and over brae, 
 Queen she is and queen shall stay. 
 
 Second Elf 
 Whence com'st thou? 
 
 First Elf 
 
 From where the light 
 In the waterfall gleams bright, 
 Where the glowing flood doth leap 
 Roaring down into the deep. 
 Then, from out the mirk and mist, 
 Where the foaming torrent hissed, 
 Past the dripping rocks and spray, 
 Up I swiftly made my way. 
 
 Third Elf (joining them) 
 
 Sisters, is it here ye dance? 
 
 First Elf 
 Wouldst thou join us ? Quick advance ! 
 
 Second Elf 
 And whence com'st thou? 
 
 Third Elf 
 
 Hark and hist ! 
 
 Dance and dance, as ye may list !
 
 HAUPTMANN 183 
 
 'Mid the rocky peaks forlorn 
 Lies the lake where I was born. 
 Starry gems are mirrored clear 
 On the face of that dark mere. 
 Ere the fickle moon could wane, 
 Up I swept my silver train. 
 Where the mountain breezes sigh, 
 Over clove and crag came I. 
 
 Fourth Elf (entering) 
 
 Sisters ! 
 
 First Elf 
 Sister ! Join the round ! 
 
 All (together) 
 
 Ring-a-ring-a-ring-around ! 
 
 Fourth Elf 
 
 From Dame Holle's flowery brae, 
 Secretly I stole away. 
 
 First Elf 
 Wind and wander, in and out. 
 
 All (together) 
 
 Ring-a-ring-a-round-about ! 
 
 (Lightning and distant thunder.) 
 
 (Enter suddenly, from the hut, Rautendelein. Clasping her hands behind her head, 
 she watches the dance from the doorway. The moonlight falls full on her.) 
 
 Rautendelein 
 Ho, my fairies ! 
 
 First Elf 
 
 Hark ! A cry !
 
 184 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Second Rlf 
 Owch ! My dress is all awry ! 
 
 Rautendelein 
 Ho, ye fairies ! 
 
 Third Elf 
 
 Oh, my gown ! 
 Flit and nutter, up and down. 
 
 Rautendelein (joining in the dance) 
 
 Let me join the merry round, 
 Ring-a-ring-a-ring-around ! 
 Silver nixie, sweetest maid, 
 See how richly I 'm arrayed. 
 All of silver, white and rare, 
 Granny wove my dress so fair. 
 Thou, my fairy, brown, I vow 
 Browner far am I than thou. 
 And, my golden sister fair, 
 I can match thee with my hair. 
 Now I toss it high behold, 
 Thou hast surely no such gold. 
 Now it tumbles o'er my face : 
 Who can rival me in grace? 
 
 All (together) 
 
 Wind and wander, in and out, 
 Ring-a-ring-a-round-about ! 
 
 Hauptmann's genius has power to gift with 
 life from the welling spring of his own rich artist 
 soul all the elemental forces of nature. In "The
 
 HAUPTMANN 185 
 
 Sunken Bell " whatever moves, lives. Hear the 
 spell spoken by Rautendelein as she bustles about 
 the hearth over her work as sick-nurse : 
 
 Flickering spark in the ash of death, 
 Glow with life of living breath ! 
 Red, red wind, thy loudest blow ! 
 I, as thou, did lawless grow ! 
 
 Simmer, sing, and simmer ! 
 
 (The flame leaps up on the hearth.) 
 
 Kettle swaying left and right 
 Copper-lid, thou 'rt none too light ! 
 Bubble, bubble, broth and brew, 
 Turning all things old to new ! 
 Simmer, sing, and simmer ! 
 
 Green and tender herbs of spring 
 In the healing draught I fling. 
 Drink it sweet, and drink it hot 
 Life and youth are in the pot ! 
 Simmer, sing, and simmer ! 
 
 Just as long as Hauptmann symbolically vivi- 
 fies nature his poetry pours forth with a sponta- 
 neous and irresistible charm. " The Sunken Bell " 
 is instinct with an all-embracing nature-sense; 
 nearly the whole gamut of nature's varying moods 
 is run, from the awful to the idyllic. But as soon 
 as he oversteps his limitations and tries through
 
 1 86 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the symbol to give concrete shape to the unsub- 
 stantial, the forces that rule within or above in- 
 sentient nature, he finds them inconvertible and 
 quickly loses himself in subtilties. To submit just 
 one example, it is decidedly farfetched when at 
 the beginning of the fourth act the six talents 
 involved in the creation of a poetical work, to wit: 
 Intellect, Energy, Inspiration, Indecision, Self- 
 Criticism, and Self-Discipline, are personified as 
 six dwarfs forced into servitude by the bell founder 
 Heinrich. By a Goethe growing old and whim- 
 sical we meekly allow ourselves to be mystified ; 
 but even from such a Goethe to Hauptmann it is 
 a far cry. 
 
 " The Sunken Bell " has appeared in an almost 
 unprecedented number of editions in the original 
 text, and it has been turned several times into 
 English ; of these translations that of Mr. Meltzer 
 is, in my opinion, the one in spirit most allied to 
 the original. The play has been performed in this 
 country by German actors, including that ideal 
 Rautendelein, Agnes Sorma, and it has been pro- 
 duced also under American management, with a 
 cast to be sure which failed to catch the elfin 
 airiness of the piece. At any rate, the story is 
 so well known even " Mr. Dooley " has made
 
 HAUPTMANN 187 
 
 capital out of it that we may save ourselves 
 the ungrateful task of turning at length so exqui- 
 sitely dainty a composition into barren prose. 
 About its symbolic meaning, however, something 
 must be said. 
 
 The story, briefly retold, runs thus: A bell, 
 intended to proclaim afar the praise of the Crea- 
 tor and the fame of its maker, falls down a steep 
 bank and is lost in the mountain lake. The 
 maker, heartsick because he has discovered that 
 the bell is not the masterpiece it is thought to 
 be by all the people, 'throws himself after his 
 handiwork. 
 
 I fell. I know not how I 've told thee that 
 Whether the path gave way beneath my feet, 
 Whether 't was willingly I fell, or no 
 God wot. Enough. I fell into the gulf. 
 
 But he does not perish. Half dead from the fall, 
 he drags himself to a lonely hut. Here lives 
 Granny Wittichen, a notorious witch, together 
 with an elfin creature, the golden-haired Rauten- 
 delein. With this girl, who is conceived as a 
 personification of nature, Master Heinrich falls in 
 love, and forsakes wife and children to dwell 
 with her in the mountain wilds. There he sets
 
 1 88 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 up his workshop. Among the great, free heights, 
 with soul raised aloft by fresh incentive, he feels 
 the access of new power to accomplish that which 
 was denied him in the spiritual solitude down in 
 the valley : he will work up into form a wondrous 
 chime, 
 
 Such as no minster in the world has seen. 
 Loud and majestic is its mighty voice; 
 Even as the thunders of a storm it sounds, 
 Rolling and crashing o'er the meads in spring. 
 Ay, in the tumult of its trumpet tones, 
 All the church bells on earth it shall strike dumb. 
 All shall be hushed, as through the sky it rings 
 The glad new Gospel of the new-born light ! 
 
 On this new gospel a symbolic sun worship 
 that shall absorb and humanize our religion he 
 addresses an ecstatic harangue to the vicar, who 
 has come to reclaim Heinrich for his abandoned 
 duty. 
 
 Eternal Sun ! Thy children and my children 
 
 Know thee for Father and proclaim thy power. 
 
 Thou, aided by the kind and gentle rain, 
 
 Didst raise them from the dust and give them health ! 
 
 So now their joy triumphant they shall send 
 
 Singing along thy clear, bright path to Heaven ! 
 
 And now, at last, like the gray wilderness 
 
 That thou hast warmed, and mantled with thy green,
 
 HAUPTMANN 189 
 
 Me thou hast kindled into sacrifice ! 
 
 I offer thee myself, and all I am ! ... 
 
 O Day of Light when from the marble halls 
 
 Of my fair Temple the first waking peal 
 
 Shall shake the skies when, from the somber clouds 
 
 That weighed upon us through the winter night, 
 
 Rivers of jewels shall go rushing down 
 
 Into a million hands outstretched to clutch ! 
 
 Then all who drooped, with sudden power inflamed, 
 
 Shall bear their treasure homewards to their huts, 
 
 There to unfurl, at last, the silken banners, 
 
 Waiting so long, so long to be upraised, 
 
 And, pilgrims of the Sun, draw near the feast ! 
 
 O Father, that great Day ! . . . You know the tale 
 Of the lost Prodigal? ... It is the Sun 
 That bids his poor, lost children to the Feast. 
 With rustling banners, see the swelling host 
 Draw nearer, and still nearer to my Temple ! 
 And now the wondrous chime again rings out, 
 Filling the air with such sweet, passionate sound 
 As makes each breast to sob with rapturous pain. 
 It sings a song, long lost and long forgotten, 
 A song of home a childlike song of Love, 
 Born in the waters of some fairy well 
 Known to all mortals, and yet heard of none ! 
 And as it rises, softly first, and low, 
 The nightingale and dove seem singing, too, 
 And all the ice in every human breast
 
 190 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Is melted, and the hate, and pain, and woe, 
 Stream out in tears. 
 
 Then shall we all draw nearer to the Cross, 
 
 And, still in tears, rejoice, until at last 
 
 The dead Redeemer, by the Sun set free, 
 
 His prisoned limbs shall stir from their long sleep, 
 
 And, radiant with the joy of endless youth, 
 
 Come down, himself a youth, into the May. 
 
 But Heinrich's fair dream is not realized, because 
 he has not left his human conscience behind him 
 in the valley. His faithlessness drives his loyal 
 wife to suicide, for Hauptmann's characters the 
 natural escape from sorrow; a vision shows him 
 his little children toiling up towards him with a 
 jug containing the dead mother's tears. Master 
 Heinrich's soul is harrowed by remorse ; the man 
 in him is broken, and with that the artist goes to 
 pieces also. The sunken bell, touched by the dead 
 wife's ringers, tolls a loud warning. Heinrich, 
 wholly beside himself, curses and spurns poor 
 Rautendelein, but soon discovers that he cannot 
 do without her. To the life of the valley he can- 
 not return; his forest temple goes up in flames. 
 And so, without a home on the shining heights, 
 without a home in the netherland, he must die.
 
 HAUPTMANN 191 
 
 That " The Sunken Bell " is the work of a 
 real, whole-souled poet is certified by every line. 
 A rare poetic temperament pulsates through every 
 fiber of the whole composition. Poetically " The 
 Sunken Bell " can hardly be praised too much. 
 Its situations and characters are so entrancing, 
 the language is so beautiful, that we may draw 
 pure delight from each constituent part, even 
 though we may not understand the allegory that 
 is hidden in it. 
 
 As for the underlying tissue of personal experi- 
 ence, it is but thinly veiled. Yet a great many 
 have enjoyed " The Sunken Bell " without going 
 to the trouble of tracing out the resemblance of 
 Master Heinrich the bell-founder to Master Ger- 
 hart the playwright. Nothing could better argue 
 the intrinsic poetical value of the work. 
 
 We have so far spoken of " The Sunken Bell " 
 as a poem, as a lyric effusion cast in dialogue, if 
 such a description is admissible. Our praise can- 
 not be equally unstinted when we view " The 
 Sunken Bell " as a drama and a channel of phil- 
 osophic thought. It is then that we miss, back 
 of the lovely allegory, the clarified world-view of 
 a ripened individuality. And such we have been 
 taught by our great dramatists to expect.
 
 192 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 The tragic fate of Master Heinrich would in- 
 fallibly have appealed to us had the poet fully con- 
 vinced us of his hero's overmanship. In that 
 case Master Heinrich might have been reckoned 
 among those brethren-in-fate of Faust whom we 
 hesitate to judge according to the usual stand- 
 ards of human conduct. As it is, he is too small 
 of stature to be compared with Faust, even 
 though he does distantly resemble him. Faust 
 triumphs because he is an overman, Heinrich 
 perishes because he would like to be. He is a 
 calamitous blend of the Titan's ambition and the 
 weakling's lack of self-control, a hybrid between 
 overman and decadent. His flight from the nar- 
 rower circles of life looks suspiciously like an 
 escapade. No lofty fellowship of spirit or con- 
 geniality of mind, no profound mutual compre- 
 hension joins Heinrich and Rautendelein by 
 main force; nothing but a sensual attraction 
 draws them together. And the sacred fires in 
 Heinrich's new-built temple cannot long be kept 
 glowing when fanned only by such a fickle 
 breeze as his passion for Rautendelein. If the 
 fate of Heinrich, the lesser mystic, fails to wring 
 from us as much sympathy as we feel for the 
 greater mystic, Faust, it is principally because
 
 HAUPTMANN 193 
 
 we ourselves are more nearly concerned in the 
 fate of Faust. The great problems of life which 
 he finally solves in spite of all hindrances are of 
 universal human relevancy. The whole aim and 
 endeavor of Hauptmann's hero, on the other 
 hand, is centered exclusively on artistic ideals, to 
 realize which he deserts his nearest obligations. 
 In spite of all its beauties " The Sunken Bell," 
 after all, does not appeal irresistibly to all our 
 human nature at once, because it deals with human 
 nature under exceptional aspects. 
 
 The enthusiastic acceptance of " The Sunken 
 Bell " served as an unmistakable sign of the 
 trend of the literary taste. For the poet himself 
 as well as for the public it testified to the truth 
 of the blunt saying in Paul Heyse's anti-natural- 
 istic novel Merlin : " Though with the pitchfork 
 of naturalism we may drive out never so vigor- 
 ously that longing for the great and beautiful 
 which is called idealism, it forever returns." 
 
 In determining Hauptmann's position in mod- 
 ern letters, this poetic achievement has ad- 
 vanced essentially its author's reputation and 
 won for him many who formerly were averse or 
 skeptical. By no means, however, does it raise 
 him to the rank of the facile princeps among
 
 194 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 living poets ; for it is a distinguishing character- 
 istic of the German mind that the mere sensuous 
 beauty of an art work does not wholly satisfy it. 
 The Germans want to look up to their great 
 poets not only as to magicians who produce a 
 transient semblance of the beautiful, but also as 
 to teachers of wisdom and guides through the 
 wildernesses and labyrinths of life. All present 
 symptoms point strongly to the fact that they 
 demand that their dramatists draw characters 
 who, on the one hand, shall be perfectly true to 
 life, but who also, in addition to their transient 
 individual significance, shall have a universal, 
 profound, close human relationship with us and 
 thereby move us to such a personal participation 
 in their fate as no mere stranger ever can compel 
 on his own account. So far as we have made their 
 acquaintance, Hauptmann's heroes are either 
 as Master Heinrich symbols in human shape, 
 in which case they lack the requisite red-blooded 
 personality, or they are the superficial likenesses 
 of men who are caught with astounding accuracy 
 in their characteristics of attitude and speech, yet 
 are without a lasting interest because the inner- 
 most secret of their identity with ourselves is not 
 revealed.
 
 HAUPTMANN 195 
 
 After " The Sunken Bell " it seems as if our 
 poet were conscious of the inadequacy of past 
 efforts, and had at last found the road to a genu- 
 ine realistic character drama. Certainly it can be 
 only a hasty examination which finds in Fuhr- 
 mann Henschel ^ Henschel the Teamster") (1898) 
 nothing but a relapse of the successful Mdrchen- 
 dichter into reluctant fidelity to his old love, 
 Naturalism. In Florian Geyer Hauptmann had 
 essayed the application of naturalism to historic 
 drama. In Fuhrmann Henschel another experi- 
 ment is made, in which the naturalistic impres- 
 sionism is employed as an aid to the true func- 
 tion of the drama now apparently conceived as 
 the revealment of the psychology not of a social 
 throng, as in Die Weber and in Geyer, but of an 
 individual. The transition from a physiologic to 
 a psychologic type of impressionism is thus dis- 
 tinctly marked ; a progress which, as has been well 
 pointed out by the historian Karl Lamprecht, 
 is in line with the general trend of modern lit- 
 erary development. Already from the middle of 
 the nineties Hauptmann's plays had ceased to 
 be regarded by ultra-naturalists like Holz as pat- 
 terns and paradigms of their theory. Perhaps now, 
 in the retrospection, we can better understand
 
 196 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the apparently saltatory progress of Hauptmann. 
 That he had outgrown the obstructive ordinances 
 of naturalism there can be no question. Yet he 
 did not turn utter renegade, because he recognized 
 the permanent gain accruing to the drama from the 
 late reform ; rather he sought to find a means by 
 which, without sacrificing this gain, he might 
 attain a less one-sided manifestation of his powers. 
 In Hannele, as we have seen, the theme was chosen 
 with singular felicity so as to permit the unmixed 
 coexistence of the seamy and the dreamy worlds. 
 In " The Sunken Bell " naturalism was pushed to 
 the wall by the long-repressed furor poeticus. But 
 Hauptmann is naturally unwilling to relinquish a 
 method which furnishes the sole opportunity for 
 one of the most potent elements in his genius, 
 namely, his unexcelled power of observation and 
 reproduction. The new peasant drama combines 
 the physiological and the psychological methods. 
 It retains all the external verisimilitude of "The 
 Weavers," yet the interest is never, as there, 
 focused on the environment, but on the Auswick- 
 lung, the unfolding of the central character. 
 
 Fuhrmann Henschel is a Silesian dialect drama, 
 like Die Weber. The situations are very much 
 like those in Bahnwarter Thiel. Henschel, a
 
 HAUPTMANN 197 
 
 rough, stupid, but well-meaning and deeply con- 
 scientious fellow, has solemnly promised his dying 
 wife (in act i) that he will not marry Hanne 
 Schal, the house servant, of whom she is jealous. 
 Having for domestic reasons broken his promise 
 to the dead, the superstition preys on his mind 
 that he is gradually being forfeited to her revenge. 
 Meanwhile the wily, sensuous Hanne develops 
 into a reckless village Messalina. With hardened 
 villainy she practices one deception after another 
 upon her hulking, good-natured husband, robbing 
 him of his domestic happiness, his child, his honor, 
 his prestige, his substance, and thus finally of rea- 
 son and of life itself. The end (which is suicide) 
 is thus brought on without the cooperation of 
 the tragic guilt of the hero, formerly held to be 
 one of the essentials of tragedy. In the story of 
 Fuhrmann Henschel the realistic method is not 
 employed with the unscrupulous thoroughness of 
 former plays, so that, among other things, all 
 ribaldry and nastiness are dispensed with ; a single 
 obscenity occurs. It is true that, for the purpose 
 of making up a definite milieu, various supernu- 
 merary characters like Siebenhaar and Franziska 
 Wermelskirch wander detachedly about in this 
 play as in the earlier ones, but the figure of
 
 198 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Wilhelm Henschel is skillfully moved into the 
 foreground and kept there throughout the five 
 acts. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that 
 Hauptmann has not fully risen above his limi- 
 tations; for even Henschel's tragic fate seems 
 painted al fresco and much of the psychological 
 motiving is left to the onlooker. Besides, the 
 plot is not fairly rounded out, since in the last act, 
 when the will power of the hero is finally broken, 
 the whole structure of the plot, unfinished as it 
 is, collapses too, as though we had no interest in 
 any one but Henschel. So much, however, we 
 may regard as certain, without claiming an author- 
 itative opinion, that this work of Hauptmann by 
 the relative flawlessness of form and content marks 
 a long stride forward in his artistic progress. At 
 any rate, " Henschel the Teamster " must unques- 
 tionably be reckoned one of the greatest peasant 
 tragedies ever written. 
 
 So numerous were the dramatizations of peasant 
 life after Fuhrmann Henschel that it looked for a 
 while as though the muse of the German drama 
 were preparing to take up its permanent residence 
 in the country. But she only wanted to recuper- 
 ate from the strenuous exploitation of the metrop- 
 olis ; she was beginning to tire of the fad for the
 
 HAUPTMANN 199 
 
 tragedy of artist life which was gradually becoming 
 a somewhat monotonous form of literary endeavor; 
 and she sought invigoration from the fostering 
 soil. The Heimatkunst vernacular art thus 
 came to be highly prized, and its popularity was 
 soon in its turn encompassed by the peril of fad- 
 dish over-specialization. Fortunately, however, 
 literary specialization means the accretion of many 
 facts hitherto unavailable for a writer and thereby 
 eventually a visible widening of his horizon. 
 
 The real poet once he is recognized should feel 
 himself raised above the temptation of following a 
 fashionable specialty, be it for the sake of bread, 
 be it for the still more meretricious reason of popu- 
 larity. Hauptmann's later works, too, bear witness 
 to his greater independence, to his plucky deter- 
 mination to advance to his goals along self-chosen 
 paths. And yet in spite of his increasing freedom 
 from technical bigotry, one cannot always help 
 feeling that up to this time the picture of the 
 dying swan on the title-page of "The Sunken Bell" 
 carries an ominous significance hardly intended 
 by the poet. 
 
 Certainly the tramp-comedy Schluck und Jau 
 (1900) does not lay claim to any special weight 
 or relative value among the works of Hauptmann.
 
 200 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 If his first sustained effort, the rhapsodic Prome- 
 thidenlos, savored strongly of Byron, Schluck und 
 Jau is frankly reminiscent of the Induction to 
 Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. But 
 whereas there the sport with Christopher Sly ends 
 at the opening of the real play, in Hauptmann's 
 Spiel zu Scherz und Schimpf (" Play in Joke and 
 Jollity") the incident throughout clusters round 
 two drunken vagabonds whom the Prince's jovial 
 friend in a waggish mood has carried into the 
 hunting lodge. 
 
 It is natural to think that Hauptmann purposed 
 to take up the psychologic experiment just where 
 Shakespeare left off, that he imagined the inward 
 experience of a pauper who, awaking from a 
 drunken stupor, finds himself through some mira- 
 cle in the possession of princely wealth, rank, and 
 power. However, his play moves less by psycho- 
 logic forces than by the comicality of the ensuing 
 deception of Jau, to which his comrade Schluck 
 is forced to contribute by masquerading as his 
 princely spouse. Jau readily accepts the expla- 
 nation that his former squalid estate was only a 
 temporary delusion from which he has just recov- 
 ered, but amid his new magnificence remaining un- 
 changed, a vulgar, crapulous glutton, he furnishes
 
 HAUPTMANN 2OI 
 
 so much fun for his fancied " subjects " that 
 the psychologic experiment is soon smothered 
 in roaring comedy. Before long a pugnacious 
 form of megalomania makes Jau unendurable and 
 hastens the end of his glory. A sleeping-draught 
 is administered and Jau removed to the lawn in 
 front of the chateau where he was first picked up. 
 His colleague Schluck has preceded him. In con- 
 clusion we are acquainted with the moral lesson 
 of the play, which consists in a sententious truism 
 about the inconstancy of fortune. 
 
 " The descendants of Alexander of Macedon be- 
 came joiners and clerks in Rome. This bundle of 
 patched homespun but yesterday it paraded as 
 a prince ! " The prince and the pauper are equally 
 strangers to the pomp and splendor through which 
 they are ushered with different degrees of speed. 
 The real value of a man is little more than that of 
 Jau in his natural state. With such philosophy 
 we are dismissed. It is not deep nor new, but the 
 poet himself has warned us in the prologue not 
 to take him too seriously : 
 
 Und nehmt dies derbe Stiicklein nicht fur mehr, 
 Als einer unbesorgten Laune Kind. 
 
 And we may account for the " crude little 
 piece " by Richard M. Meyer's conjecture that
 
 202 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Hauptmann belongs to those poets with whom 
 recreation itself is turned into poetical product. 
 
 In Schluck und Jau Hauptmann approaches 
 real comedy more than in any other work. 
 The play is indeed documentary evidence of a 
 " happy, careless mood." Such moods, with 
 Hauptmann, are excessively rare. But genuine 
 humor we miss even in Schluck und Jau. For 
 genuine humor is the medium of an optimistic 
 view of life, a medium by which all things are 
 gilded or sublimated. To this poet whom the 
 gods have otherwise endowed so richly, that one 
 divine gift seems to have been denied, because 
 he is at bottom a pessimist through whose mind 
 the world is refracted as a confused and wran- 
 gling mass. All his works the comedies not 
 excepted betray this pessimistic world-view 
 which in the last analysis appears to be con- 
 comitant with the lack of a higher intellectual 
 potency. 
 
 If it is a fact that Michael Kramer (1900) was 
 written to give the lie to critics like Richard 
 M. Meyer, who had said of Hauptmann that he 
 lacked "the higher intellect, the mastery in the 
 realm of ideas, the power to deal with the ab- 
 stract, the quick flash that lights up the mystery
 
 HAUPTMANN 203 
 
 of things," he has only furnished his critics with 
 an additional proof of their allegation. 
 
 In Michael Kramer (1900) the poet under- 
 took a bold and thoroughly original task. In 
 this play what is customarily regarded as the 
 " action " is not worked out through the agency, 
 nor even with the cooperation, of the real hero, 
 Michael Kramer is in no way the author of his 
 son's tragic fate; such at least was the impres- 
 sion produced by the masterly premiere in Berlin. 
 In fact the "action" is of a very indirect and 
 subordinate importance; it serves merely as a 
 psycho-dynamic means for drawing to the surface 
 the inmost soul-life of the principal character, 
 for carding out, as it were, his very heart and 
 entrails. So far this is the most ambitious and 
 possibly the most successful psychological study 
 undertaken by Hauptmann. 
 
 Michael Kramer is the artist who just falls 
 short of greatness, a type nearly related to 
 Master Heinrich and, less intimately, to Col- 
 league Crampton, a painter who has never 
 won the prize of public favor because, on the one 
 side, his high principles forbid him to prostitute 
 his art, to debase it to unworthy purposes, and 
 because, on the other side, his hand is no mate
 
 204 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 for his inspiration, his brush no tool adequate to 
 his artistic purpose, so that Kramer's best powers 
 are hopelessly lost on that perplexing road that 
 leads from the first conception to the finished 
 work, and his best ideas never materialize on 
 the canvas. As Heinrich is the man of the bell 
 that is never to be cast, so is Kramer the man 
 of the picture forever unpainted; but here the 
 limit to a further comparison between the two 
 seems to be set, for Kramer's manfully conscious 
 persistence, even though it does not triumph, is a 
 far more creditable form of endeavor than Hein- 
 rich 's hysterical chase after phantoms. 
 
 Kramer is concisely described by his daugh- 
 ter Michalina : " Father is terribly honest." As 
 Kramer belongs to the painters who heed not 
 Goethe's caution, "Bilde Kunstler, rede nicht!" 
 and has a pedagogue's habit of dwelling on his 
 convictions, we learn from his own lips that unlike 
 the moonstruck bell-founder he puts the main 
 stress on duty: " der Mann mufi Pflichten erken- 
 nen, kor'n 6>." He invests this maxima regula of 
 his conduct with the emphasis of frequent reit- 
 eration. So he says to his disciple Lachmann: 
 " Always work, work, Lachmann. We Ve got to 
 work, you know, Lachmann. Else we molder
 
 HAUPTMANN 205 
 
 alive. Just look at such a life, how such a man 
 works, such a Bocklin. That leads to something, 
 there 's something to show for that. Not only 
 what he paints; the whole fellow. Work, you 
 know, is life, Lachmann." 
 
 Michael Kramer has been called sib to Master 
 Heinrich and Colleague Crampton, but that the 
 kinship is not very close has also been stated. 
 True, he belongs to a type that has necessarily 
 the greatest fascination for a man like Haupt- 
 mann, who is in love with his art, desperately in 
 love, as we sometimes say, or better, as we should 
 always say, sacredly in love with it. He typifies 
 the incompleted, fractional, or merely potential 
 artist der unganze Kunstler, I should say in 
 German. But this man's failure has lost its sting. 
 A life long he has striven without winning the 
 prize, yet his loyalty has been rewarded. That 
 divine spark which alone can engender the truly 
 great in art is missing from his breast ; but for 
 the lack he is compensated by the stirrings of a 
 serious and sober idealism. He is an unswerv- 
 ing advocate of the Joy of Working, and that 
 makes him a great teacher. Whoever comes to 
 him as a willing pupil is mysteriously trans- 
 formed. " As a beggarly little fellow he arrives,"
 
 206 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 says Lachmann, " and then suddenly receives the 
 accolade." 
 
 It is clear that the tragic pathos in Kramer's 
 fate cannot be grounded in his misfortune that 
 as an artist he does not come up to his ideals. 
 We have to look for it somewhere else. That 
 summum bonum of the artist natural genius 
 which the parent lacks, was given to the lucky 
 child. If the son became the fulfillment of the 
 father, then all was well. " Not I, thought I to 
 myself, but you, you perhaps." Or, quite at the 
 end, " I was the husk ; there lies the kernel." And 
 now having to see how the lazy rascal seals his 
 conscience hermetically against father, mother, 
 sister, and against every protest of his own artist 
 nature, miserably frittering away his genius as a 
 common pothouse loafer, is not the cruel shame 
 of it enough to eat away the father's heart ? That, 
 then, is his tragedy. Not enough that fate has 
 twice forced Michael Kramer to lay his artist's 
 ambition in the grave; he must also say of the 
 human being which is the dearest to him in the 
 world, the dearest because Michael bows before 
 his son's full-orbed genius as though it were the 
 noblest part of his own self : " There is n't a good 
 fiber in him. The boy is worm-eaten at the core.
 
 HAUPTMANN 207 
 
 A bad fellow. A low fellow." The history of art 
 teaches that by some odd perversity genius some- 
 times travels in the same yoke with moral turpi- 
 tude. Benvenuto Cellini was as eminent a black- 
 guard and desperado as he was a carver and 
 chaser ; Master Veit Stoss was a notorious forger, 
 branded as such by the public executioner. Yet 
 though the secrets of the "split personality" of 
 those men are not of necessary concern for us, 
 we do expect some explanation for the natural 
 wickedness of a leading character in a modern 
 play of the realistic-psychological sort. Knowing 
 that the author is fully informed regarding the pro- 
 venience of his people and the aetiology of their 
 physical and mental conditions, we confidently 
 turn to him for enlightenment; but before the 
 enigma of Arnold Kramer's character the most 
 discerning reader stands in utter perplexity. 
 
 Morally he resembles in no respect either of his 
 parents. His physical ugliness he has inherited 
 from his father a lean, lanky frame, lopsided shoul- 
 ders, and a slightly humped back might, at a 
 pinch, account for Arnold's crabbedness ; it offers 
 no fit explanation for his boundless depravity. 
 Possibly Hauptmann felt that under the circum- 
 stances he owed it to his hearers to describe this
 
 208 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 freak of nature all the more minutely; he has 
 decidedly overdone the thing, and yet it cannot 
 be said that we learn more and more of young 
 Kramer's character as the play progresses. In the 
 first act, in his behavior towards his mother, he 
 shows himself a brazen-faced, cowardly liar. The 
 second act unrolls the character portrait of the 
 father ; no new light is shed on the extant picture 
 of the son. And his physiognomy is so fixed that 
 the third act, too, does not in any essential way 
 alter its aspect. Nay, even when in the last act 
 we see him safely coffined and hear the touching 
 obituary delivered by the agonized father, we 
 are in danger of forgetting the de mortuis nil 
 nisi bonum. For Arnold Kramer is to the bitter 
 end an incorrigible profligate ; and the most that 
 could be said in his favor would be in the nature 
 of the cow-boy's epitaph, " He was a mighty bad 
 fellow in some ways, but then he was worse in 
 others." In lieu of a real dramatic plot, a thin 
 thread of incident binds together in the four 
 acts of Michael Kramer the final chapter in 
 the wasted life of Kramer junior. Arnold is 
 enamored of a wayward damsel, who will none 
 of him. Exasperated beyond endurance by a 
 lucky rival, he threatens the latter's life. The
 
 HAUPTMANN 209 
 
 revolver is snatched from his hand; then Arnold 
 runs away and drowns himself. When all is said, 
 the unfortunate fact remains that young Kramer 
 is the weirdly true representative of a species of 
 degenerates who " happen " in well-regulated, nay 
 by some irony of fate even in the " best " families. 
 But I doubt sincerely whether the best possible 
 performance of this play and I believe I have 
 seen just that helps us to a deeper understand- 
 ing of the type. 
 
 Architecturally Michael Kramer relapses from 
 the greater structural consistency of Fuhrmann 
 HenscheL The action is pushed forward jerkily 
 over the insipid first act to the most telling part of 
 the play; then after the appalling interview be- 
 tween father and son in which the second act ends, 
 it sinks to the level of hopeless banality in the 
 third act. With Arnold out of the way, a higher 
 plane is reached in the fourth act, which is cast in 
 a sort of disguised soliloquy. Lachmann is pres- 
 ent on the scene, but plays no more active part 
 than the interlocutor in a minstrel troupe. The 
 thoughts uttered by Michael have a powerful, 
 human charm, without, however, being either very 
 new or remarkably profound. Wealth of ideas is 
 certainly not a strong point of Hauptmann's art.
 
 210 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 From this opinion we are not converted by the 
 " thieves-comedy " Der Biberpelz (" The Beaver 
 Coat") (1893) an d its sequel or, better, companion 
 piece, Der rote Hahn (" The Red Cock") (1901), 
 both strict milieu plays and, therefore, somewhat 
 in the same relation to Schluck und Jau as, say 
 Die Weber to Hannele. Remarkable in both, par- 
 ticularly in " The Beaver Coat," is the sure seizure 
 of the externals. The atmosphere of a particular 
 locality, situated this time not in the author's home 
 district but " somewhere in the vicinity of Berlin," 
 is reproduced with a startling fidelity. Given 
 such a performance as that in the Deutsches 
 Theater at Berlin, where the intentions of the 
 author are carried out under his personal super- 
 vision and with careful attention to the smallest 
 detail, the illusion is well-nigh complete. Der 
 Biberpelz has been compared by nearly all the 
 critics to Heinrich von Kleist's Der zerbrochene 
 Krug, one of the few great comedies of which the 
 Germans may boast. I confess that beyond the 
 fact that in both plays the plot is enacted in a 
 court room, I can see no good reason for drawing 
 an analogy. The character of the judge in both 
 cases deviates widely from the accepted pattern, 
 but Kleist's Judge Adam is an old rake and
 
 HAUPTMANN 2 1 1 
 
 arrant knave, a veritable stage villain, whereas 
 Amtsvorsteher von Wehrhahn measures up to a 
 fair enough moral standard. Moreover, in the 
 older comedy the judge is the central figure, which 
 is not the case in the newer. That distinction 
 belongs to the washerwoman Wolff, a most inter- 
 esting, double-dyed malefactress who commits her 
 villainies under the very nose of the incredibly 
 stupid magistrate and even gathers in official com- 
 mendation from that innocent. Wehrhahn, though 
 he occupies the second place, is drawn with infi- 
 nite care, and while the remaining ten persons are 
 only subsidiary, tireless and most successful labor 
 has been spent on their characterization also ; they 
 all seem drawn direct from living models. 
 
 The action this time is rather more involute 
 than we are accustomed to find it in Hauptmann's 
 work, because the plot consists in a game of hide 
 and seek. Still, of a story there is not much to 
 tell. In the year 1887, during the Septennats- 
 kampf which turned on the peace strength of the 
 army, the new Amtsvorsteher, or district judge, 
 devotes the greater part of his energies to ferreting 
 out and harassing those " internal enemies " who 
 foment the war against the conserving forces of 
 the fatherland. He cultivates a keen scent for
 
 212 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 political offenders, to the great detriment of his 
 efficiency as a magistrate. At this time a number 
 of crimes against property are committed in the 
 town. Frau Wolff, the chief culprit, in league 
 with poachers and "fences," conducts a thriving 
 business in contraband. One evening in company 
 with her husband she steals a cord of firewood 
 from the premises of a well-to-do citizen by the 
 name of Kriiger. On the following day the victim 
 reports the theft, but Baron Wehrhahn does not 
 show very deep interest in the affair, for just then 
 he is on the trail of a case of leze majesty which 
 absorbs him much more than the affair in hand. 
 Kriiger is not in his good books, anyway, as he 
 has the reputation of being a socialist. At the 
 present time he is in particularly bad odor on 
 account of a suspicious inmate of his house, a 
 Dr. Fleischer, who by the way is an absolutely 
 harmless scholar seeking rest and health in the 
 suburban quiet. The irascible old Kriiger, whose 
 temper explodes under the overbearance and pry- 
 ing inquisitiveness of the magistrate, flares up 
 and roars out his anger at Baron Wehrhahn, the 
 Baron roars in return, and the thieves go scot free. 
 Later, Frau Wolff executes an order of her patron 
 Wulkow for Kriiger's fur overcoat and pockets
 
 HAUPTMANN 2 1 3 
 
 the handsome fee of fifty-nine thalers for the 
 job. The third act in no way advances the action, 
 but is devoted almost wholly to character treat- 
 ment. The character of Frau Wolff is lighted up 
 by a number of sympathetic touches, notably her 
 love of children and motherliness towards the 
 benevolent Dr. Fleischer. But her vicious traits 
 also come out more strongly than ever before, 
 above all, her perfect art of dissimulation. Nothing 
 could appear more sincere than her indignation at 
 the light-fingered gentry, who should be cast out 
 neck and crop, she says, else " they '11 steal the 
 very roof from over one's head." The humor, we 
 see, is all in the situation, not in the characters 
 that are set off by it. A character like that of the 
 Wolff woman is too repugnant to elicit laughter 
 by itself. There is an analogy between the fourth 
 and the second acts strong enough to make the 
 play a little tedious towards the end in any render- 
 ing that is below the highest standard. In the 
 fourth act the sagacious Wehrhahn presides in 
 his office to receive information about the stolen 
 fur, but again his thoughts are preoccupied with 
 his imagined " sacred duty " to persecute with fire 
 and sword the enemies of state and society. Adolf 
 Bartels, the author of a book on Hauptmann, is
 
 214 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 right in finding fault with Wehrhahn's incompre- 
 hensible stupidity. For one reason or another all 
 parties needed for a full investigation are on the 
 spot, the plaintiff, the thief, the receiver of the 
 stolen object, and an unimpeachable witness who 
 has a clew to the whereabouts of the corpus delicti. 
 The truth lies so close that this Prussian Solomon 
 could not help rubbing his nose against it if he 
 did not prefer to turn that useful organ aside and 
 poke it into things that concern him not The 
 officialdom of modern Prussia is not free from its 
 measure of human frailty; its most obvious fault 
 is the Strebertum, that repulsive habit of keeping 
 the eye peeled for the higher opportunity. This 
 official toadyism Hauptmann undoubtedly meant 
 to satirize in the figure of Wehrhahn, but he did 
 so at too great a sacrifice of truth. Wehrhahn is 
 not a sample of the Prussian police or judiciary, 
 but its caricature. Anybody who has the slightest 
 acquaintance with this highly efficient branch of 
 the Prussian government will subscribe to Bartels' 
 assertion that in a suburb of Berlin a blockhead 
 like Wehrhahn could not hold his position for 
 a single month; yet we find that gentleman in 
 the undisturbed enjoyment of his emoluments a 
 dozen years later.
 
 HAUPTMANN 215 
 
 Der rote Hahn ("The Red Cock") 1 (1901) is 
 labeled a " tragi-comedy in four acts." The 
 German repertory was practically without any 
 specimens of this class of play when Friedrich 
 Hebbel wrote "A Tragedy in Sicily" (1845). ^ n 
 Hebbel's rather insignificant play the tragi-comic 
 element hinges on the notion of the guardians 
 of law and order themselves turning criminals 
 and then conspiring to make an innocent man 
 surfer the penalty for the foul murder which they 
 have committed. Hauptmann, we have seen, was 
 several times attracted by tragi-comic motives: 
 "In Schluck und Jau the victim is first roughly 
 handled by fate and then mocked into the bar- 
 gain. In Colleague Crampton, who first incurs 
 and next by a stroke of luck escapes the conse- 
 quences of his folly, we have likewise a tragi- 
 comic hero. In Der Biberpelz a tragi-comic spec- 
 tacle was furnished by the systematic defeat of 
 justice through its appointed preservers. Of this 
 genus Der rote Hahn is another specimen. It 
 furnishes a continuation to Der Biberpelz, or rather 
 another series of scenes culled from the same 
 precincts. 
 
 1 In German, "jemandem den roten Hahn aufs Dach setzen " means 
 " to set a person's house on fire." The play in English might be named 
 " The Fire Bugs."
 
 216 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Hauptmann in his infatuation with the princi- 
 pal characters of Der Biberpelz may have felt 
 that he had not yet done them full justice or 
 made the most of them. So he put them once 
 more into dramatic commission. True children 
 of Hauptmann that they are, time has wrought 
 no perceptible change in them. Von Wehrhahn 
 is still Amtsvorsteher, although his breast is now 
 adorned with a badge of distinction; he is the 
 same sturdy patriot as of old, still heart and 
 soul in high politics, and as hot as ever after the 
 social-democratic vermin. The admirable " Mutter 
 Wolffen," too, is still at her post, alert and active 
 in spite of her sixty years. Having buried her 
 first husband, she has joined her fortunes to those 
 of one Fielitz, who follows the double calling of a 
 shoemaker and a police spy. His latter employ- 
 ment accounts for the entente cordiale which Wehr- 
 hahn keeps up with the noble couple. The theme 
 and the groundwork of the tragi-comedy are the 
 same as in its preceding companion piece. Again 
 justice miscarries through the bungling political 
 zeal of the incompetent Wehrhahn and the arch- 
 knavery of Madame Wolff-Fielitz. While the 
 magisterial eye is riveted on die tidchsten Jiiter 
 der Nation, its falcon glances are withdrawn
 
 HAUPTMANN 2 1 7 
 
 from the criminal doings in the immediate sur- 
 roundings. Several fires have occurred, and it is 
 an open secret that they have been laid by the 
 owners for the sake of the insurance money. On 
 the strength of a remark dropped by her son-in- 
 law regarding the value of the Fielitz property 
 as a site for a fine large house, Mother Fielitz 
 has made up her mind to have a little fire of 
 her own and works on and nags her faint-hearted 
 husband till he consents to aid and abet the 
 lucrative scheme. The couple contrive to be 
 away from home on the day when the fire breaks 
 out; the property is burnt to the ground (acts 
 i and ii). The third act passes in the official quar- 
 ters of Wehrhahn, who is in the act of examining 
 a number of witnesses with reference to the fire. 
 As usual his scent is sidetracked. The Fielitzes 
 have not the least difficulty in hoodwinking him, 
 and make him take up with eagerness the sug- 
 gestion that the fire was the revenge of some polit- 
 ical suspect against whom Fielitz had rendered 
 service. A stronger clew, however, points to an 
 imbecile lad whose father, although he happens 
 to be in a position to indicate the guilty persons, 
 is prevented by Wehrhahn from speaking his 
 mind ; the proceedings in the court room resemble
 
 218 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 strongly those in Der Biberpelz. Hauptmann is 
 apparently as much in love with the anomalous 
 situation as a painter who repeatedly treats the 
 same object In the fourth act Mother Fielitz has 
 attained her purpose, the new house is under 
 roof, and after the German custom the event 
 is celebrated with the so-called Richtschmaus. 
 Again the heroine is shown from a better, human 
 side, as was the case in the third act of Der 
 Biberpelz. By way of a quasi rational sanction 
 of her conduct she is permitted to set forth at 
 some length her pessimistic world-view. Her 
 death from heart failure, however surprising it 
 must be to her physician as well as to the audi- 
 ence, puts an effectual though abrupt stop to 
 the vivid scenes which of themselves tend to no 
 truly dramatic close. 
 
 The conclusions drawn from the earlier works 
 of the famous Silesian that he lacks keen pene- 
 tration and cannot contribute to the world's stock 
 of ideas are in no wise shaken by his latest 
 productions. 
 
 Der arme Heinrich ("Poor Heinrich ") (1902) 
 deals with a German legend well known to Eng- 
 lish readers through " The Golden Legend " of 
 Longfellow.
 
 HAUPTMANN 219 
 
 This time Hauptmann makes a vigorous at- 
 tempt to expound in dramatic form the inner 
 development of a human soul ; but he succeeds 
 only so far as he follows the lines laid down 
 by his celebrated predecessor, Hartmann von 
 Aue. 
 
 Hauptmann has chosen as a suitable vehicle of 
 the romantic tale the iambic pentameter and has 
 manifested in the somewhat conventional way, 
 whereby the subject-matter is worked up in the 
 five acts, a closer observance of the established 
 routine. At first we find ourselves at the home 
 of Gottfried, a tenant of the noble Count Hein- 
 rich von Aue. We make the acquaintance of 
 the worthy farmer and his goodwife, and of their 
 daughter Ottegebe, a girl just blooming into 
 womanhood. Here Heinrich has decided to hide 
 from the world the shameful malady with which, 
 as a punishment for too great pride, he knows 
 himself to be stricken. To the most loyal among 
 his retainers, his kinsman Sir Hartmann von 
 Aue, 1 Heinrich reveals his affliction in a scene 
 of extraordinary dramatic power; Ottegebe has 
 
 1 He is brought into the play by way of poetical tribute to the great 
 mediaeval epicist of that name who, in the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century, wrote the novel in rimes entitled Der arme Heinrich upon which 
 Hauptmann's work is based.
 
 220 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 overheard him and, rushing forward in an ecstasy 
 in which religious fervor and earthly love are 
 insolubly welded, exclaims as she covers Hein- 
 rich's hands with frantic kisses : 
 
 " Lord ! my dear Lord ! think of the Lamb divine ! 
 I know I will it I can bear the sins. 
 I Ve promised it ! And thou shalt be redeemed." 
 
 The "little wife," so Ottegebe has formerly 
 been called in jest by Heinrich, has been told 
 that there lives a great surgeon at Salerno who 
 can cure lepers with the heart's blood of a pure 
 maiden. She now longs to sacrifice her life in 
 order that her beloved master may be freed from 
 his curse. In Heinrich, meanwhile, the will to 
 live wages a formidable combat with his manly 
 conscience. He has left human habitations and 
 lives like a brute in fields and woods. The hide- 
 ous ravages of the disease, added to his savage 
 neglect of his person, have made him terrible 
 and loathsome to behold. But Ottegebe, nothing 
 daunted, remains firm in her resolution. Spurned 
 and insulted by Heinrich, she falls into melan- 
 choly and physical decline. Her parents confide 
 her to the care of a pious hermit. Here Heinrich, 
 at last succumbing to the demoralizing effect of
 
 HAUPTMANN 221 
 
 his misery, seeks her out, ready to follow whither- 
 soever she lead. 
 
 Heinrich. Maid, thou art mine ! 
 
 Ottegebe. I am the Lord's. No, no. 
 
 Woe me ! Ah come ! What say' st thou? 
 
 Heinrich. For to me 
 
 Is measured out but so much life, no more, 
 As grants the hollow of thy blessed hand. 
 
 The fifth act takes place in Heinrich's ancestral 
 castle, where preparations are made by Hart- 
 mann for a joyous reception. And now Heinrich 
 returns, himself again in mind and body. He 
 has been cured of the plague, not through the 
 vicarious self-immolation of Ottegebe, but, on the 
 contrary, just because in the supreme moment 
 he found it in him to rise above his love of self, 
 to prevent the sacrifice, and to accept his fate as 
 an immutable decree of Providence. With this 
 hard-earned submission to the power of God, 
 Heinrich Hauptmann's as well as Hartmann's 
 has won his deliverance from the judgment. 
 And the end, too, is the same in both versions. 
 Hartmann von Aue, in bold defiance of the strong 
 caste spirit which dominates in the literature of 
 the age of chivalry, marries Heinrich to his yeo- 
 man's daughter. In the play, also, the wedding
 
 222 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 bells are sounded for the regenerate knight and 
 his virgin redeemer. The legendary character of 
 Ottegebe is not entirely preserved by Haupt- 
 mann. As in Hannele, he does not hesitate to 
 contaminate the young girl's saintliness with an 
 erotic element, and by a mystic touch each of the 
 conflicting emotions gains weight from the other. 
 It may be questioned whether the poet has done 
 wisely to superadd to the heavenly heroism and 
 the sentimental love a suggestion of incipient 
 sex-life. Der arme Heinrich has been called a 
 mystery play of love ; but in order that Ottegebe's 
 pure soul should mirror forth, together with the 
 love of God, the saving grace of human affection, 
 it was hardly necessary that she should have 
 been depicted as a young flagellant vigorously 
 plying the scourge on her body to suppress 
 satanic temptations. True it is that Hauptmann 
 has been able perfectly to reconcile this prema- 
 ture manifestation of sensuality with absolute 
 modesty and saintly chastity. Nevertheless the 
 eternally-and-spiritually-feminine by which Hein- 
 rich von Aue was drawn onward to a saving 
 conversion did not require the admixture of 
 physiological motives. But it may be that it 
 has heightened the "secessionist" nimbus which
 
 HAUPTMANN 223 
 
 hovers round Ottegebe and a few other women in 
 Hauptmann's plays, notably the Princess Sidsilill 
 in Schluck und Jau. 
 
 Still another difference between the two ver- 
 sions deserves to be noted. In the Middle- High- 
 German story the horrors of the miselsuht with 
 which the hero is afflicted are nowhere described 
 with vivid detail. It is enough that the misery 
 to which Heinrich is reduced is contrasted in 
 a general way with his rank and wealth. It 
 remained for Gerhart Hauptmann, after the mod- 
 erns had bodied forth on the stage with such 
 great gusto a variety of inherited diseases, to 
 present a true or, at any rate, a sickening stage- 
 view of leprosy. So, as in Hannele, the crass 
 realism of one portion of the play contrasts with 
 the poetic romanticism of the other; the conflict 
 seems far greater, as the metrical uniformity of 
 the plan makes no allowance for the discrepancy 
 and the work is pitched to a high average level 
 of poetic dignity. Would not the author have 
 done better to let us behold the physical misery 
 of Heinrich through a veil, as it were, instead 
 of outraging our sensibilities by uncalled-for 
 explicitness ? His occasional independence of 
 naturalism has already been pointed out in this
 
 224 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 chapter; and in the present instance one is led 
 to regret that Heinrich is not treated with as 
 much reserve as Ottegebe. Although Der arme 
 Heinrich contains many single passages aglow 
 with wondrous poetic beauty, yet it is not, as a 
 whole, up to the standard of Hauptmann's chief 
 poetic efforts. 
 
 Hauptmann has named his latest five-act play, 
 Rose Bernd (1903), a Schauspiel; a designation 
 which under the customary classification per- 
 tains to a serious play with a tragic tendency but 
 a non-fatal ending. The difference, if it could 
 be applied to Rose Bernd, would be at most 
 purely superficial. The name, in fact, does not 
 signify. 1 
 
 Rose Bernd is a tragedy in every sense 
 except that the heroine is withdrawn from our 
 view this side of her last extremity. Not that 
 the author shrank from the issue. Were we to 
 behold Rose the infanticide on her way to the 
 place of execution, or were we harrowed by her 
 ravings in the violent ward of a madhouse, the 
 tragedy would not be more complete than it is. 
 
 1 Hauptmann, with many modern dramatists, uses great freedom 
 in the descriptive subtitles of his plays. Die Weber he calls a Schau- 
 spiel, Vor Sonnenaufgang a soziales Drama, Einsame Menschen simply 
 a Drama, etc.
 
 HAUPTMANN 225 
 
 For the exhibition of Rose's soul-life for which 
 alone the author had care, the above-mentioned 
 exciting finales are unnecessary. And perhaps 
 Hauptmann has never before rounded out the 
 portrait of a human soul in such surely drawn 
 lines; certainly not since Fuhrmann HenscJuL 
 Like Die Weber, Hannele, Michael Kramer, in 
 fact, like all Hauptmann's plays, Rose Bernd is 
 an outflow of his deep human commiseration. 
 
 The story is as sad as it is short and common. 
 Flamm, mayor of the village, falls in love with 
 his invalid wife's helper, a buxom, fine-looking, 
 joyous-hearted peasant girl. Accidentally the 
 relations between master and servant are dis- 
 covered by Streckmann, a vain, unscrupulous 
 woman-hunter, who puts the usual price on his 
 silence. The girl refusing to comply is hounded 
 by him and made to surfer unspeakably. Finally 
 she is entrapped and outraged. Even then the 
 persecution does not cease. Rose's father sues 
 the scoundrel for slandering his daughter's char- 
 acter. Rose called upon to testify against Streck- 
 mann is ashamed to tell the truth and makes a 
 false oath. Flamm, believing in Rose's bad con- 
 duct with other men, generously acquits himself 
 of the blame for her ruin ; his wife, who has
 
 226 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 nobly stood by Rose, now also weakens in her 
 sympathy. At last Rose Bernd breaks down 
 under the terrible strain of so many sorrows. In 
 a lonely field she gives birth to a child which 
 in her frenzied anguish she strangles. Then she 
 is arrested. At this point the play leaves off; 
 wisely, for the verdict of legal justice would 
 necessarily carry a dissonance into our mood, 
 attuned as nearly to pure compassion as that of 
 Rose's deeply devout betrothed from whom the 
 revelation of her deed wrings the pitying final 
 words of the play : Das Madel was mufi die 
 gelitten han ! (" The lass how she must have 
 suffered!") 
 
 However much one is impressed by this last 
 effort of Hauptmann, yet it is not the work of 
 transcendent dramatic merit which his countless 
 admirers have been expecting from him year 
 after year, to be disappointed again and again. 
 The excellences of Hauptmann's later plays do 
 not wholly compensate for certain inherent de- 
 fects which make it look as though he were 
 debarred by his make-up from the achievement 
 of unqualifiedly great works. He is not destined, 
 apparently, to be the Messiah of the German 
 stage.
 
 HAUPTMANN 227 
 
 Hauptmann's literary characteristics have been 
 fully treated in the beginning of this chapter; it 
 is therefore not necessary to revert to a discus- 
 sion either of his powers or of his failings. All 
 in all, though disinclined to join in the song of 
 boundless praise that is raised to Gerhart Haupt- 
 mann by a many-voiced and ever-swelling chorus, 
 we gladly honor him in spite of his limitations as 
 one of the greatest poets of his time and country. 
 Lest our position towards his work should have 
 seemed at all lacking in the reverence justly due 
 to a writer of his rank and sincerity, we want to 
 repeat the belief, set forth in an early portion of 
 this chapter, that Hauptmann in cultivating the 
 drama to the exclusion of every other literary 
 form lets the richest acres of his genius lie fal- 
 low, and we plead, in extenuation of the critical 
 attitude taken, a certain resentful sense of disap- 
 pointment. Nietzsche once said of Wagner : " I 
 believe it often happens that artists do not real- 
 ize what they are best able to do because they 
 are too vain." One cannot help pointing the 
 aphorism at Hauptmann. He is at his happiest 
 when letting his emotional nature break out into 
 poetic strains. He could be the prince among 
 modern lyrists if he would. That is why we
 
 228 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 clamor for songs from him he gives us nothing 
 but dramas. 
 
 On the other hand, if from the world of hopes 
 and ideals we turn our eyes to that of results and 
 realities, we may well be proud of Gerhart Haupt- 
 mann. At the age of forty-two he has to his 
 credit an imposing array of performances. His 
 artistic creativeness is not past its heyday. A 
 richer development may yet lie before him: a 
 growth in character, intellect, and artistic ability. 
 We have much reason to be grateful to him for 
 what he has already given ; and since ideal hopes 
 will not be suppressed, who shall keep us from 
 looking for still greater gifts ? 
 
 [Hauptmann's latest play, Elga, appeared after the plates of 
 this volume were ready for the press, so that it could not be 
 included in the review.]
 
 MODERN 
 GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 
 
 229
 
 WOMEN WRITERS OF THE NINE- 
 TEENTH CENTURY 
 
 It is the prevailing practice of historians of Ger- 
 man literature to maintain a somewhat rigid sepa- 
 ration of sexes, in their classification of writers. 
 There is thus some precedent for the not alto- 
 gether philosophic procedure of the present paper, 
 in segregating a number of writers by virtue of 
 their sex for a separate critical treatment. In 
 respect to quantity, the contribution made by 
 women in the field of German letters in the nine- 
 teenth century is sufficiently enormous to jus- 
 tify such a segregation. And there is a certain 
 continuity of development running through the 
 whole of it which makes it well worth while to 
 consider the Frauenschriftstellerei of the century 
 by itself. 
 
 The general critical judgment passed upon the 
 great bulk of it will not fall wide of this verdict : 
 A startling absence of freshness and originality, 
 counterbalanced in a measure by a great imitative 
 faculty. Naturally we wonder where the cause 
 
 of the limitation may lie. In Germany it may 
 
 231
 
 232 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 be that absorption in domestic interests has been 
 a chief cause for that fatal want of outlook and 
 that seeming incapacity for the fullest self-expres- 
 sion which exclude the greater part of feminine 
 fiction from the legitimate domain of letters. But 
 are the arrested development of the artistic im- 
 pulse and the atrophy of the higher intellectual 
 powers really to be held alone responsible for 
 the defective literary performance of the German 
 woman ? A glance at the writers of other coun- 
 tries gives rise to doubt. In England, George 
 Eliot has remained the only great novelist. 
 George Sand has been without a successor in 
 France. And in the United States, where a well- 
 organized woman-worship has fostered a greater 
 independence, and where opportunities for educa- 
 tion have certainly been ample, not a single work 
 of art of the grander stamp has to this day 
 emanated from woman. Whether, then, there 
 be any nature-ordained limitations which deny 
 to woman the gift of truly creative achievement 
 is a matter regarding which, at the outset of 
 this review, we may ask permission to keep our 
 judgment in suspense. 
 
 The history of the literary activity of the Ger- 
 man woman prior to the nineteenth century, when
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 233 
 
 she made her official bow in polite literature, can 
 be gathered only by indirection, namely, by ascer- 
 taining the extent of her influence over literary 
 art. Beyond a doubt there always has existed, 
 under some guise or other, a measure of feminine 
 control over letters. For instance, in both classic 
 periods women were a dominant force: Minne- 
 dienst (the " service of the lady") is the mainspring 
 of nearly all German lyrics to the end of the thir- 
 teenth century; and even the great epic writers 
 of the Hohenstaufen era are exponents of the 
 chivalric code of love ; notably does Tristan und 
 Isolde breathe its spirit. 
 
 Sterner and less romantic times put an end 
 to this feminine influence of the golden age. It 
 reappeared in a more rational form in the course 
 of the eighteenth century. Womankind has an 
 unassailable title to our gratitude because of the 
 fact that the discreet censorship which imposed 
 upon the maturer works of our classic writers 
 their wonderful artistic reserve lay in the hands 
 of women. The feminine influence it is that 
 lay also at the root of ideal conceptions like Iphi- 
 genie, Leonore, Dorothea, Johanna. The women 
 of Weimar and Jena, and elsewhere too, repre- 
 sented an extraordinarily fine culture of mind and
 
 234 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 taste. The copious volumes of correspondence 
 of the closing eighteenth and the opening nine- 
 teenth century, which are among the most gen- 
 uine human documents of times intellectually so 
 much alive, disprove finally the self-satisfied alle- 
 gation that the credit for the advanced literary 
 culture of women belongs to the declining nine- 
 teenth century, and is mainly due to America. 
 
 But literary culture is not necessarily latent 
 genius. 
 
 The imitative character of feminine authorship 
 to which reference was made above is attested 
 by the rush of feminine contributions to every 
 variety of fiction, once its era has been fully 
 ushered in. The misery of the woman of letters 
 dearly loves company. 
 
 The performances of the female satellites of 
 the classic writers need not be taken up in this 
 place. A catalogue of empty names and titles 
 would be the only yield. None of them has left 
 an ineffaceable impression. Even the one hun- 
 dred and twenty-five volumes of fiction by Hen- 
 riette Hanke who remembers the name ? 
 are incased in solid, impenetrable oblivion. Per- 
 chance a passable poem here and there by Luise 
 Brachmann, who leans hard upon the manly
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 235 
 
 shoulders of Schiller, survives. Suffice it to say, 
 in order to gain a starting point, that about 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century feminine 
 fiction came into vogue. Almost immediately it 
 divided into two sorts, between which we have to 
 distinguish to this day. Crudely we may desig- 
 nate these classes as mere amusement novels and 
 novels with a purpose, a purpose which may be 
 purely artistic, but is, as a rule, educational. It 
 cannot, of course, be said that books of the former 
 class disclaim all ethical tendency whatever. On 
 the contrary, the authors champion the accepted 
 maxims of respectable society and prepare them 
 in usum Delphini or rather Delphinas, since they 
 purvey them to the Backfisch or h'ohere Tochter, 
 the "young person" of Germany. It is fiction of 
 this sort that has attached a rather odious sense 
 to the word Frauenchriftstellerei. Not, indeed, 
 on any moral grounds. For the somewhat sugary 
 morality of the authoress of this class is unim- 
 peachable, and the most exacting Sunday-school 
 superintendent will cheerfully testify to the 
 soundness of her religious convictions. Nor is 
 a theory of life lacking, either. It conforms to 
 that benedictory optimism of which Mr. Howells 
 claims to have discovered the ordinary cause
 
 236 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 in an uncommonly well-cooked dinner. Not a 
 drop of bitterness ever makes its way from 
 such a gentle heart to the pen. Bad people, to 
 be sure, there be, presumably for the sake of 
 variety in the color scheme of the universe, and 
 things do have a way of sometimes going wrong. 
 But the lady writer's unalterable forgivingness 
 wears out the most unremitting persecutions of 
 a hounding fate ; and to have retribution meted 
 out to him by this sweet soul, the villain must 
 indulge in veritable antics of wickedness. She 
 much more enjoys praying for him, and he, like 
 Editha's improbable burglar, likes to have himself 
 occasionally converted, for a spell. Yet one can 
 ill afford simply to brush aside these " like-mother- 
 used-to-make " novels, because a very large por- 
 tion of our contemporary fiction, here as well as 
 in Germany, is concocted after the same recipe, 
 from the same mush and milk, and with the same 
 well-greased kitchen utensils. Moreover, it is 
 unfortunately to this class of books that Ameri- 
 cans owe their supposed knowledge of the Ger- 
 man woman. Externally she consists mainly of 
 a pair of soulful blue eyes, a brace of uncommonly 
 heavy flaxen tresses, a sweet smile, and a Gret- 
 chen bag. Her intellectual horizon is marked out
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 237 
 
 by her accomplishments. She reads and recites 
 Schiller and the expurgated Heine over her 
 fine embroidery ; she sings and plays Schu- 
 bert, Mendelssohn, and a family sort of Schu- 
 mann ; it remains to say that she knows French 
 and English and is inordinately fond of the ap- 
 proved varieties of flowers. She is the famed 
 angelic maid, the clinging damsel without a back- 
 bone whom, according to Helene Bohlau, the Ger- 
 man loves so dearly. According to that writer 
 she meets the world with naively astonished eyes, 
 and on the whole manages to have an easy time 
 of it, for a thousand knights-errant are dying to 
 discover her and to make her make them happy. 
 
 Yet in fairness to the Germans it must be said 
 that women of a taller mental stature and a larger 
 temperamental gamut have long ere yesterday 
 stepped in front of this anaemic doll and cast 
 eclipse upon her; and that as a novel-heroine 
 she is now suffered to smirk and simper on the 
 bookshelves of the penny circulating libraries 
 in her own fatherland, or to be translated into 
 English by Mrs. Caspar Wister. 
 
 Let us first turn our attention to the Tendenz- 
 schrifts teller ei of women writers. Though ex- 
 ceedingly few women have excelled in literature
 
 238 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 by easy mastery of the higher craftsmanship, by 
 that power of intense concentration and seiz- 
 ure of human nature in which the great writer 
 reveals himself, yet many have shown an uncom- 
 mon intellectual force of the aggressive kind. 
 On the whole, it may be averred without undue 
 exaggeration that nearly all women who play 
 a conspicuous role in German letters write in a 
 reformatory frame of mind. And that in a great 
 majority of cases the woman's cause is their cho- 
 sen field of effort goes almost without saying. 
 It is natural, also, that these spirited innovators 
 come to the front mostly in periods of unrest, 
 when fiction becomes the theater of a heated 
 social warfare. At such times the vigilant woman 
 of the pen contrives under cover of literary exer- 
 tions to wrest from the turmoil a fresh morsel 
 of liberty for her sex. This helps explain why 
 even the female adherents of romanticism did not 
 subscribe to the political and religious Toryism 
 into which the movement issued. The emotional 
 Bettina von Arnim exhibits much of the specifi- 
 cally romantic extravagance of sentiment; and in 
 the greatest virtue of romanticism, the capacity 
 for poetic experience, she also excels. Her more 
 than half fictitious " Correspondence of Goethe
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 239 
 
 with a Child " is certainly one of the finest prod- 
 ucts of German romanticism. Yet in many of 
 her political and religious views she is in full 
 accord with " Young Germany." Dies Buck ge- 
 tiort dem Konig (" This Book is for the King ") 
 is a bold manifesto calling attention in a marked 
 manner to the starving condition of the Silesian 
 weavers 1 and blaming a great deal of needless 
 human misery upon bureaucratic quackery. 
 
 The active period of Young Germany ex- 
 tended from the Paris July Revolution (1830) 
 to the outbreak of the German Revolution of 
 1848. The momentous social forces that were 
 enlisted in the onslaught of this school of writers 
 against the castle of conservatism lent a practical 
 significance to the cry for the " emancipation " 
 of woman. The Young Germans, accepting the 
 doctrines of the French socialists, and familiar 
 with the writings of St. Simon and George Sand, 
 which had shed a new light upon the civic rela- 
 tion of the sexes, first set up the audacious de- 
 mand for civil marriage. It reverberates in all 
 keys and modulations through the works of the 
 women of Young Germany, from its sane and 
 clear phrasings by Fanny Lewald to the more 
 
 1 See p. 149 of this volume.
 
 240 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 than indiscreet Utopianisms of the Free Love 
 advocates. For soon not only the sacrament but 
 also the civil institution of marriage was put in 
 doubt ; so that even radicals were frightened back 
 by the meaning with which " emancipation," now 
 the watchword for the final purpose of the femi- 
 nine rebellion, was invested by extremists. We 
 see, then, that towards the middle of the century 
 which has been called a century of democracy, 
 the rising sense of personality permitted the 
 wildest anarchism to run riot within a regenera- 
 tive scheme which was essentially collectivist ; a 
 phenomenon which makes us question whether 
 socialism and individualism are not after all but 
 emanations of one and the same fundamental 
 impulse. 
 
 The uncontrolled vagaries of the fanatical 
 emancipationist did much to alienate general 
 sympathy from the rational aims of more clear- 
 eyed leaders. The " advanced woman " of to-day, 
 were she to study these feminine contributions 
 of the Young German and the subsequent litera- 
 tures, could not fail to be amazed at the modern- 
 ness of the cures for the ailments of society that 
 are advertised. Julie Burow, for example, urges 
 every woman to adopt a trade or a profession for
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 241 
 
 the sake of material independence. And Luise 
 Otto, the founder of the Allgemeiner Deutscher 
 Frauenverein (" General Union of German Wo- 
 men") (1855), even advocates the organization 
 of workingwomen of every grade through labor 
 unions. 
 
 We may roughly classify the propagandist fic- 
 tion of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary 
 period according to the great undercurrents that 
 run through its social philosophy, the collectivist 
 and the individualist; in a third class might be 
 gathered the writings of the opposition, reaction- 
 ary either from conviction or from inertia and 
 indifference. But such a simple classification 
 must confess itself far too crude to do more than 
 draw attention to the most obvious distinctions. 
 
 The contrast between the main forces within 
 the Young German school is tellingly exemplified 
 in Ida Hahn-Hahn and Fanny Lewald. Their 
 lives reach from the beginning of the century 
 to the beginning of the new era in Germany. 
 Fanny Lewald lived from 1811 to 1889. Count- 
 ess Ida Hahn-Hahn was born in 1805 and died 
 in 1880, much too late for the good of her 
 literary fame. She had a most tensely eccentric 
 or Byronesque temperament, as they used to say
 
 242 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 in the days of her prime. The experiences of 
 her childhood, her matrimonial misfortunes, her 
 conversion to Catholicism, her brief novitiate 
 in a convent, and other romantic interludes 
 show her personal career to have been so inti- 
 mately connected with the fate of her heroines 
 that Hahn-Hahn's novels may be considered 
 as links in a long autobiographic chain. From 
 the beginning A us der Gesellschaft ("From 
 the Realm of Society") (1838) she elected 
 German high life as a congenial field, and by 
 vouchsafing her readers the coveted peep into 
 that glittering Vanity Fair she easily attained 
 popularity. In reading Hahn-Hahn you are 
 made to feel distinctly that you belong to the 
 misera plebs. You have bought a ticket that 
 admits to the gallery only, and are now looking 
 down upon the dazzling assembly with all of a 
 plebeian's delight. And as if to show you that 
 your confidence was not misplaced, the noble 
 Countess herself stands at the door below scru- 
 tinizing the arrivals and counting their quarter- 
 ings. No hero passes muster before her unless 
 he is at least a baron and can present himself in 
 a cavalry uniform or in court attire. Commoner 
 and civilian are admitted only upon absolute
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 243 
 
 proof of genius, which for the Countess seems 
 to consist of an indefinite expansiveness. A 
 genius, in Hahn-Hahn's estimation, is one whose 
 soul is capable of " immensity." To everything 
 that is plain, from clothes to character, the lady 
 has an unconquerable aversion. Her faultlessly 
 well-groomed men and her stupendously milli- 
 nered women oscillate between ballroom and bou- 
 doir as the natural poles of mundane existence. 
 Oddly enough, in this painted and perfumed world 
 of the formalities, the most startlingly unconven- 
 tional things continually do happen. The Countess 
 revels in tragedies of the soul as she under- 
 stands them. To us of to-day Hahn-Hahn's peo- 
 ple, fidgeting forever in their heart struggles, 
 seem somewhat like fishes floundering on the 
 hook, and we regard them without any real human 
 pity. But her books have, in spite of their glaring 
 paradoxes, which are aggravated by a want of the 
 higher technical requisites, a certain fascination 
 in that the morbid subjectivity of the hysterical 
 authoress is astoundingly revealed amidst all the 
 gorgeous trappings. By virtue of this frankness, 
 and it alone, she is decidedly modern. Countess 
 Ida Harm-Hahn draws from life and goes to the 
 mirror in quest of models. Heinrich Heine is
 
 244 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 authority for the statement that the German au- 
 thoress writes with only one eye on her page, 
 since the other is fixed on some man. It will 
 be seen that his criticism does not apply to the 
 Countess Hahn-Hahn. Her heroines are all of 
 them Countesses Ida Hahn-Hahn: gushing en- 
 thusiasts, doting but capricious lovers, fanatical 
 devotees. They are drowned in a sea of emo- 
 tional conflicts, and the Countess erects for each 
 of them a tombstone with the epitaph: Genius 
 did it. The modern reader, to be sure, will ex- 
 culpate genius and lay the blame on an impish 
 impulsiveness of temperament. An instance is 
 the fate of " Faustine," the truest reflex of the 
 authoress herself. Faustine tears her bleeding 
 heart from the grasp of her first lover to pass 
 it from hand to hand and finally, for a rest cure, 
 to take it to a nunnery. Her pernicious life 
 philosophy is contained in this rich epigram: 
 " To love is to devote oneself to a single object ; 
 but why should that object always be the same ? " 
 Hahn-Hahn, by the strongly individualistic 
 tendency, foreshadows the Herrenmoral rampant 
 in the literature of to-day. That is to say, she 
 is a prophetess of " emancipation " for which the 
 Young Germans, notably Gutzkow and Laube,
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 245 
 
 were striving; but the enlarged freedom is not 
 offered to the men or women of ordinary caliber, 
 the Vielzuvielen of Nietzsche. No; it is exclu- 
 sively a prerogative of the exceptional person ; 
 or, in Stirner-Nietzschean phraseology, of der 
 Einzige or der Eigene. Only this is Hahn- 
 Hahn's personal note the exceptional man, the 
 great personality, happens regularly to be an 
 aristocrat. 
 
 Over against this unreasoned accentuation of 
 aristocratic egotism may be placed the democratic 
 altruism of Fanny Lewald. The sober qualities 
 which make this bourgeoise of Jewish extraction 
 a potent educational factor in the Frauenbewe- 
 gung (woman movement), render her distinctly 
 unromantic and, it must be confessed, a trifle 
 prosy. The motive power of her convincing elo- 
 quence is not a fiery temperament, but cool logic. 
 She is clear and definite, always temperate, 
 and severely judicial, hence the reforms which 
 she advocates are within the bounds of reason. 
 She ponders the same problems as Ida Hahn- 
 Hahn, but with greater impartiality and depth. 
 The tendency of her contemporaries to exempt 
 the genius from the common moral obligations 
 had a formidable opponent in Fanny Lewald.
 
 246 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 She studied the much-discussed marriage ques- 
 tion in such a fair and sober spirit that her novel 
 Eine Lebensfrage ("A Question of Life") (1845), 
 one of the earliest and most direct literary argu- 
 ments in favor of divorce, commanded general 
 attention and respect. Among the earlier cham- 
 pions of the "new woman," Fanny Lewald de- 
 serves the first place of honor. Her successful 
 practical activities for the advancement of the 
 cause of women were in full accord with her 
 literary work. 
 
 It is only natural that the aims of the radical 
 women should have stricken horror to pious Prot- 
 estant souls like Marie Nathusius, the conserv- 
 ative and orthodox authoress of the Tagebuch 
 eines armen Frauleins (" Diary of a Poor Gentle- 
 woman") (1853). This exquisitely "inward" book 
 breathes wholly the humble spirit of obedience 
 which would not meddle with the affairs of the 
 world, believing them safe enough in the hand of 
 Providence. 
 
 On the Catholic side the projects of Young 
 Germany are viewed with even greater alarm, as, 
 for instance, by Annette von Droste-Hulshoff 
 (1797-1848), the most remarkable woman writer 
 of her generation, and in the judgment of many
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 247 
 
 competent critics the foremost among all German 
 poets of her sex. Droste's real strength, however, 
 does not lie in the defense of her traditional ideals, 
 of which, by the way, she regards George Sand as 
 the arch enemy. On the contrary, the "purpose" 
 in her books, springing from bigotry and a certain 
 religious mysticism, overcasts her artistic clear- 
 ness and is the very feature that forbids unquali- 
 fied admiration. For the self-repression in Droste's 
 works is much more than artistic restraint. The 
 mistiness of the composition makes us conscious 
 of her want of outlook. This limitation is com- 
 pensated in Droste's novels by an uncompromis- 
 ing veracity and rare minuteness of observation, 
 powers which qualified this daughter of the " red 
 soil " of Westphalia to become our first great 
 representative of " regional " art. Still greater 
 is Droste in her lyrics. They are a fascinat- 
 ing blend of rugged strength of character and 
 delicacy of perception, and reveal an amazing 
 nature-sense which knows how to express the 
 personality of the meanest object of nature. In 
 reproducing her sensuous impressions of an en- 
 semble such as a landscape, the poetess calls 
 up in the reader novel experiences of nature, in 
 which respect she may rightly be called an early
 
 248 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 impressionist, a forerunner of such moderns as 
 Gabriele d'Annunzio. 
 
 Likewise averse to the participation of women 
 in public life is another powerful lyrist, the Vien- 
 nese Betty Paoli (1815-1894). Her poetry be- 
 trays much more frankly than Droste's its motive 
 
 power : 
 
 Ich bin nichts waiter als ein Herz, 
 Das viel gelebt und viel gelitten. 
 
 She might have said geliebt instead of gelebt, 
 and come nearer to the truth. In poems full 
 of intense yet rather reflective passion she dis- 
 countenances all feminine ambition ; woman can 
 find her only chance of happiness in love, self- 
 effacing love. Nature has thus circumscribed 
 her lot, but has at the same time endowed her 
 with a power of blissful self-surrender far beyond 
 any of which the coarser-grained organization of 
 man is capable. 
 
 From these serious writers we must now turn 
 aside for a moment to the two most prolific 
 women writers of the entire nineteenth century, 
 writers who manifest an attitude of unruffled 
 placidity towards questions of ethical import, of 
 which stoicism the last secret is stolid indif- 
 ference.
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 249 
 
 Luise Miihlbach (1814-1873) stood quite apart 
 from the triumphs and defeats of Young Ger- 
 many, although she was married to a prominent 
 member of that school. Seldom before the days 
 of our now fortunately expiring craze for " his- 
 torical " romance has the vogue of a writer so 
 far outstripped his merits as was the case with 
 Miihlbach. She was certainly not without con- 
 siderable talent; but she was utterly devoid of 
 artistic stability, and permitted her ruinously 
 facile pen to run away with her literary con- 
 science. Yet this ungoverned quill-driver had 
 her most loyal readers amongst the cultured 
 classes, because her novels were perfectly suited 
 to the shallow taste for historical anecdote that 
 prevailed for a long time after the revolution of 
 1848. As a matter of fact, her characters had 
 as faint a resemblance to their originals as the 
 mute procession men in a Shakespearean play 
 bear to the figures they represent: they only 
 paraded in their masks and clothes. Muhlbach's 
 first phenomenal success in the field of historical 
 romance was " Frederick the Great and his Court" 
 (1854), a novel in thirteen interminable parts. 
 After that, under the spur of increasing popular- 
 ity, she averaged a baker's dozen of volumes a
 
 250 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 year. The whole field of modern history was can- 
 vassed for its backstair gossip. There is hardly 
 a famous personage of the eighteenth or nine- 
 teenth century up to Frederick III whom Mlihl- 
 bach did not cut up and serve up in her literary 
 kitchen. Under her real name (Frau Professor 
 Mundt) she enjoyed in Berlin a reputation as 
 a capital cook and saving housekeeper. But 
 although her domestic economy extended also 
 to her literary work and she spread her heroes 
 thin enough so as to make them go the farther, 
 yet before the hand of death stopped her pen, 
 at the age of sixty, the limited supply had practi- 
 cally given out, and during her last years she 
 was forced to rehash the old favorites. 
 
 Misfortune never comes single. Charlotte Birch- 
 Pfeiffer (1800-1868) is the Luise Muhlbach of the 
 German drama. For a true dramatist she lacked 
 the first and last requirement, the power to 
 grasp character; but she knew how to create 
 an effective role. She could not invent a plot; 
 but she had great constructive skill of a certain 
 cheap kind, a perfect mastery of the claptrap of 
 the stage, and absolute control over the facial 
 muscles and tear ducts of the groundling. Her 
 plays fairly drip with maudlin sentimentality.
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 
 
 25 1 
 
 Withal she was very enterprising. Were she 
 writing in these days, Birch- Pfeiffer might justly 
 assert her patent to one method of that singular 
 manifestation of our democracy, the theatrical 
 trust, for she dramatized every popular novel she 
 could lay hands on. French and English writers, 
 such as Dickens, Bronte, Victor Hugo, George 
 Sand, Bulwer, George Eliot, and home novelists, 
 as Auerbach, Spindler, and Schiicking, were pro- 
 miscuously prepared for the stage. 
 
 In dealing with these famous authoresses one 
 lapses easily from that dignity which is some- 
 how expected of the literary historian. In exten- 
 uation, the Horatian Difficile est satiram non 
 scribere may be pleaded. At any rate, the sum 
 total of the feminine fiction of the romantic and 
 the Young German era, as well as of that imme- 
 diately following, is ill calculated to convert the 
 skeptic. We behold, on the one hand, an agita- 
 tion which takes its cues from robust masculine 
 minds and in the main retails the ideas of others 
 to the sluggish comprehension of the public. 
 This is done in most cases without much defer- 
 ence to the dictates of the aesthetic conscience. 
 Nevertheless one significant change is wrought 
 out by the feministic drift of this fiction, namely,
 
 252 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the gradual shifting of the center of interest from 
 the hero to the heroine. Having her frequently 
 exorbitant claims refused in the material world, 
 woman transfers them to the realm of fiction. 
 And so, without any great artistic meaning, the 
 novels which women write and women read and 
 in which women are the leading figures furnish 
 an inventory of the feminine aspirations of the 
 period. A great technical gain accrued to this 
 class of books from the increasing power of 
 character observation and growing zest for psy- 
 chological inquiry. Little by little it came to be 
 realized that the best judge of the moral organi- 
 zation of woman is woman herself, and when this 
 recognition was eventually coupled with the ana- 
 lytic skill of to-day, then at last the conditions 
 were ripe under which alone the German authoress 
 was able to seize woman's life in its fullness. 
 
 Quite in contrast to the purpose novel stands the 
 huge mass of mere amusement fiction, which has 
 been characterized above. 1 Throughout the cen- 
 tury its output is mainly regulated by the commer- 
 cial law of demand and supply. By the middle of 
 the century this kind of novel-writing, being then 
 practically the one outlet for the " intellectual " 
 
 l See pp. 235-237.
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 253 
 
 ambition of women, had taken on the aspect of 
 a teachable and learnable trade. Public taste had 
 settled into a comfortable sameness, and from now 
 on the technical accomplishments of the artisan 
 novelists were quite equal to the claims made on 
 their talents. The woods of fiction land were peo- 
 pled by permanent and accommodating settlers. 
 The intending authoress need only shake a tree 
 and down came the baron or officer or professor 
 or artist that was wanted, and the subsidiary char- 
 acters were equally obliging in dropping down 
 ready made and just as good as new. Even the 
 plot and the diction were cut and dried. With 
 the aid of the family magazines, among which Die 
 Gartenlaube and Uber Land iind Meer marked the 
 highest level tolerated by the " general reader," the 
 conventionalized novel as well as the convention- 
 alized lyric predominated throughout the third 
 quarter of the nineteenth century in distressing 
 uniformity. But we only have to think of such 
 books as Winston Churchill's The Crisis in order 
 to see what an astonishing success smiles fre- 
 quently upon works of this order. As for the 
 " tendency," it must not be supposed that the pas- 
 time fiction has n't any. We find it wholly con- 
 cordant with the general way of thinking. The
 
 254 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 great majority of these writings display a species 
 of mild, dilute liberalism. For after the strenuous 
 agitation set afloat by Young Germany had suf- 
 fered shipwreck in the disaster of 1848, its smaller 
 debris drifted peacefully on the shallow waters of 
 amusement fiction. In this generation it was con- 
 ceded that women should strive for freedom, but 
 the extent or degree of this freedom was a matter 
 of higgling dispute. So, for instance, the question 
 was raised, What callings are suitable for a woman? 
 And it is quite in harmony with the meaning art 
 then had for a writer like Wilhelmine von Hillern, 
 the daughter of Charlotte Birch- Pfeiffer, to con- 
 clude that the laurels which grow on the tree of 
 science are beyond the reach of woman, but that 
 she may pluck her laurels lustily from the tree of 
 art ; as though excellence in art were less difficult 
 to attain than distinction in science. The "liber- 
 alism " of the women novelists shows itself in their 
 incessant war upon prejudices, but they select 
 either such prejudices as no longer prevail, or 
 those which it is safe enough to fight, and, as 
 a rule, their heart is not in the battle. We have 
 refrained from discussing specimens of the out- 
 and-out amusement novel in the earlier half of 
 the century. For the period that lies between
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 255 
 
 1848 and the great war of 1870 Luise Miihlbach 
 was given as a type, although she made pretense 
 to position as an " historical " novelist. 
 
 The paragon among German authoresses as 
 they were about 1875 * s E. Marlitt (her real 
 name is Eugenie John), who illustrates better 
 than she explains the prodigious popularity of 
 a fiction which combined graceful entertainment 
 with easy moralizings, and managed to win 
 applause from the liberals without forfeiting the 
 approval of the conservatives. Golctelse, Reichs- 
 gr'dfin Gz'se/a, Im Hause des Kommerzienrats, 
 Das Geheimnis der alien Mamsell, Die zweite 
 Frau, Das Heideprinzeflchen^ and the other nov- 
 els which have helped us to while away many 
 and many a dreary hour under the unsuspecting 
 eye of a drowsy teacher, are not without many 
 prettinesses. Marlitt may justly be called an 
 "accomplished " writer. She possesses the gift of 
 narrative glib and voluble; her morals are de- 
 lightful ; she has a knack for the ready and seem- 
 ingly natural solution of unsolvable problems; 
 and, best of all, she never forgets her manners. 
 
 1 The English titles given these books by Mrs. C. Wister are : 
 " Gold Elsie," " Countess Gisela," "At the Councilor's," " The Old 
 Mam'selle's Secret," " The Second Wife," " The Little Moorland 
 Princess."
 
 256 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 But even the naively admiring eyes of the vora- 
 cious novel-reader cannot long remain shut 
 against certain defects of Marlitt, though these 
 may seem to him mere specks of imperfection. 
 There is in her stories an engine-turned uniform- 
 ity of plot and an unnecessarily harsh prejudice 
 against common sense. The reason is not far to 
 seek. Common sense, were it not resolutely sup- 
 pressed as a factor in her plots, might make itself 
 disagreeable by standing in the way of the all-is- 
 well conclusion required by an exacting public. 
 It is, accordingly, treated as a negligible quan- 
 tity, and the director-generalship of human affairs 
 in Marlitt's novels devolves upon the generous 
 promptings of the human heart. Chief aid-de- 
 camp to the noble heart is the irresistible 
 attractiveness of all good people. Whereas in 
 life victories are usually won through powerful 
 exertion or strong-willed self-denial, in Marlitt 
 the spring of personal magnetism is touched, the 
 good heart does the rest, and stern truth may 
 whistle for it. This successful method could not 
 long remain Marlitt's secret. Once discovered, 
 it was caught up by a swarm of busy imitators 
 who learned the trick though they missed the 
 grace, and to this day their widely ramified
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 257 
 
 sorority flourishes in all parts of the globe. But 
 lest we be diverted too long from our subject, 
 which is, after all, a literary one, let us dismiss 
 the host of Marlitt's satellites with brevity. It 
 is but fair, however, not to make this jejune and 
 time-serving class too inclusive. E. Werner, for 
 instance, deserves to be excepted. She adopted 
 in a general way Marlitt's method of dyeing in 
 fine colors. But as a writer she eventually sur- 
 passed her model, thanks to a greater breadth 
 of horizon, warmth of conviction, and a certain 
 trenchant critical faculty. Instead of limiting 
 herself to the conventional assortment of heroes, 
 she showed a kindly attachment for misfit indi- 
 viduals; this even betrayed her occasionally into 
 representing an unmitigated crank as a hero. 
 One might easily mention a number of other 
 popular women novelists of the past generation 
 who, like Werner, can lay claim to a high degree 
 of skill and, without being in any sense great 
 writers, wield a good and steady pen at the busi- 
 ness. To name only a few, a commendable brisk- 
 ness of style marks the stories of Golo Raimund, 
 Egon Pels, Emmy von Dincklage, and Claire 
 von Gliimer. Still more independently gifted are 
 Sophie Junghans and Emilie Junker.
 
 258 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 To none of these authors of the seventies, how- 
 ever, but perhaps to Luise von Fran9ois, belongs 
 the distinction of having contributed to the per- 
 manent fund of literature the first book of last- 
 ing worth. Die letzte Reckenburgerin (" The Last 
 Lady of Reckenburg") presents with surprising 
 realism a picture of patriarchal existence at 
 the end of the eighteenth and the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century. Despite its main 
 shortcomings, which consist in a tendency to 
 preach in season and out of season and the want 
 of outlook so common in feminine fiction, Die 
 letzte Reckenburgerin must be assigned a high 
 place among German novels, not only by com- 
 parison with the average, but on account of its 
 own unmistakable merit. It is the product of a 
 penetrating, energetic, yet gentle and forgiving 
 mind. 
 
 From now on women writers of real worth 
 become much less rare. 
 
 An intellect of the same noble type as Fran- 
 gois' is revealed in the literary personality of 
 Malwida von Meysenbug, whose three volumes 
 of memoirs are replete with deepest human inter- 
 est, since they are the record of a human soul 
 that has ever aligned itself on the spiritual side
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 259 
 
 of life and has been very close to such eminent 
 men of the age as Richard Wagner and Fried- 
 rich Nietzsche. Meysenbug and Fra^ois belong 
 to a group of authoresses who are deeply intel- 
 lectual and who yet show themselves independ- 
 ent of the "cause," because to them the sole 
 object worth striving for and the one on which 
 they have steadily fixed their gaze, is the fuller 
 development of the idealistic side of human 
 nature. 
 
 A like educational aim, ever consistently ideal- 
 istic, inspires the work of Marie von Ebner- 
 Eschenbach, who, now in her seventy-fifth year, 
 belongs on the whole to the older literary school, 
 but has in some ways exercised great influence over 
 the present generation of authoresses. She enjoyed 
 a rather modest renown before the arrival of the 
 new era, but once the amiable superficiality of 
 Marlitt had begun to pall, Ebner-Eschenbach's 
 depth of feeling was hailed as a welcome relief. 
 She is now looked upon by some critics as the 
 foremost novelist of Germany, and by general 
 consent is recognized as one of the best short- 
 story writers in the world. 
 
 Marlitt and her followers derived much public 
 approbation from their " idealism." Marie von
 
 260 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Ebner-Eschenbach is an idealist of a much more 
 substantial sort. She is deeply in earnest and per- 
 mits herself no dalliance in philosophical prob- 
 lems that are beyond her depth. A rare gift of 
 self-criticism is coupled in her with a freedom 
 from prejudice that is almost startling in a mem- 
 ber of the high aristocracy. 1 Inborn goodness 
 and the large-mindedness bred of wisdom are 
 the chief elements in the thinking and forgiv- 
 ing morality of her works. In her stories each 
 individual is permitted to struggle in his own 
 unhackneyed way with the problems that beset 
 the path of life, but the course of fate is not 
 deflected by any silly shrinking from an unhappy 
 ending. The guiding hand of the authoress 
 shows only in that the outcome invariably vin- 
 dicates the higher ethics. That is because she 
 herself stands unswervingly for the Hellenic and 
 Goethean ideal of Sophrosyne. This philosophic 
 temperance explains the full meaning of her 
 trivial-sounding motto : ' Gutsein ist Gliick. Such 
 high personal qualities are only too apt to put 
 the critic off his guard when it comes to judging 
 the artist in the superior woman. It is at this 
 point that many a thinking reader will feel 
 
 1 By birth she is an Austrian countess.
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 261 
 
 constrained to part company with the chorus of 
 eulogists. He will not deny at all that Ebner's 
 writings mirror, as has been aptly said, " the con- 
 science of a priestess and the heart of a mother." 
 But he will often miss the distinctive art note. 
 Ebner's composition is apt to be crude or labored ; 
 her diction is refractory; in nearly every story 
 a didactic elevation of the voice disturbs the har- 
 mony; and as for her realism, it is wholesome 
 and unstudied, but touched up too highly with 
 romantic tints to be convincing. Yet she may 
 claim for her eclecticism as much of truth as is 
 obtained by the "naturalists," for her endeavor, 
 so she tells us, is to reproduce convincingly what 
 she alone has seen : " a noble feature in the 
 face of the outcast, or a flash of genius in the dul- 
 lard's eye." Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, to be 
 a writer of the first order, lacks two essentials : a 
 deeper sense of beauty and greater possibilities 
 of temperament. But taken all in all, she is an 
 eminent literary character with a forcible and 
 steadfast individuality of her own. 
 
 Frangois, Ebner-Eschenbach, and Meysenbug, 
 although their writings derive their value in 
 part from their pedagogical message, do not pay 
 any particular attention to the woman movement,
 
 262 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 which, as we saw, stirred so many minds to their 
 depths towards the middle of the century and, 
 after ebbing away in the sands of the later 
 amusement fiction, was to leap forth with fierce 
 vigor in the feminine writings of our own day. 
 The lives and works of these authoresses reflect 
 the waning light of a day aglow with the rich 
 and mellow culture of the Goethean age. In 
 connection with them should be mentioned Car- 
 men Sylva, the Queen of Rumania. She com- 
 bines the mature temperance of Eschenbach and 
 Meysenbug with the greater intensity of the mod- 
 ern school. To a greater extent even than Marie 
 von Ebner she is a reflective writer. Follow- 
 ing W. Jordan's example, she boldly makes the 
 modern scientific theory of the world the intel- 
 lectual content of her work. As the result of 
 earnest study of social and religious problems 
 her stanch but by no means uncritical optimism 
 stands on the lofty level of an ardent faith in 
 natural evolution. 
 
 Having, after this hurried retrospect, now 
 reached the threshold of the present era, we next 
 pass on to a group of younger writers, real tran- 
 sition types that usher in a rather hysterical 
 cultus of art and the artist.
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 263 
 
 Ada Christen, Ossip Schubin, and Maria Janit- 
 schek are all three Austrians, but though not 
 untinged with the easy-going, sanguine tempera- 
 ment of the modern Phaeaces, their conception 
 of life, on the whole, is dismal enough to suit 
 the most stringent pessimist. This fundamental 
 dolefulness sounds most genuine in Ada Chris- 
 ten, the oldest of the trio. Of the same age with 
 Carmen Sylva, she is grouped with younger 
 writers because she has even more in common 
 with them than the Queen of Rumania. Her 
 impassioned verses in many respects remind one 
 strongly of Betty Paoli, save that Christen's self- 
 revelation is much more thoroughgoing: her 
 poems conceal and disguise nothing. It is a 
 far cry from the unreserved candor of her Lie- 
 der einer Verlorenen to the pathological " exhi- 
 bitionism " of Marie Madeleine's Auf Kypros 
 and the lyric confessions of Else Galen-Gube. 
 And yet, for good or for evil, Ada Christen first 
 broke the seven sacred seals and bared undi- 
 vulged feminine secrets. This unrestricted sub- 
 jectivity is, however, not the only quality which 
 puts her in a class with the " moderns " ; she 
 belongs there likewise by her harrowing natural- 
 ism in depicting the proletarian milieu. This is
 
 264 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 true both of her verses and her stories. Never- 
 theless, the famous Viennese humor does not 
 fail her, and some of her homely good-natured 
 stories of Viennese life are veritable cabinet 
 pieces ; for example, Echte Wiener (" True Chil- 
 dren of Vienna"), the story of Waltz King 
 Strauss' boyish infatuation for the mother of the 
 authoress. Ada Christen fully appreciates the 
 quick and lively freshness of Viennese life, yet 
 she grasps the fact that at the root of its artistic 
 laissez faire there lies the shallow self-indulgence 
 of the philistine. And in some of her gloom- 
 steeped stories she shows how the native joyous- 
 ness of such people is overspread by darkening 
 sorrow and finally put out by despair. 
 
 The earliest specimens of the work of Ossip 
 Schubin (Lola Kirschner) were full with the 
 promise of great things. They gave evidence 
 of a strong though undisciplined native talent, 
 uncommon dash, a quick power of observation, 
 and showed a keen knowledge of two opposite 
 worlds, high life and the peasantry, truly aston- 
 ishing in a youthful person and an outsider to 
 both. Ossip Schubin made her literary debut 
 at sixteen, and set out on her career with the 
 cheering approval of George Sand and Ivan
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 265 
 
 Turgenieff. But as time went on and popu- 
 larity gave her assurance, she seemed to neglect 
 her further artistic education. At any rate she 
 has yet to make good her extraordinary promise. 
 Her present style of writing is calculated to 
 strengthen rather than disarm the suspicion that 
 Ossip Schubin bears some unfortunate affinity 
 to Hahn-Hahn. Not alone in her controlling 
 weakness for international high life; for she is, 
 besides, self-conscious and given to mannerisms 
 take the polyglot titles of her books and 
 sensational effects. With the naturalist tenden- 
 cies she is, on the whole, out of touch, although 
 at the outset of her career she showed a strong 
 leaning towards realism; and although herself 
 quite outspoken in dealing with those subjects 
 which were formerly tabooed in feminine fiction, 
 she has no patience with the extent to which 
 the ruling freedom of speech is made use of by 
 the latest generation of women writers. 
 
 This brings me to a feature of the new femi- 
 nine fiction which even here cannot go wholly 
 unmentioned. The quality for which above all 
 others the German reader was once accustomed 
 to look in the works of women, namely, that 
 maidenly modesty which for sweet souls like
 
 266 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Ottilie Wildermuth and the enterprising Elise 
 Polko still proves such a sure pathfinder to the 
 Christmas tree of the boarding-school miss, is no 
 longer characteristic of the authoress. Extremes 
 often meet. Our women novelists were at one 
 time squeamish. They are now frank beyond 
 the frankness of Amelie Rives-Chanler and Ella 
 Wheeler Wilcox, frank to the very limits of 
 brutality, nay, even to the extent of sometimes 
 overstepping them. 
 
 The serious student of literature must not be 
 prudish. But though callous to those transgres- 
 sions which bring down upon many excellent 
 books the condemnation of our public librarians, 
 even he will be nonplused by the unbridled can- 
 dor of Maria Janitschek. He will shrink from it 
 only the more because it struts along in pon- 
 tifical robes. Maria Janitschek came into prom- 
 inent notice in the early eighties of the past 
 century as one of the first exponents of "mod- 
 ernism." Her chief characteristic is an emotion- 
 alism strangely mixed of " mud and fire." On the 
 one hand, she revels in erotic problems of the 
 most risque sort, dealing with them in a manner 
 of the earth earthy. On the other hand, she is a 
 fanatical votary of symbolism, with a passion for
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 267 
 
 all that is abstruse. Like very many modern Ger- 
 man writers, she is also a priestess of the greatest 
 mystification of the nineteenth century, the Uber- 
 mensch-w\.t established by Friedrich Nietzsche. 
 
 The number of Schubin's and Janitschek's 
 satellites is legion. Their names, however, are 
 hardly ever heard out of Germany, except pos- 
 sibly that of Hermione von Preuschen, who may 
 be known in this country, at least as a painter, 
 for her " Mors Imperator " was a conspicuous 
 exhibit in the Woman's Building at the Col- 
 umbian Fair in Chicago. Her writings are as 
 coquettishly mystical as her pictures. 
 
 The foregoing synopsis, aiming only at a sug- 
 gestive and helpful classification, has assumed 
 that a modicum of familiarity with a few of the 
 more conspicuous writers who served as illus- 
 trative examples could be taken for granted. 
 Many of their works are accessible in English 
 translations. But now that the critic is at last 
 led into the company of the German woman of 
 letters of to-day, the widespread though unpar- 
 donable American ignorance of contemporary 
 German literature confronts him as a serious 
 difficulty; an ignorance which is doubly deplor- 
 able on its own account and on account of its
 
 268 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 causes. This expression of regret does not imply 
 that it is worth while for any one in these busy 
 days to try to keep up with the entire literary 
 production of two continents, with the British 
 Isles thrown in. But a legitimate human inter- 
 est attaches to whatever part of modern fiction 
 is actually conjured up by the living forces of 
 our time; especially to so much of it as reveals 
 the passing attitude of one generation of men 
 towards the basic principle of society, the uni- 
 versal moral law. Whatever may otherwise be 
 urged against the new novels and plays of con- 
 tinental Europe, it must be admitted that they 
 have justified their claims on human sympathy 
 by an astoundingly close touch with all sides 
 of life. There is every reason in the world why 
 the literature of to-day should reflect a greater 
 wealth of experience and contain a fuller register 
 of ideas than that of any former period, even 
 though literature has been unable to keep step 
 with the miraculous expansion of the practical 
 activities. Indeed, when viewed from the culture- 
 historic standpoint, the work of living German 
 authoresses is thoroughly worthy of attention. 
 However, there are very few subjects on which 
 even the American woman, superior as she is
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 269 
 
 to her male compatriot in literary as well as in 
 general culture, is so densely ignorant. The 
 reasons are not far to seek. Notwithstanding 
 her ample educational advantages, the Amer- 
 ican woman, as a rule, is a poor linguist. To 
 enjoy a book or a play in the original, one must 
 at least be beyond the need of continual refer- 
 ence to the dictionary. Yet there are many 
 otherwise well-educated American women, per- 
 haps just out of college to-day, who are unable 
 to make out a fairly simple German or French 
 text. This is to be lamented, even though the 
 assertion of a living French critic, that to de- 
 clare oneself unable to read German is to confess 
 oneself at least twenty years behind the times 
 in knowledge, is undoubtedly an exaggeration. 
 Persons unfamiliar with German or French are 
 very likely to invoke by way of excuse the whim- 
 sical saying of Emerson, that he would as soon 
 swim across the Charles River to get to Boston, 
 instead of crossing the bridge, as he would read 
 a foreign original when he could obtain a trans- 
 lation. It may be said, in reply to the Concord 
 sage, that it pays to learn swimming, even apart 
 from the healthful excitement of the exercise. 
 For there are some very wide rivers that are
 
 270 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 spanned by too few bridges. Such an one is 
 German literature. Now, it may be asked, how 
 does it come that so few specimens of German 
 " modernism " are made accessible to us through 
 translation? Possibly the explanation lies in the 
 nonconformity of these audacious Germans to 
 our tacit exaction that foreign writers should pay 
 court to our jejunely nice, scrupulously conven- 
 tionalized literary taste. 
 
 The most potent influence that is at work in 
 the German literature of to-day partakes of the 
 nature of a grimly resolute striving for the fullest 
 individual freedom. The effect of the new rebel- 
 lion sown by the daring genius of Nietzsche is 
 clearly manifest in the turn taken by the plea, 
 in fiction, for the woman cause. The rights of 
 personality, which were formerly subordinated to 
 considerations of the general welfare, are now 
 loudly emphasized. The leading women eman- 
 cipators of to-day extol the " creative " life above 
 the life sanctioned by social agreement, and do 
 not question the right of the individual to break 
 through the accepted moral formulas. They 
 utterly reject the gospel of patience, which 
 women love so much to observe and still more 
 to preach, And while the old accusations of
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 271 
 
 tyranny are still hurled against the ruling sex 
 with the undiminished vigor of old, not a little 
 criticism, intemperate and sometimes savage, is 
 directed against the meek and stolid submis- 
 siveness of the women themselves. There is a 
 degree of danger in this fanatical agitation for 
 unchecked liberty, and it cannot be denied that 
 such teaching may prove fatal to a few unsteady 
 heads. There are two ways of dealing with such 
 a situation. In this country, where literary fash- 
 ions bow to the dictate of public opinion, we 
 choose to suppress the dangerous doctrine by 
 smothering its utterance in fine indignation. In 
 Germany, on the other hand, the fullest discus- 
 sion of heterodoxy is freely tolerated. The Ger- 
 mans realize that progress in culture can only 
 spring from a soil constantly plowed up by 
 controversy. 
 
 It seems to me, then, that we are committing 
 a grievous error in denying a hearing to what 
 the most capable women of Germany have to 
 say on a subject which to them is of the great- 
 est moment, even though we may feel that their 
 zeal is greater than their insight. After all, the 
 heroes and heroines of recent German fiction, 
 for whom ruthless self-affirmation is claimed as
 
 272 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 a special prerogative, are not of the common 
 run of people, but of a class scarcely extant 
 amongst us ; they are nearly always artists. And 
 surely we need have little apprehension lest our 
 own types of the overman, the trust magnate 
 and the political boss, catch the infection and 
 apply their overgrown sense of individuality to 
 a sphere other than the material. Candidly, so 
 long as we admit to our homes the " yellow " 
 daily, it is hypocrisy on our part to proscribe 
 any seriously meant book or class of books in 
 the name of public morals. 
 
 The literary era that dates from the early eigh- 
 ties of the past century and is commonly called 
 " Youngest Germany " has been more fruitful of 
 good than of evil. Whatever may be our judg- 
 ment as regards its ethical merits, it has brought 
 us a most gratifying progress in all technical 
 respects. Though the successors of Marlitt in 
 and out of the Gartenlaube still jog along im- 
 perturbably in the old ruts St. Keyser, W. 
 Heimburg, D. von Spattgen, F. Kapff-Essenther, 
 H. Schobert, e tutte quante, yet even their banal 
 plots with their never-failing happy denouement 
 have profited by the modern example. As for 
 the writers of the new school, any fair-minded
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 273 
 
 person must admire in them a great strength of 
 purpose and power of observation, a wider range 
 of sentiment and opinion and a more piercing 
 artistic vision than were given their predeces- 
 sors. And while the modern woman of letters 
 might perhaps resent this congratulation, there 
 is cause for rejoicing in the fact that the gratify- 
 ing literary improvement has gone hand in hand 
 with the steady enlargement of woman's sphere 
 and opportunities. 
 
 In unabated agitation of the woman cause, Ga- 
 briele Reuter and Helene Bbhlau stand preemi- 
 nent. Both strike out boldly for a fuller liberty, 
 but they also seek to deepen the sense of woman 
 towards her new obligations. Reuter's famous 
 novel, Aus guter Familie (" Well Bred "), pleads 
 in spirited fashion against coercion in every form 
 whatsoever ; by insinuation, the authoress includes 
 marriage, an institution devised by the despotism 
 of man and acquiesced in by the slavish cowardice 
 of woman. The slender thread on which Gabriele 
 Reuter strings her moralizings is the tragic story 
 of Agathe Heidling, the daughter of an official. 
 Like all girls of her class, she is brought up pri- 
 marily to marry; failing to do this, she settles, 
 after a brief rebellion, into a purposeless life at
 
 274 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the cost of her true personality, and, finally, of 
 her reason. Incontestably, this book, of which 
 the lesson is self-evident, has proved a powerful 
 lever in the hands of the radical advocates of 
 social reform. Its plea, as is the custom with 
 such books, gained the day not so much by the 
 persuasiveness of the argument as by virtue of its 
 glittering eloquence. Few " novels of purpose," 
 it should be borne in mind, do make their way 
 by means of intrinsic worth ; most derive success 
 from vociferation. 
 
 Helene Bohlau is no less emphatic than Ga- 
 briele Reuter, but very much more forcible. She, 
 too, enjoys writing "at the top of her lungs"; 
 yet even though she has not held aloof from 
 sensational exaggerations, notably in Das Recht 
 der Mutter (" The Mother's Right ") and in Halb- 
 tier (" Half Beast "), she is the greater artist of 
 the two. Two entirely different groups of novels 
 have come from her pen. The earlier ones, incited 
 by a close touch with Goethean culture Helene 
 Bohlau grew up in Weimar radiate a sunny 
 humor, but bear not at all on vital issues. Later 
 on, Nietzsche supersedes Goethe as Bohlau's lode- 
 star. Henceforth she extols the new, intoxicating 
 passion of life that makes a demigod of him who
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 275 
 
 will desert beaten paths and, with a new-won 
 consciousness, gain the power of wresting joy 
 from each phenomenon as it reveals itself anew. 
 This sovereign power, to Nietzsche and his dis- 
 ciples, is the sublimated life which alone is worth 
 living. An almost sacred wrath against the meager 
 contentment of the female philistine as well as 
 against the rapacity of her male tyrant burns 
 in Bohlau's intemperate harangues. Forever she 
 harps the plaint of Iphigenie in Tauris : Der 
 Frauen Zustand ist beklagenswert. In Adam 
 und Eva or Halbtier she maintains that woman 
 such as she has become through the enforced 
 disuse of her spiritual faculties is not yet a com- 
 pleted human being. This shows itself, among 
 other ways, in her pitiable impotence when 
 brought face to face with adversity. " If a beast 
 were hunted as woman has been, it would de- 
 velop a weapon a horn perchance, or a venom- 
 ous tooth. Not so woman. She has only grown 
 tamer and tamer, disgustingly tame, and has be- 
 come in the veriest sense a beast of burden. Her 
 direst wants have been neglected. If she has 
 obtained a small part of her rightful inheritance, 
 she has done so with the cunning of a famished 
 beast by stealth and subterfuge." Every blow
 
 276 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 prostrates her, leaving her unsustained by the 
 consolations of the mind. Woman, according to 
 Bohlau, is a human body which passes through 
 life entirely unspiritualized. And that half of 
 mankind which they call the gentler or weaker 
 sex is, in truth, the robust, the coarsely material- 
 istic, inimical perforce to all that is lofty or subtle 
 in our existence. 
 
 Fortunately for woman, so Bohlau holds, her 
 relentless persecutor, man, is singularly nai've in 
 his judgment and not at all hard to suit. All 
 that he expects of her is that she should make 
 herself as nearly as possible like the ladies he 
 admires on the front cover of the German family 
 magazines. But the strong-minded Helene Boh- 
 lau scorns and hates the easily pleased despot 
 and marks him with a fiery cross, by way of a 
 warning to the sisterhood. 
 
 Aside perhaps from her faith in the possibili- 
 ties of womankind, Helene Bohlau is a thorough- 
 going disciple of Nietzsche. As such she sets her 
 face against the prevailing mope-eyed conception 
 of human destiny which takes the form of either 
 complacent optimism or indolent pessimism. To 
 her way of thinking, the culmination of the fuller 
 life lies in its supreme moments, be they moments
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 277 
 
 of achievement or defeat. George Eliot once ex- 
 presses a similar sentiment when, in The Mill on 
 the Floss, she says of the heroine as she nears 
 the climax of her fate : " Even the coming pain 
 could not seem bitter she was ready to wel- 
 come it as a part of life, for life at this moment 
 seemed a keen, vibrating consciousness poised 
 above pleasure or pain." And Ricarda Huch, in a 
 poem, says to Life: Denn du bist sufi in deinen 
 Bitternissen. It is a maxim with Bohlau that 
 every true personality contains the possibilities 
 of a self-determination that should bring either 
 crowning success or destruction, should lead 
 either to unmingled happiness or to pure un- 
 happiness. 
 But 
 
 Every deed of ours, no less than every sorrow, 
 Impedes the onward march of life. 
 Some alien substance more and more is cleaving 
 To all the mind conceives of grand and fair. 1 
 
 In the humdrum grind of our daily existence, 
 which is bound sooner or later to shatter the 
 exceptional individuality, the human tragedy is 
 adulterated. 
 
 1 Goethe, Faust, translation by Bayard Taylor.
 
 278 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 It will be noted that the writings of Helene 
 Bohlau, although she is a realist as regards the 
 striking reproduction of the milieu, are steeped 
 in the azure of idealism. Naturally enough she 
 takes by preference artists for her heroes and, 
 like a majority of the novelists of to-day, seeks 
 her models in the "Athens on the Isar," the center 
 of the " new art," Munich. This is true both of 
 Halbtier and of her most important book, Der 
 Rangierbahnhof (" The Switching Station "), cer- 
 tainly one of the greatest novels of recent times. 
 The plot of this story, again, is made to subserve 
 the writer's ethical creed. Its central figure, Oily, 
 burns up with an inner fire which she cannot com- 
 municate to the surrounding world. Her family, 
 including a well-meaning but commonplace and 
 selfish husband, cannot understand her, and her 
 inner self is, as it were, placed on an insulating 
 stool ; but at the last, when her wasted young life 
 is fast slipping away, the companion soul of the 
 great artist friend stands revealed before her and 
 she dies contented. The resemblance of this 
 story to that of Marie Bashkirtseff and Bastien- 
 Lepage is unmistakable. Yet " The Switching 
 Station," as may be inferred from the very title, 
 should in the main be understood symbolically.
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 279 
 
 Many of our stanchest realists are to be found 
 in the downright symbolist school. Strange as 
 this fact may seem, there is assuredly nothing 
 contrary either to nature or to art in a method 
 whereby the externals are seized for the present- 
 ment of the larger truth. But symbolism somehow 
 carries within it the germ of exaggeration. Even 
 Ibsen, the master in combining the two methods, 
 succumbs occasionally to the danger, and falls 
 into an excessive symbolism, as, for instance, in 
 " When We Dead Awake," where the principal 
 characters are little more than allegories mounted 
 on human legs. It is on these same shoals, too, 
 that Bohlau's imposing art is more than once seen 
 to founder. 
 
 Then, too, her artistic equipoise is disturbed 
 by her strong desire to retaliate upon the enemy 
 of her sex. Barring a few rather freakish over- 
 men, all specimens of the masculine gender that 
 appear in her late novels are either hopeless 
 reprobates or invertebrate ninnies. The iniquity 
 of man is concededly great and his villainy deep- 
 dyed ; when overdrawn by a feminist they border 
 on the grotesque. 
 
 It may be pertinent in this place to call atten- 
 tion to a significant change wrought out in these
 
 280 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 days : the feminine literature of to-day is an 
 integral factor in the general intellectual life; 
 it consequently shares in the literary evolution. 
 Recent German fiction has emerged from the 
 era of uncompromising realism with a zest for 
 psychological inquiry, and in the natural order 
 of things women become more deeply inquisitive 
 about themselves. At the same time they real- 
 ize more fully than before their special gift and 
 superior aptitude for detailed observation, and to 
 their minute and honest account of themselves 
 we owe an enlarged knowledge of woman's char- 
 acter. 1 But in the reformatory zeal which impels 
 our women writers to redress the wrongs of their 
 sex, the great human problems under discussion 
 do not receive sober study, and so we find that 
 even a writer of Helene Bohlau's stature seems 
 shut out from the loftier outlook from which the 
 true poet views the eternal pantomime. 
 
 At the present moment the most conspicuous 
 German authoress is undoubtedly Clara Viebig. 
 She is the leading apostle of the anti-emancipa- 
 tion doctrine of Laura Marholm, the doctrine 
 that woman is but a fragmentary work of nature, 
 and needs to be completed by the union with 
 
 i Cf. p. 60.
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 281 
 
 man. Yet in spite of this theory, Viebig exhibits 
 in her style a rugged, virile strength. In her 
 masterly village stories, Kinder der Eifel (" Chil- 
 dren of the Eifel"), and in the grimly humorous 
 novel Das Weiberdorf (" A Women's Village "), 
 she uncurtains with a pitiless hand the brutali- 
 ties of peasant life. Das tagliche Brod (" Daily 
 Bread ") is a deeply serious study of the servant 
 problem under aspects which to Americans will 
 seem stranger than fiction, they are so different 
 from our own. " The Watch on the Rhine " is a 
 veritable triumph of the Heimatkunst (" regional 
 art") so assiduously cultivated by the Germans. 
 The latest of Viebig's literary performances, the 
 novels Vom Mulkrhannes (" Jack the Miller") and 
 Das schlafende Heer (" The Sleeping Army ") 
 and a dramatic suite entitled Der Kampf um 
 den Mann ("The Fight for a Man") all three 
 published within the last two years are keeping 
 her prominently before the public. 
 
 Though overshadowed by Bohlau and Viebig, 
 yet there are many other forceful writers in the 
 younger generation, women full of indomitable 
 energy, deep convictions, in some cases equipped 
 with a fine technical skill. Only a few of them 
 can here be mentioned.
 
 282 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Anselm (Selma) Heine is, like Helene Bohlau, 
 a realistic symbolist who likes to deal with prob- 
 lems from the artist's sphere. She teaches, among 
 other things, that the higher individuality is put 
 in jeopardy by a too congenial marriage. 
 
 With a telling protest against the ruling con- 
 ventions are fraught the plays and stories of 
 Anna Croissant-Rust and those of the unfortu- 
 nate Juliana Dery, who sealed her dissension 
 from the accepted social code with a tragic death. 
 Emil Marriot (Emilie Mataja) varies the theme 
 by tracing the real "soul" tragedies to religious 
 conflicts. She is a devout Catholic, yet has a 
 predilection for the very delicate subject of cler- 
 ical love with which the consummate art of Paul 
 Heyse has dealt in Zwei Gefangene (" Two Pris- 
 oners "). In the series of short stories, Mit der 
 Tonsur (" Tonsured Heads "), the principal char- 
 acters are priests who are unhappy through love. 
 Perhaps the best thing she has written is the 
 stirring prose threnody Der Geistliche Tod (" A 
 Clerical Death"). 
 
 Marie Eugenie delle Grazie is a poetess of 
 unquestionable power, but lack of artistic disci- 
 pline renders her unequal to the great tasks she 
 elects. In her epos "Robespierre" she is one
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 283 
 
 of the relatively few women who have attempted 
 epic poetry she demonstrates that even the most 
 terrifying realism is not proof against the noisy 
 sort of emotionalism. 
 
 Under her pseudonym of Leo Hildeck, Leo- 
 nie Meyerhof has made a well-known name for 
 herself. In Wollen und Werden (" Purpose and 
 Achievement") the artist tragedy turns on the 
 discrepancy between the creative impulse and 
 the sustaining capacity for work. Hildeck is an 
 enthusiastic Nietzschean, and the prototype of 
 her Feuersaule (" The Pillar of Fire "), notwith- 
 standing her express denial, can be none other 
 than Max Stirner, the forestaller of Nietzsche. 
 For her entirely un-German coldness, this writer 
 compensates by a rare constructive skill. 
 
 Lou Andreas-Salome, the biographer and one- 
 time friend of the great poet-philosopher-madman, 
 deals in a bold, broad manner with intricate psy- 
 chological subjects, such as the baleful awakening 
 from juvenile illusions, dwelling strongly on the 
 necessity for deep religious sentiment. 
 
 The two most promising among the youn- 
 gest set of German authoresses also follow un- 
 doubtedly in Nietzsche's footsteps. The youthful 
 Sophie Hoechstetter is so deeply engrossed in
 
 284 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 the propagation of the individualistic creed that 
 she has taken no time to bestow great care on 
 the form of her writings; so her rebel pen does 
 not disdain the handy style and methods of the 
 amusement novel, even though in the interpre- 
 tation of the master Zarathustra she exhibits a 
 greater freedom of thought than most other 
 disciples. 
 
 An even more resolute agitator and by far a 
 more convincing " realist " is Hans von Kahlen- 
 berg, whose real name is Helene von Montbart, 
 a young woman belonging to the circles that 
 are styled Militaradel ("military nobility"), and 
 whose novels move accordingly in the higher 
 strata of German life. It would not be easy to 
 name a writer of either sex so entirely unsenti- 
 mental as Hans von Kahlenberg, or one with a 
 finer ear for the hollowness of " official morality " 
 and a keener eye for the sores that eat their way 
 through the German body social. Upon these 
 cancerous spots she advances composedly with 
 the surgeon's blade, which she wields in no gin- 
 gerly way and without first administering anaes- 
 thetics. Though only in the early thirties, she 
 is already a master of the naturalistic method. 
 The crassness in the portrayal of her milieu
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 285 
 
 e.g. Die Familie Barchwitz (" The Barchwitz 
 Family "), Die Sembritzkys (" The Sembritzkys "), 
 and other novels may be easily condoned, in 
 view of her deep sympathy with the sufferings 
 of her people. 
 
 The enumeration of the authoresses of this com- 
 bative Nietzschean sect might be continued to 
 great length. The aim of this sketch, however, 
 cannot be completeness, but at best an indication 
 of salient traits, and enough has been said to sub- 
 stantiate the statement made before with regard 
 to the predominant influence of Nietzsche on our 
 feminine literature of dissent. 
 
 Two writers who represent the high-water mark 
 of artistic achievement by German authoresses 
 of the living generation have been reserved to 
 the last. Neither can be classed as a Nietz- 
 schean of strict observance, and neither can be 
 called a thoroughgoing realist, or a pedantic 
 symbolist. But to elude classification is to give 
 the sincerest proof of a self-dependent artis- 
 tic personality. Isolde Kurz and Ricarda Huch 
 come well up to the test. Not uninfluenced, 
 certainly, by great models, but without looking 
 right or left to schools and coteries, they have 
 made their way to the front rank. They are
 
 286 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 artists, first and last, who have learned to employ 
 the technical acquisitions of the modern school 
 for the presentment of facts under their eternal 
 aspect. 
 
 Of the two, Isolde Kurz is perhaps the more 
 versatile. She commands a style which is scarcely 
 surpassed by Paul Heyse when at his best. Her 
 poems, and in a still higher degree her short 
 stories and satirical fairy tales, besides excelling 
 in a chaste plastic beauty of language, win by 
 their rich fund of ripe human wisdom and an 
 irresistible humor, delightful even though spiced 
 with cutting sarcasm, of which the reader him- 
 self is frequently made the mark. The extraordi- 
 nary strength of Kurz's art lies in its burrowing 
 psychology, by which the subtlest qualities and 
 conditions of mind are brought to light. This 
 rare power enables the writer to expose with sen- 
 suous truthfulness, " realistically " as it were, the 
 world of the unreal. To quote an example, the 
 story Mittagsgespenst ("A Midday Specter") re- 
 produces with great vividness a weird daydream 
 of a mediaeval city in the full fierceness of its tem- 
 pestuous life. Italian life, especially that of the 
 Renaissance, has the same charm for Isolde Kurz 
 that it exercised on her great teacher, Conrad
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 287 
 
 Ferdinand Meyer. Her most serious contributions 
 to letters, besides a small volume of exquisite 
 lyrics, are two collections of short stories: Flo- 
 rentiner Novellen (" Short Stories of Florence ") 
 and Italienische Erzahlungen (" Italian Tales "). 
 
 Of still greater artistic significance is the work 
 of Ricarda Huch. It detracts in no wise from the 
 marvelous originality of her art that it has been 
 influenced by Gottfried Keller and Conrad Fer- 
 dinand Meyer, and that it, too, has been electri- 
 fied by a spark from Nietzsche's wayward genius. 
 The last-mentioned influence is recognized in her 
 favorite heroes. They are the Lebenskunstler, 
 the past masters of the art of living, modern 
 Renaissance men and women with a capacity 
 for translating great emotions into action. Huch, 
 at the age of thirty-eight, is the author of fifteen 
 books comprising two metrical plays, two collec- 
 tions of critical essays, a historical study, a book 
 of poems, and nine volumes of fiction. All of 
 these are works of intrinsic value. Her chief title 
 to fame, however, still reposes on Erinnerungen 
 von Ludolf Ursleu dem Jungeren (" Recollections 
 of Ludolf Ursleu the Younger"), a book full of 
 the indefinable charm exhaled only by what the 
 French call une ceuvre de longue haleine ; one of
 
 288 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 those rare books, that is to say, which draw the 
 reader into the very mood in which they were 
 conceived and sustain him in it. The novelist 
 whose unerring art has given him supreme power 
 of this sort is Thackeray. By virtue of their tem- 
 peramental consistency, Pendennis, Henry Esmond, 
 The Newcomes, are unsurpassable models. Du 
 Maurier's Trilby owes its unquestionable value to 
 close and successful study of those great models. 
 Among living writers, Pierre Loti and Maurice 
 Maeterlinck, by an almost hypnotic power, com- 
 municate to the reader their own minor-key temper 
 of mind. Ricarda Huch attains similar effects 
 without the aid of chiaroscuro. At least in Ursleu 
 and Aus der Triumphgasse ("Stories from Tri- 
 umph Lane") she draws in the broad light of her 
 own day. As a rule, however, she makes the color 
 perfection of her picture stand forth more dis- 
 tinctly by incasing it in an artistic frame of chaste 
 design. It is no easy matter to adapt, as Huch 
 has done, the style of an old chronicle to a recital 
 of contemporaneous events. But Huch's vigorous 
 art does not choose the line of least resistance. 
 Altogether she compels the highest admiration 
 for her firm conscientiousness in squaring her- 
 self with technical difficulties and exacting from
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 289 
 
 herself heroic tasks. It is characteristic, perhaps, 
 that her most ambitious works are by far her 
 best. Whereas the short stories fall appreciably 
 below the high standard by which her superlative 
 art deserves to be marked, her two master novels, 
 by virtue of their flawless structure, excel even 
 Keller's famous Der grune Heinrich (" Green 
 Henry") and take elevated rank with the lofty 
 achievement of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's imper- 
 ishable prose epics. 
 
 The "Memories of Ursleu" purports to be writ- 
 ten in cloistered solitude by the sole representative 
 of a headstrong race whose members, notwithstand- 
 ing their imperious vital instincts, are doomed to 
 self-destruction by their unbending will. In the 
 unraveling of the plot a most skillful use is made 
 of episode, for the double purpose of enlarging 
 the historical vista and, at the same time, mak- 
 ing the private tragedy stand out in bold relief 
 against the general calamity. The action passes in 
 the republic of Hamburg during the cholera epi- 
 demic of less than twenty years ago. The plague is 
 not broadly pictured as in Manzoni's / Promessi 
 Sposi; rather with the delicate discretion used 
 by Boccaccio in the framing of the Decamerone. 
 The " Band of the Holy Life," into which young
 
 290 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 patricians of both sexes form themselves in order 
 to vindicate amid the surrounding horrors of death 
 the joy of living, serves as a symbol for the chief 
 tenet in Ricarda Huch's philosophy: life is not 
 worth living without the illusions; hence let us 
 cling to the illusions. No need of saying that 
 Ricarda Huch is not a " realist " in the pedantic 
 acceptation of the term. Yet she knows well how 
 to reproduce the milieu of the patrician life as 
 well as in Aus der Triumphgasse of the slums ; 
 and she possesses the highest credential of her 
 art style. Le style cest this time lafemme! 
 Huch's is a personality with apparently unlimited 
 possibilities of inward experience and a coexten- 
 sive power of articulation, herself a member 
 of the " Band of the Holy Life," with a pas- 
 sionate desire to taste of the choicest dishes at 
 the banquet of life. Unersattlich (" Insatiable ") 
 is one of her finest poems which gives adequate 
 expression to this longing. 
 
 Ganz mit Friihling und Sonnenstrahl, 
 Klang und duftendem BliitenguC 
 Mein verlangendes Herz einmal 
 Full' mir, seliger Uberflufi ! 
 
 Gib mir ewiger Jugend Glanz, 
 Gib mir ewigen Lebens Kraft,
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 291 
 
 Gib im fliichtigen Stundentanz 
 Ewig wirkende Leidenschaft ! 
 
 Aus dem Meere des Wissens laC 
 Satt mich trinken in tiefem Zug ! 
 Gib von Liebe und gib von Hafi 
 Meiner Seele einmal genug. 
 
 With this cursory characterization of the most 
 important German women writers of the hour this 
 sketch may be concluded. It goes without saying 
 that many deserving books have necessarily been 
 left undiscussed, and that of many well-known auth- 
 oresses even the names could not be mentioned. 
 To furnish a handy reference catalogue was not 
 the reviewer's ambition, and an appreciation of 
 writers like Klaus Rittland, Hermine Villinger, 
 Charlotte Niese, Elsbeth Meyer-Forster, Richard 
 Nordmann, etc., or even the terse and forceful Use 
 Frapan, would neither have affected the general 
 estimate nor made a perceptible change in the line 
 of development as traced. The same consider- 
 ation justifies the omission of Bertha von Sutt- 
 ner's Die Waffen nieder! ("Down with Arms!"), 
 which owes the international applause bestowed 
 upon it solely to its humane sentiment. The 
 book, it will be remembered, is a plea for gen- 
 eral disarmament. Its literary value is slight. The
 
 292 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 chronological limit of the theme precludes more 
 than passing reference to the so-called "Vera" lit- 
 erature, which has rapidly crystallized round the 
 recent anonymous diary of a young Viennese girl 
 who announces herself in the title, Eine fur Viele 
 ("One for Many") as the spokeswoman of a 
 numerous class; to the Baroness von Heyking's 
 Brief e, die ihn nicht erreichten (" Letters that did 
 not reach him "), and many other books. It may 
 be of some interest to know that Ernst Georgy's 
 Die Berliner Range (" The Berlin Hobbledehoy"), 
 a phenomenally popular series of cheap-grade fun- 
 books, comes from the pen of a woman. 
 
 The writers here considered have been, with 
 very few exceptions, novelists. This is natural 
 enough, since in the field of the prose epic, which 
 throughout the nineteenth century has been the 
 most diligently worked of all literary fields, the 
 authoresses have, as a rule, exercised their talents. 
 In the other literary genera they have produced 
 relatively little that counts for much in the his- 
 tory of literature. Lyrists we have in plenty, and 
 a number of them are worthy of praise, as, for in- 
 stance, Anna Ritter, Agnes Miegel, Mia Holm, 
 Alberta von Puttkamer, Thekla Lingen, etc. But, 
 outside of the women lyrists who have been
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 293 
 
 discussed, it would be difficult to mention any 
 whose verse rings full and true, and sounds the note 
 of a deep poetic conscientiousness. Certainly we 
 cannot pay this tribute to Johanna Ambrosius, 
 about whose sympathetic songs so much ado has 
 been made. She is a plain, sensible peasant woman 
 whom Professor Weiss- Schrattenthal, the benevo- 
 lent patron of aspiring authoresses, had the ques- 
 tionable taste to dress out as a species of German 
 Sappho and to have presented to the public by her 
 East Prussian countryman Sudermann. Thirty- 
 six editions of her poems were exhausted in four 
 years, yet even that phenomenal book-trade suc- 
 cess will not keep her memory alive. Ambrosius 
 has clearly been overrated. She has opened to 
 view a soul-life of great depth, but of inconsid- 
 erable compass. And she is too well read in 
 devotional books and family magazines to have 
 preserved the refreshing spontaneity of a genuine 
 singer of the people. Lyric qualities of a much 
 higher order belong to Marie Madeleine, who is 
 unfortunately the most brazenly unabashed of all 
 modern verse writers. 
 
 In the province of the drama the successors 
 of Birch-Pfeiffer have not made many brilliant 
 conquests. Of living women dramatists, Elsa
 
 294 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Bernstein, who writes under the assumed name 
 Ernst Rosmer, is the only one who has won real 
 distinction. The singularly happy combination 
 of realism and romanticism in her fairy piece, 
 Die Konigskinder (" The Royal Children") (1895), 
 has done much to establish the reign of the Mar- 
 chendrama ushered in by Hauptmann and Fulda. 
 
 On the whole, women have shown a certain 
 ineptitude, or it may be only a reluctance, to 
 essay literature under the restrictions of definite 
 form, and have exhibited a leaning towards the 
 less exacting prose narrative. And, as a class, 
 women novelists have their pronounced failings. 
 They are found lacking in the calm objectiveness 
 that flows from historic consciousness, and in a 
 well-balanced sense of personality. Likewise, we 
 feel strongly, in their interpretation of detached 
 facts of life, the absence of a controlling philoso- 
 phy; simple truths they grasp quickly enough, 
 but too readily erect them uncemented into a 
 system. 
 
 I have not been able to speak of the Ger- 
 man authoress of the nineteenth century with 
 full-blown eulogy. However, the reader has not 
 failed to observe in her story the marks of an 
 up-grade movement calculated to disarm the
 
 WOMEN WRITERS 295 
 
 pessimist. It is certainly a fact from which women 
 ambitious for their sex may derive much gratifi- 
 cation, that one cannot name the foremost living 
 writers of Germany without including several 
 women. 
 
 And as for the vexed problem that springs into 
 view every time the woman question comes up in 
 literary criticism : Is woman excluded by natural 
 limitations from the higher realms of creative 
 art? I might answer: Ricarda Huch! ... to be 
 told, probably, that one swallow does not make a 
 summer. So again, as at the outset, I ask permis- 
 sion to leave the question open. It was not the 
 object of this sketch to prove a thesis, but rather 
 to trace a development, and to describe the 
 resultant situation.
 
 INDEX 
 
 BY PAUL REIFF, PH.D. 
 
 Instructor in German, Washington University 
 
 Alberti, C., 139. 
 Ambrosius, Johanna, 293. 
 Amiel, Journal intime, no. 
 Andreas-Salome, Lou, 283. 
 d'Annunzio, Gabriele, 248. 
 Anzengruber, L., 138. 
 Das Vierte Gebot, 37. 
 Apostel, Der. See Hauptmann. 
 Arme Heinrich, Der. See Haupt- 
 mann. 
 
 Arnim, Bettina von, 238. 
 Auerbach, Berthold, 138, 251. 
 
 Bahn-wdrter Thiel. See Haupt- 
 mann. 
 
 Bashkirtseff, Marie, 278. 
 Bastien-Lepage, J., 278. 
 Bernhardt, Sarah, 53. 
 Bernstein, E. See Rosmer. 
 Bete humaine. See Zola. 
 Biberpeh, Der. See Hauptmann. 
 Birch-Pfeiffer, C., 250, 254, 293. 
 Bjbrnson, Bjornstjeme, 108. 
 Bleibtreu, K., 175. 
 Boccaccio, Decamerone, 289. 
 Bocklin, A., 180, 205. 
 Bohlau, Helene, 237, 273, 274- 
 279, 280, 281, 282. 
 
 Das Recht der Mutter, 274. 
 
 Der Rangierbahnhof, 278. 
 
 Halbtier, 274. 
 Borne, Ludwig, 9. 
 Brachmann, Luise, 234. 
 Briefe die ihn nicht erreichten, 
 
 292. 
 
 Biichner, L., 160. 
 Bulthaupt, H., 53. 
 Bunte Buck, Das. See Hauptmann. 
 
 Burow, Julie, 240. 
 Byron, 133. 
 
 Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 52. 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, 207. 
 Christen, Ada, Echte Wiener, 264. 
 
 Lieder einer Verlorenen, 263. 
 Churchill, Winston, The Crisis, 
 
 17, 253- 
 
 Coriolanus. See Shakespeare. 
 Croissant-Rust, Anna, 282. 
 
 Dahn, Felix, 59. 
 
 Darwin, 146. 
 
 Dery, Juliana, 282. 
 
 Dickens, 251, 257. 
 
 Dincklage, Emmy von, 257. 
 
 Drei Reiherfedern, Die. See Suder- 
 
 mann. 
 Droste-Hiilshoff, Annette von, 
 
 246-247, 248. 
 
 Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von, 
 259-261, 262. 
 
 Ekre, Die. See Sudermann. 
 
 Eichendorff, 180. 
 
 Einsame Menschcn. See Haupt- 
 mann. 
 
 Eliot, George, 232, 251. 
 
 The Mill on the Floss, 277. 
 
 Emerson, 269. 
 
 Es lebe das Leben. See Suder- 
 mann. 
 
 Es war. See Sudermann. 
 
 Evangelienbuch, 3. 
 
 Ewig-Mannliche, Das. See Suder- 
 mann. 
 
 Faust. See Goethe. 
 
 297
 
 298 
 
 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Faust, the Third Part of the 
 
 Tragedy. See Vischer. 
 Fels, Egon, 257. 
 
 Florian Geyer. See Hauptmann. 
 Fontane, Theodor, 14. 
 Fouque, F. de la Motte, 180. 
 Franfois, Luise von, 258, 259, 261. 
 
 Die letzte Reckenburgerin, 258. 
 Frapan, Use, 291. 
 Frau Sorge. See Sudermann. 
 Freie Biihne, 134. 
 Freiligrath, F., 4. 
 Freytag, Gustav, 4, 59. 
 
 Die Journalisten, 38. 
 Friedensfest,Das. See Hauptmann. 
 Fritzchen. See Sudermann. 
 Fuhrmann Henschel. See Haupt- 
 mann. 
 Fulda, L., 66, 168, 294. 
 
 Der Talisman, 78, 167. 
 
 Galen-Gube, Else, 263. 
 
 Gartenlaube, Die, 253, 272. 
 
 Geibel, 4. 
 
 Georgy, Die Berliner Range, 292. 
 
 Gerstacker, F., 4. 
 
 Geschichte einer stillen Miihle. See 
 
 Sudermann. 
 
 Geschwister, Die. See Sudermann. 
 Gliick im Winkel, Das. See Su- 
 dermann. 
 
 Gliimer, Claire von, 257. 
 Goethe, 3, 4, 9, 146, 186, 204, 274. 
 
 Die natiirliche Tochter, 66. 
 
 Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 18. 
 
 Faust, 9, 125, 172, 192, 193. 
 
 Giitz von Berlichingen, 175. 
 
 Torquato Tasso, 66. 
 
 Wilhelm Meister, 33. 
 Gottfried von Strassburg, 3. 
 Grazie, M. E. delle, 282. 
 
 Robespierre, 282. 
 Grillparzer, F., 4, 10, 168. 
 Gutzkow, K., 174, 244. 
 
 Hacklander, F. W., 4. 
 Haeckel, Ernst, 146. 
 Hahn-Hahn, Ida, Countess, 241- 
 215, 265. 
 
 Aus der Gesellschaft, 242. 
 Hanke, Henriette, 234. 
 Hannele. See Hauptmann. 
 Hansel und Gretel. See Humper- 
 
 dinck. 
 
 Hartmann von Aue, 219, 221. 
 Hauff, W., 4. 
 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 4, 5, 6, 23, 
 
 119-129, 130 ff. (life), 294. 
 Bahnwarter Thiel, 158-161, 
 
 196. 
 
 Das bunte Buck, 133. 
 Das Friedensfest, 140-144, 156. 
 Der Apostel, 158, 160-161. 
 Der arme Heinrich, 81, 218- 
 
 224. 
 Der Biberpelz, 123, 129, 166, 
 
 210-214, 215, 216, 218. 
 Der rote Hahn, 166, 210, 215- 
 
 218. 
 Die versunkene Glocke ("The 
 
 Sunken Bell"), 78, 123, 124, 
 
 129, 147, 166, 180-195, 196, 
 
 199. 
 Die Weber ("The Weavers"), 
 
 123, 149-156, 157, 158, 173, 
 
 175, 178, 195, 196, 210, 224, 
 
 225. 
 Einsame Menschen, 123, 144- 
 
 149, 156, 224. 
 
 Florian Geyer, 175-179, 195. 
 Fuhrmann Henschel, 129, 130, 
 
 195-198, 209, 225. 
 Hannele, 124, 128, 166-174, 
 
 180, 196, 210, 222, 223, 225. 
 Kollege Grampian, 128, 161- 
 
 165. 
 Michael Kramer, 129, 202-209, 
 
 225. 
 
 Promethidenlos, 132, 200. 
 Rose Bernd, 129, 158, 224-226. 
 Schluck und Jau, 199-202, 210, 
 
 215, 223. 
 Vor Sonnenaufgang, 37, 124, 
 
 134-138, 140, 157, 173, 224. 
 Hebbel, F., 4. 
 
 A Tragedy in Sicily, 215. 
 Heimat. See Sudermann. 
 Heimatkunst, 199, 281.
 
 INDEX 
 
 299 
 
 Heimburg, W., 17, 272. 
 
 Heine, Anselm, 282. 
 
 Heine, H., 4, 9, 133, 237, 243. 
 
 He Hand, 3. 
 
 Heyse, Paul, 4, 286. 
 
 Merlin, 193. 
 
 Zwei Gefangene, 282. 
 Hildeck, Leo, Feuersdule, 283. 
 
 Wollen und Werden, 283. 
 Hillern, Wilhelmine von, 254. 
 Hoechstetter, Sophie, 283. 
 Holm, Mia, 292. 
 
 Holmsen, Bjame P. (pseud, for 
 Amo Holz and Johannes 
 Schlaf), Papa Hamlet, 134. 
 Holz, Arno, 133, 134, 166, 195. 
 Homer, 4. 
 
 Howells, W. D., 235. 
 Huch, Ricarda, 277, 285, 287-291, 
 295. 
 
 A us der Triumphgasse, 288. 
 
 Erinnerungen von LudolfUrsleu 
 
 dem Jiingeren, 287, 288, 289. 
 Hugo, Victor, 251. 
 Humperdinck, E., Hansel und 
 Gretel, 167. 
 
 Ibsen, H., 14, 100, 108. 
 
 Ghosts, 38. 
 
 Rosmersholm, 146. 
 
 When We Dead Awake, 279. 
 Im Zwielicht. See Sudermann. 
 lolanthes Hochzeit. See Suder- 
 mann. 
 
 Janitschek, Maria, 263, 266-267. 
 Johannes. See Suderman. 
 Johannisfeuer. See Sudermann. 
 Jordan, Wilhelm, 262. 
 Julius Casar. See Shakespeare. 
 Junghans, Sophie, 257. 
 Junker, Emilie, 257. 
 
 Kahlenberg, Hans von (pseud, for 
 Helene von Montbart), Die 
 Familie Barchwitz, 285. 
 Die Sembritzkys, 285. 
 
 Kapff-Essenther, E., 272. 
 
 Katzensteg, Der. See Sudermann, 
 
 Keller, Gottfried, 4, 287. 
 
 Der griine Heinrich, 289. 
 Keyser, H., 272. 
 Kipling, R., 159. 
 Kleist, Heinrich von, 4. 
 
 Der zerbrochene Krug, 210. 
 Klopstock, 3. 
 Kollege Grampian. See Haupt- 
 
 mann. 
 
 Korner, Theodor, 4. 
 Kudrun, 3. 
 Kurz, Isolde, 285, 286-287. 
 
 Florentiner Novellen, 287. 
 
 Italienische Erzahlungen, 287. 
 
 Mittagsgespenst, 286. 
 
 Lamprecht, K., 195. 
 
 ISAssommoir. See Zola. 
 
 La Terre. See Zola. 
 
 Laube, H., 244. 
 
 Lebensfrage, Eine. See Lewald. 
 
 Lenau, N., 4. 
 
 Lessing, 3, 9. 
 
 Nathan the Wise, 105. 
 Lewald, Fanny, 239, 241, 245-246. 
 
 Eine Lebensfrage, 246. 
 Lingen, Thekla, 292. 
 Longfellow, The Golden Legend, 
 
 218. 
 Loti, Pierre, 288. 
 
 Madeleine, Marie, 263, 293. 
 
 Auf Kypros, 263. 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 288. 
 Marchendrama, 65, 167, 168, 294. 
 Magda. See Sudermann. 
 Manzoni, A., / Promessi Sposi, 
 
 289. 
 
 Marholm, Laura, 280. 
 Marlitt, E., 4, 255-257, 259, 272. 
 Marriot, Emil, Der Geistliche Tod, 
 
 282. 
 
 Mit der Tonsur, 282. 
 Mendes, Catulle, 76. 
 Meyer, C. F., 287, 289. 
 Meyer, R. M., 201, 202. 
 Meyer-Forster, Elsbeth, 291. 
 Meyerbeer, Z' ' Africaine, 87. 
 Meyerhof, Leonie. See Hildeck.
 
 300 
 
 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE 
 
 Meysenbug, Malwida von, 258- 
 
 259, 261. 
 Michael Kramer. See Haupt- 
 
 mann. 
 
 Miegel, Agnes, 292. 
 " Moderne, Die," 4, 10. 
 Moliere, 65. 
 
 Morituri. See Sudermann. 
 Morris, William, 60. 
 Miihlbach, Luise, 249-250, 255. 
 Frederick the Great and his 
 
 Court, 249. 
 
 Nathan the Wise. See Lessing. 
 
 Nathusius, Marie, Tagebuch eines 
 armen Frduleins, 246. 
 
 Naturalism, 120, 127. 
 
 Nibelungenlied, 3. 
 
 Niese, Charlotte, 291. 
 
 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 26, 40, 113, 
 155, 227, 245, 259, 267, 270, 
 274, 275, 276, 283, 285. 
 
 Nordmann, Richard, 291. 
 
 Paoli, Betty, 248, 263, 264. 
 Papa Hamlet. See Holmsen. 
 Polko, Elise, 17, 266. 
 Power of Darkness, The. See 
 
 Tolstoi. 
 
 Preuschen, Hermione von, 267. 
 Prevost, Marcel, 76. 
 Prisoner of Zenda, The, 17. 
 Promethidenlos. See Hauptmann. 
 Puttkamer, Alberta von, 292. 
 
 Raimund, Ferd., 168, 172. 
 Raimund, Golo, 257. 
 Realism, 134. 
 
 Regina. See Katzensteg, Der. 
 Reuter, Fritz, 4, 24, 138. 
 
 Ut mine Strom tid, 14. 
 Reuter, Gabriele, 273-274. 
 
 Aus guter Familie, 273. 
 Ritter, Anna, 292. 
 Rittland, Klaus, 291. 
 Rives-Chanler, Amelie, 266. 
 Robbers, The. See Schiller. 
 Roman experimental, Le. See 
 Zola. 
 
 Romantics, 9, 167. 
 
 Rose Bernd. See Hauptmann. 
 
 Rosegger, Peter, 138. 
 
 Rosmer, Ernst, Die Kbnigskinder, 
 
 294. 
 Rote Hahn, Der. See Hauptmann. 
 
 Sachs, Hans, 77. 
 
 Sand, George, 232, 239, 247, 251, 
 
 264. 
 
 Scheffel, Jos. Victor von, 4. 
 Scherer, Wilhelm, 5. 
 Schiller, 4, 9, 155, 178, 235, 237. 
 
 The Robbers, 1 55. 
 Schlaf, Johannes, 134, 166. 
 Schluckundjau. See Hauptmann. 
 Schmetterlingsschlacht, Die. See 
 
 Sudermann. 
 Schobert, H., 272. 
 Schubin, Ossip, 263, 264-265, 267. 
 Schiicking, L., 251. 
 Shakespeare, 4, 127. 
 Coriolanus, 178. 
 Julius C<Esar, 178. 
 The Taming of the Shrew, 200. 
 St. Simon, Duke of, 239. 
 Sodoms Ende. See Sudermann. 
 Sorma, Agnes, 186. 
 Spattgen, D. von, 272, 277. 
 Spielhagen, F., 4, 109. 
 Spindler, K., 251. 
 Stimer, Max, 283. 
 Stoss, Veit, 207. 
 Strindberg, August, 76. 
 Sturmgeselle Sokrates, Der. See 
 
 Sudermann. 
 
 Sudermann, Hermann, 4, 5, 6-13, 
 13-14 (life), 16, 17, 19, 107- 
 115, 123, 293. 
 Das Ewig-Mdnnliche, 65-67, 
 
 78. 
 
 Das Gliick im Winkel, 53-56. 
 Der Katzensteg, 19-28, 106. 
 Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates, 83, 
 
 108-107, 114. 
 
 Die drei Reiherfedern, 77-83. 
 Die Ehre, \z, 13, 19, 28, 30- 
 37, 41, 45, 46, 49, 57, 58, 86, 
 92, 113.
 
 INDEX 
 
 301 
 
 Die Geschwister, 17. 
 
 Die Schmetterlingsschlacht, 8, 
 
 56-59, 86. 
 
 Es lebe das Leben, 26, 92-101. 
 Es war, 25-27, 28. 
 Frau Sorge, 14-16, 28. 
 Fritzchen, 63-65, 67. 
 Geschichte einerstillenMuhle, 1 7. 
 Heimat ("Magda"), 28, 45-53, 
 
 56,92, 113. 
 Im Zwielicht, 14. 
 lolanthes Hochzeit, 23-25. 
 Johannes, 68-77, 114. 
 Johannisfeuer, 83-92. 
 Morituri, 59. 
 Sodoms Ende, 28, 29, 37-45, 86, 
 
 114. 
 
 Teja, 23, 59-63, 67, 114. 
 Suttner, Bertha von, Die Waffen 
 
 nieder ! 291. 
 Sylva, Carmen, 262, 263. 
 
 Tagebuch eines armen Frauleins. 
 See Nathusius. 
 
 Talisman, Der. See Fulda. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, The. See 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Teja. See Sudermann. 
 
 Thackeray, in, 288. 
 
 Tieck, L., 180. 
 
 Tolstoi, L., The Power of Dark- 
 ness, 137. 
 
 Tristan und Isolde, 233. 
 
 Turgenieff, I., 265. 
 
 Uber Land und Meer, 253. 
 
 Uhland, L., 4. 
 
 Ut mineStromtid. See Fritz Reuter. 
 
 Versunkene Glocke, Die. See 
 
 Hauptmann. 
 Viebig, Clara, 280-281. 
 Villinger, Hermine, 291. 
 Vischer, Friedrich Theodor, Faust, 
 
 the Third Part of the Tragedy, 
 
 9- 
 Vor Sonnenaufgang. See Haupt- 
 
 Wagner, Richard, 155, 227, 259. 
 Wahlverwandtschaften, Die. See 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 Weavers, The. See Hauptmann. 
 Weber, Die. See Hauptmann. 
 Werner, E., 4, 257. 
 Wette, Adelheid, 167. 
 Wheeler Wilcox, Ella, 266. 
 Wilbrandt, A., 4. 
 Wildenbruch, E. von, 4. 
 
 Heinrich und Heinrichs Ge- 
 
 schlecht, 179. 
 
 Wildermuth, Ottilie, 17, 266. 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 3. 
 Wolzogen, E. von, Die Kinder 
 
 der Excellenz, 45. 
 Woodbridge, Elizabeth, 177. 
 
 Young Germany, 9, 239, 241, 246, 
 
 249, 254. 
 Youngest Germany, 10, 130, 272. 
 
 Zimmermann, Alfred, 151. 
 Zola, Emile, 158. 
 
 Bite humaine, 159. 
 
 L? Assommoir, 137. 
 
 La Terre, 137. 
 
 Le Roman experimental, 121.
 
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 Luquiens : Popular Science 60 .65 
 
 Meilhac and Hale"vy: L'Ete" de la Saint-Martin, Labiche's La Lettre 
 
 Charged, d'Hervilly's Vent d'Ouest. (House) 
 
 Melte : Contemporary French Writers 50 .55 
 
 Me'rime'e: Colomba. (Schinz) 40 .45 
 
 Michelet: La Prise de la Bastille. (Luquiens) 20 .25 
 
 Moireau : La Guerre de 1'Ind^pendance en Ame'rique. (Van Daell) . .20 .25 
 
 Moliere: L'Avare 40 -45 
 
 Moli&re : Le Malade Imaginaire. (Olmsted) 50 .55 
 
 Moliere: Le Misantrope. (Bocher) 20 .25 
 
 Moliere : Les Pre'cieuses Ridicules. (Davis) 50 .55 
 
 Montaigne : De 1'Institution des Enfans. (Bocher) 20 .25 
 
 Mussel, Alfred de : Morceaux Choisis. (Kuhns) 60 .65 
 
 Paris : Chanson de Roland, Extraits de la 50 .55 
 
 Potter: Dix Contes Modernes 30 .35 
 
 Racine: Andromaque. (Bocher) 20 .25 
 
 Renard: Trois Contes de Noel. (Meylan) 15 .17 
 
 Rostand: Les Romanesques. (Le Daum) 35 .40 
 
 Sainte-Beuve : Extraits. (Effinger) 35 .40 
 
 Sand : La Famille de Germandre. (Kimball) 30 .35 
 
 Sand: La Mare au Diable. (Gregor) 35 .4 
 
 Se'vigne', Madame de : Letters of. (Harrison) 50 .55 
 
 Van Daell: Introduction to French Authors 50 .55 
 
 Van Daell: Introduction to the French Language i.oo i.io 
 
 Van Steenderen : French Exercises 15 -2 
 
 GTNN & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 v,- \35 2 
 
 2 6 1967 
 
 TTD cot. tm _ 
 
 If ny 135 3 
 
 HAY 1 3 1968 
 
 :'i 
 
 J?CT 
 
 DEC 2 
 
 ECT> COt. Cm. 
 
 FEB2 -, " 
 
 Jan 1929 
 
 JAN 10 1970 
 
 BookSlIp-35m-9,'62(D2218B4)428(l
 
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 PT 
 
 3<f3 
 
 H36s 
 
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