Gerhart Hauptmann

Abstract

To his admirers he is the last of the German classics; one of his many detractors spoke of him as a Gartenlaubedichter, which I suppose is the equivalent of a writer for the Saturday Evening Post. And between these two extremes every shade of opinion is represented in Hauptmann criticism. This, in fact, is one of the Hauptmann problems: that no two critics seem to agree on any aspect of his work and influence. The literature on Hauptmann is bewilderingly subjective and contradictory. His plays, we are told, have been and still are more often performed than those of any other German dramatist. Beginning with the six-volume edition of 1906, collected editions of his writings have appeared more frequently than is the case with any other recent German writer. Academic criticism has been astonishingly kind to him, though no more agreed as to what should be praised and why. Even the free-lance and journalist critics of solid learning, like Alfred Kerr and Paul Fechter, have written of him in tones of deep, though not uncritical, admiration. Such unstuffy writers as Carl Zuckmayer and Frank Thiess have been interested enough to bring unfinished works of Hauptmann to completion. But these are all men of the older generation, some of them no longer living. One looks in vain for any show of interest in Hauptmann by the younger generation of critics or writers. Thomas Mann, Kafka, Rilke, Brecht, Benn, Musil: these are the names one is likely to encounter in any current discussion of the contemporary literary scene in Germany. Hauptmann's is never found among them.