Plays: Gerhart Hauptmann: Before Daybreak, the Weavers, the Beaver Coat (German Library) by Gerhart Hauptmann

by Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946) is generally considered a pioneer of modern drama. He was praised by Rilke, Thomas Mann, and James Joyce among his contemporaries for his versatility, innovativeness, and realism. This Nobel Prize-winning author is here represented by three of his best-loved plays.

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First published November 1, 1993

About the author

Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist. He is counted among the most important promoters of literary naturalism, though he integrated other styles into his work as well. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.

Life Hauptmann's first drama, Before Dawn (1889) inaugurated the naturalistic movement in modern German literature. It was followed by The Reconciliation (1890), Lonely People (1891) and The Weavers (1892), a powerful drama depicting the rising of the Silesian weavers in 1844 for which he is best known outside of Germany.
Hauptmann's subsequent work includes the comedies Colleague Crampton (1892), The Beaver Coat (1893), and The Conflagration (1901), the symbolist dream play The Assumption of Hannele (1893), and an historical drama Florian Geyer (1895). He also wrote two tragedies of Silesian peasant life, Drayman Henschel (1898) and Rose Bernd (1903), and the dramatic fairy-tales The Sunken Bell (1896) and And Pippa Dances (1906).
Hauptmann's marital life was difficult and in 1904 he divorced his wife. That same year he married the actress Margarete Marschalk, who had borne him a son four years earlier. The following year he had an affair with the 17-year-old Austrian actress Ida Orloff, whom he met in Berlin when she performed in his play The Assumption of Hannele. Orloff inspired characters in several of Hauptmann's works and he later referred to her as his muse.
In 1911 he wrote The Rats. In 1912, Hauptmann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "primarily in recognition of his fruitful, varied and outstanding production in the realm of dramatic art."
During the First World War Hauptmann was a pacifist. In this period of his career he wrote several gloomy historical-allegorical plays, such as The Bow of Odysseus (1914), The White Saviour (1912–17), and Winter Ballade (1917). After the war, his dramatic abilities appeared to diminish. He wrote two full-length plays that are similar to the early successes: Dorothea Angermann (1926) and Before Sunset (1932). He remained in Germany after Hitler's Machtergreifung and survived the bombing of Dresden. His last work was the Atriden-Tetralogie (1942–46). His works in German were published by S. Fischer Verlag.
Hauptmann died at the age of 83 at his home in Agnetendorf (now Jagniątków, Poland) in 1946. Since the Polish communist administration did not allow Hauptmann's relatives to bury him in Agnetendorf (although even the Soviet military government had recommended this), his body was transported in an old cattle wagon to occupied Germany more than a month after his death. He was buried near his cottage on Hiddensee.
Under Wilhelm II Hauptmann enjoyed the reputation of a radical writer, on the side of the poor and outcasts. During the Weimar Republic (1918–33) he enjoyed the status of the literary figurehead of the new order, and was even considered for the post of state president. Under Hitler he kept his distance from the regime, but never publicly criticized it. This, and the fact that (unlike so many writers and academics) he stayed in Germany, was strongly held against him after the war. A superb collected edition of his works appeared in the 1960s, and stimulated some impressive studies of his work (e.g. those by Peter Sprengel), but the tide of critical and public opinion remained negative. A few of his plays are still revived from time to time, but otherwise he is neglected. He was certainly an uneven writer, but at his best (as in 'The Weavers', his novel 'The Fool in Christ Emmanuel Quint', and the Novellen 'The Heretic of Soana' and 'Das Meerwunder') he can arguably rank with the best of his German contemporaries.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhart_...

Reviews

[Ion · Rating 2 out of 5]

Judging from Gerhart Hauptmann’s biography, the author comes across as an individual that adapts to the world he inhabits. In his youth, he flirted with nationalism, eventually joining in the intellectual German effort to support his country’s stance during the First World War. In the 1920s, he embraced the liberalism of the Weimar Republic. And in 1933, he was rumoured to apply unsuccessfully as a member of the Nazi Party. During the Second World War, he never left Germany, moreover he abstained from criticism of the political elite. The only stable factor during his lifetime seems to have been the national and international recognition as one of his country’s leading literary figures. Unsurprisingly though, his political stance of his old age is what triggered his lack of popularity after his death in 1946.

Focussing only on his role in literary history, a slightly different image emerges. Hauptmann is undeniably a child of Ibsen and Zola, but a rebellious one, making his voice heard loud and clear. As the father of German dramatic naturalism, he had not only influenced a cohort of modernist writers from Rilke to Joyce, he also attempted to push beyond the expected boundaries of the genre, opening the doors through which Brecht and Beckett were to enter at a later stage.

This anthology edited by Reinhold Grimm and Caroline Molina y Vedia, collects three of his most famous plays: “Before Daybreak” (1889), “The Weavers” (1892) and “The Beaver Coat” (1893). Although they all appeared in his early literary oeuvre, these works have cemented his status, particularly “The Weavers” which contributed greatly to him receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.

His debut play, “Before Daybreak” exposes us to a world of extremes. On the one hand, we have the rich industrialists, on the other the poor working class. In the middle, we find Alfred Loth, a young journalist whose flirtations with economic communism and individual perfectionism make him a tragic figure, unable to see the virtues of the reality in front of him. The same dichotomy between wealth and poverty is accentuated in “The Weavers”. Without a central character, the working class acts as a powerful unit, crying in anger at their destitution in the face of the injustice of the emerging industrialised world. “The Beaver Coat” follows in the same footsteps, though for once the loyalty is not entirely with the same social class.

In all these plays, Hauptmann’s ideological views are the driving force behind the dramatic setting. The author gave his characters a stage that resembled reality in its frankness, and yet their destiny is shaped heavily by the writer’s viewpoint. His commitment to the validity of eugenics makes the outcome of “Before Daybreak” an expectant disappointment. The full dedication to proletarianism in “The Weavers” transforms the heroes into villains unintentionally. The obsession to break away from traditionalism leaves “The Beaver Coat” in a state of unsettled indecisiveness. Partly, this criticism could come to Hauptmann’s aid in terms of redeveloping the capabilities of theatre, however this would simply limit his achievements to a technical level. As unfair as this may come across, it is difficult to ignore the fallacy of thought in these works.

Hauptmann’s work was celebrated and equally censured by both extremes of the political spectrum. From these plays, the source of this dichotomy comes from his ability to create a mob-like reaction that forces the viewers to align with the thinking of his characters, irrespective of our personal stances towards their concerns. It is brilliantly effective, undoubtedly. The realisation that we have fallen prey to an author’s vision calls for a revision of both the quality of the content and our ability to sense truth in a murky reality. In that, Gerhart Hauptmann will continue to split audiences to this day.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before Daybreak was my favorite. The weavers is almost carnival in its menagerie of the poor and The Beaver Coat is the most ibsenesque (although all are). All three are concerned with the depiction of impovershed, and the deflation of the Bourgeois notion at the time that the poor are also at fault for their own condition, or personally contemptible, etc.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

HOFFMANN (still censuring): That is not the point at issue. I repeat: I speak not absurdity, but rather that which I must implore you to accept as incontrovertibly true. I speak from experience. He manages to befog your mind for you, and all of a sudden you find yourself ranting about the universal brotherhood of man, about freedom, about equality. Then you start considering yourself above every tradition, every convention, every established ethic. Once upon a time, for the sake of this insanity, we were -- God knows -- prepared to trample on the corpses of our own parents to achieve our ends. And you can believe me when I tell you that he would, if need be, do the same thing to this very day.

HELEN: And how many parents manage each livelong day to march over the bodies of their children without anyone even...