HAUPTMANN, GERHART (1862— ), German author, was born in Obersalzbrunn, Silesia, on Nov. 15, 1862, the son of an innkeeper. He was educated locally and in Breslau, and was at first intended for a farmer. His instincts were, however, always artistic. In 188o-81 he spent two years at the Breslau school of art, followed by a year's study at Jena university. He then travelled in France, Spain and Italy and in 1884 established himself in Rome as a sculptor. Obliged by reasons of health to return to Germany, he lived in Dresden, Berlin (where he had thoughts of going on the stage) and Erkner, near Berlin, later settling at Schreiberhau, Silesia.
A man of great versatility and exceptionally wide artistic sym pathies, Hauptmann hesitated long before choosing literature as his means of expression. His earliest work was Promethidenlos (1885) . In 1889 he began the series of dramas which set him at a bound at the head of the German dramatic writers of his time. Hauptmann's first drama, V or Sonnenau f gang (1889) , appeared at a moment when the cultivated German public read nothing but Scandinavian, French and Russian authors, and German writers, to gain a hearing, were obliged to adopt foreign pseudonyms. Hauptmann's genius forced German attention back to its native authors. He was at heart always rather a romanticist than a natur alist, but circumstances forced him to begin as a naturalist. Vor Sonnenauf gang aroused a storm of criticism similar to that en countered by Ibsen and Strindberg, by whose side he took his place. He persevered, however, with a series of dramas depicting the life of the working classes or the poverty-stricken middle classes until, by 1910, German naturalism was fully established. These naturalist dramas include Einsame Menschen (1891), Fuhrmann Henschel (1898), Gabriel Schillings Flucht (1912), and most notably Die Weber (1892), a social drama on the grand scale, representing the rise, outbreak, development and failure of a miniature revolution, and perhaps Hauptmann's greatest work. These dramas had created the type of German naturalism ; but in Hauptmann exact and conscientious observation was mellowed by his great sensibility and feeling for beauty and genuine poetic gift. His romantic tendencies found play as early as 1892 in the somewhat fantastic Hanneles Himmelfahrt, while Die Versunkene Glocke (1896) and Und Pippa Tanzt (1906) are fairy pieces in a rather vague symbolic style. Hauptmann's insight, intellectual honesty and earnest purpose maintained him in the position which he had won as the foremost and most representative German writer. His later plays, however, the best of which was perhaps Der IVeisse Heiland (1919), met with less appreciation than his earlier work. The subjective vision which now permeated his work perhaps hardly replaced his earlier peculiar gift for reproducing the life of others. Hauptmann's narrative work is less famous than his dramatic, but he has produced two stories almost perfect in form and content: Der Narr in Christo Emanuel Quint (191o) and Der Ketzer von Soana (1918), as well as one of the most famous of German novels in Atlantis (1912). Hauptmann's verse, though dignified and sincere, lacks warmth.
See C. Holl, Gerhart Hauptmann, etc. (1913) ; W. Bonsels, Das junge Deutschland and der grosse Krieg, aus Anlass des Brie f wechsels Romain Rollands mit G. Hauptmann fiber den Krieg and die Kultur (1g14) ; A. Esprey, G. Hauptmann and wir Deutschen (1916) ; J. H. Marschan, Das Mitleid sbei G. Hauptmann, bib. (i919) ; Paul Fechter, Gerhart Hauptmann (1922) ; P. Schlenther, G. Hauptmann (1922).