HANNBLE. Hauptmann's dream play, (Hanneles Himmelfahrt) ( (Hannele's Ascen sion)) was first played 14 Nov. 1893 at the Royal Theatre in Berlin and won for its au thor the Grillparzer prize, but failed to obtain the Kaiser's sanction for the Schiller prize. Driven by the brutality of a drunken foster father to despair, the orphaned Hannele, a child of 14, throws herself into the vil lage pond on a cold winter's night, thinking that she is obeying the call of the Lord Jesus. Rescued, she is put to bed in the poorhouse, where in her delirium she gives utterance to fancies never uttered and her love for the only person who had ever been good to her, the village school-teacher. These fancies, in which the fairy tales of Cinderella and other chil dren's lore are mingled with biblical stories, are boldly but poetically put upon the stage in scenes that alternately dissolve from imagina tion into reality before the spectator until the poor child dies. Along with the angels, appear her dead mother, and the teacher Gottwald is transformed into the figure of Christ. In this Hauptmann was unquestionably influenced by Fritz von Uhde's wonderful conceptions of biblical scenes. Hence the accusations of
blasphemy showered upon him until the de fense of acknowledged religious leaders and writers gradually silenced the outcry. Then the play was attacked for its social-democratic tendencies, while its romantic imagery raised up the accusation of treason to naturalism, for which Hauptmann had stood. Trne, his first dramas had portrayed the anguish and misery of the human soul predominantly, but with (Hannele' he commences to stress the human ((longing for heaven* of which that (Weltweh)" is the root, retaining the rest of the technique of naturalism.
Editions: Gerhart Hauptmann's (Hannele,' Berlin 1894 (really 1893); title later changed to Himmelfahrt) (Berlin 1906, 15th ed.). Consult Emil Sulger-Gebing, (Gerhart Hauptmann' (Leipzig 1909, chap. 5). There are English translations by Charles H. Meltzer (New York 1908); G. S. Bryan (Boston 1909); and William Archer _(London 1894).