LOST PARADISE, The.. The symbolical title of Was verlorene Paradies> ("The Lost Paradise)) (1892) by Ludwig Fulda designates i the world in which the vast majority of men and women eat bread in the sweat of their brows. The play is intended to arouse sympa thy for workmen who strike rather than see their families starve. Contrasted with their state is that of an absentee Berlin proprietor whose luxurious mode of life leaves but a narrow margin for charitable concessions to his workmen, and who is just now especially impeded by having admitted to equal partner ship in the business a young man of aristo cratic name about to become his son-in-law. The latter attempts to cow the laborers into submission. But the daughter, visiting the factory for the first time on the occasion of her betrothed's appearance there, is touched with pity for the employees, and is stirred to such indignation at the bargain for a son-in law which her parents have made that she breaks the engagement and beseeches her father to grant the demanded increase of wages.
The drama reflects conditions in Germany rather than any, conceivable conditions among us. No American manufacturer would sup pose that a gilded youth—though the son of an inventor—could assume the management of a machine-shop, or could avert a strike; none would regard his business as merely the dowry of his daughter, or would face bank ruptcy rather than dispense with a socially dis tinguished son-in-law. And even in Germany Herr Bernardi's daughter — sophisticated, but inexperienced, unused to feeling and yet sensir tive to others' wrongs—is an unlikely prod uct of her environment. The superintendent of the factory has a keen sense of the joy of work and of social justice; Bernardi's attitude is a mixture of aloofness and sentimentality. The play contains a number of dramatic mo ments and an abundance of realistic dialogue, but also considerable stretches of sententious conversation. Translated by H. C. De Mille (New York 1897); edited by P. H. Grum mann (Boston 1906).