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HAUPTMANN AND
SCHNITZLER.
By Fanny Johrson.
Two German dramatists, Arthur Schnitz.
ler and Gerhart Hauptmann, have in the
his
current Fear attained the age of 50, and
1,
Sts
their respective birthdays (May 15 and
ws
November 15) have been celebrated in
he
various ways as literary events. Haupt¬
stymann’s reputation at least is European.
he
Some of nis work is known to English
ebt
readers in translation, and in bis own

ccuntry the Hauptmann Society (Gemeinde)
1ot
puts him on a level with such great men
che
as Browning and Goethe, who are not only
ent Fread but written about. The epithet, too
int
often profaned, realistic is constantly
son
applied to Hauptmann. From first to last
ion
peasants than princes, and even with social
strata far helow the comfortable indepen¬
Die
dence of the German peasant class.
Ratten, for example, one of his latest
plays, takes place in a Berlin slum. He is
Jof
attentive to the cry of the poor, and, as a
#a¬
recent critic has observed, pity, as well as
the sincere presentment of fact, is his
he
greatest qualty. But there is another side
to his genius, the impulse towards a mystia
treatment of Nature. In his case an indi¬
vidual as well as a Teutonic characteristic.
on
Of his social plays, Die Weber (1892),
records a risig of the Silesian weavers in
1844, of which the poet’s grandfather, a
weaver himself, had been an eye-witness.
No single figure, but the mobile Vulgus
itself, is the hero of the piece. The weavers
hy
are shown in the warchouse, docked of their
ihe
legitimate earnings by a species of fines and
ten
other devices for getting much and giving
ses
little, such as capital too often employs
against labour; then in the public house,
par
goaded to fury and whetting their courage
tor conflict by drink and song; and agai
destroying the ill-gotten wealth accumulated
in their master’s house. Lastly, appears
the solitary figure of" Father Hilse, - the
God-fearing old weaver, to whom patience
seems better than rebellion. He is struck
and killed by a chance shot from the rioters,
and thus resistance and submission äppear
The
equally impotent. To compare
Weavers, produced, in spite of police
opposition, in 1892, with such a recent
labour play as Mr Galsworthy’s“ Strife is
to realise how far in 20 years the labour
question and the public attitude have
modified, though the problems remain essen¬
tially the same. In previous plays Haupt¬
mann had treated the fate of a group of
individuals such assthe miserable family of
drunkards in“ Vor Sonnenaufgang, orthe
incompatible married pair in" Einsame
Menschen. The novel technique and em¬
ployment of the crowd motive in Die
Weber' marked him out to students of the
drama as well as to the general public.
The Sunken Bell.
In Die versunkene Glocke (1895) he
reached anôther kind of excellence. Its
immediate and continuous popularity tes¬
tifies that his countrymen are, above all
things, lovers of fairy tales. The bell that
Heinrich had founded for the church,
sweetest and most flawless of all his work,
slips from the cart that is carrying it to the
belfry and falls into a mountain tarn.
Heinrich wanders desperate with grief into
the mountains, is found by the nymph-like
sprite Rautendelein, tended to life and hap¬
piness again, and inspired with new crcative
energy. He now determines to found joy¬
bells, not church bells. But his forsaken
children wander up into his retreat, hearing
in an urn the tears of their mother, who had
cast herself into the lake. Her dead hand
touches and sounds Die versunkene
Glocke?' and Heinrich awakes from his
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