| Name: |
Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann |
| Birth Date: |
|
| Death Date: |
|
| Place of Birth: |
|
| Place of Death: |
|
| Nationality: |
|
| Gender: |
|
| Occupations: |
|
Gerhart Hauptmann first attempted to express himself artistically as a sculptor. But once he had discovered his literary talents he explored, after a somewhat epigonic beginning, all possible literary forms: novellas, novels, epic and lyrical poetry, and drama. While he had artistic and popular success with his novellas and novels, Hauptmann achieved his broadest recognition as a playwright. He rapidly became the most prolific and most imitated dramatist since Friedrich Schiller, whose plays dominated German thinking about this genre up to the advent of naturalism. Without its success on the stages in Berlin, naturalism would probably have remained only a mildly disruptive occurrence on the German literary scene; and this success would have been impossible without Hauptmann's plays. On the other hand, without the emergence of naturalism, Hauptmann might never have found the proper vehicle for his talents, let alone gained such prominence and influence.
Today Hauptmann remains for most theatergoers and literary historians alike the outstanding representative of strongly realistic, character-oriented, socially critical plays.
This is a free page. This page contains 151 words. This
biography contains 10,596 words (approx. 35 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann Access Pass.
