"I am a coward, a coward"
Gerhart Hauptmann, Nobel Prize 1912
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1862-1946
German dramatist, novelist, and poet, Hauptmann showed the influence of the theories of Zola
and the plays of Ibsen in his play Before Dawn (1889, tr. 1909), which inaugurated the
naturalistic movement in the German theater and won overnight fame.
His other realistic plays include the famous tragedy of the working class, The Weavers (1892,
tr. 1899), the comedy The Beaver Coat (1893, tr. 1905), and the tragedies Drayman Henschel
(1899, tr. 1913) and Rose Bernd (1903, tr. 1913).
Responsive to changing moods in literature, Hauptmann reflected the trend away from
naturalism with the dream play Hannele (1893, tr. 1894) and the popular romantic play The
Sunken Bell (1897, tr. 1898). His prose works include the novel of a modern mystic, The Fool
in Christ, Emanuel Quint (1910, tr. 1911) and The Heretic of Soana (1918, tr. 1923).
Till Eulenspiegel (1928) is an epic of postwar Germany. A leading figure in German literature for
three generations, Hauptmann received many honors, notably the 1912 Nobel Prize in Literature.
By the end of 1933, he was probably the only German writer of any talent left in Nazi Germany.
He was then over 70 and well past the peak of his creative powers. He continued to write and
tried to show outward conformity by giving thee Nazi salute and joining in the singing of the
Horst Wessel song. But he did not become a NSDAP member and his naturalistic plays were
often atttacked by the Nazis for their supposedly negative attitudes.
A Hungarian writer who met Hauptmann in 1938 in Rapallo was bitterly told by Hauptmann that
Hitler had ruined Germany and would soon ruin the world. When asked why he did not leave
the country, the German shouted angrily :"I am a coward, do you understand, a coward." Sic
transit gloria mundi.
| Hauptmann showed that intellectual courage in a rather democratic society and physical courage in a dictatorship do not always go together, far from it. |