Gerhart Hauptmann summary

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Gerhart Hauptmann, etching by Hermann Struck, 1904; in the Schiller-Nationalmuseum, Marbach, Ger.

Gerhart Hauptmann, (born Nov. 15, 1862, Bad Salzbrunn, Silesia, Prussia—died June 6, 1946, Agnetendorf, Ger.), German playwright and poet. He studied sculpture before turning to literature in his early 20s. His first play, the starkly realistic social drama Before Dawn (1889), made him famous and signaled the end of highly stylized German drama. His naturalistic plays on themes of social reality and proletarian tragedy, including The Weavers (1892), The Beaver Coat (1893), and Drayman Henschel (1898), made him the most prominent German playwright of his era. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1912. In his novels, stories, epic poems, and later plays, he abandoned naturalism for mystical religiosity and mythical symbolism.

Nobel Prize Summary

Nobel Prize, any of the prizes (five in number until 1969, when a sixth was added) that are awarded annually from a fund bequeathed for that purpose by the Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel. The Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards given for intellectual

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and

short story Summary

Short story, brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters. The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise

tragedy Summary

Tragedy, branch of drama that treats in a serious and dignified style the sorrowful or terrible events encountered or caused by a heroic individual. By extension the term may be applied to other literary works, such as the novel. Although the word tragedy is often used loosely to describe any sort