See Also: Hauptmann, Gerhart (Johann Robert)(encyclopedia)
Hauptmann, Moritz(encyclopedia)
Rau, Johann(medicine)
Eck, Johann(encyclopedia)
Spix, Johann(medicine)
Sturm, Johann(medicine)
Theden, Johann(medicine)
Wepfer, Johann(medicine)
Wirsung, Johann(medicine)
Zollner, Johann(medicine)

Hauptmann, Gerhart (Johann Robert) (sh)




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.


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

By courtesy of the Schiller-Nationalmuseum, Marbach, Ger.