98. “Fuhrmann Henschel”

Play in five acts by Gerhart Hauptmann
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

Gerhart Hauptmann's mature art has transformed an everyday, almost uninteresting event into a drama that we follow from act to act with ever-increasing devotion and which, despite the apparent indifference of the subject matter, leaves us with the feeling that we have made a new experience of what is called human destiny. Hauptmann's art definitely has something that points to the artist's delicate hands. Hauptmann does not know a rough grasping and shaping of people and actions so that they correspond to the artist's intention. Hauptmann does not know the Shakespearean way of always doing violence to things in order to bring them into the dramatic framework. He obviously loves the things he treats too much for that. He sees their form, their life with the finest artistic sense. The simple, plain truth of the facts is revealed to his inquiring gaze, his feelings resting selflessly on the objects; and when he places this simple, plain truth in front of people, only then do they realize how wrong and false they themselves see the same facts.

The carter Henschel lives in a Silesian seaside resort in the 1960s. He is a well-behaved, honest man, up to his job, loved by his servants and the townspeople. But he is weak-willed and not very clever towards the people who take advantage of his weakness. The maid Hanne also lives in his house. She is a person who will not shy away from any criminal act if it can lead her to seize control of Henschel's house. Henschel's wife is ill and soon dies. The child Henschel has by this woman also dies. While all this is happening, Hanne catches the carter in her nets. He marries her, despite having promised his dying wife that he would never do so. The way Hanne behaves gives rise to the justified suspicion in the village that the first wife and her child have been taken away from her. She betrays the good Henschel with a waiter. The way in which the poor man is informed of his second wife's infidelity by his acquaintances at the inn and how he is driven to despair and voluntary death when he is certain is of unspeakable dramatic effect in Hauptmann's portrayal.

We are dealing with simple, undifferentiated people and with a plot that follows perfectly straight lines. Only an artist like Gerhart Hauptmann, who sees simplicity in its greatness because he sees it in its truth, can show how shocking such people and such actions can be. Just let a moralizing or idealizing poet come across the same material: it would be a runaway hit.

There is a feminine trait in Hauptmann's poetic talent. It has been noted that in the course of their married life, women gradually adopt a handwriting that becomes more and more similar to that of their husband. So it is with Hauptmann's dramatic style. It becomes more and more similar to the features in which nature creates. Compare this development with that of Schiller, for example. The latter is increasingly searching for an artistic style, for a mode of creation with higher laws than those found in nature. Schiller is the male poet who wants to create style; Hauptmann is the female genius who waits until she has conceived what she is to give birth to. I am not speaking in Schiller's favor, nor do I want to say anything to Hauptmann's disadvantage. For perhaps poetry is a feminine expression of the psyche and only philosophy the outflow of the truly masculine. Then poets with masculine traits would only really be philosophical natures who express themselves through the medium of poetry. And perhaps Hauptmann's poetry only appears so unphilosophical because he is a real poet!

The performance at the Deutsches Theater is worthy of recognition in every respect. The direction was up to the style of the work and the actors gave exemplary performances. The only thing one could do would be to copy out the note to say a word of praise for each name, if one did not want to do injustice to the other by mentioning one. But Rudolf Rittner (Fuhrmann Henschel) and Else Lehmann (Hanne) must be mentioned, because they solved the two most difficult tasks in the best possible way.