Hauptmann

Dr. Gerhart Hauptmann recently made his second visit to America after a lapse of thirty-eight years—the purpose of his trip, to join in Columbia University's Commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the death of Goethe. A figure in German literature comparable to Goethe, he resembles his great predecessor in that he, too, hesitated as to whether he should become a painter or an author. After attending art school for a while he became disgusted by the narrow pedantries of the authorities and threw in his lot with the literary Realists. Now he is the respected dean of German letters—dramatist, poet and novelist. He has proved that one may have the eyes of realistic observation, as in The Weavers, or Lonely Lives, and the mystic vision of the poet, as in The Sunken Bell, or Hannele. The span of Hauptmann's years, the Scriptural three score and ten, covers a period of vast significance in the history of his country, and a career which most honorably illustrates the finest qualities of the German mind and German culture

ERNEST BOYD