Carl Hauptmann's Gypsies between Racial Hygiene and Bohème

Carl Hauptmann (1858–1921) today shares Wilhelm Jensen’s fate. As his modern editor noted, Hauptmann too is now virtually forgotten. 1 This is in his case perhaps even less deserved. As Gerhart Hauptmann’s elder brother and a late starter in the poetic profession, Carl Hauptmann often felt overshadowed by Gerhart and underestimated (or indeed misrecognized) by critics on that account. 2 Yet he wrote a large number of successful plays in styles ranging from naturalism to impressionism and expressionism, which were performed throughout his career at major theatres all over Germany. Of these, perhaps the Silesian dialect drama Ephraims Breite (1900) is the most distinguished and the visionary expressionist trilogy Die goldnen Straßen (1918), part of which Max Reinhardt directed with huge success at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, 3 the most ambitious. An anthology of lyrics and aphorisms, Aus meinem Tagebuch , went through three editions between 1900 and 1929. He published fine early impressionistic stories and Novellen in major contemporary journals such as the Freie Bühne (1891, 1893) and Morgen (1907). Of his three novels the second, Einhart der Lächler (1907), was published by Marquardt in a first impression of over 3,000 ( Chronik , 173), with a further three by Curt Wolff from 1915 to 1917 (379). By 1922 35,000 copies had been sold, 4 and a fifth, popular edition by the Horen Verlag appeared in 1928. Hauptmann had distinguished artistic connections too: friendships with the Worpswede circle of painters, 5 particularly Otto Modersohn, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Heinrich Vogeler, and Otto Mueller; with Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé; also with the prominent writers and publicists of the fin de siècle Bruno Wille, Franz Blei, Wilhelm Bölsche, Peter Hille, John Henry Mackay, and Frank Wedekind.