VI. Fontane’s Commentary on Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang [Before Daybreak] (1889)
Fontane’s review of Hauptmann’s Before Daybreak provides a useful synopsis, but it also indicates how the style and content of Naturalist theater broke cultural conventions in ways that met with Fontane’s approval.
I
It is never very easy (at least this is my view of the matter) to come up with a review, and sometimes it is difficult. Yesterday presented such a case. Only he who has the courage to loathe this work vigorously, piously, merrily, and freely, or to flatly praise it to the heavens, will be spared the experience of racking his brains over this social drama by Gerhart Hauptmann; but anyone who lacks that courage, who feels that every new scene presents him with new questions, will recognize the difficulty of answering all of those questions and will face a difficult day of writing.
[ . . . ]
This is a strange, a spine-chilling story. All over our country, we now have regions where farmers, and sometimes mere cottagers, have become rich overnight, and the play takes us to one such place. It is a Silesian village on the edge of the mountains, and the house we enter not only has citified wallpaper and paintings on the walls; it is also equipped with electric bells and a telephone. The latter is even used in the play. The house, at least the “elegant” part, is home to five persons, four of whom comprise the old line: the farmer Krause, his much younger second wife, and his two daughters from a first marriage. The elder daughter is already married to the engineer Hoffmann, who is now the fifth person in the house, but actually the first in terms of status. He has taken over all business matters, and has used fraudulent tactics to increase the fortune that he originally came upon; at the same time, though, he has seen to the modernization of the house. Yes, indeed, bells and a telephone can be found there, a horse and carriage as well, even an “Eduard,” a liveried servant from Berlin. This house poses as elegant, but in reality it is actually a horrible house, one with a specter in every corner. A drunkard of the first degree, the old farmer practically lives at the pub; his second wife, a former stable maid or not much more, pretends to be a “fine lady” when it suits her; the older daughter, married to the engineer Hoffman, has inherited her father’s addiction to booze; and her husband, Hoffmann, the director of the house, is a phrasemonger and thoughtless hedonist who cares only about himself and subordinates everything to his own enjoyment. Before this schnapps- and sin-ridden clan is introduced to us in full, we make the acquaintance of
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