The Nobel Prize in Literature 1912 was awarded to Gerhart Hauptmann "primarily in recognition of his fruitful, varied and outstanding production in the realm of dramatic art".
They also have a biography of the Laureate. So it may well be true that he was the face of German literature to those outside Germany. Thomas Mann is said to have thought Hauptmann good company. History of course was just beginning then, and the rest of his life we see him shuffled along like most in the 20th century, with little dignity, but minimal criminal evidence.
Ludwig Lewisohn edited Gerhart Hauptmann's Collected Works and here is an excerpt from Volume 7, The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann: Miscellaneous dramas: (1917).
The below dialogue is specifically from Commemoration Masque, (translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan). This drama was designed:
To Commemorate The Spirit Of The Wars Of Liberation
Eighteen Hundred Thirteen, Fourteen And Fifteen
Performed At The Centennial In Breslau (1913)
That is, this presentation recalls when the German states threw off the yoke of Napoleon. And I will add, to me, the description below is not of French action, but of modernity.
There is an amusing interval when the stage actors playing a Parisian mob, spill off the stage,
[The director]
You come too soon, the times are rude.
Out, out! Your cue has not been spoken.
First Jacobin
Scoundrel, you want your cranium broken?
The Director I'm the director!
Second Jacobin
Who?
But our main focus is on a section with a bloody description of mob action. I will not gloss the French Revolution, merely point out I do not think these events are exaggerated.
Our quotation:
But we had our little joke, at least.
The man who works deserves his feast.
The Princess Lamballe was a bite to allure you:
We lit'rally tore her to bits, I assure you.
But that was the final scene of the fray,
For first we had at her with merry play:
You know she was furnished without and within.
.....
First Jacobin
I also am a Septembriseur.
Long live the Terror! Terreur! terreur!
I fished in a body as though 'twas a pocket,
To pull the quivering heart from its socket;
I held it as a cat a captured mouse,
And sucked it bare as a haunted house.
.....
People, so must you gobble and guzzle,
That is the genuine sacrament
.....
I say again, modernity is the point, not France, but everybody, over two hundred years ago.
And of course not ALL of modernity.
[The director]
You come too soon, the times are rude.
Out, out! Your cue has not been spoken.
First Jacobin
Scoundrel, you want your cranium broken?
The Director I'm the director!
Second Jacobin
Who?
But our main focus is on a section with a bloody description of mob action. I will not gloss the French Revolution, merely point out I do not think these events are exaggerated.
Our quotation:
But we had our little joke, at least.
The man who works deserves his feast.
The Princess Lamballe was a bite to allure you:
We lit'rally tore her to bits, I assure you.
But that was the final scene of the fray,
For first we had at her with merry play:
You know she was furnished without and within.
.....
First Jacobin
I also am a Septembriseur.
Long live the Terror! Terreur! terreur!
I fished in a body as though 'twas a pocket,
To pull the quivering heart from its socket;
I held it as a cat a captured mouse,
And sucked it bare as a haunted house.
.....
People, so must you gobble and guzzle,
That is the genuine sacrament
.....
I say again, modernity is the point, not France, but everybody, over two hundred years ago.
And of course not ALL of modernity.
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