Thiel - Paperback

by Gerhart Hauptmann (Author)

"Thiel" is by far the best story ever written by Gerhart Hauptmann, a dramatist, novelist and a Nobel Prize winner.

The novel follows the principles of the naturalist movement in its detailed portraying of the life of Thiel, a good decent and humble railway signalman.

The novel relies on symbolic and impressionist techniques and goes beyond the scientific naturalist approach to explore and portray Thiel's inner life with its many complex interaction of suppressed social, psychological, and religious impulses.

Thiel was first published in German as "Bahnw rter Thiel" or "Signalman Thiel".

Author Biography

Gerhart Hauptmann gained fame as one of the founders of German Naturalism. Hauptmann's first play, Before Surnrise, was acknowledged as the beginning of an important new literary movement in Germany. Hauptmann's dramatic genius is incontestable, but he has never seemed able to settle on any one form as best suited to express his dramatic intentions. "The Weavers" for example, a play that caused considerable stir when it was first presented, is most unusual in that it was concerned with a whole community and has neither hero nor heroine, while "The Sunken Bell", was centered around one man's struggle for expression.