Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source:http://www.archive.org/details/honoraplayinfou01baukgoog
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The French expression, a "man of the theater," is best exemplified inthe person of the German dramatist Hermann Sudermann. The term isintended to convey the idea of a playwright who is interesting andeffective, one who is, in short, master of his trade. The author of"Die Ehre," which is here presented for the first time to Englishreaders, was for many years a man of the theater in the strictestacceptance of the term.
Hermann Sudermann was born at Matziken, Prussia, in 1857. Afterreceiving his preliminary scholastic training in his native province,he attended the Universities of Konigsberg and Berlin and immediatelyafter his graduation from the latter institution entered the field ofjournalism. His first works were short stories and novels, of which"Dame Care," "Regina," and "The Song of Songs" are the best known.German critics and the German reading public are inclined, of lateyears, in view of Sudermann's repeated failures in the field of drama,to place his fiction on a distinctly higher plane than his plays, andit is true that much of the finer intelligence of the man has gone tothe making of his better novels. However, the earlier plays exerted aninfluence so widespread and are of such unquestioned intrinsic value,that there is some question as to the ultimate disposition of thelaurels.
"Honor" was published in book form in 1888, the year before thefounding of the famous "Freie Buhne," or "Free Theater," which was tousher in and nourish modern German Realism. It was first produced in1890.
While Sudermann was not properly speaking a member of the new movement,his early works, "Honor" in particular, were shaped by and servedpartially to create the ideas which the founders of the "Freie Buhne,"Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf, had formulated. But a closer inspectionof "Honor," of "The Destruction of Sodom," "Magda," and "The Joy ofLiving," leads us to the conclusion that Sudermann was playing with theNaturalistic formula, using it as a means rather than an end. Oneexample will suffice: Arno Holz invented the phrase "SequentialRealism," by which he meant the chronological setting down of life inas minute and truthful a manner as possible. He aimed at thephotographic reproduction of life; that process he called "artre-making nature." In his own plays, above all in "Die FamilieSelicke,"