Gerhart Hauptmann, the most distinguished of modern German dramatists, was born in the Silesian village of Obersalzbrunn on November 15, 1862. By descent he springs immediately from the common people of his native province to whose life he has so often given the graveness of tragedy and the permanence of literature. His grandfather, Ehrenfried, felt in his own person the bitter fate of the Silesian weavers and only through energy and good fortune was enabled to change his trade to that of a waiter. By 1824 he was an independent inn-keeper and was followed in the same business by the poet's father, Robert Hauptmann. The latter, a man of solid and not uncultivated understanding, married Marie Straehler, daughter of one of the fervent Moravian households of Silesia, and had become, when his sons Carl and Gerhart were born, the proprietor of a well-known and prosperous hotel, Zur Preussischen Krone.
From the village-school of Obersalzbrunn, where he was but an idle pupil, Gerhart was sent in 1874 to the Realschule at Breslau. Here, in the company of his older brothers, Carl and Georg, the lad remained for nearly four years, having impressed his teachers most strongly, it appears, by a lack of attention.
