Hauptmann

Hauptman

Venerable dwellers in the village of Obersalzbrunn, Silesia, told proudly last week how they had romped as children with Gerhart Hauptmann, now perhaps Germany's foremost man of letters, then the mischievous son of the indigent village hotel keeper.

The pride of Obersalzbrunners in dramatist Hauptmann was reawakened when he was asked to become a charter member of the new department of literature in the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts--an honor of primatical magnitude.

Like Mr. Sinclair Lewis (TIME, May 17, THE PRESS), Herr Hauptmann issued a statement explaining why he deemed himself bound as an artist to decline an honor of this type: "I do not believe conscious leadership is possible in literature. Writers who are thus officially recognized by the state would form a group to which free writers would rightly object."

Since Gerhart Hauptmann is 64, ripe in honor, hoar in fame, no charge of "publicity seeking" was raised against the author of Vor Sonnenaufgang (Before Sunrise), precursor of the whole modern German realistic movement, Die versunkene Glocke (The Sunken Bell), and Rose Berndt.