It makes little difference which of his dreams we many select, in almost every one we shall find an interesting, effective exposition. For this reason he has been called the dramatist of the first act. He has a magic power of presenting a line of action in which difficulties arise which we like to see solved. Suspense is created. This may go through a second and part of a third act. Then something new sets in, new material is introduced, which interferes seriously with the straight line of the action. The drama begins to bulge out in the middle. The individual’s threads of the composition become looser. We pass through a series of episodes, generally executed with dramatic power, and nearly always effective on the stage, but not closely woven into unity. At the end, we find ourselves the recipients of two, sometimes three, actions instead of one. It is the proper thing to rate the novelist Sudermann above the dramatist, and it may be that in this case the judgment of the higher critics is correct. Certainly he has produced no drama as yet which, in loftiness of conception and excellence of execution, even approaches Dame Care, and yet the Sudermann craze was fanned into a flame by the tremendous popularity of his dramas. The novel Dame Care made him known, but the drama Honor made him famous. Nor is the cause of this greater vogue of Sudermann’s dramas, especially in the case of the earlier, the really successful plays, difficult to explain. In the novel he is the cunning psychologist, patiently chronicling the victories and defeats of an individual soul. The problem may be one of universal importance, the background may be limited never so broadly; nerveless our interest is centered on one or two individuals and we feel them as individual personalities. Not so in the dramas. Here the battle is waged on a larger stage. We sense the characters not so much as individuals as types. It is a clash of social conventions, a protest against the exiting order of things and who can resist the attraction of satire directed against those whom we have envied or despised? It is this element of social satire in his dramas, combined with a masterly technique and a thorough knowledge of the stage as it actually is, that has made the dramatist Sudermann such as a favorite with the theatre loving public. In conclusion, a word or two may be added here concerning the choice of Frenssen’s life of Jesus as fitly representing his writing in general. It is not for our author’s liberal religions views that this chapter of Holy Land has been selected, nor for his chiaroscuro portrait of the historical Jesus, considered merely as portrait; but rather because no other selection coming within the compass of this series exhibits so fully the essential characteristics of Frenssen’s style, insight, devotion, and enthusiasm; and also because nowhere else can the reader feel so deeply the strong undercurrent of seriousness which now and then rises to the surface of even the lightest kind German literature and, for a while at least, swallows up all the driftwood and wreckage. If read with these considerations in mind, The Life of Jesus cannot but aid in revealing the secret instincts, which he rightly divined to be but dormant, while other writers though them to be dead. Of the twelve works of his first period three novels stand out prominently: The Pastor of Breitendorf (1893), and The Lord of Grabenhagen (1897). Polenz describes in them separately the three forces for good and evil in a German country community the pastor, the independent farmer, and the lord of the manorhorse. The scene is laid in all alike in that beautiful corner of Saxony where Polenz was born and where he lived his active and observant life. Freshness, strength, and finesse respectively have been claimed as the characteristics of these books, but this is only partly true, for Polenz wrote each scene in the style most expressive of his characters. In Farmer Buttner, therefore, where rugged farmers play the prominent part, strength prevails, but the picture of the Count of Saland is done with as much finesse as anything in The Lord of Grabenhagen. Tolstoy, who admired Polenz, used to speak of his “beautiful German, “ and undoubtedly had reference to the adequacy of his style. Polenz never wrote anything simply for outward effect or observer of the dictates of what is called inner form. His style as well as his idea is appropriate to the material facts with which he is dealing. The gripping intensity of Farmer Buttner is not entire; due to the author’s true conception, but in larger part to his singularly appropriate style, for it attunes the reader to the reality of the surrounding in which the old farmer lived. Many early painted them without the envelope of air; and only in air men live. The linear perspective of these painters was good, but until the artists had learned the principle of aerial perspective, portraits of life were impossible Polenz’ aerial perspective good, which accounts for the life of his characters. The exceedingly cordial welcome extended to Dr. Ludwig Fulda, poet, dramatist, essayist and translator, on the occasion of his visits to the United States as the guest of the Germanistic Society of America, in 1906 and 1913, furnished eloquent testimony of the great popularity he enjoys in this country. The influence of German culture upon the intellectual life of America has been a profound and beneficial one, and there are few men in the German literary world of today who are better fitted to disseminate the message of modern German thought and literary striving than Fulda, whose clever American Impression stamp him as a clear-eyed and sympathetic observer of foreign manners and customs, inclined, however, in true optimistic fashion, to look chiefly on the bright side of things. The Italian Renaissance, notwithstanding its corruption and criminality, is entitled to a large portion of admiration, and its romantic revival is far more justified than the glorification of the Middle Ages in German romanticism. Hofmannsthal really enriches us by taking from this period what has lasting value and fascination. The Death of Titian (1892) is a glowing panegyric of Renaissance art. The dying master is within the house at work upon his last canvas, while his disciples are assembled on the terrace of the garden overlooking Venice and conversing together on the great Venetian’s art. It is an unforgettable scene, which endears itself by the sincerity of its enthusiasm, couched in language of the highest beauty. Death and the Fool (1900) is a modern morality – play. The death of the wealthy and over-refined aristocrat is the theme of the scene, a situation recalling the medieval everyman, that most remarkable dramatic crystallization of the medieval view of life and death. When Everyman is on the last steps of life the things of the earth leave him sadly in the lurch; Good Deeds alone accompanies him into eternity. An austere memento mori speaks from this epitome of medieval piety. Hofmannsthal’s Dives has nothing in common with his medieval cousin. As an intellectual aristocrat he has always stood aloof from life- a spectator, not a participant. His long monologue, resembling in many features that of Faust, is a confession of a lost life wasted in egotistical self-seclusion. ERNST VON WILDENBRUCH (Pages 1-153) “Ernst von Wildenbruch.” “King Henry.” “Noble Blood.” HERMANN SUDERMANN (Pages 154-249) “Herman Sudermann.” “John the Baptist.” GUSTAV FRESSEN (Pages 250-333) “Gustav Fressen.” “The Life of Jesus.” WILHELM VON POLENZ (Pages 334-433) “Wilhelm von Polenz.” “Farmer Buttner.” LUDWIG FULDA (Pages434-481) “Ludwig Fulda.” “Tête-À-Tête.” “To Adolf Wilbrandt.” “To Eduard Morike.” “Epistle to Paul Heyse.” “Humor.” HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL (Pages 482-527) “Hugo von Hofmannsthal.” “Death and the Fool.” “The Death of Titian.” “On Mutability.” “Interdependence.” “Travel Song.” Keywords: The German Classics Vol. 17, Wildenbruch, Von, Sudermann, Fressen, Polenz, Fulda, Hofmannsthal, Italian, German, America, Jesus, lord, death, fool, holy land, Dame, Evil,

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