In Berlin, Heinrich Hart (b. Dec. 30, 1855, Wesel, Westphalia [Germany]—d. June 11, 1906, Tecklenburg, Ger.) and Julius Hart (b. April 9, 1859, Münster, Westphalia [Germany]—d. July 7, 1930, Berlin, Ger.) led the movement to modernize German literature by establishing a critical basis for Naturalism and providing a forum for its discussion and dissemination. From 1882 to 1884 they published Kritische Waffengänge, the periodical that decisively launched the Naturalist movement in Germany. After 1884 they worked for the popularization of Naturalism through other journals that they edited (i.e., Berliner Monatshefte, Kritisches Jahrbuch, and Die Freie Bühne), in which they published essays on Naturalistic aesthetics. They organized Durch (1886), an avant-garde literary coterie, and were founding members of the Freie Bühne (1889), a theatre group whose performances of controversial modern plays (including some by Henrik Ibsen) marked the climax of German Naturalism. The Harts were also lyrical poets, short-story writers, playwrights, and dramatic critics, but it was as theoreticians and critics that they made their most lasting contributions.
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Naturalism, in literature and the visual arts, late 19th- and early 20th-century movement that was inspired by adaptation of the principles and methods of natural science, especially the Darwinian view of nature, to literature and art. In literature it extended the tradition of realism, aiming at an even more faithful,…
Freie Bühne, (German: “Free Stage”) independent Berlin theatre founded in 1889 by 10 writers and critics and supervised by the writer-director Otto Brahm for the purpose of staging new, naturalistic plays. Like André Antoine’s Théâtre-Libre in Paris, Brahm’s company gave private performances to theatre subscribers only. The Freie Bühne’s first…
Henrik Ibsen, major Norwegian playwright of the late 19th century who introduced to the European stage a new order of moral analysis that was placed against a severely realistic middle-class background…