Abstract

Gerhart Hauptmann researchers have customarily relied on a statement made by the famous Hauptmann friend and scholar Felix A. Voigt who, in 1935 and 1965, vehemently denied any long-term influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on the Nobel Prize-winning German author. In an attempt to re-evaluate Hauptmann's Nietzsche reception, this dissertation focuses on the chronological compilation of relevant biographical facts and Hauptmann's documented Nietzsche references, including a sizeable number of previously unknown materials. Also incorporated are a description of Hauptmann's contacts to the Nietzsche archives in Weimar and his hitherto unpublished correspondence with the philosopher's sister, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche. ;Strong emphasis is placed on a linguistic text comparison of Hauptmann's and Nietzsche's collective works. Hauptmann owned most of Nietzsche's writings and his handwritten marginal notes in Nietzsche's Der Wille zur Macht clearly illustrate a distinctly linguistic method of reception. Hauptmann appears equally captivated by striking terminology and poignant aphorisms, which he detached from their original source and utilized in his own writings. Whether he used this procedure to stimulate his creative thought-processes or whether he simply succumbed to the temptation of borrowing diction, his frequent appropriation of Nietzschean terminology is indicative of his high esteem for the poet-philosopher's stilistic and rhetorical mastery. Hauptmann's admiration is traceable through a period of over 60 years and thus throughout his entire literary career. Hauptmann's reception of Nietzsche culminated in three high points and shows an otherwise oscillating movement where phases of great affinity alternate with intervals in which his interest lay dormant without ever entirely vanishing