The Weavers by Gerhart Hauptmann

First produced: 1892

First published: 1892

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Social criticism

Time of work: The 1840’s

Locale: Germany

Principal Characters:

• Dreissiger, a manufacturer
• Pfeifer, his manager
• Becker, a weaver
• Moritz Jaeger, a returned soldier
• Old Baumert, a weaver
• Old Hilse, a weaver
• Gottlieb Hilse, his son
• Luise Hilse, Gottlieb’s wife

Critique:

THE WEAVERS is usually rated the best of Hauptmann’s dramatic works. It is almost wholly a socio-economic study in that the characters are types caught in irresistible forces of the social and industrial system under which they live. The dramatic incidents are a microcosm of the much wider industrial revolution, with the unemployment caused in part by the introduction of power looms. In this play no answer to the problem is given; rather, Hauptmann shows us people who react in the only way they can when misery becomes too oppressive.

The Story:

In a large room on the ground floor of Dreissiger’s house the weavers were bringing in their finished webs. Pfeifer, manager for Dreissiger, inspected each piece and assessed its value. He had a sharp eye for flaws and the amounts he named were low. From the complaints aired, the weavers were near starvation. In general, however, the weavers were a docile, tractable lot.

Old Baumert came in carrying a bundle wrapped in cloth. It was the body of his pet dog. Baumert had not had the heart to kill the animal himself, but he had had it butchered to provide meat for his family. The dog was only a skinny, half-grown pup, not large enough to feed his destitute family.

Most of the weavers were squat and sickly, but Becker was a young, impudent giant. When he heard the price Pfeifer would allow for his web, he refused on the ground that such an amount was alms, not wages. In fury Pfeifer called for Dreissiger, who upheld his manager. A diversion was created when a child fainted. Dreissiger was angry because the child’s parents had sent him so far with the heavy web; he ignored the crowd’s explanation that the child was starving.

Because of the tension in the room, Dreissiger harangued the weavers. In his view he provided work; if the weavers did not want to do his work, they could go elsewhere. Then he made a portentous announcement: he was engaging two hundred more weavers, and the new rates of pay would be lower.

The Baumerts occupied one room in the house of William Ansorge, a former weaver. Old Baumert was too feeble to do much and his wife was crippled. One daughter, Emma, was twenty-two. She had a boy of four fathered by a consumptive weaver who had died before they could be married. Bertha, the second daughter, was a pallid girl of fifteen. The two sisters spent long hours at the loom. Their landlord, Ansorge, was too old to weave any more; he led a miserable existence mending baskets.

When old Baumert came in, he brought with him Moritz Jaeger, a returned soldier. Jaeger was a fine strapping youth with good clothes and money in his pockets, the center of interest as he told of his successes in the army. He kindly provided a bottle of brandy which cheered the family immensely.

Bertha cooked their dog meat in the oven. With meat and brandy they would have a feast. Ansorge joined them as the smell of cooking meat spread through the house. To his intense disgust, Baumert’s stomach could not hold the meal; two years had passed since he had tasted meat.

Jaeger was appalled at the misery of the weavers. Able to read, he was pessimistic about any relief for the workers. The papers had recently published the report of the Berlin inspector who had been sent to investigate their living conditions. The bureaucrat had asserted solemnly that there was no one in want among them. Jaeger had found a different answer.

He began to read to them a marching song that told the woes of the weavers. Inflammatory in tone, it named Dreissiger as an oppressive villain. As he read the stanzas, Ansorge and Baumert caught some of its revolutionary spirit, and they were stirred to fight for their rights.

In the common room of the public house, Welzel, the publican, served a commercial traveler. The salesman, a competent city man, was flirting with Anna, Welzel’s red-haired daughter. Wiegand, a joiner, had that day made a coffin for a dead weaver. The man had died of starvation; he needed only a light coffin. The traveler expressed his surprise that the supposedly destitute weavers should hold such elaborate funerals. Wiegand, who was a cunning man, was of the opinion that the weavers were a wrong-headed lot; no one need be in want if he were enterprising.

When Ansorge and Baumert came in, the talk grew more animated as other weavers aired their wrongs. A peasant happening in told the assembly that the weavers were poor only because they did not know how to do useful work. A forester joined in that opinion. The weavers retorted bitterly that they were forbidden to take even a broken branch from the forests.

After Jaeger and Becker came in at the head of a small group of young men, the talk centered even more strongly on the weavers’ woes. The traveler, attempting a pompous remark on the amount of real destitution, was roughly silenced, and Welzel for safety led him into another room. Then Kutsche, the policeman, came to warn the weavers that they must not sing their song any more. But the mob spirit grew; the defiant song rang out.

In Dreissiger’s private room, the growing tulmult had forced the manufacturer to interrupt his whist game with Pastor Kittelhaus. As Dreissiger came back in, he announced that he had had Becker seized. Weinhold, a tutor in the household, was young enough to feel sympathy for the weavers. When he voiced his opinions, he was summarily discharged. The coachman entered and told them he had the carriage ready, for it looked as if the family might be compelled to flee. The children were already prepared to travel.

The obsequious police superintendent hurried to congratulate Dreissiger on having the ringleader, Becker, apprehended. When five dyers led in the captured Becker, the superintendent began to upbraid the weaver, but Becker, cool and self-possessed, cried shame on the dyers for not joining their fellow workers. When Becker was led off to jail, the mob freed him and manhandled the police.

Pastor Kittelhaus, who had no sympathy for the rioters, attempted to talk to the crowd outside. He was shouted down and roughly treated. The Dreissiger family drove away just as the weavers broke into the house. Thoroughly aroused, the mob sacked the building and broke windows and doors.

Old Hilse, a weaver living in another village, could not believe the news when Hornig the rag dealer told him that the weavers were rioting for more pay. The doctor came to see Hilse’s blind wife and verified the news. Hilse, a pious old soldier, was upset that his fellow weavers could forget law and order. His son’s wife, Luise, sided with the rioters, but Gottlieb, her husband, believed as his father did. Old Hilse predicted that as soon as the soldiers came the weavers would be a sorry lot.

The ominous marching song came closer as the rioters, led by Jaeger and Becker, shouted for Hilse and Gottlieb to join them. Luise courageously went out with the mob, but the Hilse men stayed at their looms. Soon shots were heard; the soldiers were putting down the riot. When Gottlieb saw his wife standing defiantly in front of the line of bayonets, he could resist no longer, and he dashed out to join the throng.

Old Hilse stubbornly stayed at his loom near a window, where a chance bullet wounded him fatally. Mielchen, Gottlieb’s little daughter, called to her grandfather that the soldiers had been driven off and that the mob was entering the house of Dittrich, another manufacturer. Old Hilse made no answer.

Further Critical Evaluation of the Work:

Gerhart Hauptmann was the son of a prosperous innkeeper in Silesia where the weaver riots took place eighteen years before his birth. The Silesian dialect he uses in THE WEAVERS and some of his other works is the language of his childhood. Following his parents’ wishes, he attempted the study of science and agriculture. He then studied art and sculpture with little success, finally finding his medium in writing poetry and fiction. His association with politically active, idealistic circles served as an inspiration for his writing of THE WEAVERS, whose story was familiar to him from his grandfather’s tales. The work was soon acclaimed as the first German socialist drama. The controversy that immediately surrounded the work contributed a great deal to its becoming widely known. On the grounds that the nature and language of the drama were inflammatory, public performances were repeatedly banned by the police. The ban was eventually removed by court order, the controversy finally reaching the German Parliament.

The style of the drama is naturalistic, presenting starkly realistic scenes from the lives of destitute Silesian weavers. Since the work introduces new characters in every scene, and lacks a definite unity of plot, its very form as drama was questioned. The structure is in fact epic, rather than dramatic. While appearing objective, the author obviously selected aspects that created sympathy for the plight of the weavers, and, by extension, the plight of all poor and exploited people.

This was the era of Social Darwinism, and the treatment of subjects repugnant to society was in literary vogue, as was also the naturalistic style through the influence of Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Ibsen, Zola, and Flaubert. With THE WEAVERS, based on a true incident, Hauptmann pioneered naturalistic drama in Germany. While his later subjects ranged from satire on society through middle-class personal conflicts to reworking themes of Greek tragedy, he is still best known for his naturalistic works, particularly for THE WEAVERS.