erary fame as the vehicle of the message they had for the world. The
plays of the period suggest the fermentation going on in the young
brains, the unsettling of old and the dawn of new creeds, religious,
social and esthetic. The clash of two generations became one of the
most popular themes. Caesar Flaischlen, a Suabian, handled it most
thoughtfully and effectively in _Martin Lehnhardt_. Though the author
modestly called it "dramatic scenes," it was a play presenting with
spirited rhythm a phase of the spiritual revolution and moral
revaluation then taking place, and in the orthodox uncle and the
radical nephew he created two figures full of real dramatic life. The
well-to-do and well-satisfied middle-class with its somewhat shopworn
ideals was a popular topic with these young men who lustily set about
to demolish the Mosaic and other codes of life. Otto Erich Hartleben
was hailed as the Juvenal of the society of his time, flaying it
mercilessly in satirical comedies like _Education for Marriage_, _The
Moral Requirement_, and _Rose-Monday_.

Whatever were the shortcomings of these young hot-spurs, there is no
doubt that there were among them earnest seekers for new values of life
and letters. Many were contented with pathetic seriousness and doubtful
results to imitate their successful and popular model, Gerhart
Hauptmann. Some made no attempt at concealing that they walked closely
in the footsteps of their master. Nor did the critics of the new school
esteem them any less for being followers and imitators rather than
creators of independent merit. Among these youths, Georg Hirschfeld, a
born Berliner, was the most promising. He was of a type abundant in
every metropolis having an intense intellectual life: sensitive,
impressionable, with an amazing talent for absorption and adaptation
and a facile gift of language. The reception accorded to his drama.
_The Mothers_ (1896), which was frankly reminiscent of Sudermann's
contrast between the front and the rear house and of Hauptmann's
dialogue of real life, was so generous, that it gave the author, then
barely twenty-three, a position quite out of proportion to his
achievement. His efforts at following up the easily won success made
him a pathetic figure in the drama of that decade. He experienced
failure upon failure and has now, after the publication of some stories
of varying merit and the stage success of a clever comedy directed
against the esthetes--_Mieze and Maria