m the Baltic
provinces, the upper-class life of which has been treated by Eduard
von Keyserling, while need and struggle have been described by
Frances Kuelpe and Karl Worms; the West Prussians, represented by
Max Halbe; the Pomeranians (Georg Engel), the Mecklenburgers (Max
Dreyer), the Hanseatics (Gustav Falke, Thomas Mann, Otto Ernst), the
Schleswig-Holsteiners (Timm Kroeger, Charlotte Niese, Gustav Frenssen,
Othmar Enking, Helene Voigt-Diederichs), the Hanoverians (Diedrich
Speckmann, Heinrich Sohnrey, Karl Soehle), the Westphalians (Hermann
Wette, Walther Schulte vom Bruehl).

Along the banks of the Rhine, on the other hand, there dwells in the
same latitude a more vivacious people, whose mischievous cheerfulness
and easy-going philosophy of life are manifestations of their Frankish
blood. It is striking that hardly one of the most prominent Rhenish
writers of the present (Clara Viebig, Joseph Lauff, Rudolf Herzog,
Wilhelm Schaefer, Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, Herbert Eulenberg) has failed
to try his hand at the drama. In Middle Germany emotions are more
deep-seated and more responsive; people are more sentimental, more
soft-hearted, more talkative, more visionary, have a finer sense
of form, but a more conventional manner of speech. In this charming
region of forests and mountains, to which the population is warmly
attached and in which it finds protection, there is abundant occupation
for a tender heart and a lively imagination. Middle Germany is the home
of mysticism and romanticism, and this fact is apparent in the authors
of the present day: the Silesians (Karl and Gerhart Hauptmann, Hermann
Stehr, Paul Keller), the Misnians (Max Geissler, Kurt Martens), the
Thuringians (Helene Boehlau, Marthe Renate Fischer, Wilhelm Arminius),
the Hessians (Wilhelm Speck), the Franconians (Wilhelm Weigand,
Bernhard Kellerman), and the inhabitants of the Palatinate (Anna
Croissant-Rust).

Fondness for music is especially prominent in the stocks in which there
has been an infusion of Slavic elements. In Upper Germany, accordingly,
a sharp line is to be drawn between the Bavaro-Austrian and the
Alemannic group. In Austria the capacity for sensuous enjoyment and a
certain indolence are combined with a tendency toward sanguine but
short-lived enthusiasms. A soft, southern air blows about the heights
of Styria as well as over Vienna and its environs, and in the works of
the writers of these regions (Wilhelm Fischer-Graz, Rudolf Hans
Ba