Der Ketzer von Soana

With the novella "The Heretic of Soana," first published in 1918 in the Neue Rundschau, Gerhart Hauptmann celebrated one of his greatest successes as a storyteller. Hauptmann depicts the passionate love of the young priest Francesco for the fifteen-year-old goat herder Agata. In the last year of the war, the audience was receptive to such material, filled with a longing for peace and weary of military themes. Thus, the novella, which embodied a fulfillment of happiness, arrived just in time. Rarely have reviews for a Hauptmann work been so varied. While Protestant church circles took the novella as an opportunity to launch a fierce attack against the author and publisher, representatives of literary modernism expressed their enthusiasm, seeing it as a "deep, healing refreshment" (Walther Rathenau). The third volume of the Erkner edition includes the engravings by Hans Meid, which illustrated the 1926 edition published by S. Fischer.