Gerhart Hauptmann is best known for Naturalistic plays such as The Weavers, but later in life he turned toward Symbolism. The play that combines both styles and can be seen as a transitional work for Hauptmann is Hannele.
The German title of the play is Hanneles Himmelfahrt, which roughly translates as Hannele's Heaven-Journey or Hannele's Ascension. The piece tells the story of a young, abused girl with all the bleakness and crudity one would expect from Naturalism.
When Hannele asks a woman tending to her during a fever if the woman comes from the Lord Jesus, the woman responds that she's just Martha. The girl has a hallucination of her abusive stepfather, and then a vision of her dead mother. It is then that three angels become visible onstage. Are they another hallucination, or is Hannele really seeing angels?
We're never quite sure, but in the second act, Martha seems to think they were all a dream. Hannele claims to have been given a primrose (which in German is known as a Key to Heaven). More frightening is an angel she sees dressed in black, who seems to be a clear symbol of death. A woman dressed in Martha's clothes then appears, but according to the stage directions, she is "more beautiful and younger than she, with long white wings."
Clearly, we are no longer in the realm of Naturalism, though all of these mystical figures could still be interpreted as hallucinations or dreams. That changes after Hannele dies and a real primrose appears in her hands. Not only does the audience see the primrose, but the other characters on the stage apparently do, too, as they declare that she must be a saint.
Toward the end of the second act, a stranger who is a Christ-like figure gets Hannele to awaken and promises to lift her beyond the stars. The play also shifts from prose to poetry. At last, angels sing:
We carry you yonder in silken silence,
Hush-a-by, by-by to heavenly rest,
Hush-a-by, by-by, to heavenly rest.
Once the singing stops, though, Martha and a doctor confirm that Hannele is dead. After rising to a poetic Symbolism, the play slips back into Naturalism again.
