Bahnwärter Thiel (Flagman Thiel), published in 1888, is Gerhart Hauptmann’s breakthrough novella and a masterwork of German literary Naturalism. Written in German, it portrays a devout railway crossing keeper whose idealized memory of his dead first wife is brutally disrupted by his obsession with his coarse and domineering second wife, building toward a devastating psychological and physical catastrophe.
Hauptmann captures the inner life of a working-class man with unprecedented psychological depth and compassion — a revelation in German literature. Download this free public-domain EPUB to read a compact and devastating masterpiece that established Hauptmann as one of Germany’s greatest writers.