Sudermann was a very popular playwright and novelist during the Wilhelminian period. His works are among the most performed stage plays of their time and have been filmed several times, such as "Der Katzensteg" (Cats’ Bridge) and "Reise nach Tilsit" (Trip to Tilsit). After the success of the play "Die Ehre" (Honour) he was compared with Gerhart Hauptmann. He described the contemporary conflicts of status rather morally than "dissecting" them – as the poets of naturalism usually do. The novel "Frau Sorge" (Dame Care) told of the life of the farmer's son Paul Meyhöfer, who can only free himself from mental distress by setting fire to the farm he had acquired himself.
After the First World War, Sudermann's fame faded during his lifetime. In the book "Bilderbuch meiner Jugend" (The Picture Book of my Youth) he looked back with mild self-irony on his simple ancestry, the landscape and the way of life of the pious Mennonites in the Elbing (today Elbląg) region.
Illustration:
Hermann Sudermann, book illustration, around 1900