To some, Max Halbe ranks second to Gerhart Hauptmann among the dramatists of the German naturalist movement; to others, he is a minor figure whose significance lies in his evocation of the landscape and traditions of West Prussia. That dual reputation belies the brevity and looseness of his adherence to naturalism and the power of his best work; it has also meant that his nonnaturalist pieces have suffered oblivion. Jugend (1893; translated as Youth, 1916) made him a household name; it was a phenomenal success, for two decades the most frequently performed of all modern German plays. Further successes, Mutter Erde (1897; translated as Mother Earth, 1915), Haus Rosenhagen (1901; translated as The Rosenhagens, 1910), and Der Strom (The River, 1903; published 1904) followed. Along with Eisgang (The Ice Is Moving, 1892), they were established in the German repertoire in the years up to World War I. But in the general estimation of his contemporaries his later...