SOURCE: “The Spiritual Malaise of a Modern Hercules, Hauptmann's Bahnwärter Thiel,” in Germanic Review, Vol. 55, No. 3, Summer, 1980, pp. 98-108.

In the following essay, Clouser examines the conflict between spiritual and physical natures in Bahnwärter Thiel, equating Thiel with a failed Hercules.

Largely neglected until the middle of this century, Bahnwärter Thiel has recently begun to receive critical praise as a master Novelle and one of Gerhart Hauptmann's best prose pieces. Although it is an early work, Bahnwärter Thiel prefigures the major phases of Hauptmann's subsequent development—from poetic realism and naturalism, through mystic neo-romanticism and psychological realism, to modernizations of Hellenic myth. Thiel's story is both timeless and contemporary: the suffering of an oppressed human spirit at the dawn of the technical age. The soul of the protagonist, a meek signalman, is severely tried, first by the death of his adored wraith-wife Minna, then...