[Gerhart Hauptmann and psychiatry at that time reflected in his works]

In the work of Hauptmann, the "Poet of compassion", the mentally ill, doctors and psychiatric institutions play a special role in the context of social criticism concerning human suffering. The charisma of August Forel and the impressions of atmosphere at the Zurich Burghölzli must already have had a formative effect on Hauptmann in 1888. The Leubus Institution (Silesia), the provincial psychiatric hospital in Stralsund and the psychiatric hospital in Dalldorf/Berlin are further backdrops for Hauptmann's encounters with the psychologically abnormal and his almost characteristic affinity for borderline psychological situations in his books.