THE BEAVER COAT (Der Biberpelz) _Translated by the Editor._ THE CONFLAGRATION (Der rote Hahn) _Translated by the Editor._ INTRODUCTION I Gerhart Hauptmann, the most distinguished of modern German dramatists, was born in the Silesian village of Obersalzbrunn on November 15, 1862. By descent he springs immediately from the common people of his native province to whose life he has so often given the graveness of tragedy and the permanence of literature. His grandfather, Ehrenfried, felt in his own person the bitter fate of the Silesian weavers and only through energy and good fortune was enabled to change his trade to that of a waiter. By 1824 he was an independent inn-keeper and was followed in the same business by the poet's father, Robert Hauptmann. The latter, a man of solid and not uncultivated understanding, married Marie Straehler, daughter of one of the fervent Moravian households of Silesia, and had become, when his sons Carl and Gerhart were born, the proprietor of a well-known and prosperous hotel, _Zur Preussischen Krone_. From the village-school of Obersalzbrunn, where he was but an idle pupil, Gerhart was sent in 1874 to the _Realschule_ at Breslau. Here, in the company of his older brothers, Carl and Georg, the lad remained for nearly four years, having impressed his teachers most strongly, it appears, by a lack of attention. For this reason, but also perhaps because his father, injured by competitors and by a change in local conditions, had lost his independence, Gerhart was withdrawn from school in 1878. He was next to become a farmer and, to this end, was placed in the pious family of an uncle. Gradually, however, artistic impulses began to disengage themselves--he had long modelled in a desultory way--and in October, 1880, at the advice of his maturer brother Carl Hauptmann proceeded to Breslau and was enrolled as a student in the Royal College of Art.