In addition to his more pretentious novels, Spielhagen wrote a large number of shorter novels and short stories. To these belong _Klara Vere_ and _On the Dunes_, already mentioned, _At the Twelfth Hour_ (1863), _Rose of the Court_ (1864), _The Fair Americans_ (1865), _Hans and Grete_, and _The Village Coquette_ (1869), _German Pioneers_ (1871), _What the Swallow Sang_ (1873), _Ultimo_ (1874), _The Skeleton in the Closet_ (1878), _Quisisana_ (1880), _Angela_ (1881), _Uhlenhans_ (1883), _At the Spa_ (1885), _Noblesse Oblige_ (1888). The most important of Spielhagen's latest novels are _The Sunday Child_ (1893), _Self Justice_ (1896), _Sacrifices_ (1899), _Born Free_ (1900). [Illustration: FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN _Permission Berlin Photo. Co., New York_ A. WEISS] The place of Spielhagen in German literature is variously estimated. Heinrich and Julius Hart in _Kritische Waffengänge_ (1884) contest his claim to a place among artists of the first rank and condemn his use of the novel for purposes of reform; while Gustav Karpeles in his _Friedrich Spielhagen_ (1889) assigns him a place among the best novelists of his time. This latter position is more nearly correct. The modern disposition to cry art for art's sake, and to denounce all art which has a didactic purpose, is the offspring of ignorance of the real nature of art. In a general way all art has a didactic purpose of varying degrees of directness. It is just this didactic purpose which has entitled the novel to its place among the literary forms, and it is this purpose which made Spielhagen's novels such a potent power in the social revolution of the later nineteenth century. The charge has been made against Spielhagen that his characters are mechanical types used as vehicles of the author's doctrines or of the tendencies of the time. This charge is not sustained by the facts, even in the case of his first somewhat crude novel, the _Problematic Characters_, of which he says later: "There was not a squire in Rügen nor a townsman in Stralsund or Greifswald who did not feel himself personally offended." And the pronounced and clearly defined characters of _Storm Flood_, in their sharp contrasts and fierce conflicts with social tradition and natural impulse, present a vivid picture of the surging life of the New Empire. Spielhagen possessed an intimate knowledge of literary technique. Few if any of his contemporaries had given more careful attention to the principles of esthetics and of literary workmanship, as may be seen from his critical essays and particularly the treatises, _Contributions to the Theory and Technique of the Novel_, and _New Contributions to the Theory and Technique of the Epic and Drama_.