Heyse was more successful in portraying women than men. He was long called “the favorite of maidens.” He had insight to see fairly and to balance well the traits of normal maidenhood--beauty, coyness, love of prowess and adventure, ardent but concealed love until the lover came to whom she would yield her “maidenly pride” (“Mädschenstoltz”). There are traces of the influence of Goethe in certain passages in _Kinder der Welt_, and such _Novellen_ as _The Broiderer of Treviso_, _The Prodigal Son_, and _The Spell of Rothenburg_. In the last story, there are comments upon art, interwoven with humor and irony as the characters journey from Ausbach to Würzburg. Originality, however, marks his drama and his fiction--that “ideal conception and fine literary craftsmanship” which won for him the Nobel inscription. Mr. Georg Brandes believes that Heyse was, primarily, a pupil of Eichendorf, as his poetry indicates.[77] The poems by Heyse are less familiar than his prose, although he wrote both epics and lyrics. “Salamander” ranks among his best long poems; “The Fury” and “The Fairy Child” are examples of his lyrics. He delighted to translate--or transpose--troubadour lays, folk songs from the Spanish and the Italian. Like Mendelssohn, to whom he has been compared in temperament, he lacked dynamic force but he was sensitive, artistic, and idealistic in his basic character. GERHART HAUPTMANN (1912) The prize of 1912 has been awarded: Hauptmann, Gerhart, born 1862: “principally for his rich, versatile, and prominent activity in the realm of the drama.”[78] During the quarter century since the first Nobel prize was awarded, it has happened, at intervals, that two representatives of the same nation but different generations, are found on the lists in literature. Thus Björnson and Hamsun, among Norwegian novelists, Echegaray and Benavente in Spanish Drama, and Heyse and Hauptmann in German literature of the imagination, are exponents of succeeding generations of thought and expression. Heyse stood for the older, more poetic and romantic forms; he decreed a philosophy of nobleness in man and contentment in life. Gerhart Hauptmann, who received the prize only two years later than Heyse, in 1912, was ranked by some critics with the realists of the modern, restless type, whose criticism of society in general was world-disturbing. After 1900 the fame of Heyse had declined among the younger, more progressive writers. His award, at eighty years, revived interest in his writings, especially the _Novellen_; translations and articles about his personality were widely printed in current journals.