About the work
Lonely Lives is a five-act play that Gerhart Hauptmann wrote between August and November 1890 in Charlottenburg. The Freie Bühne premiered it on 11 January 1891 at Berlin's Residenztheater, directed by Cord Hachmann with Emanuel Reicher as Johannes Vockerat; that same year it was also staged at Berlin's Deutsches Theater and Vienna's Burgtheater.
Plot
The independent scholar Johannes Vockerat lives with his wife and newborn child in cramped bourgeois circumstances by the Müggelsee near Berlin, beset by crises of faith and creative work. The student Anna Mahr pulls him out of his stagnation; their initially platonic bond deepens into an affair that increasingly threatens his marriage and drives the play toward a tragic end.
Cultural significance
Warmly received by critics and audiences at its premiere, the play established Hauptmann's reputation as the leading dramatist of his generation; scholars have noted echoes of Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm.