About the work
Rose Bernd is a five-act play that Gerhart Hauptmann wrote between April and September 1903. It was prompted by a court case in which Hauptmann served as a juror judging a farmhand accused of killing her infant. It premiered on 31 October 1903 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.
Plot
The 22-year-old maid Rose Bernd becomes pregnant and marries hastily to avoid disgrace; she is raped and ultimately kills her newborn child. The characters speak in Silesian dialect.
Cultural significance
The play draws on the tradition of the bourgeois tragedy but does not condemn its protagonist, instead holding rigid social norms responsible for the catastrophe. It was filmed twice, in 1919 with Henny Porten and in 1957 directed by Wolfgang Staudte with Maria Schell.