ABSTRACT
The decade of the 1890s saw the beginnings of a decisive retreat from the scientific positivism which had dominated the second half of the nineteenth century and which, in its time, had been one of the most significant factors in the emergence of European Naturalism.1 It also saw the collapse of the provisional alliance between the German Naturalist writers and organized socialism.2 These two developments are reflected in a number of the dramas of this period, the best of which is almost certainly Gerhart Hauptmann’s third play, Einsame Menschen.
