1. Hermann Sudermann was a German dramatist and novelist.
11 Facts About Hermann Sudermann
1. 2.
Hermann Sudermann's father owned a small brewery in Heydekrug, and Sudermann received his early education at the Realschule in Elbing, where he lived with his relatives and attended the Mennonite church where his uncle was the minister.
3.
Hermann Sudermann's parents having been reduced in circumstances, he was apprenticed to a chemist at the age of 14.
4.
Hermann Sudermann was able to enter the Realgymnasium in Tilsit, and to study philosophy and history at Konigsberg University.
5.
Hermann Sudermann then devoted himself to fiction, beginning with a collection of naturalistic short stories called Im Zwielicht, and the novels Frau Sorge, Geschwister and Der Katzensteg.
6.
Hermann Sudermann married the novelist Clara Lauckner, nee Schulz on 20 October 1891 and lived with his family in Berlin-Wannsee.
7.
Hermann Sudermann was a widow and already had three children from her previous short-lived marriage, and she then had one child with Sudermann: a daughter, Hede.
8.
In 1894 Hermann Sudermann returned to novels with Es War, a protest against the fruitlessness of brooding repentance.
9.
At the commencement of World War I, Hermann Sudermann was enthusiastic, publishing a Kaiserlied.
10.
Hermann Sudermann had a stroke in 1928, and died of a lung infection shortly afterwards, in Berlin, aged 71.
11.
Hermann Sudermann mainly is remembered today for his Lithuanian stories, for his autobiography, and for the 1927 silent films Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, based on his short story Die Reise nach Tilsit, from the Collection Litauische Geschichten, The Song of Songs, starring Marlene Dietrich, based on his novel Das Hohe Lied and Flesh and the Devil, starring Greta Garbo, based on his novel The Undying Past.