The dispute over the weavers made him the most famous German of his generation: Gerhart Hauptmann's (1862-1946) fame outlasted World War II and even secured the deceased a special train for his departure from what had become Polish Silesia, as well as the participation of leading SED politicians in his burial on Hiddensee. The first biography of Gerhart Hauptmann, consistently based on original sources, tells the remarkable success story of the innkeeper's son from Silesian Salzbrunn, who set out to become a monumental sculptor and entered literary history as the greatest dramatist of Naturalism. The call to be a moral authority, indeed the conscience of the nation, was not fully met by the Nobel laureate, born 150 years ago, either in 1914 or 1933. Nevertheless, Hauptmann's life has been characterized from an early age by moral idealism and the utopian dream of a better world.