He is not simply a victim of circumstances or a creature of physical impulses. He is a giant, but a gentle one, his metabolism rendering him so sluggish and passive that only a severe shock to his system will prompt a violent reaction.Īll these factors-social, cultural, psychological, and physiological-interact to determine and make plausible Thiel's breakdown and the ensuing murders. By dwelling on Thiel's Herculean physique, Hauptmann also indicates a potential for violence, although this is held in check by a fundamentally phlegmatic temperament.

His guilt and self-disgust, however, are compounded when he realizes how much he is neglecting Tobias's welfare to satisfy his own physical needs. This 'spiritual intercourse' is intended to quell the pangs of conscience he feels about his abject sexual dependence on Lene, his puritanical upbringing having led him to associate desire with depravity. His workplace deep in the pine forest also isolates him from human company for long hours, thus intensifying his propensity to brood on things and, importantly, encouraging his mystical tendencies.Ī regular churchgoer steeped in Protestant tradition, Thiel makes his workplace a sacred shrine to his late wife Minna, of whom he has ecstatic visions during nightlong sessions of Bible reading and hymn singing. This service resembles that of the army, Thiel taking great pride in his uniform and manning his post with all the discipline and punctuality associated with the Prussian military ethos.

His behavior is often mechanical, like the trains in whose service he is employed. A cog in the efficient machine of the Prussian railway system, Thiel himself leads a routine life, organized on systematic lines and with a fixed schedule. He remains lineman Thiel because the job in large measure makes the man. Significantly, we never learn his first name. While the wives remain one-dimensional, Minna characterized by her spiritual hold on the lineman, Lene by her physical hold, Thiel himself is the subject of a complex, finely drawn portrait. His concern is rather to explore character and milieu, hence the subtitle 'A Novella-like Study.'Īs the title proper suggests, Thiel's character dominates the tale. Hauptmann grants the railway accident just a few lines, viewed from the limited perspective of Thiel, while the murders are not described at all. The events, though shocking in the manner traditional to the novella as a genre, are not sensationalized. Because of his sexual dependence on her, Thiel for a period tolerates Lene's maltreatment of her stepson, but when Tobias is fatally injured by an express train on his stretch of track, the lineman's subsequent derangement culminates in the violent murder of Lene and her baby, after which he is admitted to a mental asylum in Berlin. The story traces Thiel's development from the death of his first wife, Minna, in childbirth, leaving him a small son, Tobias, to his second, rapidly concluded marriage with the dairymaid Lene, who bears him another child. Sexuality and crime, two typical naturalist themes, both figure prominently the central character Thiel is firmly situated in a working-class milieu, and Hauptmann adopts a quasi-scientific approach in exploring the factors determining his behavior. In many respects it can be seen as a representative work of naturalism. Set in the countryside southeast of Berlin where Hauptmann, then a sympathizer of social democracy, was living, the story grew out of his frequent contacts with local working people, including railway men. One of his earliest works, it was first published in 1888 in the Munich-based naturalist periodical Die Gesellschaft. Of the 10 short stories Gerhart Hauptmann wrote during his long career, 'Lineman Thiel' ('Bahnwärter Thiel') is the finest and best known.

The railway man synopsis