Abstract

In his short story Bawährter Thiel, Gerhart Hauptmann seems to turn to Émile Zola’s theory of the Roman expérimental. He tests the chain-reactions of his hero by bringing him into contact with different milieus. The various spaces are the background where phenomena are produced and they even symbolize different conceptions of the world. Spaces are also the result of imaginative projections. The sociological experiment has repurcussions on the author’s mode of writing and the structure of the story.