"Bahnwarter Thiel" (1988), by far the best story ever written by Gerhart Hauptmann, follows the principles of the Naturalist movement in its detailed study of the life and milieu of a humble and apparently unexceptional Prussian railwayman. Yet in its exploitation of symbolism, of techniques sometimes close to Impressionism, and in its subtle use of a changing narrative perspective, this Novelle goes beyond the essentially 'scientific' Naturalist approach: Hauptmann thus succeeds in exploring the complex interaction of suppressed social, psychological, physiological, and religious impulses...