Staging the New Reichshaupstadt: Modern Encounters in Hermann Sudermann's Die Ehre

This article examines Sudermann's sensationally successful first drama Die Ehre (Honor, 1889) by contextualizing the contemporary social issues treated in the work. A closer look at the drama reveals discontents among the mechanisms of social order in late nineteenth-century Germany. Old class taboos were disintegrating, Germany's fortunes were advancing, and Berlin was being transformed into a world city. The germaneness of the themes presented in Die Ehre are precisely why the drama caused a sensation in 1889, and why it remains a rich documentation of turn-of-the-century Berlin.