Nobel Foundation · Public domain

A prolific German writer of the late nineteenth century — novels, poetry, roughly 177 short stories and some sixty plays — whose sheer output made him a central figure among the literary men of his time. He won the 1910 Nobel Prize in Literature for a career the committee called permeated with idealism; one of the judges called him the greatest German literary talent since Goethe, a claim the century's later verdict on his work has not fully upheld.