Gerhard Johann Robert (Gerhart) Hauptmann:
(Obersalzbrunn (Lower Silesia), November 15, 1862 – Agnetendorf near Hirschberg, Polish occupation zone, June 6, 1946).
German playwright. Initially, he wrote realistic dramas, in which he focused on the dire situation of the poor; later, he also wrote more symbolic plays and works based on Greek mythology. He is considered a co-founder of German naturalism. In 1912, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. For some time, he belonged to the Friedrichshagener Kreis, a circle of intellectuals in Berlin.
Civilization is coercion, culture: freedom.
You best recognize by his questions whether a person is smart.
There are productive errors and unproductive truths.
This sentence paradoxically reverses the usual value system of truth and error: A ‘productive error’ is a false assumption that nevertheless leads us forward—it stimulates new questions, provokes refutation, and advances knowledge. An ‘unproductive truth’ is correct, but banal and inconsequential—a truism without any cognitive value. The point: The value of a statement is not measured by its truth content, but by its fruitfulness for thought.
Origin:
The circulating short form “There are productive errors and unproductive truths” is presumably a later refinement of an original sentence that read differently:
> “There are very few productive truths, but all the more productive lies and errors.”
The likely source is the later collection of aphorisms “Insights and Perspectives. Aphorisms” (first published in 1942).
Author:
Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946)
German dramatist and novelist, Nobel laureate in Literature 1912. The attribution is consistently supported by several independent sources and fits with related Hauptmann aphorisms of the same motif, such as “He who errs more deeply, also becomes more deeply wise.”
