Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946) - German playwright, Nobel laureate in 1912. The drama “Before Sunset,” written and staged a year before Hitler came to power, sums up the final and irrevocable result of the era explored and depicted by the writer. In the image of the secret commercial adviser Matthias Clausen, the author erects an imperishable monument to classical bourgeois humanism and at the same time shows his complete powerlessness in the face of the encroaching insanity, the complete moral degradation of the social environment, including, first of all, members of his family. This play is surprisingly multi-layered, in it , like streams into a big river, many motifs flow from his previous works, both dramatic and prosaic. And today, like a hundred years ago, this strange love story of a 70-year-old man and a 20-year-old girl still excites and delights.