His father owned a small brewery in Heydekrug, and Sudermann received his early education at the Realschule in Elbing, where he lived with his relatives and attended the Mennonite church where his uncle was the minister.

He then devoted himself to fiction, beginning with a collection of naturalistic short stories called Im Zwielicht ("At Twilight", 1886), and the novels Frau Sorge ("Dame Care", 1887), Geschwister ("Siblings", 1888) and Der Katzensteg ("Cats' Bridge", 1890).

These works failed to bring the young author as much recognition as his first drama, Die Ehre ("Honour", 1889), which inaugurated a new period in the history of the German stage.

In 1894 Sudermann returned to novels with Es War (the title referring to Section 2, §1 of Nietzsche's Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen), a protest against the fruitlessness of brooding repentance.

In autumn 1917, he organised the Frohe Abende ("Cheery Evenings"), a program promoting artistic endeavors among the common people, for which he received an Iron Cross Second Class on 5 April 1918.

After the end of the war, he helped found the Bund schaffender Künstler ("Society of Creative Artists"), which posed as a centrist political force and which earned him the reputation of an opportunist.