[1] He published Eisgang in 1892, and then his primary work, Jugend (Youth), in 1893, which was, after Hauptmann's Die Weber, the most successful contemporary stage play in Germany.

Jugend was especially difficult to place: famous theatre managers in Berlin (L'Arronge, Barnay, Blumenthal) refused it, but Lautenburg accepted and performed it with great success in 1893.

[1] The drama, whose unaffected and sympathetic treatment of sexual relationships made no concessions to prevailing bourgeois morality, won it the enthusiastic praise of socialist critics.

Franz Mehring, the principal spokesman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany on culture, warmly welcomed Jugend and referred to Halbe, along with Gerhardt Hauptmann, as "one of the princes of Genius land.

Halbe's next play, the comedy The Tourist in America (German: Der Amerikafahrer) made the impression of being witless, and his reputation rapidly declined.

The dramas Lebenswende and Mutter Erde (the latter standing with Jugend as his most famous work; a translation into English, Mother Earth, appeared in German Classics, Vol.