Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)

German poet and novelist, who has explored in his work the duality of spirit and
nature and individual's spiritual search outside restrictions of the society. H
esse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Several of Hesse's nove
ls depict the protagonist's journey into the inner self. A spiritual guide assis
ts the hero in his quest for self-knowledge and shows the way beyond the world "
deluded by money, number and time."
"For even the most childish intoxication with progress will soon be forced to re
cognize that writing and books have a function that is eternal. It will become e
vident that formulations in words and the handling on of these formulations thro
ugh writing are not only important aids but actually the only means by which hum
anity can have a history and continuing consciousness of itself." (Hesse in Read
ing in Bed, ed. by Steven Gilbar, 1974)
Hermann Hesse was born into a family of Pietist missionaries and religious publi
shers in the Black Forest town of Calw, in the German state of Wttenberg. Johanne
s Hesse, his father, was born a Russian citizen in Weissenstein, Estonia. Hesse'
s mother, Marie Gundert, was born in Talatscheri, India, as the daughter of the
Pietist missionary and Indologist, Hermann Gundert. His parents expected him to
follow the family tradition in theology - they had served as missionaries in Ind
ia. Hesse entered the Protestant seminary at Maulbronn in 1891, but he was expel
led from the school. After unhappy experiences at a secular school, Hesse left h
is studies. He worked a bookshop clerk, a mechanic, and a book dealer in Tbingen,
where he joined literary circle called Le Petit Cnacle. During this period Hesse
read voluminously and determined the become a writer. In 1899 Hesse published h
is first works, ROMANTISCHE LIEDER and EINE STUNDE HINTER MITTERNACHT.
ELISABETH
Ich soll erzhlen
die Nacht ist schon spt willst du mich qulen,
schne Elisabeth?
Daran ich dichte
und du dazu,
meine Liebesgeschichte
ist dieser Abend und du.
Du musst nicht stren
die Reime verwehn.
Bald wirst du sie hren,
hren und nicht verstehen.
Hesse became a freelance writer in 1904 after the publication of his novel PETER
CAMENZIND. In the Rousseauesque 'return to nature' story the protagonist leaves
the big city to live like Saint Francis of Assisi. The book gained literary suc
cess and Hesse married Maria Bernoulli, with whom he had three children. A visit
in India in 1911 was a disappointment but it gave start to Hesse's studies of E
astern religions and the novel SIDDHARTHA (1922). In the story, based on the ear
ly life of Gautama Buddha, a Brahman son rebels against his father's teaching an
d traditions. Eventually he finds the ultimate enlightenment. The culture of anc
ient Hindu and the ancient Chinese had a great influence on Hesse's works. For s
everal years in the mid-1910s Hesse underwent psychoanalysis under Carl Jung's a
ssistant J.B. Lang.
In 1912 Hesse and his family took a permanent residence in Switzerland. In the n

ovel ROSSHALDE (1914) Hesse explored the question of whether the artist should m
arry. The author's replay was negative and reflected the author's own difficulti
es. During these years his wife suffered from growing mental instability and his
son was seriously ill. Hesse spent the years of World War I in Switzerland, att
acking the prevailing moods of militarism and nationalism. He also promoted the
interests of prisoners of war. Hesse, who shared with Aldous Huxley belief in th
e need for spiritual self-realization, was called a traitor by his countrymen.
Hesse's breakthrough novel was DEMIAN (1919). It was highly praised by Thomas Ma
nn, who compared its importance to James Joyce's Ulysses and Andr Gide's The Coun
terfeiters. The novel attracted especially young veterans of the WW I, and refle
cted Hesse's personal crisis and interest in Jungian psychoanalysis. Demian was
first published under the name of its narrator, Emil Sinclair, but later Hesse a
dmitted his authorship. In the Faustian tale the protagonist is torn between his
orderly bourgeois existence and a chaotic world of sensuality. Hesse later admi
tted that Demian was a story of "individuation" in the Jungian manner. The autho
r also praised unreservedly Jung's study Psychological Types, but in 1921 he sud
denly canceled his analysis with Jung and started to consider him merely one of
Freud's most gifted pupils.
Leaving his family in 1919, Hesse moved to Montagnola, in southern Switzerland.
Siddharta was written during this period. It has been one of Hesse's most widely
read work. Its English translation in the 1950s became a spiritual guide to a n
umber of American Beat poets. Hesse's short marriage to Ruth Wenger, the daughte
r of the Swiss writer Lisa Wenger, was unhappy. He had met her in 1919 and wrote
in 1922 the fairy tale PIKTOR'S VERWANDLUNGEN for Ruth. In the story a spirit,
Piktor, becomes an old tree and finds his youth again from the love of a young g
irl. Hesse divorced from Maria Bernoulli, and married in 1924 Ruth Wenger, but t
he marriage ended after a few months. These years produced DER STEPPENWOLF (1927
). The protagonist, Harry Haller, goes through his mid-life crisis and must chos
e between life of action and contemplation. His initials perhaps are not acciden
tally like the author's. "The few capacities and pursuits in which I happened to
be strong had occupied all my attention, and I had painted a picture of myself
as a person who was in fact nothing more tan a most refined and educated special
ist in poetry, music and philosophy; and as such I had lived, leaving all the re
st of me to be a chaos of potentialities, instincts and impulses which I found a
n encumbrance and gave the label of Steppenwolf." Haller feels that he has two b
eings inside him, and faces his shadow self, named Hermine. This Doppelgnger figu
re introduces Harry to drinking, dancing, music, sex, and drugs. Finally his per
sonality is disassembled and reassembled in the 'Magic Theatre' - For Madmen Onl
y.
"There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many peo
ple live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and
never allow the world within to assert itself."
During the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) Hesse stayed aloof from politics. BETRACH
TUNGEN (1928) and KRIEG UND FRIEDEN (1946) were collections of essays, which ref
lected his individualism and opposition to mass movements of the day. NARZISS UN
D GOLDMUND (1930, Narcissus and Goldmund) was a pseudomedieval tale about an abb
ot and his worldly pupil, both in search of the Great Mother.
In 1931 Hesse married Ninon Dolbin (1895-1966). Ninon was Jewish. She had sent H
esse a letter in 1909 when she was 14, and the correspondence had continued. In
1926 they met accientally. At that time Ninon was separated - she had married th
e painter B.F. Doldin and planned a career as an art historian. Hesse moved with
her to Casa Bodmer, and his restless life became more calm. Hesse's books conti
nued to be published in Germany during the Nazi regime, and were defended in a s
ecret circular in 1937 by Joseph Goebbels. When he wrote for the Frankfurter Zei
tung Jewish refugees in France accused him of supporting the Nazis, whom Hesse d

id not openly oppose. However, he helped political refugees and when Narcissus a
nd Goldmund was reprinted in 1941, he refused to leave out parts which dealt wit
h pogroms and anti- Semitism. In 1943 he was placed on the Nazi blacklist.
"The secret of Hesse's work lies in the creative power of his poetic similes, in
the "magic theater" of the panoramas of the soul that he conjures up before the
eyes and ears of the world. It lies in the identity of idea and appearances tha
t, to be sure, his work - like any work of human hands - can do more that sugges
t." (Hugo Ball in Hermann Hesse, 1947)
In 1931 Hesse began to work on his masterpiece DAS GLASPERLENSPIEL, which was pu
blished in 1943. The setting is in the future in the imaginary province of Casti
lia, an intellectual, elitist community, dedicated to mathematics and music. Kne
cht ('servant') is chosen by the Old Music Master as a suitable aspirant to the
Order. He goes to the city of Waldzell to study, and there he catches the attent
ion of the Magister Ludi, Thomas von der Trave (an allusion to Hesse's rival Tho
mas Mann). He is the Master of the Games, a system by which wisdom is communicat
ed. Knecht dedicates himself to the Game, and on the death of Thomas, he is elec
ted Magister Ludi. After a decade in his office Knecht tries to leave to start a
life devoted to realizing human rights, but accidentally drowns in a mountain l
ake. - In 1942 Hesse sent the manuscript to Berlin for publication. It was not a
ccepted by the Nazis and the work appeared in Zrich, Switzerland.
"Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, j
ustice and understanding and fulfill their requirements. Children live on one si
de of despair, the awakened on the other side." (from The Journey to the East, 1
932)
After receiving the Nobel Prize Hesse published no major works. Between the year
s 1945 and 1962 he wrote some 50 poems and about 32 reviews mostly for Swiss new
spapers. Hesse died of cerebral hemorrhage in his sleep on August 9, 1962 at the
age of eighty-five. Hesse's other central works include In Sight of Chaos (1923
), a collection of essays, and the novel Narcissus and Goldmund (1930), set in t
he Middle Ages and repeating the theme of two contrasting types of men. In the 1
960s and 1970s Hesse became a cult figure for young readers. The interest declin
ed in the 1980s. In 1969 the Californian rock group Sparrow changed their name t
o Steppenwolf after Hesse's classic, and released 'Born to be Wild'. Hesse's boo
ks have gained readers from the New Age movements and he is still one of the bes
tselling German-speaking writers throughout world.
For further reading: Mein Onkel Hermann: Erinnerungen an Alt-Estland by Monika H
unnius (1921); Herman Hesse by Hugo Ball (1947); The Novels of Hermann Hesse by
T. Ziolkowski (1965); Hermann Hesse by F. Baumer (1969); Hermann Hesse, His Mind
and Art by M. Boulby (1967); C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse by M. Serrano (1971);
An Outline of the Works of Hermann Hesse by R. Farquharson (1973); Hesse by T.J.
Ziolkowski (1973); Hermann Hesse: A Collection of Criticism, ed. by J. Liebmann
(1977); Hermann Hesse: Biography and Bibliography by J. Mileck (1977); Hermann
Hesse: Life and Art by Joseph Milek (1981); Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel:
A Concealed Defense of the Mother World by Edmund Remys (1983); The Hero's Ques
t for the Self by D.G. Richards (1987); Hermann Hesse's Fictions of the Self by
E.L. Satelzig (1988), Reflection and Action by James N. Hardin (1991) - See: Rom
ain Rolland, who was interested in Indian philosophy. Hesse's novel Demian was b
ased on Carl Jung's theories of individuation. James Joyce's daughter Lucia was
among Jung's patients in the 1930s. Suom.: Hesselt suomennettu mys valikoima Riiki
nkukkokehrj ja muita kertomuksia (1989). - See also Zelda Fitzgerald.
Selected works:
ROMANTISCHE LIEDER, 1899
EINE STUNDE HINTER MITTERNACHT, 1899

HINTERLASSENE SCHRIFTEN UND GEDICHTE VON HERMANN LAUSCHER, 1901

PETER CAMENZIND, 1904 - trans. - Alppien poika
UNTERM RAD, 1906 - The Prodigy / Beneath the Wheel - Ers nuoruus
GERTRUD, 1910 - Gertrude and I - suom.
ROSSHALDE, 1914 - trans. - suom.
KNULP, 1915 - trans.
DEMIAN, 1919 - published under pseudonym Emil Sinclair - trans. - suom.
KLINGSORS LETZTER SOMMER, 1920 - Klingsor's Last Summer - Katoava kes
SIDDHARTHA, 1922 - trans. - suom. - film 1972, dir. by Conrad Rooks, starring Sh
ashi Kapoor, Simi Garewal, Romesh Shama, Pinchoo Kapoor
BLICK INS CHAOS, 1923 - In Sight of Chaos
PIKTOR'S VERWANDLUNGEN, 1925
GESAMMELTE ERZHLUNGEN, 1927
DER STEPPENWOLF, 1927 - Steppenwolf - Arosusi - film 1974, dir. by Fred Haines,
starring Max von Sydow, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clementi, Carla Romanelli
BETRACHTUNGEN, 1928
NARZISS UND GOLDMUND, 1930 - Narcissus and Goldmund / Death and the Lover - Nark
issos ja Kultasuu
DIE MORGENLANDFAHRT, 1932 - The Journey to the East - Matka aamun maahan
DIE GEDICHTE, 1942
DAS GLASPERLENSPIEL, 1943 - The Glass Bead Game (also: Magister Ludi) - Lasihelm
ipeli
BERTHOLD, 1945
TRAUMFHRTE, 1945
KRIEG UND FRIENDEN, 1946 - If the War Goes On...
FRHE PROSA, 1948
BRIEFE, 1951
SPTE PROSA, 1951
DICHTUNGEN, 1952 (6 vols.)
ZWEI IDYLLEN, 1952
DIE GEDICHTE, 1953 - Poems (trans. of 31 poems)
The Prodigy, 1957
GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN, 1957
PROSA AUS DEM NACHLASS, 1965
NEUE DEUTSCHE BCHER, 1966
KINDHEIT UND JUGEND VOR 1900, 1966
BRIEFWECHSEL. HERMANN HESSE - THOMAS MANN, 1968
POLITISCHE BETRACHTUNGEN, 1970
GESAMMELTE WERKE, 1970 (12 vols.)
Strange News from Another Star, 1972
GESAMMELTE BRIEFE, 1973
Hours in the Garden and Other Poems, 1974
Tales of Student Life, 1975
Hermann Hesse and Romain Rolland: Correspondence, 1976
DIE ROMANE UND GROSSEN ERZHLUNGEN, 1977 (8 vols.)
Six Novels with Other Stories and Essays, 1980
Pictor's Metamorphosis and Other Tales, 1982
Stories of Five Decades, 1984
Soul of the Age, 1991
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