Hermann Hesse

At 85 years old, Hermann Hesse has this physical status:

Hermann Karl Hesse (born poet, novelist, and painter) is a painter from Hermann Karl Hesse (born poet, novelist, and painter).

Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game are among his best-known games, each of which explores an individual's quest for authenticity, self-knowledge, and spirituality.

He was named Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.

Life and work

Hermann Karl Hesse was born in Württemberg, Germany, on July 2nd, 1877. His grandparents served in India under the auspices of the Basel Mission, a Protestant missionary group. Hermann Gundert's grandfather invented a Malayalam grammar and a Malayalam-English dictionary, as well as contributing to the Bible's translation into Malayalam in South India. Marie Gundert, Hesse's mother, was born in South India in 1842. "A happy child I wasn't," she recalled about her own childhood. "A happy child I was not" As was common among missionaries at the time, she was left homeless in Europe at the age of four when her parents returned to India at the age of four.

Johannes Hesse, the son of a doctor, was born in 1847 in Weissenstein, Estonia's capital (now Paide, Järva County, Estonia). Johannes Hesse belonged to the Baltic German minority in the Russian-ruled Baltic region: his son Hermann was also a citizen of both the German Empire and the Russian Empire at birth; so far from both the German Empire and the Russian Empire. Hermann had five children, but two of them died in infancy. The Hesse family moved to Calw, where Johannes worked with the Calwer Verlagsverein, a publishing house specializing in theological texts and schoolbooks, in 1873. Hermann Gundert (also the namesake of his grandson) owned the publishing house at the time, and Johannes Hesse succeeded him in 1893.

Hesse grew up in a Swabian Pietist household, with the Pietist tendency to sulify believers into small, deeply reflective groups. In addition, Hesse referred to his father's Baltic German roots as "an important and potent fact" of his growing identity. "All seemed to be a very polite, very international, lonely, little-understood visitor," Hesse's father said. In young Hermann's tales from Estonia, his father evoked a different sense of faith. "It was] an incredibly joyful day, and despite its Christianity, a merry world... We wished for nothing so long as to see this Estonia... where life was so serene, so vibrant, and happy." Hermann Hesse's sense of alienation from the Swabian petite bourgeoisie grew stronger as a result of his relationship with his maternal grandmother, Julie Gundert, née Dubois, whose French-Swiss roots prevented her from ever fitting in with that group.

Hesse was both a child and a teenager, and his family was a struggle to cope. "The little fellow has a life in him," Hermann's mother wrote to her husband, an incredible presence, a tenacious will, and a remarkable intellect in his fourth year of age.

How can he express all that?

This internal war against his tyrannical temperament, his vivacious turbulence, continues to rage at my house; if this young and passionate individual's life were anything but glorious, I'm afraid to imagine what this young and passionate person will become if his upbringing be wrong or poor."

As early as his first year at school, Hesse showed signs of significant depression early. Hesse's juvenilia collection, Grandfathers, vividly relates events and anecdotes from his childhood and youth in Calw: the water, the bridge, the chapel, the houses leaning tight together, hidden nooks and crannies, as well as the people's distinctive characteristics, their peculiarities, and their idiosyncrasies. The fictional town of Gerbersau is pseudonymous for Calw, imitating the true name of the nearby town of Hirsau. It comes from the German word gerber, meaning "tanner," and aue, which refers to "meadow." Calw had a centuries-old leather-working industry, and the tanneries' presence in the town during Hesse's youth was still strong. The St. Nicholas Bridge in Calw, which is why a Hesse monument was constructed there in 2002.

Hermann Hesse's grandfather, a philosopher and fluent in many languages, urged the boy to read more, giving him access to his library, which was brimming with the works of world literature. All of this gave Hermann Hesse the impression that he was a world citizen. "The source of an alienation and a resistance to any sort of nationalism that so defined my life," he explained.

With his mother, young Hesse shared a passion for music. Both music and poetry were important to his family. His mother wrote poetry, and his father was known for his use of words in both his sermons and the writing of religious tracts. Theo, his half-brother, who rebelled against the family by entering a music conservatory in 1885, became his first role model for becoming an artist. Hesse displayed an early ability to rhyme, and by 1889-1990, he had decided he wanted to be a writer.

When Hesse was four years old in 1881, the family moved to Basel, Switzerland, where they stayed for six years before returning to Calw. Hesse began attending the Latin School in Göppingen in 1891, and he entered the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Maulbronn Abbey. The pupils attended 41 hours of classes a week at the abbey, one of Germany's most elegant and well-preserved. Although Hesse did well during the first months, writing in a letter that he loved writing papers and translating classic Greek poetry into German, his stay in Maulbronn was the start of a big personal crisis. Hesse's rebellious personality was demonstrated in March 1892, and he was spotted in a field a day later. Hesse began a journey through numerous colleges and universities, and he and his parents have had a lot of difficulty. He spent time in Bad Boll under the custody of theologian and minister Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt in May, after an attempt at suicide. He was later admitted to a mental hospital in Stetten im Remre, and then a boys' academy in Basel. He attended the Gymnasium in Cannstatt, which is now part of Stuttgart, at the end of 1892. He passed the One-year Examination in 1893, which ended his education. He began spending time with older people and quit drinking and smoking in the same year.

Hesse began a bookshop apprenticeship in Esslingen am Neckar but decided after three days. In the early summer of 1894, then began a 14-month mechanic apprenticeship at a clock tower factory in Calw. He shifted his attention away from selling and filing to more spiritual pursuits due to the monotony of soldering and filing jobs. He was keen to begin a new apprenticeship with a bookseller in Tübingen in October 1895. He returns to Beneath the Wheel later in his novel Beneath the Wheel from his youth, particularly his time at the Seminary in Maulbronn.

Hesse began working in the bookshop in Tübingen, which had a specialized collection of theology, philology, and law on October 17th. The books' tasks consisted of organizing, packing, and archiving. Hesse pursued his own passion after each twelve-hour workday, and he spent his long, idle Sundays with books rather than acquaintances. Hesse's research included theological writings as well as Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, and Greek mythology. Nietzsche's "dual...impulses of passion and order" in humankind were also a factor in the majority of his books.

By 1898, Hesse had a respectable income that enabled him to live independently from his parents. During this period, he concentrated on the German Romantics' works, including a large number of the Clemens Brentano, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Novalis. In letters to his parents, he expressed the belief that "the morality of artists is replaced by aesthetics."

He was taken to Fräulein von Reutern, a friend of his family's, during this period. He met people of his own age there. In the sense that the majority of them were still at university, his ties with his contemporaries were "problematic." He was often left feeling uncomfortable in social situations.

In 1896, his poem "Madonna" appeared in a Viennese periodical and Hesse published his first small volume of poetry, Romantic Songs. A fan letter from his in 1897, "Grand Valse," drew him. It was Helene Voigt, who married Eugen Diederichs, a young publisher, next year. Diederichs agreed to release One Hour After Midnight, Hesse's collection of prose from 1898 (although it is dated 1899). Both companies were a failure. Only 54 of the 600 printed copies of Romantic Songs were sold in two years, and One Hour After Midnight received just one print and sold sluggishly. In addition, Hesse "suffered a great surprise" when his mother debapproved "Romantic Songs" on the grounds that they were too secular and also "vaguely sinful."

Hesse started working in Basel, Germany, in late 1899. He stayed with Basel's academic families through family links. He flourished spiritually and artistically in an environment that provided him with a slew of stimuli for his pursuits. At the same time, Basel offered the solitary Hesse many opportunities for escape into an intimate life of creative discovery, travel, and wanderings. Due to an eye disorder, Hesse was refused compulsory military service in 1900. He was affected by this, along with nerve disorders and chronic migraines.

In 1901, Hesse decided to fulfill a long-awaited dream and traveled to Italy for the first time. Hesse departed jobs and began working at Basel's antiquarium Wattenwyl. Hesse had more opportunities to publish poems and small literary texts in journals. Honorariums were now available in these journals. His new bookstore has decided to publish his upcoming book, Posthumous Writings and Poems of Hermann Lauscher. His mother died after a long and painful illness in 1902. "I think it would be better for us both if we did not attend" his funeral, despite his maternal love for her mother."

The publisher Samuel Fischer, who appeared first as a pre-publication in 1903 and then as a regular printing by Fischer in 1904, had a breakthrough: from now on, Hesse could make a living as a writer thanks to the excellent notes he received for Lauscher. The novel became extremely popular in Germany. Sigmund Freud "lauded Peter Camenzind as one of his favorite readings."

Hesse married Maria Bernoulli (of the famous mathematicians) in 1904, but her father, who opposed their union, was away for the weekend. The couple married in Gaienhofen, on Lake Constance, and began a family, later having three children. He wrote Beneath the Wheel, his second book, which was published in 1906, in Gaienhofen. He wrote mainly short stories and poems in the years that followed. His book "The Wolf," written in 1906–07, was "quite possibly" a precursor to Steppenwolf.

Gertrude, his next book, which was published in 1910, revealed a production deficit. He had to struggle with writing it, and later would refer to it as "a miscarriage." Hesse's fascination in Buddhism was reignited in Gaienhofen. Hesse had stopped alluding to Buddhist words in his writing following a letter from Kapff in 1895. Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophical theories resurfaced in 1904, and Hesse discovered theosophy. Hesse's fascination in India was revived by Schopenhauer and theosophy. Despite the fact that this masterpiece was created from these new influences many years before Hesse's Siddhartha (1922).

During this period, tensions between him and Maria were also elevated, and in 1911, Hesse left Sri Lanka and Indonesia for a long journey. "The physical experience... was to depress him," he said of Sumatra, Borneo, and Burma. Any spiritual or religious inspiration that he was looking for eluded him, but his literary journey left a lasting impression. Following Hesse's return to Bern (1912), the family moved to Bern (1912), but the change of environment did not solve the marriage problems, as he himself admitted in his book Rosshalde from 1914.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial army, saying that he could not sit inactive by a warm fireplace when other young writers were dying on the front. He had been classified unfit for combat service, but he had been sent to a service that involved the care of prisoners of war. Although most poets and writers of war-devastated countries fell into a sea of mutual hate, Hesse, who appeared to be unimpressed by the time's general war ferries, published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 3 November, wrote "O Friends, Not These Tones" ("O Friends, not This Töne"), a riot. He appealed to his fellow intellectuals not to fall for nationalistic madness and hatred in this essay. "That love is greater than hate," Hesse wrote, explaining that wisdom is greater than rage, understanding greater than ire, and peace is nobler than war, this is what this unholy World War should bring into our memories, more so than ever before." Hesse later said that what came after this was a turning point in his life. For the first time, he discovered himself in the middle of a serious political crisis, having been chastised by the German press, the recipient of hate mail, and distanced from old friends. Despite this, he did receive assistance from his companion, Theodor Heuss, and French writer Romain Rolland, who visited Hesse in August 1915. "The effort...to apply love to political problems has failed" Hesse wrote to Rolland in 1917.

When a larger life tragedy befell Hesse, his father's serious illness, and his wife's schizophrenia, it was not fully addressed. He was made to leave his military service and begin receiving psychotherapy. Hesse's longtime obsession with psychoanalysis, which led him to Carl Jung's personal acquaintance, prompted him to his current creative heights. Hesse and Jung developed a correspondence with Chilean author, diplomat, and Nazi sympathizer Miguel Serrano, who outlined their friendship with both figures in the book C.G. Jung & Hermann Hesse: A History of Two Friendships. Hesse penned his book Demian, which would be published following the armistice in 1919 under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair.

His marriage had fallen apart by the time Hesse returned to civilian life in 1919. His wife had a serious bout of psychosis, but Hesse believed there was no hope of working with her. They had been divided, their children were housed in boarding homes and relatives, and Hesse resettled alone in Ticino's middle of April. He lived in Sorengo from 25 April to May 11. He rented four small rooms in a castle-like building, the Casa Camuzzi, in Montagnola on May 11th. He investigated his writing ventures further; he began to paint, an interest represented in his new major story, "Klingsor's Last Summer," which was published in 1920. This new life in Ticino brought him joy, and Hesse later referred to Ticino as his "most active, most industrious, and most passionate period of my life." Hesse's novella Siddhartha published in 1922, displaying the passion for Indian culture and Buddhist philosophy that had already existed earlier in his life. Ruth Wenger, the daughter of Swiss writer Lisa Wenger and aunt of Mégh Oppenheim, married him in 1924. However, this marriage never found any stability.

In 1923, Hesse was granted Swiss citizenship. Kurgast (1925) and The Nuremberg Trip (1927) were two autobiographical narratives that foreshadowed Hesse's next book, Steppenwolf, which was published in 1927. The first biography of Hesse appeared in the year of his 50th birthday, written by his friend Hugo Ball. He moved away from the solitude of Steppenwolf and into a cohabitation with art historian Ninon Dolbin, née Ausländer, a few weeks after his latest bestseller. In the 1930s novel Narcissus and Goldmund, this change to companionship was represented.

Hesse left the Casa Camuzzi in 1931 and moved with Ninon to a larger house near Montagnola, which was also built for him to use for the remainder of his life by his companion and patron Hans C. Bodmer. Hesse married Ninon in a year ago and began planning what would be his last major project, The Glass Bead Game (a.k.a.). Magister Ludia. In 1932, as a preliminary research, he published Journey to the East.

Hesse expressed skepticism in Germany during the rise to power of Nazism. Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann travelled to exile in 1933, each being aided by Hesse. Hesse tried to combat Hitler's suppression of art and literature that protested Nazi ideology in this way. Hesse's third wife was Jewish, and he had publicly voiced her opposition to anti-Semitism long before then. Hesse was chastised for failing to condemn the Nazi Party, but his inability to criticize or promote any political belief stemmed from his "politics of detachment" ("The Nazis" were never explicitly condemned, but his condemnation of their policies is beyond question." The Nazi party, which included the blood sacrifice of the individual to the state and the race, represented the total opposite of everything he believed in. "It is the responsibility of spiritual individuals to stand with the spirit rather than to sing along when the people start belting out patriotic songs their leaders have ordered them to sing," Hesse wrote to a reporter in Germany. In the 1930s, Hesse made a public display of resistance by researching and promoting the work of banned Jewish writers, including Franz Kafka. German journals stopped publishing Hesse's work in the late 1930s, and the Nazis eventually outlawed it.

"He survived the years of the Hitler regime and the Second World War through the [The Glass Bead Game]," Hesse recounted. This was to be his last book, printed in 1943 in Switzerland. In 1946, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Hesse wrote many short stories (mainly recollections of his youth) and poems (mostly with nature as their subject). Hesse also wrote satirical essays about his writing (for example, the mock autobiographies: The Life Story Told and Aus den Briefwechseln eins Dichters) and spent much time exploring his fascination with watercolours. Hesse spent time on the Internet as a result of the Nobel Prize, and as a new generation of German readers investigated his work, he occupied himself with the steady stream of letters he received as a result of the Nobel Prize. In one essay, Hesse reflected on his lifelong struggle to find a knack for idleness, and estimated that his average daily correspondence exceeded 150 pages. He died on August 9, 1962, aged 85, and was buried in Sant'Abbondio, Germany, where his companion and biographer Hugo Ball and another German artiste, conductor Bruno Walter Walter, are also buried.

Source

Awards

• 1906: Bauernfeld-Preis
• 1928: Mejstrik-Preis of the Schiller Foundation in Vienna
• 1936: Gottfried-Keller-Preis
• 1946: Goethe Prize
• 1946: Nobel Prize in Literature
• 1947: Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bern
• 1950: Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize
• 1954: Pour le Mérite
• 1955: Peace Prize of the German Book Trade