HERMANN HESSE: BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS - LITERATURE - 2025

Hermann Karl Hesse was a writer dedicated to poetry, novels and short stories, as well as a painter. He was born on July 2, 1877 in Calw, southwest of present-day Germany, which was then known as the German Empire. Hesse descended from a family of Christian missionaries of the Lutheran current.

His father was Johannes Hesse, born in Paide, Estonia, in 1847; and his mother was Marie Gundert, born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1842. From that marriage six children were born, two of whom died at an early age. Since 1873 the Hesse family owned a publishing house dedicated to religious texts and which served to support the evangelical missions of that time.

This publishing house was directed by Hermann Gundert, Hesse's maternal grandfather and in honor of whom it owes its name. Hesse lived his first 3 years in Calw and then his family moved to Basel, Switzerland, in 1881. They settled in Swiss lands for 5 years, to return again to their hometown.

Back in his country he formally studied Latin in Göppingen, a nearby town in the same federal state of Wurtemberg, to which Calw is circumscribed. The inclination to the gospel on the part of his family marked the life of the German writer very early on, and not necessarily because he felt identified with this religious tendency.

Just after finishing her Latin studies in Göppingen with excellent marks, in 1891 Hesse joined the Maulbronn Evangelical Seminary, under the influence of her parents and at just 14 years of age. It was as a result of entering this institute that the differences between Hesse and his family began to flourish.

Biography

A few months after his 15th birthday, in March 1892, Hesse decided to escape from the seminary in Maulbronn, showing his first unshakable signs of rebellion against the system.

The young man felt like a prisoner between those normalist Lutheran walls. Hesse considered this institute a prison of the senses, a place to castrate the intellect of men, but above all, a place where he was prevented from living one of his passions: poetry.

"I'll be a poet or nothing," he wrote in his autobiography. As a man of letters, he later managed to capture what he experienced during his short seclusion in the evangelical seminary. In his work Under the Wheels he clearly describes his experience of being subjected to the educational rudiments of the Protestant teachers of that time.

As a result of the Maulbronn escape, a considerable number of violent confrontations arose between Hesse and his family, who considered that what the young man was experiencing was the typical rebellious stage of a teenager.

During those tense moments, Hesse went through various institutions without being able to feel comfortable in any. This situation plunged him into a terrible depression that brought him to the brink of suicidal thoughts.

In 1892 he wrote a letter where his possible suicide appeared poetically: "I would like to leave like the sun at sunset." In May 1892 he attempted suicide and was confined in a mental hospital located in Stetten im Remstal.

After his short stay in the asylum, Hesse was taken back to Basel, Switzerland, and placed in an institute for minors. Before the end of 1892, he was taken to a school in Bad Cannstatt, in Stuttgart, the capital of Württemberg.

In Bad Cannstatt, in the year 1893, he managed to earn his first-year diploma but his disagreement persisted; so even with excellent grades, he dropped out. His family ceased the pressure and began to accept, reluctantly, the freedoms of the young writer's soul.

First steps towards your independence

After retiring from his studies, he set himself the goal of becoming financially independent in order to truly free himself from the yoke of his parents.

He obtained a job opportunity as a bookseller's apprentice - the most fleeting of his work experiences - in Esslingen am Neckar, a town in the capital of Württemberg. He left the office after three days.

He later returned to his homeland, to work for 1 year and 2 months as a mechanic at the Perrot watch factory. Although he was earning well, at the Perrot factory he realized that hard manual labor was not his thing, that there was a void he needed to fill.

At the age of 18, in 1895, he returned to the bookseller trade. This time his work took him south of the capital of Württemberg, specifically to the Heckenhauer bookstore, in the town of Tübingen. He worked by ordering the books: he grouped them according to the type of material and then filed them.

Passion for reading

During the first two years of work at the bookstore, he devoted himself to studying philology, theology, and law. Those were the main themes of the books of that place, the ones that forged its literary character and its temper. Even after finishing his work, he stayed up late devouring books, a passion that would never leave him.

In that place his poetry flowed enormously, to the point that, at the age of 19, a magazine in Vienna published his poem Madonna. It was 1896 back then.

Two years later he came to occupy the position of assistant bookseller, which allowed him to have a fair salary, being able, at 21, to obtain his desired financial freedom.

Hesse loved reading Greek mythology. He also read the poets Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. These writers greatly marked his poetic and fictional work.

First formal steps in poetry

In 1898, the same year as his promotion to assistant bookseller, he formally published his first poetic work: Romantic Songs (Romantische Lieder). A year later, he published An hour after midnight (Eine Stunde hinter Mitternacht), both pieces by the publisher Eugen Diederichs.

Although from a commercial point of view these works were a failure, Diederichs did not doubt the great talent of Hesse. The publisher regarded Hesse's work as pieces of great literary value and the beginning of a great career in letters.

In 1899 Hesse worked in a Basel bookstore. There, with the help of his parents, he rubbed shoulders with wealthy families and intellectuals of the time, forging ties that allowed him to grow in various areas of his life.

Being in motion was something common in his work; he was not a man to stand still. His inspiration and growth went hand in hand with staying active between roads and cities, a characteristic that accompanied him until the end of his days, as well as his migraines and his vision problems.

Württemberg

It was the visual problems that he had that prevented him from being enlisted in the German army around 1900. A year later he managed to make one of his most desired goals a reality: to know Italy.

His first novel

His trip to the country of Da Vinci to meet the ancient arts marked his literary life. He returned to Basel that same year to work at the Wattenwyl bookstore. There his imagination was constantly on the boil.

The bookstores were his seas of happiness, there he was a fish among the letters. During his work stay at Wattenwyl, Hesse did not stop reading or publishing short stories and poems, at the same time that he prepared his debut in the genre of the novel: Peter Camenzind.

The publisher Samuel Fischer, upon learning of the creation of Hesse's recent novel, did not hesitate to contact him and offer his services. In 1904 Hesse fulfilled one of his dreams and reinforced another: to publish Peter Camenzind, his first novel, and to be able to live off his passion for writing.

World War I and the Hesse crisis

When the First World War arrived in 1914, there was havoc throughout the world. Germany was at great risk. Hesse, responding to her patriotic sense, appeared before the authorities to enlist in the army; just as it happened in 1900, his application was denied due to his visual impairment.

The writer did not resign himself to not being able to help his homeland in the face of such a threat, so he requested any way to help be presented. Paying attention to his requests, and thanks to the reach he had had for his work, he was allowed to be in charge of the "Library of German prisoners of war".

Declared unpatriotic

From his new post, at the end of 1914 and in the middle of the war, he wrote the article "Friends, let us stop our disputes" in the New Zurich Newspaper, a Swiss newspaper. It was a call to peace, to rediscover calm; however, he was not seen that way by a large part of the population, who accused him of being a traitor.

Hesse suffered from multiple threats and disrepute; however, part of her intellectual friends came to her defense. They were very hard moments for him.

Three unfortunate facts

Not being enough the war that was lived and the attacks that it suffered by the nationalists, the life of Hesse was convulsed from other aspects nearby. Her son Martin became seriously ill, her father died and her wife suffered from severe attacks of schizophrenia. Hesse collapsed.

In 1916 he was leaving the position of helping prisoners of war and began to be treated psychotherapeutically to overcome his crisis. His trader was Dr. Joseph Bernhard Lang, a disciple of the renowned psychoanalyst Carl Jung, with whom Hesse later became close friends.

After 28 sessions of psychotherapy, Hesse was discharged in November 1917; from that moment he took a lot of interest in psychoanalysis. During the end of his treatment, in just two months, Hesse wrote his novel Demian. This work was then presented in 1919 under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair.

Return home

With the war over and home, Hesse was unable to rebuild her home. Her family was fractured and her wife devastated, so they chose to separate. However, not everything was on good terms, as Barble Reetz recounts in the biography he made entitled The Women of Hermann Hesse.

Among the anecdotes that are told is one in which Hesse requested custody of her children from Maria, but was not able to give them due attention, which was considered a selfish act.

The truth is that, when the marriage dissolved, Hesse went to Switzerland and rented a small castle; this is how the facade of the building looked like, called La Casa Camuzzi. There not only did his inspiration reappear, but he also began to paint. In 1922 her renowned novel Siddhartha was being born.

Second matrimony

In 1924 Hesse opted for Swiss nationality and married Ruth Wenger, a young woman who was impressed with the writer's work.

Their marriage was a total failure. Hesse practically abandoned him and paid him no attention, leading to Ruth in the arms of a married man and the dissolution of the marriage.

Not only did Ruth get comfort from abandonment; In 1926 Hesse was already visiting Ninon Dolbin, a married woman who was obsessed with him and who did not stop until she fulfilled her dream: to be Mrs. Hesse.

Third marriage

After the formal break with Ruth, Hesse became depressed and published The Steppe Wolf. According to critics, it was his way of showing that misunderstood "inner self", which sought solitude and that we all have. In 1931 Dolbin's dream came true, and she became the writer's wife.

The day after Hesse and Dolbin were married, the writer went on a solitary trip to Baden to cure some rheumatisms, as he used to do with his other wives. Meanwhile, two days later Dolbin went alone to celebrate her honeymoon in Milan. Barble Reetz recounts all this in detail in The Women of Hermann Hesse.

Bead set

In 1931, Hesse began to shape his last masterpiece, which he titled The Bead Game (Glasperlenspiel). In 1932, Hesse decided to first publish The Journey to the East (Morgenlandfahrt).

Those were troubled times, Hitler ascended to power in a Germany that was urgent and resentful of the scorn suffered in the Treaty of Versailles. Peace-loving Hesse did not want to suffer the mistreatment of 1914 again.

Self-exile

Hesse, sensing what would happen, radioed in Switzerland and from there openly expressed his support for the Jews. In the mid-1930s, no German newspaper published Hesse's articles to avoid retaliation.

The poet and writer, despite putting his life at risk, did not shake his hand to write against the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

The Nobel

For the next several years of her life, Hesse focused her energies on shaping her dream: Bead Game. In this work Hesse proposes his idea of ​​an eclectic society. He created a community that takes the best of all cultures to recreate a music-mathematical game that brings out the best in human beings.

Hesse's innovative idea, calling for peace in such troubled times, earned him a nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature, an award that he subsequently won in 1946 as Germany and the world recovered from one of the bloodiest chapters in human history. Then Hesse wrote other poems and stories; never abandoned the letters.

Death

Death called him while he slept, on August 9, 1962, in the town of Monrtagnola, Switzerland. Specialists diagnosed that the cause was a stroke.

Famous phrases

- It should not be our goal to become another person, but to recognize others, honor others for the simple fact of being who they are.

- The life of each man is a path towards himself, the attempt at a path, the outline of a path.

- I make my way tired and dusty, and stopped and doubtful the youth remains behind me, which lowers its beautiful head and refuses to accompany me.

Three poems by Hermann Hesse

Night

I have blown out my candle.

Through the open window the night enters, it

gently embraces me and allows me to be

like a friend or brother.

We are both equally nostalgic;

we cast apprehensive dreams

and talk quietly of the old days

in the paternal home.

Lonely sunset

The bottle wobbles in the empty bottle and

the candle glow in the glass;

it's cold in the room.

Outside the rain falls on the grass.

You lie down again to rest briefly,

overwhelmed by cold and sadness.

Dawn and sunset come again, they

always come back:

you, never.

Without consolation

Paths do not lead to the primitive world;

our soul is not consoled

with armies of stars,

not with river, forest and sea.

Not a tree one finds,

neither river nor animal

that penetrates the heart;

you will find no consolation

except among your fellow men.

Plays

Poems

- Romantische Lieder (1898).

- Hermann Lauscher (1901).

- Neue Gedichte (1902).

- Unterwegs (1911).

- Gedichte des Malers (1920).

- Neue Gedichte (1937).

Novels

- Peter Camenzind (1904).

- Under the wheels (1906).

- Gertrud (1910).

- Rosshalde (1914).

- Demian (1919).

- Siddhartha (1922).

- The steppe wolf (1927).

- Journey to the East (1932).

- The game of beads (1943).

Stories

- Eine Stunde hinter Mitternacht (1899).

- Diesseits (1907).

- Nachbarn (1908).

- Am Weg (1915).

- Zarathustras Wiederkehr (1919).

- Weg nach Innen (1931).

- Fabulierbuch (1935).

- Der Pfirsichbaum (1945).

- Die Traumfährte (1945).

Various writings

- Hermann Lauscher (1900).

- Aus Indien (1913).

- Wanderung (1920).

- Nürnberger Reise (1927).

- Betrachtungen (1928).

- Gedankenblätter (1937).

- Krieg und Frieden (1946) (essays).

- Engadiner Erlebnisse (1953).

- Beschwörungen (1955).

References

1. "Hermann Hesse - Biographical". (2014). (n / a): The Nobel Foundation. Recovered from: nobelprize.org
2. Keapp, J. (2002). "Hermann Hesse's Hegelianism: The Progress of Consciousness Towards Freedom in The Glass Bead Game". (n / a): STTCL. Recovered from: newprairiepress.org
3. In Case You Missed It - Demian By Hermann Hesse. (2018). (n: / a): Argenta Oreana. Recovered from: aopld.org
4. "Hermann Hesse". (2018). (n / a): Wikipedia. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org
5. Luebering, JE (2017). Hermann Hesse. (n / a): Britannica. Recovered from: britannica.com