"Between Bremen and Naples, between Vienna and Singapore, I have seen many a pretty town, towns by the sea and towns high up on mountains, and as a pilgrim I drank from many a fountain, which later gave me the sweet poison of homesickness. But the most beautiful town of all that I know is Calw on the Nagold, a small, old, Swabian Black Forest town." Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962) wrote these lines in 1918 about his beloved hometown of Calw. It is thanks to the poet and Nobel Prize winner that the charm and beauty of this Black Forest town have been written about and achieved worldw

    •

Hermann Hesse

German writer (1877–1962)

This article is about the German writer. For the Swiss politician and businessman, see Hermann Hess (politician). For the Ghanaian technology entrepreneur, see Herman Chinery-Hesse.

Hermann Karl Hesse (German:[ˈhɛʁmanˈhɛsə]ⓘ; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. Although Hesse was born in Germany's Black Forest region of Swabia, his father's celebrated heritage as a Baltic German and his grandmother's French-Swiss roots had an intellectual influence on him. He was a precocious, if not difficult child, who shared a passion for poetry and music with his mother, and was especially well-read and cultured, due in part to the influence of his polyglot grandfather.

As a youth he studied briefly at a seminary, struggled with bouts of depression and even once attempted suicide, which temporarily landed him in a sanatorium. Hesse eventually completed Gymnasium and passed his examinations in 1893, when his formal education ended. However, he remained an autodidact and voraciously read theologic

    •

Hermann Hesse


Born

in Calw, Württemberg, Germany

July 02, 1877


Died

August 09, 1962


Genre

Fiction, Philosophy, Spirituality


Influences

Wolfgang Goethe, Knut Hamsun, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Carl GusWolfgang Goethe, Knut Hamsun, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Carl Gustav Jung, Novalis, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Hölderlin, Jacob Burckhardt...more


edit data


Many works, including Siddhartha (1922) and Steppenwolf (1927), of German-born Swiss writer Hermann Hesse concern the struggle of the individual to find wholeness and meaning in life; he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946.

Other best-known works of this poet, novelist, and painter include The Glass Bead Game, which, also known as Magister Ludi, explore a search of an individual for spirituality outside society.

In his time, Hesse was a popular and influential author in the German-speaking world; worldwide fame only came later. Young Germans desiring a different and more "natural" way of life at the time of great