Hermann Hesse.
Feng Shui
Hesse was born into a family of missionaries. In 1881, he became a student at a local missionary school and later at a Christian boarding school. Hesse was a versatile and talented boy: he played various musical instruments, drew well, and began trying to prove himself as a writer. Hesse's very first literary work was the fairy tale "Two Brothers", written for his younger sister in 1887.<р>In 1886, the Hesse family returned to Calw, and in 1890 he began studying at the Göppingen Latin School and a year later entered the seminary at the Maulbronn monastery. Six months after the start of his studies, the writer left Maulbronn and went to Bad Boll. His studies at the Cannstadt gymnasium, where he entered in 1892, did not end in success.
In 1899 Hesse published his first book. The book "Romantic Songs" consisted of poems written by the poet before 1898. Immediately after the book, a collection of short stories, An Hour After Midnight, was published.
In the spring of 1901, Hesse went on a trip to Italy.
Hesse's first novel, Peter Camenzind, was awarded the Bauernfeld Literary Prize in 1905.
In 1904, Hesse married Maria Bernoulli. In 1906, the autobiographical novel “Under the Wheel” was published, and in 1909, the novel “Gertrude”. After his divorce from Maria in February 1919, the writer left for Bern.
In 1924, Herman married for the second time; Ruth Wenger became his chosen one. Their marriage lasted three years.
At the beginning of 1926, Hesse began work on the novel Steppenwolf, which later became one of the writer's most important works.
On November 14, 1931, Herman married for the third time. In 1946 he became a Nobel Prize laureate.
(1877-1962) In 1962, Hesse's health rapidly deteriorated and leukemia developed. On August 9, 1962, Hermann Hesse died.
Hermann Hesse was born in the small German town of Calw. The writer's father came from an ancient Estonian family of missionary priests, whose representatives lived in Germany from the mid-18th century. For a number of years he lived in India, and in old age returned to Germany and settled in the house of his father, also a famous missionary and publisher of theological literature. Herman's mother, Maria Gundert, received a philological education and was also engaged in missionary work. Widowed, she returned to Germany with two children and soon married Hermann's father.
When the boy was three years old, the family moved to Basel, where his father received a teaching position at a missionary school. Herman learned to read and write early. Already in the second grade, Hermann Hesse tried to write poetry, but his parents did not encourage such activities because they wanted their son to become a theologian.
When the boy was thirteen years old, Hesse entered a closed Latin school at a Cistercian monastery in the small town of Goppingham. At first, Herman became interested in studying, but soon separation from home caused him a nervous breakdown. With great difficulty, he completed the year-long course, and although he passed all the exams brilliantly, after the first year of study, the father took his son from the monastery. Hesse would later describe his studies at the monastery in his novel The Glass Bead Game (1930-1936).
To continue his education, Hermann Hesse entered the Protestant seminary in Maulbronn (a suburb of Basel). It had a freer regime, and the boy could visit his parents. He becomes the best student, studies Latin and even receives a prize for translating Ovid. But still, life outside the home again led to nervous disorders. His father took him home, but relations with his parents became complicated, and the boy was sent to a closed boarding school for children with mental disabilities, where German tried to commit suicide, after which he ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
After undergoing a course of treatment, Hesse returned to his parents' home, and then, on his own initiative, entered the city gymnasium, where one of the teachers became his spiritual mentor. Gradually, Herman regained interest in studying, he even passed some of the required exams, but still in October 1893 he was expelled from the graduating class.
Over the next six months, Herman was at home, reading a lot, helping his father with his publishing activities. Then he first realized his true calling - to be a writer. He asks his father to give him the opportunity to live independently in order to prepare for literary work. But the father flatly refused his son, and Herman had to become an apprentice to a friend of their family, a well-known master of tower clocks and measuring instruments in the city, G. Perrault. In this house, the young man found understanding and found peace of mind. A few years later, Perrault would become the prototype of one of the characters in the novel The Glass Bead Game. As a token of gratitude, Hesse will even keep the hero of the novel his last name.
A year later, on the advice of Perrault, Hermann Hesse left the workshop and began working as an apprentice in the store of the Tübingen bookseller A. Heckenhauer. He spent all his time in the store: selling scientific literature, making purchases from publishers, communicating with customers, most of whom were professors and students of the local university. Soon, Hesse passed the necessary exams for the gymnasium course and entered the University of Tübingen as a free student. He attended lectures on art history, literature, and theology.
A year later, Herman passed the exam and became a certified bookseller. But he did not leave the Heckenhauer company and spent several hours every day at the book counter. At this time, he began to publish, first publishing small reviews of new book releases in local newspapers and magazines.
In Tübingen, Hermann Hesse became a member of the local literary society, at whose meeting he read his poems and stories. In 1899, he published his first books at his own expense - a volume of poems “Romantic Songs” and a collection of stories “An Hour After Midnight”. In them he imitates the German romantics of the early 19th century.
Hesse understood that for further creative growth he needed communication with professionals, so he moved to Basel, where he joined the largest second-hand book firm in the city, P. Reich." The aspiring writer still does a lot of self-education, and devotes his free time to creativity. Hesse wrote in one of his letters to his father: “I am selling the most valuable books and am going to write ones that no one has ever written.”
In 1901, Hermann published his first major work, the novel “Hermann Lauscher,” in which he created his own artistic world, built on images borrowed from German myths and legends. Critics did not appreciate the novel, its release went almost unnoticed, but the very fact of its publication was important to Hesse. Less than a year later, he released his second novel, “Peter Kamenzind,” which was published by the largest German publishing house S. Fischer. The writer told the story of a gifted poet who overcomes many obstacles on the path to happiness and fame. Critics praised this work, and Fischer entered into a long-term agreement with Hesse for the priority right to release all of his works. S. Fischer, and subsequently his successor P. Zurkamp, would become the only German publishers of Hesse's books.
Several editions of the novel were published one after another, and Hermann Hesse gained European popularity. The agreement with the publisher allowed the writer to gain financial independence. He left his job at a second-hand bookstore and married his friend M. Bernoulli, a distant relative of the famous mathematician and physicist D. Bernoulli.
Soon after the wedding, the couple moved to the small village of Heienhoffen on Lake Constance. Hesse was engaged in peasant labor and at the same time plunged into work on a new work - the autobiographical story “Under the Wheel”, and also continued to act as a critic and reviewer. The writer tries his hand at various genres: he writes literary fairy tales, historical and biographical stories.
Hermann Hesse's fame is growing; the largest German literary magazines turn to him with requests for articles and reviews of new works. Soon Hesse begins to publish his own literary magazine.
One after another, the writer releases three short stories in which he tells the story of the wanderings and internal tossing of the tramp Knulp. After the publication of the works, he traveled to India. He reflected his impressions of the trip in collections of essays and poems. Returning to his homeland, he found the rampant war hysteria and fiercely opposed the war. In turn, a real propaganda campaign was launched against him. As a sign of protest, the writer and his family moved to Switzerland and renounced German citizenship.
Hermann Hesse settled in Bern, and when World War I began, he organized a charitable foundation to help prisoners of war, for which he collected funds and published anti-war books and newspapers.
In 1916, a streak of misfortune began in the life of Hermann Hesse: the eldest of his three sons died from a severe form of meningitis, the writer’s wife ended up in a home for the mentally ill, and to top it all off, the writer learned of his father’s death. Hesse had a nervous breakdown; for several months he was admitted to a private hospital with the famous psychologist C. Jung, which helped him regain self-confidence.
Then Hesse begins to think about a new novel called Demian (1919). In it, he told the dramatic story of a young man who returned from the war and tried to find his place in peaceful life. The novel restored Hesse's popularity in his native country and became a reference book for young people in the post-war period.
In 1919, Hermann Hesse divorced his wife because her illness was incurable, and moved to the resort town of Montagnola in southern Switzerland. A friend provided the writer with a home, and he began publishing again, writing the novel “Siddhartha,” in which he tries to comprehend modernity from the perspective of a Buddhist pilgrim.
After some time, Hesse married a second time, but this marriage lasted only about two years. The couple separated, and the writer plunged into work on a new great work - the novel “Steppenwolf”. In it he tells the story of the artist G. Haller, who travels in a strange, fantastic world and gradually finds his place. To show the duality of the hero, the writer gives him the traits of a man and a wolf.
Gradually, Hermann Hesse restored contacts with Germany. He was elected a member of the Prussian Academy, and began to lecture at German universities. During one of his trips to Zurich, Hesse accidentally met his old friend, art critic Nika Dolbin, whom he later married.
The couple settled in Montagnola, where Hesse's acquaintance, the philanthropist G. Bodmer, built a house for him with a large library. The writer lived in this house with his wife until the end of his life.
After the Nazis came to power, in 1933, as a sign of protest, Hermann Hesse left the Prussian Academy. He practically stopped engaging in journalism, although he did not stop anti-fascist speeches. In Germany, Hesse's books were burned in public squares, and his publisher P. Zurkamp ended up in a concentration camp.
The writer releases the novel “Pilgrimage to the Land of the East” and begins work on his main work, the novel “The Glass Bead Game,” which was published in 1943. The action of the work takes place at the beginning of the 25th century in the fabulous country of Castalia. Hesse tells the story of a peculiar knightly order, whose representatives are engaged in a mysterious game of beads, composing and solving puzzles. The main character of the novel, J. Knecht, goes from student to Grand Master of the order. Although the novel does not contain the slightest hint of modernity, readers easily recognized the characters as the largest representatives of German culture - Thomas Mann, Johann Goethe, Wolfgang Mozart and many others. The first part of the novel, sent by the author to the publisher in 1934, was immediately added to the list of banned books by the Nazi authorities.
In 1946, Hermann Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his inspired creativity and brilliant style." At the end of the forties, he also received the most prestigious awards in Germany - the Goethe and G. Keller literary prizes. Writers' books are translated into different languages. In 1955, Hermann Hesse received the German Book Trade Prize, which recognizes the most widely read works written in German.
The writer is also elected a member of various academies and scientific communities, but Hesse distances himself from the popularity that has befallen him. He rarely leaves his home, writing memoirs and short essays. Together with his wife, he puts his huge archive in order and publishes several volumes of correspondence with major figures of the 20th century.
In the summer of 1962, the writer died in his sleep from a stroke. After the death of Hermann Hesse, his widow organized an international center in memory of the writer in the house, in which researchers from around the world work.
Hermann Hesse (German)Hermann Hesse; July 2, 1877, Calw, Germany - August 9, 1962, Montagnola, Switzerland)- Swiss novelist, poet, critic, publicist and artist of German origin, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1946). Considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Hesse's work became a kind of “bridge between romanticism and existentialism.”
Hermann Hesse was born into a family of missionaries and publishers of theological literature in Calw, Württemberg. The writer's mother was a philologist and missionary; she lived in India for many years. The writer's father was also engaged in missionary work in India at one time.
In 1880 the family moved to Basel, where Hesse's father taught at a missionary school until 1886, when the Hesses returned to Calw. Although Hesse dreamed of becoming a poet since childhood, his parents hoped that he would follow the family tradition and prepared him for a career as a theologian. In 1890, he entered the Latin School in Goppingen, and the next year, having passed the exam brilliantly, he moved to the Protestant seminary in Maulbronn. On March 7, 1892, Hesse fled from the Maulbronn Seminary for no apparent reason. After spending a very cold night in an open field, the fugitive is picked up by a gendarme and taken back to the seminary, where as punishment the teenager is sent to a punishment cell for eight hours. After this, Hesse’s stay at the seminary becomes unbearable and his father eventually takes him away from the institution. Parents tried to place Hesse in a number of educational institutions, but nothing came of it and as a result, Hesse began an independent life.
For some time the young man worked as an apprentice in a mechanical workshop, and in 1895 he got a job as a bookseller's apprentice, and then as an assistant to a bookseller in Tübingen. Here he had the opportunity to read a lot (the young man was especially fond of Goethe and the German romantics) and continue his self-education. In 1899, Hesse published his first books: a volume of poetry “Romantic Songs” and a collection of short stories and prose poems “An Hour After Midnight”. That same year he began working as a bookseller in Basel.
Hesse’s first novel, “Posthumous Writings and Poems of Hermann Lauscher,” appeared in 1901, but literary success came to the writer only three years later, when his second novel “Peter Camenzind” was published. After this, Hesse left his job, went to the village and began to live solely on the income from his works. In 1904 he married Marie Bernouilly; the couple had three children.
During these years, Hesse wrote many essays and essays for various periodicals and until 1912 he worked as co-editor of the magazine March. In 1911, Hesse traveled to India, and upon returning from there he published a collection of stories, essays and poems “From India”.
In 1912, Hesse and his family finally settled in Switzerland, but the writer found no peace: his wife suffered from mental illness, and war began in the world. Being a pacifist, Hesse opposed aggressive German nationalism, which led to a decline in the writer's popularity in Germany and personal insults against him. In 1916, due to the hardships of the war years, the constant illness of his son Martin and his mentally ill wife, as well as the death of his father, the writer had a severe nervous breakdown, for which he was treated by psychoanalysis with a student of Carl Jung. The experience gained had a huge impact not only on the life, but also on the writer’s work.
In 1919, Hesse left his family and moved to Montagnola, in southern Switzerland. By this time, the writer’s wife was already in a psychiatric hospital, some of the children were sent to a boarding school, and some were left with friends. The 42-year-old writer seems to be starting life anew, which is emphasized by the use of a pseudonym for the novel “Demian” published in 1919. In 1924, Hesse married Ruth Wenger, but this marriage lasted only three years. In 1931, Hesse married for the third time (to Ninon Dolbin) and in the same year began work on his most famous novel: “The Glass Bead Game,” which was published in 1943. In addition to literary work, Hesse is interested in painting (from the age of 20 -x) and draws a lot.
In 1939-1945, Hesse's works were included in the list of unwanted books in Germany. Certain works are even subject to a publication ban; the publication of the novel “The Glass Bead Game” was banned in 1942 by the Ministry of Propaganda.
In 1946, Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his inspired work, in which the classical ideals of humanism are increasingly evident, and for his brilliant style.”
After receiving the Nobel Prize, Hesse did not write another major work. His essays, letters, and new translations of novels continued to appear. In recent years, the writer lived constantly in Switzerland, where he died in 1962 at the age of 85, in his sleep, from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Writer's Awards
Nobel Prize for Literature (1946)
Honorary Doctor of the University of Bern (1947)
Wilhelm Raabe Prize (1950)
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Association (1955)
I was born at the end of the New Age, shortly before the first signs of the return of the Middle Ages, under the sign of Sagittarius, in the beneficial rays of Jupiter. My birth took place in the early evening on a warm July day, and the temperature of this hour is the one that I loved and unconsciously sought all my life and the absence of which I perceived as deprivation. I could never live in cold countries, and all the voluntary journeys of my life were directed to the south.
Hermann Hesse, Nobel laureate in 1946, is one of the most widely read authors of the 20th century. He called his entire work “a protracted attempt to tell the story of his spiritual development,” “a biography of the soul.” One of the main themes of the writer’s work is the fate of the artist in a society hostile to him, the place of true art in the world.
Hesse was the second child in the family of a German missionary priest. He spent his childhood in the company of three sisters and two cousins. Religious upbringing and heredity had a profound influence on the formation of Hesse's worldview. And yet he did not follow the theological path. After escaping from the theological seminary in Maulbronn (1892), repeated nervous crises, attempted suicide and stays in hospitals, he briefly worked as a mechanic and then sold books.
In 1899, Hesse published his first, unnoticed, collection of poems, Romantic Songs, and wrote a large number of reviews. At the end of his first Basel year he published The Remaining Letters and Poems of Hermann Lauscher, a work in the spirit of confession. This was the first time that Hesse spoke on behalf of a fictitious publisher - a technique that he later actively used and developed. In his neo-romantic novel of education "Peter Camenzind" (1904), Hesse developed the type of his future books - the seeking outsider. This is the story of the spiritual formation of a young man from a Swiss village who, carried away by romantic dreams, goes on wanderings, but does not find the embodiment of his ideals.
Disillusioned with the big world, he returns to his native village to simple life and nature. Having gone through bitter and tragic disappointments, Peter comes to the affirmation of naturalness and humanity as enduring life values.
In the same year - the year of his first professional success - Hesse, who now devoted himself entirely to literary creativity, married the Swiss Maria Bernoulli. The young family moved to Gainhofen, a remote place on Constance. The period that followed turned out to be very fruitful. Hesse mainly wrote novels and short stories with an element of autobiography. Thus, the novel “Under the Wheels” (1906) is largely based on material from Hesse’s school years: a sensitive and subtle schoolboy dies from a collision with the world and inert pedagogy.
During the First World War, which Hesse described as a “bloody nonsense,” he worked for the German prisoner-of-war service. The writer experienced a severe crisis, which coincided with the separation from his mentally ill wife (divorce in 1918). After a long course of therapy, Hesse completed the novel “Demian” in 1917, published under the pseudonym “Emile Sinclair”, a document of self-analysis and further internal liberation of the writer. In 1918, the story “Klingsor’s Last Summer” was written. In 1920, Siddhartha was published. An Indian Poem”, which centers on fundamental issues of religion and the recognition of the need for humanism and love. In 1924, Hesse became a Swiss citizen. After his marriage to the Swiss singer Ruth Wenger (1924; divorced in 1927) and a course of psychotherapy, the novel Steppenwolf (1927) was published, which became something of a bestseller.
This is one of the first works that open the line of so-called intellectual novels about the life of the human spirit, without which it is impossible to imagine German-language literature of the 20th century. (“Doctor Faustus” by T. Mann. “The Death of Virgil” by G. Broch, prose by M. Frisch). The book is largely autobiographical. However, it would be a mistake to consider the hero of the novel, Harry Haller, as Hesse’s double. Haller, Steppenwolf, as he calls himself, is a restless, desperate artist, tormented by loneliness in the world around him, who does not find a common language with him. The novel covers about three weeks of Haller's life. Steppenwolf lives in a small town for some time, and then disappears, leaving behind “Notes”, which make up most of the novel. From the “Notes” the image of a talented person is crystallized, unable to find his place in the world, a person living with the thought of suicide, for whom every day becomes torment.
In 1930, Hesse achieved his greatest recognition among the public with the story Narcissus and Holmund. The subject of the story was the polarity of spiritual and worldly life, which was a theme typical of that time. In 1931, Hesse married for the third time - this time to Ninon Dolbin, an Austrian, an art historian by profession - and moved to Montagnola (canton of Tessin).
In the same year, Hesse began work on the novel “The Glass Bead Game” (published in 1943), which seemed to summarize all of his work and raised the question of the harmony of spiritual and worldly life to an unprecedented height.
In this novel, Hesse tries to solve a problem that has always troubled him - how to combine the existence of art with the existence of an inhuman civilization, how to save the high world of artistic creativity from the destructive influence of the so-called mass culture. The history of the fantastic country of Castalia and the biography of Joseph Knecht - the “master of the game” - were allegedly written by a Castalian historian living in an uncertain future. The country of Castalia was founded by selected highly educated people who see their goal in preserving the spiritual values of humanity. Practicality of life is alien to them; they enjoy pure science, high art, a complex and wise game of beads, a game “with all the semantic values of our era.” The actual nature of this game remains vague. The life of Knecht - the “master of the game” - is the story of his ascent to the Castalian heights and his departure from Castalia. Knecht begins to understand the danger of the Castalians' alienation from the lives of other people. “I crave reality,” he says. The writer comes to the conclusion that the attempt to place art outside of society turns art into a purposeless, pointless game. The symbolism of the novel, many names and terms from various areas of culture require great erudition from the reader to understand the full depth of the content of Hesse’s book.
In 1946, Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contribution to world literature. That same year he was awarded the Goethe Prize. In 1955, he was awarded the Peace Prize, established by German booksellers, and a year later a group of enthusiasts established the Hermann Hesse Prize.
Hesse died at the age of 85 in 1962 in Montagnola.
