Hermann Hesse was the writer who distinguished for his revolutionary character that adroitness managed to combine with a wide spirituality. These two elements gave to his writings a quite subversive style; make him a thoroughgoing cult pioneer of his early age. The German poet, novelist and painter, had as main theme of his writing work the humans breaking out of the accustomed standards and modes of society and civilization in an attempt to find true and essential self/ spirit. This “self-realization” was blended with an eastern frame and attitude that characterized Hermann Hesse.

Born on July 1877 in the Black Forest town of Claw in Wurttemberg of Germany, was the son of two Christian Missionary parents who both served with a Basel missionary to India, that actually was the birthplace of his mother. Hermann spent his first years of life surrounded by the spirit of Swabian piety, a historic and linguistic region in Germany.

After a successful attendance at the Latin School in Göppingen , Hermann behest by his father to attend the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Maulbronn in 1891, where after less than a year he mutinied by fled from the Seminary, found a day later in a near field. Since that time, Hesse began a journey through various institutions and schools, a period that Hermann reveal his rebellious character, experienced intense conflicts with his parents. During that period, it is said that Hermann attempted to suicide.

Finally, at the end of 1892, he attended the Gymnasium in Cannstatt and on year later, in 1893, he passed the One Year Examination, which concluded his schooling.

Afterwards, he began a bookshop apprenticeship in Esslingen am Neckar, but after three days he left. The summer of 1894, he was apprenticed in a Calw tower-clock factory. The monotony work made him to turn toward more spiritual activities, so one year later he begun working in a Tübingen bookstore. The experience from his youth was expressed in 1906 in the novel “Beneath the Wheel”, in which an overly diligent student is driven to self-destruction.
Hermann remained in the bookselling business until 1904, when he became a free-lance writer and brought out his first novel “Peter Camenzind”.

Main role to his later novels played his visit in India in 1911. Since then, Hermann started his studies of Eastern religions, that later reflected in the lyric novel “Siddhartha” (1922), which based on the early life of Gautama Buddha. In the story, a Brahman son rebels against his father’s teaching and traditions. Eventually he finds the ultimate enlightenment.

The culture of ancient Hindu and the ancient Chinese had a great influence on Hermann’s works and life as well.

In 1912 Hesse and his family permanently resided in Switzerland and two years later, he wrote the novel “Rosshalde” where he explored whether the artist should marry or not. During World War I, Hesse lived in Switzerland attacking the prevailing moods of militarism and nationalism and promoting the interests of prisoners of war. In 1919 he became a permanent resident of Switzerland.
Later, while experiencing a personal crisis, Hermann visited a psychoanalyst named J.B. Lang. The influence of analysis appears in the work titled “Demian” (1919), which is an examination of the achievement of self-awareness by a troubled adolescent. Actually this was his breakthrough novel that made him famous.

In 1923 Hermann divorced with his first wife Maria Bernoulli, left his family and become a citizen of Switzerland, settling in Montagnola.

After a very short marriage (few months) with Ruth Wenger, the daughter of the Swiss writer Lisa Wenger, Hermann wrote the well-known novel “Steppenwolf” (1927) where he describes the controversy between the bourgeoisie habitus manner and the spiritual self realization of a middle-aged man. Follows in 1930 his next novel “Narcissus and Goldmund”, an intellectual ascetic who is content with established religious faith is contrasted with an artistic sensualist pursuing his own form of salvation.

From the end of the 1930s, German journals stopped publishing Hesse’s work, which was eventually banned. As spiritual refuge from these political conflicts and later from the Second World War, Hermann wrote in 1943, his last novel “The Glass Bead Game”, also known as “Magister Ludi”, which is the longest one. There, he explored for once more the dualism but this time, through the figure of a supremely gifted intellectual. For this work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.

Among the awards that he won was the “Bauernfeld-Preis” in 1906, the “Mejstrik-Preis der Wiener Schiller-Stiftung” in 1928, the “Gottfried-Keller-Preis” in 1936, the “Goethepreis der Stadt Frankfurt” in 1946, the same year that he awarded with the Nobel Prize, a Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bern in 1947, the “Wilhelm-Raabe-Preis” in 1950, “Orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaft und Künste” in 1954 and the “Peace Prize of the German Book Trade” in 1955.

After the Second World War, Hermann’s productivity declined. He didn’t write any novel but only short stories and poems. He died on August 9, 1962, and was buried in the cemetery at San Abbondio in Montagnola, leaving behind more than 30 books, as well as poems. 

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