Today the German writer Herman Hesse would complete 140 years old. In his writings we can see his activism against all kind of totalitarianism, his fight for freedom of speech and thought, for personal freedom and the autonomy of the individual. His writings inspired many to fight against violations of human rights. So, this post is a tribute to him. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hermann-Hesse. The second was published at http://www.dw.com/en/hermann-hesse-misunderstood-but-loved/a-16152933. The third was published at http://www.dw.com/en/hesse-recognized-magic-power-of-words/a-15848265. The fourth https://www.hermannhesse.de/files/WORLDWIDE%20RECEPTION%20AND%20INFLUENCE_0.pdf
Herman Hesse (1877-1962) was a German novelist, poet, and winner of the Nobel for literature in 1946, whose main theme deals with man's breaking out of the established modes of civilization to find his essential spirit. With his appeal for self-realization, Hesse posthumously became a cult figure to young people in the English-speaking world. At the behest of his father, Hesse entered the Maulbronn seminary. Though a model student, he was enable to adapt, so he was apprenticed in the city of Calw in a tower-clock factory and later in a Tubingen bookstore. Hesse remained in the bookselling business unitl 1904, when he became a freelance writer and brought out his first novel, Peter Camenzind, about a failed and dissipated writer. The inward and outward search of the artist is further explored in Gertrud (1910) and Rosshalde (1914). A visit to India in these years was later reflected in Siddhartha (1922), a poetic novel, set in India at the time of the Buddha, about the search for enlightenment. During World War I, Hesse lived in neutral Switzerland, wrote denunciations of militarism and nationalism, and edited a journal for war prisoners. A deepening sense of personal crisis led Hesse to psychoanalysis with J.B.Lang, a disciple of Carl Jung. The influence of analysis appears in Demian (1919), an examination of the achievement of self-awareness by a troubled adolescent. This novel had a pervasive effect on a troubled Germany and made its author famous. Steppenwolf (1927) describes the conflict between bourgeois acceptance and spiritual self-realization in a middle-aged man. In Narcissus and Goldmund (1930) an intellectual ascetic who is content with established religious faith is contrasted with an artistic pursuing his own form of salvation. In his last and longest novel, The Glass Bead Game (1943), he again explores the dualism of the contemplative and the active life, this time through the figure of a supremely gifted intellectual.
In 1962, just after Herman Hesse had died of a heart attack at the age of 85, the German newspaper Die Zeit wrote that the author had become absolete. The newspaper, however, would eat its words. In the meantime, Hesse's works have been translated into nearky 60 languages, and at least 125 million copies sold. Hesse was born in Calw, near Stuttgart. He grew up in a very religious household. This search for identity and the process of discovering oneself were main topics, his stories were scattered with references to his own experiences, analysis of himself. "He questioned autonomy and religion. He searched for a religion that was not militant or missionary, but open to other lifestyles, other ideas," explained Hesse's biographer, Gunnar Decker, "This is a crucial issue in the Arab world, " he adds. After returning to Europe 1914 from a travel to Asia, Hesse moved to Switzerland. But the war and its propaganda aggravated and Hesse wanted to warn the German intellectuals to turn away from their nationalist polemics and be more humane. Hesse watched with concern and disapproval as the Nazis took control of Germany. Throughout the World War II he supported German refugees, including Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. It was during this war that he wrote his last great work, The Glass Bead Game, which won him the 1946 Nobel for Literature. At the time, the Nobel committee said the prize was "for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals and the high art of style." After World War II, Hesse's books were very popular in Germany as the country sought a source of guidance and self-reflection.
Herman Hesse is an author who dealt with the contradictions of the 20th century. Contradictions such as being confronted with technological developments, with outside forces which robbed him of his autonomy. He was always preoccupied with how to defend oneself against such things and how one might escape such alienating situations. He dealt with the question of an unalienated life, of finding balance internally and externally. Hesse said that his relationship to boundaries, country and state borders was highly questionable. Added to that was Hesse's missionary background: His parents were misssionaries who lived in India for a long time. That is a form of cosmopolitanism with a paradoxically provincial complexion. This understanding and the return to questions such as "What nationality am I?" and "Which country do I live in?" has an associational quality. With Hessel it has something universal. How does the unalienated, human life that we are supposed to lead look? And how can we all live together despite all the things that divide us?
The fact that a writer such as Herman Hesse who, in his day, was always at odds with the political powers-that-be, and who was a social outsider, in fact, who was continually breaking free of the "ties that bind," and whose entire works were basically a big biography, the fact that such a writer have unleashed a worldwide response of such magnitude is one of the most curious phenomena in the history of literary reception. The vast majority of Hesse readers have a very precise feeling for the honesty and the credibility of the statements made by their author. The standpoint from which they value and judge is located outside the literary domain. With Camenzind, his first novel, Hesse had gripped the youth of his day. Demian captured the imagination of the generation returning from World War I, and the powers of meditation and humanity, fascinated all those seeking new forms of order in the chaos of a shattered state and lost war. Always a crucial factor shaping the willingness to accept the writings of any author is the background in terms of human levels of experience. This background has, in fact, a major impact on overall reception. And more so among readers who see in literature something that might be able to help solve their problems in life, and consider the writer to be a kind of psychotherapist, as someone pointing the way, as someone who knows the answers for all those seeking directions in life. The American response to Hesse's works came from the America of the Vietnam War, came from a generation that was rising up against the carnage and senselessness of the war, against the omnipotence of the state, and against the increasingly soulless nature of modern life, a generation that did not want to have its life mapped out for it by others, and dared to question the belief that the age of technology would bring nothing but progress. These young people discovered in Hesse's writings the afflictions of their own souls, their problems, dreams and yearnings. Readers sensed that the focal points of their feelings and thoughts had been expressed in compelling form in Hesse's works. It was in his criticism and his protest against anything totalitarian, his love of peace and his tenacious defence of personality and a free, personal, simple life that they found confirmation of their own ideas. For Hesse changing the world meant humanizing it. And this is a process that has to be initiated and executed by the individual. Asserting and defending the personality and the independence of the individual, and the areas in which the individual has freedom of action, these are the aims. Yet there are no magic bullets enabling one to achieve this: "Each of us is something very personal and unique, and supplanting the personal conscience with a collective one is nothing but a violation, and it is the first step towards all forms of totalitarianism." A decisive element in the reception of Hesse's works was the uncompromising openness that was a mark of his character, and which imbued his statements with sincerity, credibility, and a high degree of authenticity. To this one must add the readily comprehensible nature of his world of symbols. Yet this simplicity should not be taken to mean superficiality or innocuousness. Rather, it is the art of being able to express even complex matters in clear and simple form.
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