Weltgeist hermann hesse biography summary

Hermann Hesse was a German-born Swiss novelist and poet.

Hesse gained a wide readership for his lyrical explorations of spirituality and psychology in a time when other modernists were describing the dread, alienation , and absurdity of modern industrial society. Hesse's interests in self-understanding and spiritual realization were explored in the genre-expanding Steppenwolf, which fused dreamlike awareness and Jungian psychology with realism.

The novel was praised by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, because it "exposes the problem of modernity's isolated and self-isolating man. Although Hesse collaborated closely with a number of contemporary German writers, among them Thomas Mann , Bertolt Brecht , and Romain Rolland , his prose is neither as dense nor experimental as many modernists.

In fact, Hesse's novels are often used by students of the German language because of their simple elegance and accessible style although his final novel, The Glass Bead Game, is notoriously challenging within his oeuvre. Hesse was concerned with the dominant themes of modernism—the loss of cultural consensus, the growing anomie of the individual, the spiritual void of post-Christian Europe—yet believed that an inner quest and the resources of Eastern spirituality provided an alternative to existential despair on one hand and militant nationalism on the other.

Long an advocate of the individual's private quest for self-knowledge, Hesse despised the growing mass movement of German nationalism and the rise of National Socialism.

Hermann Hesse was a German novelist and poet, often hailed as one of the greatest German writers.

He came under suspicion and his works were censored during the Third Reich, but he survived the war, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in Hesse's father, Johannes Hesse, was born in , in Estonia, the son of a doctor. The Hesse family had lived in Calw since , where they operated a missionary publishing house under the direction of Hesse's maternal grandfather, Hermann Gundert.

Hermann Hesse spent his first years of life surrounded by the spirit of Swabian piety. In , the family moved to Basel, Switzerland for five years, then returned to Calw. Here in March , Hesse showed his rebellious character: He fled from the Seminary and was found in a field a day later, cowering. During this time, Hesse began a journey through various institutions and schools, experiencing intense conflicts with his parents.

It was also at about this time that his bipolar disorder began to affect him; he mentioned suicidal thoughts in a letter dated March 20, In May, after an attempt at suicide, he spent time at an institution in Bad Boll under the care of theologian and minister, Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt. Later he was placed in a mental institution in Stetten im Remstal, and then a boys' institution in Basel.