Zarathustras wiederkehr hermann hesse biography

Hugo Ball

Hermann Hesse, sein Leben und sein Werk (1927, 243 pp.) was undertaken at the request of Hesse’s publisher, S. Fischer. It was written in the course of a few weeks and published upon the occasion of Hesse’s fiftieth birthday. Ball was not intent upon writing a systematically-presented scholarly work. Having learned to know and to appreciate Hesse, he simply wanted to share his experience with others.

Ball follows Hesse leisurely from childhood to his fiftieth birthday. He describes the little boy listening eagerly to his mother’s stories, the distraught student fleeing from Maulbronn, the apprentice mechanic in Calw, and the young bookdealer in Tübingen. Hesse’s marriage and his futile attempt to establish himself on the Bodensee are related in considerable detail. The difficult war years on the outskirts of Bern are touched upon, and Hesse’s psychoanalytical treatment, the break-up of his family, and his eventual retirement to Montagnola are discussed quite candidly.

Fully aware, however, that Hesse was deeply rooted in a strong family tradition, and that his sensitive nature was very susceptible to the influence of environment, Ball does not restrict himself to just these biographical facts. Swabia, Estonia, and India, the world of his forebears, and Calw and Basel, the world of his childhood, are constantly in the background. A multitude of stray but interesting details concerning various members of the Gundert and Hesse families are appropriately introduced. Mention is made of Grandfather Gundert’s scholarly work and of his library, where young Hesse steeped himself in the German authors of the eighteenth century. Grandfather Hesse and life in Russian Weissenstein are described. Hesse’s difficulties in Maulbronn recall Uncle Paul Gundert’s escapades in that same institution. Life in the Hesse home in Calw is