Geburtstag: 2. Juli 1877
Todesdatum: 9. August 1962
Hermann Karl Hesse war ein deutschsprachiger Schriftsteller, Dichter und Maler. Bekanntheit erlangte er mit Prosawerken wie Siddhartha oder Der Steppenwolf und mit seinen Gedichten . 1946 wurde ihm der Nobelpreis für Literatur und 1954 der Orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste verliehen.
Als Sohn eines deutsch-baltischen Missionars war Hesse durch Geburt russischer Staatsangehöriger. Von 1883 bis 1890 und erneut ab 1924 war er schweizerischer Staatsbürger, dazwischen besaß er das württembergische Staatsbürgerrecht.
— Hermann Hesse
Brief, 23. Juli 1950. zitiert in: "Mein Hermann Hesse – Ein Lesebuch", Hrsg. Udo Lindenberg, Suhrkamp Verlag 2008, S. 28
— Hermann Hesse
Magie des Buches - Betrachtungen. Suhrkamp Frankfurt am Main 1977. Seite 30
— Hermann Hesse
Figur »Pablo« in: Der Steppenwolf. Suhrkamp, 1974. S. 227. ISBN 9783518366752. Google Books
— Hermann Hesse
Demian, (an den Anfang gestelltes Motto des Ich-Erzählers Emil Sinclair), GW Bd. 5, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987, S. 7
— Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 182, Kapitel 5, Frankfurt am Main 1974, Seite 49
— Hermann Hesse
Der Steppenwolf, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 175. 1974, Seite 29.
— Hermann Hesse
Gertrud. A. Langen Verlag München 1911. Seite 234
— Hermann Hesse
Das Glasperlenspiel (Romanfigur des Beichtvaters Dion), GW Bd. 9, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987, S. 569
— Hermann Hesse
"Siddharta", Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt, zit. nach der 3. Auflage 1975, S. 80
— Hermann Hesse
Brief (Sept. 1960) an Wilhelm Gundert Quelle: Mein Hermann Hesse – Ein Lesebuch. Hrsg. Udo Lindenberg, 2008, Suhrkamp Verlag, S. 26
— Hermann Hesse
Context: When I take a long look at my life, as though from outside, it does not appear particularly happy. Yet I am even less justified in calling it unhappy, despite all its mistakes. After all, it is foolish to keep probing for happiness or unhappiness, for it seems to me it would be hard to exchange the unhappiest days of my life for all the happy ones. If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless. Even if, as it is decreed by the gods, fate has inexorably trod over my external existence as it does with everyone, my inner life has been of my own making. I deserve its sweetness and bitterness and accept full responsibility for it.
p. 3
— Hermann Hesse
Context: Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him — for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood. Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men — each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature — are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, story telling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.
Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way that I will die more easily once I have completed this story.
p. 9. Prologue
— Hermann Hesse
Context: Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.
p. 146
— Hermann Hesse
Context: It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live. But I was exactly the same when I was still a student. We study and work, don't waste much time, and think we may rightly call ourselves industrious — but we are scarcely conscious of all we could do, all that we might make of our freedom. Then we suddenly receive a call from the hierarchy, we are needed, are given a teaching assignment, a mission, a post, and from then on move up to a higher one, and unexpectedly find ourselves caught in a network of duties that tightens the more we try to move inside it. All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours. That is well; one would not want it to be different. But if we ever think, between classroom, archives, secretariat, consulting room, meetings, and official journeys — if we ever think of the freedom we possessed and have lost, the freedom for self-chosen tasks, for unlimited, far-flung studies, we may well feel the greatest yearning for those days, and imagine that if we ever had such freedom again we would fully enjoy its pleasures and potentialities.
— Hermann Hesse
Context: I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams — like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
Each man's life represents the road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.
p. 9 Prologue
— Hermann Hesse
Context: If a man does not think too much, he rejoices at rising in the morning, and at eating and drinking. He finds satisfaction in them and does not want them to be otherwise. But if he ceases to take things for granted, he seeks eagerly and hopefully during the course of the day for moments of real life, the radiance of which makes him rejoice and obliterates the awareness of time and all thoughts on the meaning and purpose of everything. One can call these moments creative, because they seem to give a feeling of union with the creator, and while they last, one is sensible of everything being necessary, even what is seemingly fortuitous. It is what the mystics call union with God. Perhaps it is the excessive radiance of these moments that make everything else appear so dark. Perhaps it is the feeling of liberation, the enchanting lightness and the suspended bliss that make the rest of life seem so difficult, demanding and oppressive. I do not know. I have not travelled very far in thought and philosophy. However I do know that if there is a state of bliss and a paradise, it must be an uninterrupted sequence of such moments, and if this state of bliss can be attained through suffering and dwelling in pain, then no sorrow or pain can be so great that one should attempt to escape from it.
