Soul of the Age

by Hermann Hesse

  361. On August 28, 1946, the city of Frankfurt am Main awarded Hesse the Goethe Prize, the first official honor he had ever received from Germany.

  362. Described in “Recollections of Some Physicians” (1960).

  363. One of the related surviving documents is a letter from the mayor of Calw of November 28, 1946, in which he says: “We wish to convey our sincere thanks for your donation of 3,000 RM from the Goethe Prize you were awarded; the city of Frankfurt has forwarded us that amount. The sum will be distributed among the poor in Calw, according to your specifications, and will be received with great joy as a Christmas present from you.”

  364. Author of a dissertation on Hesse, Romanticism, and the Orient (1932).

  365. Hesse had hardly arrived in the Préfargier Sanatorium when the news came that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hesse himself did not attend the award ceremony. The Swiss Ambassador to Sweden, Minister Valloton, accepted the award on December 10, 1946, and Hesse’s greetings were read at “the banquet on the occasion of the Nobel ceremony.” (WA 10:102f).

  366. Since 1929, when he himself was awarded the Nobel Prize, Thomas Mann had continually suggested to the Prize Committee that Hesse was a worthy recipient.

  367. Hesse had recently written the following to Max Wassmer: “It’s a pity that the external fulfillments take place mostly at a time when they are no longer any fun. At least, Ninon is delighted like a child about it, and my friend Bodmer and his wife spent a highly enjoyable evening with her, drinking the best champagne. As for myself, I have been completely abstemious for the first time in several decades, for three weeks now.

  368. Their mutual friend Otto Basler, a teacher and publicist in Burg/Aargau.

  369. Krieg und Frieden (Zurich: Fretz & Wasmuth, 1946), which bore the dedication: “For Thomas von der Trave from Josef Knecht, Waldzell, October 1946”; English translation: If the War Goes On … (1971), with more or less the same contents.

  370. “In Hours at the Desk,” Hesse had written: “As a small child, I always wanted a present of paper for Christmas and my birthday, and when I was about eight years old, I requested the following on a wish list: ‘A sheet of paper as big as the Spalen-Tor’” (city gate in Basel; the Hesse family lived close by from 1881 to 1886).

  371. See Hesse’s story “Der Europäer” (WA, 6: 423ff).

  372. A figure from Hesse’s “Kurgast” (“Guest at the Spa”) (WA, 7: 5–113).

  373. A figure from The Glass Bead Game.

  374. Printed matter which Hesse enclosed with many individual replies.

  375. The situation described in this letter is typical of the frauds perpetrated in Hesse’s name during the period of his greatest fame.

  376. The Nicholas Chapel on the Nagold Bridge in Calw.

  377. Gide’s twenty-four-year-old daughter Catherine from his relationship with Elisabeth van Rysselberghes.

  378. Jean Lambert; his translation of the novel was published by Calmann-Lévy in 1948. Later editions included a preface by André Gide and notes by Jean Lambert.

  379. The scroll bearing the honorary citizenship of his hometown, Calw.

  380. Elsy and H. C. Bodmer had given Hesse a record player for his seventieth birthday.

  381. Hans Purrmann, who lived in Montagnola.

  382. Hesse was still busy reading mail on July 20, when he wrote to Max Wassmer: “We have read more than ten thousand pages of letters.”

  383. Der Blütenzweig (Zurich, 1945), a selection of poetry.

  384. Ernst Köpfli, editor at Fretz & Wasmuth, Zurich.

  385. Afterword to the new edition of Hugo Ball’s biography of Hesse.

  386. Hesse did not get to see Suhrkamp at that time, as he had hoped. Their first meeting after the war did not take place until January 1948 in Montagnola.

  387. Latin, “brings them a step closer,” from the The Glass Bead Game’s motto.

  388. The poems were “Josef Knechts Berufung” and “Verlieren sich im Sand,” which the editors had presumably received from the Munich Hesse collector and bibliographer Horst Kliemann. On November 21, Hesse wrote to Kliemann: “… I had finally hoped to find out who it was who had arbitrarily ascribed two poems by somebody else to me … What I discover instead is that you have, unfortunately, a large number of poems of mine, of which any number may, of course, not be by me but might nevertheless appear one day under my name.” A statement underneath the poems read as follows: “We would like to thank the Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, for permission to publish the two poems by Hermann Hesse for the first time.”

  389. Sculptor and writer.

  390. Penzoldt was staying in Peter Suhrkamp’s vacation home in Kampen on Sylt.

  391. In the fall of 1947, Peter Suhrkamp, who had been granted a license to operate as a publisher in the American occupation zone, was able to set up the Suhrkamp Verlag, formerly the S. Fischer Verlag, in Frankfurt.

  392. Salome Wilhelm’s Richard Wilhelm: Mittler zwischen China und Europa was not published until 1956.

  393. Ion Antonescu, authoritarian Romanian politician, ally of Hitler.

  394. Austrian writer and Zionist; best known as biographer and editor of Franz Kafka.

  395. Published as “An Attempt at Self-Justification” in the June 1948 issue of the Neue Schweizer Rundschau, Zurich.

  396. The addressee had read Hesse’s letter to Max Brod in the Neue Schweizer Rundschau of June 1948 and had been shocked by the notion that it is no longer possible for intellectuals to cooperate directly with politicians.

  397. The passage highlighted by Hesse begins: “The intellect detests all groups; it prefers not to engage in party politics; it feels compromised when unanimity is reached; it considers that it has something to gain from mutual disagreement.”

  398. “Hermann Hesse und München,” in Münchner Tagebuch, Vol. 3 (1948).

  399. The premiere of the first part of Othmar Schoeck’s Mörike Song Cycle, “Das holde Bescheiden,” 1949.

  400. Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann’s eldest son, committed suicide in Cannes on May 21, 1949.

  401. André Gide: Die Geschichte eines Europäers (1948).

  402. German Catholic writer and critic.

  403. Mann had returned to the United States on August 5, 1949, at the end of his second postwar visit to Europe.

  404. Mitte des Lebens (1950).

  405. “Aufzeichnung bei einer Kur in Baden” (“Notes from a Spa in Baden”) (WA, 8:508ff).

  406. Hesse had recently refuted a similar criticism of Mann’s “Letter to Vienna”: “On the whole, the German excitement about Thomas Mann says something about the nature of their preoccupations and indicates once again how unwilling they are to tackle serious matters. Ultimately, what harm has Mann done with any of his ‘political’ attitudes and activities since losing his citizenship? None!”

  407. Possibly the memoirs Ungleiche Welten (1951).

  408. August Rentschler, Erinnerungen eine alten Calwers, in the Calwer Zeitung.

  409. A turner’s workshop at 22 Lederstrasse in Calw, next door to the house inhabited by the Hesse family from 1889 to 1893.

  410. “Briefmosaik (1)” appeared in the Neue Schweizer Rundschau, Zurich, in March 1950.

  411. Dr. Josef B. Lang.

  412. Josef Knecht, the main character in Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.

  413. H. Hesse, Krisis: Ein Stück Tagebuch (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1928); 1,150 copies were printed.

  414. In another letter to Ernst Rheinwald, Hesse wrote: “Suhrkamp’s exaggerated and idiosyncratic notions of chivalry caused him to forfeit many options that could have been retained.” To Felix Braun: “Suhrkamp thought it wasn’t right for a German to make any demands on Jews.”

  415. Written by Mann’s brother, Heinrich.

  416. “He who likes it fine / Should write along this line. / He who likes it not / Had better mosey off.”

  417. “Der Fall John Peet.” The article, with a short foreword by Hesse, was rejected by the media.

 
; 418. Disorder and Early Sorrow (1926), a novella about a childhood experience of Thomas Mann’s daughter Elisabeth.

  419. The Italian Germanist and writer Giuseppe Antonio Borgese.

  420. Der Bogen, a series of short literary texts, edited by Traugott Vogel (1950–64).

  421. Robert Walser, “Die Schlacht bei Sempach.” Cf. Robert Walser, Masquerade and Other Stories, trans. Susan Bernofsky (1990).

  422. Hans Mühlestein, Dichtungen des Michelangelo Buonarota (1950).

  423. The Holy Sinner. At Sils Maria, Mann had read Hesse excerpts from the book, which was first published in 1951. In April 1951, Hesse wrote to Max Silber: “On two separate occasions in the Engadine last summer, Th. Mann read us a few chapters from Gregorius. It was pleasant and fun. Everything transpired behind a mask of objectivity in an endlessly cheerful, soothingly ironic mode. I wouldn’t wish for any changes.”

  424. Erika Mann corresponded regularly with Hesse until his death. Twenty-eight extensive letters from Erika Mann, written between 1950 and 1962, were discovered among Hesse’s papers.

  425. Buber visited Hesse in Baden in early December. Hesse’s friendship with Buber reaches back almost as far as his friendship with Mann. Between 1909 and 1950 he reviewed thirteen books by Buber, and in 1950 proposed him for the Nobel Prize.

  426. “Absage” (1933) (Gedichte, p. 778).

  427. Italian: this damn whore.

  428. Erika Mann had informed Hesse on April 26, 1951, about her tumor operation and the American “political witch hunt against Thomas Mann, which the Nazis couldn’t have waged with greater infamy in 1933.”

  429. Klaus Mann zum Gedächtnis, with a foreword by Thomas Mann (1950).

  430. Elsy Bodmer, the wife of Hesse’s patron Dr. Hans Conrad Bodmer.

  431. Jancke was the founder and director of the Darmstadt Academy.

  432. Hesse resisted any publication of his letters for many years. The first selection was published at Ninon’s particular initiative, and she selected letters only of a general, not personal nature.

  433. The Suhrkamp Verlag had moved into new quarters at 53 Schaumainkai in Frankfurt.

  434. Arnold Zweig, novelist and essayist.

  435. Johannes R. Becher, Expressionist poet who became Minister of Culture in the German Democratic Republic.

  436. Albert Schweitzer was a candidate for the next Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in 1952; John Orr, Lord Boyd Orr of Brechin, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949.

  437. Narrative fragment, “A Report from Normalia” (1951; WA 8:531ff).

  438. Published as “Birthday,” a circular letter, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of July 15, 1952.

  439. List: Peter Suhrkamp, Elsy Bodmer, Tilly and Max Wassmer, and Alice Leuthold.

  440. A special issue of the Neue Schweizer Rundschau, Zurich, on the occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of Hermann Hesse, which consisted largely of letters from Rudolf Alexander Schröder, Thomas Mann, Othmar Schoeck, Ernst Morgenthaler, Otto Basler, and contributions by, among others, Martin Buber, R. J. Humm, Hermann Kasack, Karl Kerényi, Ernst Penzoldt, and Werner Weber.

  441. Poet, novelist, and essayist.

  442. Briefe: 1934–1944. Seidel was Ina Seidel’s cousin; she married him in 1907.

  443. From the final stanza of the poem: “Long after I have flowed into the vast circulation of oceans / a drop of bitter tears / floods flushing the bottled mail strandward— / Someday a person reading and interpreting these lines.”

  444. Excerpts from the letter appeared as “Correspondence about a poem by Hermann Hesse” in the Neue Zürchet Zeitung, January 17, 1954.

  445. “Licht der Frühe” (Gedichte, p. 706).

  446. With a written comment: “Please treat this letter very confidentially. It is intended only for you and isn’t adequately formulated for publication.”

  447. A publicist friend of Hesse’s, who expanded Hugo Ball’s biography of Hesse and edited Hesse’s correspondence with Thomas Mann (1968).

  448. Ferien: Eine Herbstgabe (1849).

  449. “Jesus und die Armen” (“Jesus and the Poor”) (Gedichle, p. 587).

  450. Distinguished Catholic novelist.

  451. The Glass Bead Game.

  452. Writer, liberal politician, and first president (1949–59) of the Federal Republic.

  453. Pour le Mérite (Peace category, awarded to foreigners). “A nice thing about it,” Hesse wrote at the end of June to his cousin Wilhelm Gundert, “is that the previous recipients include people like Jacob Grimm.”

  454. The publishing house.

  455. In October–November, 1954, Peter Suhrkamp had to undergo treatment again in the Allgäu for his heart and lung complaints.

  456. New publications by Max Frisch (the novel Stiller), Ernst Penzoldt (the story “Squirrel”), and Monique Saint-Hélier (the novel Der Eisvogel).

  457. In 1954 Suhrkamp published a facsimile edition of Hesse’s tale Piktor’s Metamorphoses in his own handwriting and with his watercolor illustrations.

  458. This letter to Hesse’s Swiss publisher was printed in Die Weltwoche, Zurich, January 7, 1955.

  459. The Zurich painter Paul Bodmer.

  460. Hermann Oldenberg, Buddha (1906).

  461. Poet and cultural philosopher.

  462. See “The Fourth Life” in Tales of Student Life.

  463. Hesse described his relationship with his patron and friend Georg Reinhart in his memoir “Der schwarze König,” in Gedenkblätter (Frankfurt, 1984), pp. 234ff.

  464. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, author of the play Nathan the Wise (1779).

  465. Karl Münchinger, who had been director of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra since 1954.

  466. Proofs of the collection Beschwörungen: Späte Prosa (Frankfurt, 1955).

  467. Theodor W. Adorno, philosopher, musicologist, critic.

  468. Thomas Mann, who had just turned eighty, died in the Zurich Cantonal Hospital on August 12, 1955.

  469. Marulla, Hesse’s youngest sister, died at the age of seventy-three on March 17, 1953.

  470. In an earlier letter of August 1955 Hesse had responded to Frau H.S.’s observation that he was currently the “most widely read” writer in Germany.

  471. A privately printed piece, “Ein Paar Leserbriefe an H.H.,” which had appeared recently (Montagnola, 1955).

  472. Bertolt Brecht died in East Berlin on August 14, 1956, at the age of fifty-eight.

  473. The writer Kurt Kläber, editor of the journal Die Linkskurve, lived in neighboring Carona. On March 19, 1933, he took his friends Brecht and Bernard von Brentano to visit Hesse in Montagnola.

  474. Hesse’s friend and patron Dr. H. C. Bodmer had died on May 28, 1956. See the poem “Nachruf” (Gedichte, p. 710).

  475. “Der Trauermarsch,” first published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 2, 1956; reprinted in Gedenkblätter (Frankfurt, 1984).

  476. Walser died of a heart attack during a solitary walk in the snow on December 25, 1956.

  477. Carl Seelig, “Am Grab von Robert Walser,” in National-Zeitung, Basel, January 6, 1957.

  478. One of Hesse’s best-known poems.

  479. Suhrkamp’s letter of July 6, 1957, described the ceremonies in the Liederhalle in Stuttgart celebrating Hesse’s eightieth birthday and in Calw and Baden-Baden during the award of the first Hermann Hesse Prize to Martin Walser. In H. Hesse–Peter Suhrkamp Briefwechsel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967).

  480. Latin: “May God make things turn out well.”

  481. Carl J. Burckhardt had allowed Hesse to avail himself of his secretary, Frau Henriette Speiser, for a few days.

  482. “Besides, all hell had broken loose in the house. The cellar was constantly under water, and it became evident that the entire drainage system, which is about 160 meters long, is broken or clogged. They have dug up half the property by now, and the road as well, as much as two meters deep.” (From a letter to Otto Engel.)

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sp; 483. Karlheinz Deschner, Kitsch, Konvention und Kunst: Eine literarische Streitschrift (1957).

  484. Thornton Wilder was awarded the German book trade’s Peace Prize.

  485. Hesse’s former housekeeper.

  486. Preparatory work on a little volume of writings by Peter Suhrkamp, which Siegfried Unseld had proposed, and which Hermann Kasack subsequently edited: Der Leser: Aufsätze und Reden (1960).

  487. Ruth and her husband, the actor Erich Haussmann, were living in Dresden.

  488. Die Gedichte.

  489. A picture taken by Martin Hesse.

  490. Calw, Hesse’s birthplace, was planning to transform the Vischers’ courtly house in Bischofstrasse into a local museum that would include a Hesse room. This plan, which was subsequently implemented, led to the creation of the present-day Hermann Hesse Museum, the only permanent exhibition in Europe devoted to Hesse.

  491. The collection of Hesse’s friends Alice and Fritz Leuthold.

  492. In 1959 Professor Joseph Mileck acquired the collection of Horst Kliemann for the University of California, Berkeley.

  493. Professor at the University of Toronto; author of an introductory volume to Hermann Hesse (1970).

  494. Published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 8, 1960.

  495. E. Valentin, Musica Domestica: Von Geschichte und Wesen der Hausmusik (1959).

  496. Hesse’s friend Volkmar Andreä, composer and director of the Zurich Conservatory.

  497. A kind of pseudonym or Chinese mask Hesse assumed in his latter years when he wanted to convey a special message. Meng Hsiä means “dream writer.”

  498. Under the honorary chairmanship of Theodor Heuss on October 20, 1961.

  499. Tilbert Etzel, chairman of the German Club in Pretoria, South Africa.

  500. Klaus Mann would have been fifty-five years old on November 18, 1961.

  501. Alfred Kantorovicz, Heinrich und Thomas Mann (1956).

  502. Thomas Mann, Briefe 1889–1936, ed. by Erika Mann (1961).