Although Hesse was born in Germany's Black Forest region of Swabia, his father's celebrated heritage as a Baltic German and his grandmother's French-Swiss roots had an intellectual influence on him.

He was a precocious, if not difficult child, who shared a passion for poetry and music with his mother, and was especially well-read and cultured, due in part to the influence of his polyglot grandfather.

His interest in Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions, combined with his involvement with Jungian analysis, helped to shape his literary work.

His best-known works include: Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge, and spirituality.

In 1873, the Hesse family moved to Calw, where Johannes worked for Calwer Verlagsverein, a publishing house specializing in theological texts and schoolbooks.

Hermann Hesse's sense of estrangement from the Swabian petite bourgeoisie grew further through his relationship with his maternal grandmother Julie Gundert, née Dubois, whose French-Swiss heritage kept her from ever quite fitting in among that milieu.

In a letter to her husband, Hermann's mother Marie wrote: "The little fellow has a life in him, an unbelievable strength, a powerful will, and, for his four years of age, a truly astonishing mind.

[6] In his juvenilia collection Gerbersau, Hesse vividly describes experiences and anecdotes from his childhood and youth in Calw: the atmosphere and adventures by the river, the bridge, the chapel, the houses leaning closely together, hidden nooks and crannies, as well as the inhabitants with their admirable qualities, their oddities, and their idiosyncrasies.

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.

At the same time, Basel offered the solitary Hesse many opportunities for withdrawal into a private life of artistic self-exploration, journeys and wanderings.

[25] Having realised he could make a living as a writer, Hesse finally married Maria Bernoulli (of the famous family of mathematicians[26]) in 1904, while her father, who disapproved of their relationship, was away for the weekend.

Following Hesse's return, the family moved to Bern (1912), but the change of environment could not solve the marriage problems, as he himself confessed in his novel Rosshalde from 1914.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial Army, saying that he could not sit inactively by a warm fireplace while other young authors were dying on the front.

[36] This public controversy was not yet resolved when a deeper life crisis befell Hesse with the death of his father on 8 March 1916, the serious illness of his son Martin, and his wife's schizophrenia.

During a three-week period in September and October 1917, Hesse penned his novel Demian, which would be published following the armistice in 1919 under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair.

Their home in Bern was divided, their children were accommodated in boarding houses and by relatives,[37] and Hesse resettled alone in the middle of April in Ticino.

This new beginning in different surroundings brought him happiness, and Hesse later called his first year in Ticino "the fullest, most prolific, most industrious and most passionate time of my life".

[39] His next major works, Kurgast (1925) and The Nuremberg Trip (1927), were autobiographical narratives with ironic undertones and foreshadowed Hesse's following novel, Steppenwolf, which was published in 1927.

Shortly after his new successful novel, he turned away from the solitude of Steppenwolf and started a cohabitation with art historian Ninon Dolbin, née Ausländer.

In 1931, Hesse left the Casa Camuzzi and moved with Ninon to a larger house, also near Montagnola, which was built for him to use for the rest of his life, by his friend and patron Hans C.

[40] In the same year, Hesse formally married Ninon, and began planning what would become his last major work, The Glass Bead Game (a.k.a.

In the 1930s, Hesse made a quiet statement of resistance by reviewing and publicizing the work of banned Jewish authors, including Franz Kafka.

During the last twenty years of his life, Hesse wrote many short stories (chiefly recollections of his childhood) and poems (frequently with nature as their theme).

Hesse also wrote ironic essays about his alienation from writing (for instance, the mock autobiographies: Life Story Briefly Told and Aus den Briefwechseln eines Dichters) and spent much time pursuing his interest in watercolours.

Hesse also occupied himself with the steady stream of letters he received as a result of the Nobel Prize and as a new generation of German readers explored his work.

In one essay, Hesse reflected wryly on his lifelong failure to acquire a talent for idleness and speculated that his average daily correspondence exceeded 150 pages.

[46] Despite the influence he drew from Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, he stated about his parents that "their Christianity, one not preached but lived, was the strongest of the powers that shaped and moulded me".

However, after Hesse's death in 1962, posthumously published writings, including letters and previously unknown pieces of prose, contributed to a new level of understanding and appreciation of his works.

[54] In large part, the Hesse boom in the United States can be traced back to enthusiastic writings by two influential counter-culture figures: Colin Wilson and Timothy Leary.

Founded by John Lion, the Magic Theatre has fulfilled that mission for many years, including the world premieres of many plays by Sam Shepard.