The author constantly has psychological problems and turns his problems into a literary masterpiece: Who is Hermann Hesse?

The intellectual personality of Hermann Hesse, who is accepted as the greatest representative of New Romanticism in German Literature, is based on his medical doctor grandfather Carl Hermann Hesse. His father Johannes Hesse, who is of Russian origin, studied theology after studying at the knight school and also worked as a missionary in India between 1869-1873.

His mother is five years older than his father and he has two sons, Theodor and Karl, from his first marriage. Hermann finds his mother, Maria Gundert, closer to him than his father. “…however, I knew that my root was much deeper, in the motherland, in this land with black eyes, kneaded with secrets. My mother was a woman full of music…” The father, Johannes, who is not very involved in society and speaks the German language that will make his son admire him, cannot even sing, unlike his mother.

The second child of the family, Hermann Hesse, was born on July 2, 1877, while his father was working in Calw, and when he was four years old, they went to Basel, where they would stay for five years. In 1886 the family returns to Calw.

Hermann Karl Hesse (2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Hesse, whose school life is full of failures, prepares for the monastery school exams that he will study in Göppingen, the only school he loves and can prove himself between 1890-1891, and passes the exam successfully. He disappeared one afternoon during his education at the Maulbronn Monastery, where he was pleased with both his physical features and the spiritual atmosphere that was blowing in him, and which will inspire many of his novels. After being found, he receives an eight-hour prison sentence. Even though he wrote, “…I am currently serving a pure prison sentence, my condition is not bad, I am slowly recovering myself”, his mental distress slowly begins to show itself. As a matter of fact, after a while, he writes in his letters: “I feel so weak, so tired, and so incapable of willing that… a fire is burning inside my head in the abyss.”

Then, when he dropped out of school, Hesse experiences the first of the spiritual crises that will lead him to dead ends and form the basis for his great success. In 1895, he worked as an apprentice in a bookstore in Tübingen for four years. He soon becomes tired due to his intense work schedule and suffers from headaches. However, the Tübingen period will be a period in which Hesse undergoes rigorous training and stays on his own. As a matter of fact, despite coming home late at night, he starts to build his intellectual world here in these limited times. He reads Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, Virgil, Homer, and Novalis.

In 1899, he published both his poems and prose consisting of dreams, monologues, and sketches. He published his work of verse and prose in 1900, his second book of poetry in 1902, his first novel, Peter Camenzind, in 1904, and his second novel, Unterm Rad, in 1906. Hesse, who had a neo-romantic understanding of art in these years, uses mystical motifs in his poems. In his first novel, Peter Camenzind, which evokes the simplicity, sadness, and sincerity of folk songs and has an autobiographical feature, the feeling of the rebellion of children in conflict with their families, and the authoritarian school education in his second novel Unterm Rad, which has the feature of a psychological study.

In 1904, Hesse married Maria Bernoulli, who is nine years older than him and whom he feels close to due to his closeness to music and nature. The couple, whose three sons were born, lived for eight years in Gaienhofen, Germany, where they would be alone with nature and the recluse they longed for. After a while, his marriage and the nature he took refuge in became unbearable for Hesse. In 1907 he joined a vegetarian congregation. Hesse, who lives naked and alone in a makeshift hut, sleeps wrapped in a single blanket on the stone floor, fasts for a week and lies buried in the ground up to his armpits all day. However, this method, which he resorted to to relieve his mental problems, did not yield results either.

Realizing that he is not a marriageable character, Hesse travels constantly, both to be incompatible with his wife and to escape from the obligations of this life that he started. At no time in his life has he traveled as much as in these years.

Her novel Gertrud, which was published in 1910 and featured a portrait rather than a story, did not receive the expected attention. Hesse describes his novel as the balance that an artist in a dilemma tries to achieve within himself.

In 1911, he went on his first trip to India with his painter friend, which was very disappointing. On a trip to Asia, Hesse dreamed of finding the wise spirit of India, the unspoiled innocent society, and the solution to his personal problems. But along with the unhealthy climate, poverty, filth, and idolized and traded Buddhism terrifies him. In 1912, they moved to the house of painter Welti in Bern, which would later set the stage for the novel Rosshalde; They stay there until 1919 when their marriage will actually end. Rosshalde, similar to his novel Gertrud, was published in 1914; contains autobiographical elements that correspond exactly to the author's life.

“Sometimes it's good to spill what's inside. He must finally know, know what he has to endure. But we must avoid scratching the neck about things that will cause us pain and distress, my child.” (Rosshalde)

In 1916, he would take the first step in this period, which will be considered a milestone in his life, with psychoanalysis, which he went to for treatment. Hesse, who regained his mental health with the help of the famous psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung and the writings of Freud and with the help of Jung's student Dr. Josef Bernhard Lang, regained his mental health with the conversations about psychotherapy, rather than medical treatment in the clinic. will be able to find solutions to internal conflicts and will be able to cope with them.

Jungian psychology plays a major role in his novel Demian, which was written in October and November 1917, within a few weeks, before the intense effects of psychotherapy had passed. Hesse states that the task of this novel is to "remove the irregularities within itself and to establish an order". Written in the style of an educational novel, this work tells how a child writhing in neurotic fears finds himself by maturing in the problems of his age.

But Hesse does not dare to publish Demian under his own name; He published it as Emil Sinclair, inspired by the name of Isaac von Sinclair, a friend of the German poet Hölderlin. The novel, which would become the bible of the German youth in those years, gives people hope precisely because of its appeal to the needs of the youth of that period and the new lifestyle it proposes.

Demian, published in 1919, is a turning point for Hesse; The understanding of idealism, romanticism, spiritualism, and aestheticism reflected in his works began to change after this date. Besides, in April 1919, leaving behind three children and his wife in a mental hospital, he goes to Casa Camuzzi in Montagnola, in the south of Switzerland, to spend the rest of his life. Here he will live the most productive period of his life until 1931.

Hesse's close friendship with the Swiss family Wengers, who live in the neighboring village of Carona, soon leads to a love affair with their daughter Ruth Wenger. Ruth Wenger, who spent her summers in Carona with her family and was 20 years younger than her, entered her life in 1919. Their friendship, which lasted for four years, ended in a marriage, although neither side was very willing. They often meet either in Carona or in Basel, where Ruth studied singing. Ruth lives for her many pets, dogs, cats, and parrots, which gets on Hesse's nerves more and more. Their marriage, which started on January 11, 1924, got into a stalemate as Ruth's health problems deteriorated and ended in 1927 despite all Hesse's efforts to reconcile. However, their correspondence published in 2005 shows an intense love affair between them.

The lines in Hesse's poem Eine Mädchen, which he wrote during this marriage, are like a self-criticism: "I have known many women, I have loved many of them with pain, I have hurt many of them."

Claiming that society needs to change, Hesse strives to develop a personal sense of morality that separates from the traditional values of religion and morality. However, German society is not ready for these views of Hesse. For this reason, it is subject to harsh criticism from time to time. Hesse became a Swiss citizen in 1924, perhaps for this reason.

Hesse states that Christianity, which he will adhere to throughout his life, lacks the inner peace he seeks and that these deficiencies can only be completed in Eastern religions. “Christianity plays an important role in my religious life. This Christianity is a mystical Christianity rather than a Christianity in the church.”

Instead of relying on religion, Hesse wants to reach the person who has his own worldview and that worldview. Although it draws on the Bible and the Torah, this fact underlies its extension to Indian, Chinese, and Japanese teachings. Hesse captures the person who reflects the worldview he is looking for with Siddharta, which he completed in 1922. Siddharta is the proper name given to Gotama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, according to Buddha legend. Siddharta means "one who has achieved his goal" or "one who has achieved his goal".

In his 1925 letter, he wrote: “Siddharta is a European book, despite its exotic setting. Siddharta's teaching, which takes the individual as seriously as no other Asian teaching does, started from the individual. Siddharta is an expression of my liberation from Indian thought. I thought in Hindi for twenty years, even between the lines of my books. I became a Buddhist at the age of thirty, of course not in a religious sense. The way that freed me from all dogma, including Indian dogma, goes all the way back to Siddharta and continues as long as I'm alive.”

During this period when he regained his mental health, Hesse will come to a new turn in his life and meet Ninon Ausländer, who is 18 years younger than him, who will lead him to happiness. After the encounter, a strong emotional bond develops between them and Ninon moves in with Hesse in 1927. Hesse marries Ninon in 1931, which will lead him to happiness contrary to his previous experiences. The Ninon will help Hesse continue her work by reading, writing, and collecting and editing her writings later when his eyesight weakens.

Hermann Hesse's 1927 novel Steppenwolf, whose autobiographical features predominate, differs from his other works in terms of form. Unlike the format style, where we see that some divisions are made in the majority, here the author prefers to write the work as a whole.

Although the hero of the novel, Harry Haller, is presented as a person who seeks himself in his own world, as in his other works, criticisms of the era emerge as a leitmotif in the work. On the other hand, Hesse succeeds in integrating psychoanalysis, which he is not unfamiliar with, into the novel as a fictional element of the work with great mastery.

Hesse could complete his work Das Glasperlenspiel in 1942, which he started in 1930 and brought his art to its peak due to both his own poor health and the negative effects of the socio-political situation of German society at that time. The work aims to propose an alternative philosophical solution to the crime against humanity and barbarism committed by Nazi Germany.

The Bead Game, which won Hermann Hesse the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, is a masterpiece. In The Bead Game, which Hesse wrote in 1943 when the whole world was going through the hell of war, he presents the reader with a new and utopian world order consisting of a perfect combination of Eastern and Western philosophies.

In the last half of the 1960s, Hesse's popularity in Germany ended with the proliferation of Nazi Socialist-National and Communist youth in Germany. Hesse, who is accused of ignoring the time of absence after the Second World War, is excluded because of his works that do not address the problems of the age. However, after his 70s, he will meet with an excessive and insincere interest in Germany. So much so that conferences are held about him in many places, the press is closely interested in him, and even travel agencies organize trips to Montagnola, where Hesse lives, in order to attract tourists. In order to protect himself from the curious crowd that came to his house in Montagnola, Hesse had to hang a sign asking him not to be disturbed.

Hesse, who could not find the strength to leave Montagnola, died on August 8, 1962, succumbing to blood cancer, which he did not understand, on August 8, 1962. Hesse continued to paint watercolors, listen to music, tend his garden, and write poetry until the last moments of his life. As a matter of fact, hours before he died, Knarren eines geknickten wrote his last poem called Astes (The Squeak of a Twisting Branch), and died of a cerebral hemorrhage in the evening of the same day, after listening to Mozart's piano sonata, while falling asleep.