Hermann Hesse

Hermann Karl Hesse (1877–1962) was a German-born Swiss writer whose strict missionary upbringing sparked a rebellious youth and a lifelong fascination with Eastern philosophy. After working as a bookseller, he achieved financial independence through early literary successes like Romantic Songs (1899). An outspoken pacifist during World War I, personal tragedies led him to Jungian psychotherapy, deeply informing major works such as Demian (1919) and Steppenwolf (1927). Hesse relocated to Switzerland, gaining citizenship in 1923. Opposed to the Nazi regime, he published The Glass Bead Game in 1943, earning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.