Soul of the Age

by Hermann Hesse

  Each one gave me a present and recited a verse composed by Frau Doktor. The smallest one brought a small basket of fir cones for my oven, the next, the chef’s child, a plate with baked goods, which her father had baked, then a little jar of jam, made from the oranges from the little orange trees in front of the director’s apartment. Finally, Christoph presented a huge sheet of beautiful drawing paper, and in a little verse he apologized because the sheet was not quite as big as the Spalen-Tor in Basel.370 I praised the children and thanked them and they got some of the cookies; then Dr. Riggenbach came with Christoph and played in two parts (two violins) “How beautiful shines the morning star” and something from Figaro.

  Whereupon we all sat down to eat, and the singers and children, except for the doctor’s, took their leave. We had a lavish meal in the beautiful dining room on beautiful old porcelain. The table was covered with flowers, red primroses, trout, chicken, beautiful wine, etc. During the second course the old servant Léon came with a tray and said that some more telegrams had arrived for me. The doctor opened and read them—he and his wife had devised every one—some were funny, some serious, some very beautiful. One, with pictures, was supposed to have come from King Gustav of Sweden. One came from heaven and was signed by Knulp, another arrived from the arch at Mount Sinai and was penned by the last European,371 one came from Baden and brought tidings and greetings from the Dutchman,372 etc., and there was a beautiful one from Turu, the rainmaker’s son.373

  These wonderful people showered us with gifts and feted us, and I was more moved than I could ever have been by the Stockholm ceremony.

  RESPONSE TO LETTERS REQUESTING HELP374

  [1947]

  I am receiving so many hundreds of letters asking for help that I shall have to use these printed lines to reply, especially since I am no longer capable of doing much work and am also continually overburdened.

  There is no way I can consider the countless pleas for foodstuffs and other gifts of that nature from people whom I don’t know. I have great difficulty meeting the obligations that I have already undertaken in this regard—for the past two years I have been supporting a number of people in Germany whom I cherish, by sending them packages regularly. It costs several hundred francs a month to support these people, and I cannot expand that circle.

  None of these supplicants realizes that, as the author of books in the German language, I am also very much affected by the massive German bankruptcy. I entrusted my entire life’s work to Germany and was cheated out of it. I have not received a penny from my German publishers for many years, and have little hope that the situation will change during my lifetime.

  During the period of German megalomania, my books were partly banned, partly suppressed in other ways. And the remainder—all the inventory and composed type, etc.—has been completely destroyed by bombs together with the publishers, Fischer-Suhrkamp.

  It’s true that I have brought out a series of my books in new Swiss editions over the last few years. But Switzerland is small, an absolutely tiny market; it is only possible to do small printings here, and the books cannot be exported either to Germany or to Austria.

  In Berlin my devoted publisher Peter Suhrkamp is doing everything he can to republish some of my books. I am doing what I can to help him direct these books to really serious readers; otherwise people would just buy them as a speculative investment.

  Many of the requests, quite apart from those for food and books, show a complete lack of understanding of my real situation: requests for entry visas to Switzerland and work permits, even for immediate citizenship, for jobs and positions. It is painful to have to read all of these often very fanciful requests, none of which can be met.

  My friends know that I’m doing whatever I can and have been devoting most of my work and resources to the situation in Germany since war’s end. They also realize what an astonishing amount of assistance tiny Switzerland is constantly giving large, starving Germany, even though other countries with whom we are on friendly terms are no better off, and even though there are still very many Swiss who for understandable reasons are not particularly fond of Germany. It is sad that for every case in which we can be of some help, there are hundreds of requests that just cannot be met. We cannot help that.

  TO GERHARD (?) BAUER

  Marin près Neuchâtel, February 1, 1947

  In the last few months I have hardly been able to write a single real letter, and I fear the situation is not going to improve as long as I am here. To get through the correspondence, I would have to have one, or rather two secretaries, and my life isn’t set up that way: I have always done everything myself, except for proofreading, which my wife has frequently taken over, and at present she is swamped with business letters (translations, etc.) [ … ]

  You need not bother letting me know what your newspapers say about me and my book. That just doesn’t interest me. As far as I can see, the press hasn’t improved. The tone is democratic now, and rather servile vis-à-vis the victors; the contents are as devoid of substance as ever. But I follow your own thoughts with great interest and sympathy, and am usually delighted with them. And I regard your descriptions, for instance in the passage about your mother, as a true gift.

  As regards the attitude people have toward politics, in my opinion the state official who “doesn’t want to have anything to do with politics” is merely a parasite, and the soldier who lays waste an entire country and shoots at people every day, always thinking about heroism and a soldier’s honor and never about the spilled blood and the destroyed cities, is dangerously simpleminded. The mentality of the officials and soldiers in most nations is similar, and so they cannot point a finger at one another unless the coarse behavior and brutal slaughter so oversteps all customary boundaries that the entire world is aghast. The fact that this has happened in Germany is the fate or “guilt” that has to be assumed and reconciled with life.

  Enough. I have often expressed my insignificant ideas on this issue better than I can manage in such a hasty letter.

  TO MARGARETE KREBS375

  [February 1947]

  I can only answer your letter briefly since I have been months in the sanatorium, suffering from great exhaustion. I see from your letter that you became acquainted with somebody who was pretending to be me. I myself have never lived in Berlin, was there only once for a few days, and am now sixty-nine years old. But, unfortunately, I have come across that man who pretended to be me and to have written my books, even though I have never seen him in person. He incurred debts in my name and got up to other mischief of that kind. For instance, in the period you mention in your letter, I asked several Berlin newspapers and also my Berlin publisher to issue warnings about him. By the way, he also turned up in Munich, where he made friends with women, introduced himself as a well-known writer to certain families, and carried out all sorts of mischief. I am sorry that a man with my name, or who had at least assumed my name, has apparently harmed you as well. May you never meet him again!

  TO LUDWIG FINCKH

  Baden, March 6, 1947

  I am writing this letter because I think you might be able to use it in court. It is not possible for me to appeal directly to the court or to any other German or Allied authority.

  You know my attitude toward your political convictions and passions since about 1915. I have always found your form of patriotism repellent, and you have always stood on the opposite side from me, with your name, talent, and authority as an author. You were and remain a typical German nationalist; they are the ones who brought us Hitler and his diabolic antics. It is sad and unforgivable that you should have regarded Hitler and his party as a purely patriotic and idealistic movement; ninety percent of German intellectuals committed the same sin, and the ordinary people and the whole world have had to pay dearly for this biggest German sin.

  But this guilt or sin or idiocy, whatever one wants to call it, is shared by thousands of colleagues on whom nobody has laid a finger. People like Gerhart Hauptmann als
o committed this sin, yet his work and memory are still being commemorated today.

  Morally and in human terms, the most decisive factor in your case is the following: You were silly and inflicted real harm, but you were pure at heart, acted in good faith, and had no ulterior motives. You are as guilty as all those other Germans who tried to sabotage the young German Republic from 1919 onward and thus helped Hitlerism come into being; that behavior had already begun with the election of Hindenburg, even much earlier, and it would be totally perverse to exact punishment for it now. The important thing now is not that you believed in Hitler and the entire swindle, but that your motives were utterly sincere and not just egoistical. Again, the important thing is not that you may, say, have once intervened on behalf of a Jew, contrary to party doctrine, or tried to do so for me (something I would certainly never have asked of you), but that you never avoided conflicts with the representatives and power brokers of the Hitler regime and risked unpopularity whenever your conscience prompted you to take a stand. Morally, that is what is crucial. You were blinded, but you weren’t a coward or just out for your own good. You wanted to serve your people and safeguard your ideals, even when this put you in danger and did you some harm. You are thus less guilty than tens of thousands of people who are running around with impunity.

  By the way, my books have suffered the same fate as yours. They were destroyed along with my publishers, and for several years the only benefit I have been receiving from all my work has come from tiny Switzerland. That will remain the case, since I have never felt that I would ever get anything more than worthless bulk goods from Germany in exchange for the pieces of mine it is republishing. The Nobel Prize was welcome for that reason, also because I have a few dozen people to feed in your part of the world, but I’m quite indifferent to it otherwise. I gave away the Goethe Prize immediately to people inside Germany.

  TO FANNY SCHILER

  April 26, 1947

  Many thanks for your kind letter and the gift of that etching of the chapel on the bridge;376 I was very pleased with both of them. Standing there on that bridge for hours, rod in hand, watching the river, fish, neighborhood, and traffic on the bridge, etc., was one of the best preparations for my career; God knows what gave me the idea.

  Toward the middle of May, Ninon wants to bring me to Lausanne for a few days; they are supposed to do some tests, which may suggest a new form of treatment. I am no longer all that interested in this sort of thing, but since they tell me that the professor there is a decent, fine person who is particularly interested in me, I shall risk it, although I am a little afraid of the arduous journey.

  A famous and honored guest appeared unexpectedly at our door recently: André Gide. He is my favorite among my generation in France. The seventy-seven-year-old was very alert and lively, he brought along his beautiful daughter377 and her husband,378 and this young man is thinking of translating The Journey to the East.

  I am glad that you received War and Peace; I only rarely get an opportunity to send people books, yours had been on order for months.[ … ]

  TO OSKAR BLESSING, MAYOR OF CALW

  Montagnola, July 6, 1947

  Although my condition makes correspondence virtually impossible, I wish to convey my thanks right away. Your beautiful package379 arrived in good condition, and when we came back from the Bern area, it was ceremoniously opened and admired by everyone, including my sister Adele, who was also present.

  I was deeply pleased and touched by the honor that my hometown has thus bestowed on me, even to the extent of making me an honorary citizen. I would like to express my deeply felt gratitude to the town, to the council, and to you, esteemed Herr Bürgermeister, for that and also for not forgetting my sister Marulla at the ceremony.

  Beautiful old Calw is still my home, even though I may seem to have moved far afield through my kind of world citizenship and by having become a Swiss citizen. I never regarded home as a political concept and have always seen it in purely human terms. Home is the place where we were children and received our first impressions of the world and of life itself, and learned to see, speak, and think, and I have always gratefully cherished mine.

  TO H. C. BODMER

  Montagnola, July 8, 1947

  Thanks for your kind, beautiful present;380 we shall both have great fun with it. It’s a bit late, since we have had to postpone the birthday celebration in Montagnola. We celebrated July 2 in Bremgarten Castle, and sorely missed you and Frau Elsy. Present, aside from my sons and their wives, were Morgenthaler and Louis the Cruel, my eldest granddaughter, and Herr and Frau Leuthold, and so together with our friend Wassmer, the circle was almost the same as ten years ago on the Brestenberg. We dined in the splendid rococo salon, and in the afternoon there was a large celebration, which was very strenuous, yet also pretty and dignified. A few musicians appeared, a pianist and five woodwinds, and played some Danzi and Mozart. After that came two delegations, one consisting of three professors, the other of three students. They handed me the honorary doctorate, and the students brought a ceremonial scroll.

  We returned home on the 3rd, opened gifts, and invited a few friends: Böhmer and his wife, the painter Purrmann,381 and Frau Emmy Ball. My sister Adele was present; she was in Bremgarten as well. In the morning Ninon showed me the table with the presents. Then she led me up to her studio, where the radio set is, and there was your splendid present. It was inaugurated, dear friends, with a Handel concerto in your honor.

  Then we heard accounts of several festivals and lectures in Germany. Hesse has suddenly become fashionable, and I very much hope that I shall never again have to encounter this kind of thing; I have had more than enough of it. I sometimes felt like an ape decked out as a general. There was a special ceremony in Calw, where they made me an honorary citizen and named a square after me.

  Now we are sitting around and have to open, read, and answer a massive quantity of mail.382

  I wish you more beautiful days over there and a safe journey home. We are looking forward to seeing you again.

  TO HANS FRETZ

  Montagnola, August 27, 1947

  Thanks for your kind letter of August 25. I have no wish to disregard your sensibility as a publisher or insult you in any way. If you look at my earlier letters to you, you will find that I have often expressed sincere appreciation for your work, especially as regards actual book production. But I must nevertheless turn to you if the contact between publisher and author seems deficient, and the indignant tone which I may perhaps adopt on such occasions reflects the general condition of an ill man who has been overburdened for years with work and worries and has absolutely no secretarial support for his work, which includes a massive amount of correspondence.

  One of the issues I became sensitive about was the long delay in reissuing The Glass Bead Game. It was almost two years out of print, we made insistent inquiries about it, and I constantly had to put up with letters from readers and booksellers who accused me of neglecting my work and found it scandalous that this book in particular should be out of print for so long and wouldn’t even appear now in time for my seventieth birthday. I feel everything would have been fine and good again if, after the interminable wait for The Glass Bead Game, my publisher had sent me two lines informing me of its appearance. But I have only just found out about that, accidentally, by means of the letter that my recent demand has enticed from you. And here I am touching on the crux of our relationship: There is nobody in your publishing house who keeps in touch with me on a regular basis. So I often get postcards or letters from your office simply acknowledging the receipt of addresses for complimentary copies, etc.; that sort of thing is quite superfluous, as far as I’m concerned. But if I had never inquired myself, I would, for instance, have only heard later on or never at all that a new edition of The Blossom Branch383 appeared months ago or that the long-awaited Glass Bead Game is finally available. And that is just not right. This has nothing at all to do with your accomplishments as a publisher, for which I have n
ever withheld my grateful acknowledgment, but is connected with the deficiency mentioned above, the lack of a literary director or adviser who would maintain contact with the author. You yourself, dear Herr Fretz, are extremely overworked; Herr Köpfli384 is doing a great job as publisher and businessman, but is not really a colleague of mine when there are literary issues at stake, and your literary adviser, Herr Doktor Korrodi, has never written to me on any matter related to publishing.

  A word or two about Herr Basler. He wrote a piece commissioned by you,385 and I feel I should start worrying about his honorarium, since he himself would never dream of making any demands, even if ten years from now he still hadn’t received anything. So I felt I had to intervene on his behalf. He told me that he hadn’t heard anything from you since sending you his piece. If that is not so, as you seem to suggest, then I’m very sorry. I had to take him at his word.

  I hope that I have managed to suggest the way I see our relationship. There are great benefits in it for me, but also some disadvantages—especially the fact that, as I mentioned above, there is nobody at the publishers with whom I can keep in touch in both literary and human terms. So as to avoid my having to wait around nervously for months in vain, a person like that could, for instance, have let me know right away that for such and such a reason the publisher would have to delay publication of the Ball book, for which we have been waiting since May. And if I had come knocking on the door because there was no reply or a postcard hadn’t been sent, he wouldn’t have taken it as a criticism of the publishing enterprise.