|
For Hermann Hesse Calw has always remained a synonym for his yearnings
Uli Rothfuss
'In my thoughts, Calw has always remained my home, though I rarely went there again and I know very few people there any more. The boyhood afternoons in the woods and in the grass when we went swimming, the days spent fishing from the bridge, my time as a trainee in the blue locksmith’s dustcoat, all of these are sacred memories that are still fresh in my mind.'
Thus wrote Hermann Hesse in the year 1915. And in 1932: 'I have come to know no other town in the countries where I have since lived and travelled as well as I know Calw; my hometown is still an ideal for me, the archetypal town, and its lanes, houses, people and stories the embodiment of the homes and fates of all mankind'
As can be seen from these few statements, the terms 'Calw' and 'hometown' are without a doubt synonymous, when used in relation with Hermann Hesse and his work. Calw, the town where he was born, was home for him and remained so throughout his life. And for Hesse, as for so many other intellectuals in this ravaged century, the concept of 'home' was contradictory: Hesse was well aware of the two different aspects of the term 'home', which, after being misused during the era of Wilhelminian Germany and particularly during the time of national socialism, was tainted with the disastrous propaganda of blood and soil and seemed to be heading backwards.
The complexity of the concept 'home' coincided for Hermann Hesse with Calw, the place where he spent his childhood and youth. This is where he experienced what for many makes a place home and what must have helped mould Hesse too: early childhood experiences, the feeling of security in his parents’ and grandparents’ homes, his first friendships with children of the same age, first secret loves. And here his parents, who were extremely pietistic, set him an example day after day of the surely authentic yearning for the 'upper' or heavenly home.
There were also times when the 'official' Calw disassociated itself from Hermann Hesse, particularly during the era of national socialism. A critical writer, who lived and wrote about a timeless ideal of humanity in his poetry and his open letters, was not welcome here in a time when free thought was suppressed. Nevertheless, Hermann Hesse’s poetic work remained a constant searching for traces of home in himself, traces which need to be linked to specific places. And Calw is such a place, as particularly emphasised in Hermann Hesse’s work. In practically each of his works there are echoes of the hometown of his childhood and youth, sometimes named directly, sometimes alluded to and often encoded.
Hermann Hesse’s family was not originally from Wurttemberg, they were 'newcomers'. Hermann Hesse’s father, a German-Baltic missionary, came to Calw to work in the famous Calw publishing house of Dr. Hermann Gundert. In 1859, for reasons of ill-health, the founder of the publishing company, Barth, had to look for someone to work for him and had found Dr. Hermann Gundert, who was born in Stuttgart and had worked in India as a missionary and happened to be visiting home. Dr. Hermann Gundert is Hermann Hesse’s grandfather. When Barth died, Gundert was elected in 1862 to be chairman of the Calw publishing house; he was able to persuade the missionary, Johannes Hesse, who was born in Weißenstein/Estonia in 1873, and later to become Hermann Hesse’s father, to work with him. And in Calw Johannes Hesse met Hermann Gundert’s daughter, Marie Isenberg, nee Gundert, who after the death of her husband had returned, also from India, to her father in Calw.
On 20 July, 1877, Marie Hesse wrote in her diary: 'On Monday, 02 July 1877, after a hard day, God in his mercy presented us at half past six in the evening with this long-awaited child, our Hermann, a very big, heavy and beautiful child, who is immediately hungry, who moves his light blue eyes in the direction of the daylight and turns his head towards the light on his own. A magnificent specimen of a strong, healthy lad.'
Hermann Hesse was born into a family of theologians and missionaries and was likewise destined by his parents for the ministry. His protest against the totally pietistic environment in Calw came to a climax after his admission to the seminary in Maulbronn, where he was to qualify to study theology in Tubingen. He fled from Maulbronn, and thus began Hermann Hesse’s search for a way of life that could make life endurable for him at all. His earliest, youthful desire had been to become a poet or nothing. And he orientated his entire life planning toward this goal.
The years of Hermann Hesse’s childhood and youth were characterised by a feeling of belonging to a small, detached world in the little Swabian Black Forest town of Calw. Snug and homely memories in his works recall these times in his life, which contained moments which laid the foundations for his love of the hometown of his childhood and youth, which he was later to describe so many times: 'Calw, the little country town by the Nagold, which in those years was still used to transport rafts of Black Forest trees up to Holland and England, with the nearby woods, the mills, the reeded banks, the raftsmen, the down-and-outs and those who lived there, was a complete microcosm, just as Swabian as it was international, a little world in itself.'
Hermann Hesse’s writings, each and every one, must be regarded as a description of homes that have been lost - whether these be inner or outer homes - and a yearning for belonging and being home. Last but not least this explains the constantly growing readership of Hermann Hesse’s works in a world in which inner and outer homelessness is becoming more and more the rule. In his search for home, Hesse was to return again and again to Calw, and many of his works witness to this. And this Calw stands for millions of readers as a synonym for their own yearnings.
(Author: Uli Rothfuss M.Sc., Honorary professor for Literature at Eupen College of Education and Head of the Department for Culture in the Hermann Hesse town of Calw.) |
|
|
