Herman Hesse was born on July 2, 1877 in Wurttemberg, Germany to missionary parents. In 1891, Hesse attended the Evangelical Theological Seminary. In 1892, he attempted suicide and spent time in a mental institution and at a boys home.  He graduated from the Gymnasium in Cannstatt in 1893. After a couple of false starts, Hesse began an apprenticeship with a bookseller. While working in a bookstore he cultivated a taste for reading theological works.  In 1904, Hesse married Maria Bernoulli; the couple separated and divorced in 1919. He volunteered for the Imperial army in 1914 but ended up being asked to leave and forced into therapy because he wrote an essay telling Germans not to fall for patriotism. In 1923, Hesse became a Swiss citizen and in 1924, he married Ruth Wenger.

Herman Hesse’s first poem, Madonna, was published in a Viennese journal in 1896. He published a volume of poetry called Romantic Songs in 1898. In 1903, he published his first novel, Peter Camenzind. The book he is most famous for, Siddhartha , was published in 1922. It became very popular with the counter-culture in the 1960s.  He wrote a total of 13 books; some of the better known are Steppenwolf (1927) and The Glass Bead Game (1943).  In 1946, Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In later life, Hesse concentrated mainly on writing poems and short stories.

Herman Hesse died on August 9, 1962.