In the organizer's words:

"Strange to wander in the fog!"

Hermann Hesse, a life's journey in texts and pictures

From my thirteenth year on, one thing was clear to me: I either wanted to become a poet or nothing at all, writes Hermann Hesse in 1925 at the beginning of his "Kurzgefassten Lebenslaufes" After various attempts to gain a foothold in other professions - for example, he completed a three-year apprenticeship as a bookseller in Tübingen - Hesse can boast his first major literary success: "Peter Camenzind" makes the previously unknown young author famous in an instant.
With this novel, the future Nobel Prize winner (1946) Hermann Hesse proclaims his credo, which - according to his own statement - runs through his entire literary work: ...the first and most burning of my problems was never the state, society or the church, but the individual human being, the personality, the unique, non-standardized individual.

Born in Calw, Württemberg, in 1877, Hermann Hesse was brought up in a strict pietistic way and was repeatedly plagued by self-doubt throughout his life. He learned from the very beginning what it meant, what inner strength it takes to resist and remain true to one's own being. "What emanates from man, from the mouth and even more from the pen, contaminates him," his mother had warned.

Hermann Hesse, whose entire literary oeuvre is regarded as his only autobiography, did not - despite all the accusations made - see himself as unworldly and sitting in an ivory tower, but also as a critical observer and rousing warner in his time. Like many of his fellow writers, he was initially convinced of the necessity of the First World War. However, he soon made a public appeal to humanity and reason: overcoming the war was considered the noblest goal. In 1922, he also publicly spoke out against the Jew-baiting of the emerging National Socialism.

Hermann Hesse, whose works were already translated into more than thirty-five languages during his lifetime, is considered the most widely read European writer in the USA and Japan. The author of "Steppenwolf" always found his strongest echo in times of crisis, such as in post-war Germany during the First and Second World Wars and in the USA during the Vietnam War.
In 1962, Hermann Hesse, described by Emmy Ball-Hennings (actress and writer) as the "Mozart of literature", died in Montagnola, his last place of residence in Switzerland, where he had lived for many years. He not only made a name for himself as a poet, but also as a painter, editor and reviewer.

In her new program under the motto "Strange to wander in the fog!", Anna Haentjens provides insights into the poet's various creative periods with her selection of texts by Hermann Hesse. Anna Haentjens and Sven Selle also present settings of Hesse texts by Tilo Medek, Edmund Nick and Othmar Schoeck, who was a friend of Hermann Hesse and whom he considered to be one of the most important song composers since Hugo Wolf. However, most of the settings are by the Aachen composer Christian Ernst, born in 1967. Biographical notes by Anna Haentjens round off the portrait of the poet.

With Anna Hentjens (voice) and Sven Selle (piano)

Price information:

normal: 20€ reduced: 12€