Hermann Hesse was born in Calw in the Black Forest in the German state of Wüttenberg on July 2, 1877. His father, Johannes Hesse, was born in Weissenstein, Estonia, and retained Russian citizenship. His mother, Marie Gundert, was born to Pietist missionaries in Talatscheri, India. In 1880, Hesse's family moved to Basle, a city located on the border of Germany, France, and Switzerland. They resided there until 1886, during which time Hesse's father taught at the Basler Mission.
Understanding Pietism, the religion of Hesse's family, is important in order to understand Hesse himself. Both his upbringing and his religious foundation had an impact on his writing later on. Pietism began as a German Lutheran religious movement. Pietists emphasize Christian living. In other words, Pietists are not satisfied simply reading the Bible; instead, they believe the Bible should be experienced. All the Pietist morals, goals, and values are taken directly from biblical scripture, and Pietists must incorporate the biblical principles into their lives. In addition, Pietists resist church practices that emphasize tradition and repetition, rather than spontaneous experience.
Hesse's family expected him to become a Pietist minister, so the Hesse family returned to Calw in 1886. Hesse attended boarding school in Wüttenberg and a grammar school in Göppingen to study and prepare for the Wüttenberg State Examination. Hesse passed the exam and entered the seminary at the Protestant Monastery at Maulbronn. According to Hesse in his 1946 presentation speech for the Nobel Prize, he was a "good learner," but not a "very manageable boy." He went on to say, "[I]t was only with difficulty that I [fit] into the framework of a Pietist education that aimed at subduing and breaking the individual personality."
