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“Hermann Hesse and Swabian Pietism.” The phrase has provoked more than a few blanks looks from those who have ventured to ask what I am so busily working on, head buried in a book, or hunched over my laptop. “Hesse and Buddhism,” “Hesse and Jung,” “Hesse and the Sixties,” “Hesse and National Socialism,” maybe even “Hesse and the Fairy Tale”—these titles make a good deal of sense. But, “Hesse and Swabian Pietism”? “Yes,” I would frequently plead. “Hesse’s novels owe a great deal to his Pietist heritage, but no one has really looked into it.” “No way,” a critic informed me one day in the coffee house I frequented during research and writing. “‘Hesse and lsd’ would be a good topic.” “lsd?” “Yeah, he wrote his stuff—like Siddhartha and Steppenwolf—under the influence of lsd.” “No,” I calmly replied, having heard this one several times already— the product of Timothy Leary’s altered but unhistorical state of consciousness . “lsd was discovered in 1938, Siddhartha was written in 1922, and Steppenwolf in 1927. Not lsd—Pietism, that’s the key.” My critic remained unconvinced. This study is the result of my attempt to put some flesh on an apparently bold claim.  Hermann Hesse is one of the most widely read German authors in the world, and for two generations several of his works have been a staple of popular religion and spirituality in Europe and North America. Hesse’s works have received a great deal of critical and scholarly study, but little research has been done to better understand the influence of Pietism (the religion of Hesse’s family and native Swabia) on Hesse’s thought and literature . Hesse’s Pietist upbringing and heritage contributed to his moral vii Preface and political views, his pacifism and internationalism, the confessional and autobiographical style of his literature, his romantic mysticism, his suspicion of bourgeois culture, his ecumenical outlook, and, in an era scarred by two world wars, his hopes for the future. To be sure, Hesse was no Pietist. In adolescence he rejected both the tradition and his family ’s expectation that he become a theologian, cleric, and missionary. But Hesse’s literature bears witness to the fact that he continued a conversation with his religious heritage throughout his life. This study retrieves the details of that conversation. viii Preface ...

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