![]() ![]() During the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) Hesse stayed aloof from politics. These difficult years produced Der Steppenwolf(1927). Hesse's second marriage to Ruth Wenger (1924-27) was unhappy. Its English translation in the 1950s became a spiritual guide to the generation of American Beat poets. In 1922 appeared Siddhartha, a novel of asceticism set in the time of Buddha. Leaving his family in 1919, Hesse moved to Montagnola, in southern Switzerland. It was a Faustian tale of a man torn between his orderly bourgeois existence and a chaotic world of sensuality. Hesse's breakthrough novel was Demian (1919). Hesse spent the years of World War I in Switzerland, attacking the prevailing moods of militarism and nationalism. During these years his wife suffered from growing mental instability and his son was seriously ill. ![]() In the novel Rosshalde (1914) Hesse explored the question of whether the artist should marry. In 1912 Hesse and his family took a permanent residence in Switzerland. ![]()
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