Hugo Ball. Hermann Hesse

The last and the most successful book written by Hugo Ball was the monograph Hermann Hesse: His Life and Works, published by S. Fischer Verlag in 1927, four months before the author`s death. Samuel Fischer praised the book as the »best biographical work I have in my publishing house«, and the literary critics of that time all but unanimously shared his opinion. With this biography, Ball succeeded in creating a groundwork for the numerous biographical works on Hesse to come.

This biography captivates readers through Ball`s intuitive sensing of facts that he could not have been aware of and whose total complexity would become known only decades later. The influence of Hugo Ball`s perceptive biography on the image we still have of Hermann Hesse remains undiminished. Many of his characterizations have become prototypes made use of by later Hesse researchers, and thanks to their independent, illustrative qualities and Ball`s comparative scholarship will not likely be surpassed in the future.

The Editor
Volker Michels was born in 1943. Since 1970 he has been an editor of German literature and of numerous scholarly editions for Suhrkamp and Insel Verlag, including the 20-volume collected works of Hermann Hesse. He has also proposed and advised editions of works by authors such as Ernst Weiß, Robert Walser, and Stefan Zweig.

Already published
Hugo Ball: Briefe (Letters) 1904-1927 (2003)
Hugo Ball: The Consequences of the Reformation/Concerning the Critique of German Intelligence (2005)