Chapter 1, pgs. 15-36 Summary and Analysis

Hesse was born in Swabia on July 2, 1877. He was part of a large family whose parents belonged to the Piet mission in Basel. Pietism was a form of evangelical Lutheranism. His maternal grandfather had been a missionary in India in the 1830s where he married Julie Dubois. When Dr. Gundert was made head of the publishing division of the Basel Institute, and Johannes Hesse eventually became his assistant, where he met Gundert's daughter Julie. They married on November 22,1874 and had six children, four of whom survived.

Hermann's earliest childhood memory is of being lifted by his uncle at a mountain lookout to see the tiny village down below. The terrified three year old began screaming and was taken home. This was a part of his contradictory life. His parents viewed him as an unmanageable child due to...