Unterm Rad
1906
The first novel Hesse wrote in fury. Based on the real suicide of a seminary student, Under the Wheel is a scorching portrait of a sensitive boy destroyed by the very forces meant to nurture him. Hans Giebenrath is fourteen, painfully shy, gifted with a mind that sees beauty where others see nothing. In his small Black Forest village, his teachers recognize something extraordinary and begin grooming him for the brutal entrance exam to a prestigious seminary. What follows is a harrowing depiction of an education system that treats children as raw material for producing brilliant results. The pressure mounts. The joy drains from learning. And Hans, caught between his own fragile nature and the grinding machinery of academic ambition, begins to crack. This is Hesse at his most personal and angry, a man who knew this world from the inside, writing with the desperate clarity of someone trying to save others from a fate he could not save himself from.
Editions
X-Ray
“A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginning and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.””
— Hermann Hesse
“When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.””
— Hermann Hesse
“Like a wallflower he stayed in the background waiting for someone to fetch him, someone more courageous and stronger than himself to tear him away and force him into happiness.””
— Hermann Hesse
“It is wrong to say that schoolmasters lack heart and are dried-up, soulless pedants! No, by no means. When a child's talent which he has sought to kindle suddenly bursts forth, when the boy puts aside his wooden sword, slingshot, bow-and-arrow and other childish games, when he begins to forge ahead, when the seriousness of the work begins to transform the rough-neck into a delicate, serious and an almost ascetic creature, when his face takes on an intelligent, deeper and more purposeful expression - then a teacher's heart laughs with happiness and pride. It is his duty and responsibility to control the raw energies and desires of his charges and replace them with calmer, more moderate ideals. What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the effort of their schools? In young beings there is something wild, ungovernable, uncultured which first has to be tamed. It is like a dangerous flame that has to be controlled or it will destroy. Natural man is unpredictable, opaque, dangerous, like a torrent cascading out of uncharted mountains. At the start, his soul is a jungle without paths or order. And, like a jungle, it must first be cleared and its growth thwarted. Thus it is the school's task to subdue and control man with force and make him a useful member of society, to kindle those qualities in him whose development will bring him to triumphant completion.””
— Hermann Hesse
“Every healthy person must have a goal in life and that life must have content.””
— Hermann Hesse
“It was all the same to him where he would end up; what mattered most was the fact he had finally escaped … and shown … that his will was stronger than mere commands and edicts.””
— Hermann Hesse
“everything I had so far experienced was mere chance … my life still lacked a deep individual meaning of its own””
— Hermann Hesse
“I had made my mind up to stay at the top of the class and [...] graduate at the head of it. […] that was my kind of ideal. I just didn't know any better.””
— Hermann Hesse
“Wie ein schüchternes Mädchen blieb er sitzen und wartet, ob einer käme ihn zu holen, ein Stärkerer und Mutigerer als er, der ihn mitrisse und zum Glücklichsein zwänge.””
— Hermann Hesse
