Hermann Hesse was born in Calw, Germany in 1877. After a short period at a seminary he moved to Switzerland to work as a bookseller. From 1904 he devoted himself to writing, establishing his reputation with a series of romantic novels. During the First World War he worked for the Red Cross and afterwards, consolidated his position as a leading contemporary thinker. Hesse won many literary awards including the Nobel Prize in 1946. He died in 1962 at the age of eighty-five.