Following his studies at the Basler Missionsanstalt (Mission Society of Basel), Johannes, like Hermann Gundert before him, served as a missionary in India. Brought back to Europe by ill health, he settled in Calw, a little town at the edge of the Black Forest, to assist Gundert, then director of the Calwer Verlagsverein, a Pietist publishing house. There Johannes met and married Marie, and there Hermann Hesse was born on 2 July 1877, the second of six children.
A hypersensitive, imaginative, lively, and extremely headstrong child, Hesse was long a source of annoyance and anxiety. He tyrannized his parents; school held little attraction for him, and his teachers even less. In January 1890 Hesse was sent off to the Latin School in nearby Goppingen; in September 1891 he began his studies at the exclusive Protestant church school in Maulbronn, ostensibly in preparation for the pulpit. His stay was unexpectedly brief: the deeply disturbed youngster took French leave in March 1892 and was withdrawn in May, much to the relief of the school authorities, who had begun to doubt his sanity. He fared no better at schools for retarded and emotionally disturbed children in Bad Boll and Stetten or at a secondary school in Bad Cannstatt.
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