"Hermann Hesse and the world religions" - a reading by Volker Michels

Hermann Hesse's grandparents and parents were missionaries who drove her pietistic colored Christianity up to the western coast of India, where the mother of the poet was born. How he made his way out from sectarian bondage to a completely independent the exclusive validity delusion of denominations and dogmatism of churches overcoming insights creating an awareness of the similarities of the world's religions, is an exciting and future-oriented development, which led him to insights like this: "The Indian calls it „atman“, the Chinese calls it „Tao“, the Christians call it „grace“. "

Volker Michels is the most important Hesse specialist in Germany. As editor Michels supervised editions by Ernst Weiss, Michael Friedrich, Martin Beheim-Schwarzenbach and Ernst Penzoldt. He initiated the Collected Works of Stefan Zweig and Manfred Haussmann published at S. Fischer Verlag. Since 2008, Michels is working on a ten-volume edition of Hesse's letters, which should appear as a supplement to the "Complete Works".

He has written numerous essays on literary and art historical themes, which led to invitations to lecture tours through Europe, the USA, South America and Asia. Michels lives in Offenbach. There he built over the years on a Hermann Hesse Edition Archive used by researchers from around the world. In 1990 he set up the local Hesse Museum on behalf of the town of Calw and the German Literature Archive in Marbach, Hesse's birthplace.