Composed in May and July 1919, the middle text of Hesse’s Klingsor volume has received little critical attention to date. This is all the more surprising since Klein und Wagner is not only the first major text the author composed in Montagnola, and is also proof that Hesse had begun to adapt psychoanalysis to his own needs, adding his own twist to the more orthodox understanding of C. G. Jung’s theories that had dominated Demian. Moreover, the novella introduces key themes and motifs that dominate Hesse’s writing during the following decade or so, including, in particular, some striking connections to Steppenwolf. Finally, the extreme concentration of this piece is particularly notable: among Hesse’s major tales, this text has the smallest number of characters, the shortest time span, and arguably the most concentrated treatment of theme. According to Hesse’s biographer Joseph Mileck, the five chapters of the text can be interpreted as equivalent to the five acts of a drama. The combination of these elements makes Klein und Wagner one of the most fascinating texts of the author’s middle years.

Klein und Wagner tells the story of Friedrich Klein, a middle-aged minor clerk who has embezzled from his employer and absconded to Northern Italy or Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland — the text remains deliberately vague about this — with forged documents. However, Klein is not a common criminal, but rather a self-alienated, tormented bourgeois in search of peace and self-fulfillment. While pondering his fate, he recognizes that his primary motivation was a “Zwang und Drang,” a compulsion and urge, to murder his wife and children, which he could only avoid by entirely abandoning his old life. This dark drive is associated with the name Wagner, which alludes to the famous composer and also an actual German schoolteacher who in September 1913 had killed his wife and children. In spite of his flight, Klein fails to transcend his pain: instead of feeling liberated, he regards himself as a victim of his own thoughts, his brain “ein Kaleidoskop, in dem der Wechsel der Bilder von einer fremden Hand geleitet wurde” (210; “a kaleidoscope in which the shifting images were directed by another’s hand,” Klein 46). Throughout the novella, Klein repeatedly ponders suicide — that he is serious about this is indicated by the fact that he carries a gun.