Auf Hermann Hesses Spuren rund um Calw

"Oh, you wanderers, you merry light-footed men, I look after each of you like a king, with respect, admiration and envy. Each of you wears an invisible crown, each of you is a happy and conqueror. I too have been your equal and know what wandering and foreignness taste like. It tastes sweet, despite homesickness. ( ... ) To run into the world once again, young, ignorant, unbound, cheeky and curious, to eat hungry cherries by the roadside and to count the 'right or left' on the buttons of my skirt at the crossroads! One more short, balmy, fragrant summer night spent sleeping in the hay, one more time spent walking in harmless harmony with the birds of the forest, lizards and beetles. That would probably be worth a summer and a pair of new boot soles".

( From: Hermann Hesse: Lindenblüte (1906), in: Sämtliche Werke, Volume 13: Betrachtungen und Berichte 1899-1926, Suhrkamp Verlag 2003, p. 149 f. )

Hermann Hesse himself was an enthusiastic hiker, as the quote at the beginning shows. Even in his youth, Hesse undertook "foot journeys" in his Swabian homeland, in the northern Black Forest, in the Gäu and on the Swabian Alb. Later, the radius he explored on foot expanded to include the Lake Constance region, the Swiss Jura, the Bernese Oberland, Ticino, the Upper Engadine and northern Italy. Many travel and hiking sketches in his work, for example in the volume "Wanderung", bear witness to this. Several of his novel characters are also wanderers: Peter Camenzind, Knulp, Goldmund and Klingsor, for example. It therefore makes sense to follow in Hermann Hesse's footsteps as a hiker.

The trail has everything you could want from a hike. There are beautiful forests along the way, the interesting mountain town of Zavelstein with its romantic castle ruins and the spa town of Teinach with its comfortable thermal baths, where tired hikers can regenerate. From Bad Teinach, the route then leads through the Teinach valley into the Nagold valley. And from there back to the Hermann Hesse town of Calw.
There is plenty of history to discover along the way, and legends and myths accompany us at every turn.
Hermann Hesse liked to travel here a lot and can tell us a lot about it.

Hermann Hesse
Black Forest

Strangely beautiful hilltops,
dark mountains, bright meadows,
red rocks, brown ravines,
overflowing with fir shadows!

When a tower's
pious ringing mingles with the roar
of the fir storm,
I can listen for long hours.

Then, like a legend,
read by the fireside at night,
my memory of the days
when I was at home here,

that the distances were nobler, softer,
that the fir-covered
mountains shone more blissfully and richly
in my boy's eye.

( From: Hermann Hesse: Complete Works, Volume 10: The Poems, Suhrkamp Verlag 2002, p. 75 )