Hermann Hesse was born in Calw, a town in Württemberg not far from Stuttgart, on 2 July 1877, the second son of Johannes and Marie Gundert. The father, a Russian citizen of Baltic origin, already active at a Pietist mission, works for a publishing house of religious texts; his maternal grandfather, a long-time missionary in India, boasts a profound and vast knowledge of the Eastern world.

From 1881 to 1886 Hesse resides in Basel, where his father is called as editor of the mission magazine. Back in Calw with his family, from 1888 he attended the Lateinschule in Göppingen and passed, in 1891, the difficult State examination (Landexamen). In the autumn it can thus enter the prestigious Maulbronn evangelical seminary.