![[Book covers of Demian 1919 and 1921. Hesse Editionsarchiv Offenbach, 1999]](demian-erstausgabe.jpg)
| In 1920, after a literary critic of the Neue Zürcher
Zeitung had revealed that Hermann Hesse was the real author of Demian
instead of the unknown, fictitious young author Emil Sinclair.
Hesse's name of necessity appeared on the cover of the book beginning with
the 4th Edition, (17,000th - 26,000th printing) . Hesse had acknowledged
the lifting of his pseudonym in a statement printed in Vivos voco,
a German monthly published in Leipzig, in July 1920. He claimed
in that statement that questions of authorship were a personal matter and
beyond the realm of literary analysis. The change of name of
the author on the book cover necessitated a change in the subtitle: instead
of Demian: The Story of a Youth it now read: Demian: The Story
of Emil Sinclair's Youth.
(Materialien zu Hermann Hesse Demian, Suhrkamp, 1993; background (c) Fleckhaus and Staudt.) |