Dear Schoeck - dear Hesse
The correspondence from the years 1911 to 1956 has been edited in full for the first time.
"(...) and so I do what is so bad for me, I 'take up the pen' to finally, finally thank you for everything that came to my house and heart from you on September 1st!" (Schoeck to Hesse, September 27, 1936) The composer liked to cultivate direct personal contacts extensively, but he did not like writing letters. Like many other passages from the correspondence between Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957) and Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), this quote is also known from Schoeck literature, but this is the first time it has been published in its entirety.
Chris Walton and Martin Germann have edited the letters in full and linked them biographically because, as they write in the introduction, Schoeck's correspondence with Hesse is by far the most interesting in terms of content (p. 9). It now forms the 105th volume in the Schwyzer Hefte series. In chronological order, the letters primarily report on everyday artistic life; contemporary political events are barely touched upon. They are clearly arranged, annotated with footnotes and explanatory texts, and in some cases supplemented by relevant recollections of people from his circle of friends.
Together with the 34 carefully reproduced images (photos, illustrations and facsimiles), they trace this artistic friendship in many details. The volume is rounded off with several texts by Hesse about Schoeck, Schoeck's publicly published greeting on Hesse's 75th birthday and Fritz Brun's memories of the 1911 trip to Umbria. The volume is a kind of easy-to-read, informative history of Schoeck and Hesse. The bibliography, documentation and index also make it a practical reference work.
Chris Walton, Martin Germann (eds.), Hermann Hesse and Othmar Schoeck. Der Briefwechsel, 135 p., 34 ill., Fr. 25.-, Schwyzer Hefte, Vol. 105, Theiler Druck AG Wollerau 2016, ISBN 978-3-909102-67-9, ISSN 1010-3694
