The writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature, Hermann Hesse, lived in Gaienhofen from 1904 to 1912. The young author had previously led a nomadic lifestyle. The "Gaienhofen Detour,” as he called his eight years at Lake Constance, was a time of stability and sense of place: This time of my life began when I no longer lived in random and different rooms, but in houses. The simple farmhouse on the Gaienhofen village square he moved into after his 1904 wedding, was the most important. He later called it the "first refuge of my young marriage" and the "first legitimate workshop of my profession.” His first house belongs to the Hesse Museum with the impressive desk that he wrote at his entire career. It’s also the centerpiece of the new permanent exhibition, examining the author's conflict between the sedentary, inflexible bourgeoisie mindset and the artist’s desire for change.
The Höri Artist Landscape: visual artists have been visiting the Höri since the beginning of the 20th c. In the 1930s, artists retreated for political reasons. Art historian Walter Kaesbach was one of the first to find refuge here, along with … Otto Dix, Helmuth Macke and Max Ackermann, Erich Heckel, Hans Kindermann, Hugo Erfurth, Curth Georg Becker, Gertraud Herzger von Harlessem, Walter Herzger, Jean Paul Schmitz, Rudolf Stuckert, Rose-Marie Schnorrenberg — and many others.
The Höri Literary Landscape: The Jewish poet Jacob Picard and the author Udo Rukser are featured in the "Höri Literary Landscape” exhibition that documents their "inner emigration" and exile. Exemplary authors Hans Leip, Klaus Nonnenmann and the publisher Curt Weller represent this period after 1945.
