Beneath the Wheel
Unterm Rad
EditionTranslated from the original German
A gifted boy from a Black Forest town is driven through the state examination and the seminary until he breaks.
Also in the library: the complete Korean translation.
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DRM-free files. Translation CC BY-NC 4.0; the original work is in the public domain.
About the book
Hans Giebenrath is the one gifted child of a small Swabian town, and everyone, from his father to the rector and the town pastor, means to make something of him. He gives up fishing, his rabbits, and his sleep to pass the state examination, wins a place at the seminary of Maulbronn, and there meets Hermann Heilner, a rebellious young poet whose friendship costs him his standing. Worn out by headaches and ambition not his own, he is sent home, where he tries to begin again as a mechanic’s apprentice, with cider pressing, a first love, and a Sunday among working men.
This complete English translation is made directly from the German of Hesse’s early novel, first published in 1906. Its narrator moves between the boy’s quick, close experience, lyrical pages on the river and the forest, and an irony aimed at the school that forms him; all three are kept, and each of the 895 paragraphs of the original appears as one paragraph.
Highlights
- Just don’t let yourself grow weary, or you’ll end up beneath the wheel.
- He did not know that in the dress of this memory his childhood and boyhood rose up before him once more, merry and laughing, to take leave and to leave behind the sting of a great happiness that had been and would never come again.
- And you and I, we too perhaps neglected a good deal with the boy, don’t you think?
Contents
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Colophon
Translated from the original German. Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.Full colophon
Beneath the Wheel
A Novel
Original title · Unterm Rad
Author · Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
Translator · Ether Library
First publication · 1906, S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin.
Source text · A public-domain digital transcription of the S. Fischer edition (Berlin: S. Fischer), with the transcriber’s corrections of seven misprints. Translated directly from the German.
Extent · Complete and unabridged · seven chapters · 895 paragraphs, as in the original · no translator’s notes
Copyright · First published in 1906, the original work is in the public domain in the United States. The author died in 1962; the work is also in the public domain in Korea. In the European Union, the United Kingdom, and other countries with a term of life plus seventy years, it remains protected until the end of 2032.
This translation · Translated from the German by Ether Library. The English text is © Ether Library and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0): you may copy and share it for noncommercial purposes, with attribution.
Edition · English edition 1.0 · October 2026
Typography · Set in Lora (SIL Open Font License 1.1). Cover painting and design by Ether Library.
Original in the public domain (United States, Korea) · English translation CC BY-NC 4.0
Ether Library · No. 0021