Herman Hesse

Researching my opening in the Explore function, I came across Herman Hesse as a player in several games. Did the author play chess? Also, apparantly the chess player played in the late 1940s, then took a break, and played again in 1971?

Or were there two, maybe three Herman Hesse's?  Inquiring minds want to know.

http://www.chess.com/games/search.html?sort=1&p2=hesse+herman

Hermann Hesse the writer died in 1962.

And apparently there was another:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=89823

Died in 1962 means he could have played in the '40s.

The Herman Hesse with the link at chessgames was active from 1803 to 1948. I think Herman Hesse may be a somewhat common name.

Quote from the link:

"Hermann Victor Hesse was born in 1910 in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, USA. He finished second at the 1950 US Open in Detroit, Michigan."

The games in the link were the same ones on chess.com

So although the author may have indeed played chess, these games are not his.

Yes, but how do we know that the chess player whose games appear in various collections did not write the novels and pass them off as having been written by the European Herman Hesse?

This reminds me very little of my theory about Shakespeare, that either he wrote all that is customarily attributed to him or it was someone else with the same name.

Hermann Hesse was a strong master from Bethlehem, Pa.  He finished 5th in the US championship in 1948, 2nd in the UA Open in 1950, and I believe that he won an event limited to state champions in Yankton SD in 1958.  I played him 3 times while I was a student at Lehigh University, and was obviously out of my league. 

I think that Mr Hesse the author was concerned with glass bead games rather than chess games.