Klein and Wagner

Synopsis

"The most ruthless of Hesse's many self-exposures." Joseph Mileck Klein and Wagner tells the story of Friedrich Klein, a middle-aged clerk who has embezzled from his employer and escaped to Italy. However, Klein is not a common criminal, but rather a self-alienated, tormented bourgeois in search of peace and self-fulfillment. While pondering his fate, Klein recognizes that his primary motivation was a compulsion and urge to murder his wife and children, which he could only avoid by entirely abandoning his old life.