Hermann Hesse is in his late twenties and already famous for his early work when he retreats with his wife Mia Bernoulli to a remote village by Lake Constance. Here, they have a house built in the reform style, attempt to become self-sufficient, and start a family. However, Hesse is dissatisfied: he struggles to produce literary work and finds himself in a creative crisis. Thomas Lang tells the story of a problematic yet fascinating phase in the life of the writer, who later achieved worldwide fame with the Nobel Prize in Literature and became a favorite of entire generations of readers.