Why This List?
When you build a tool for writing books, sooner or later someone asks: Which books have actually shaped you? It's a good question. And one I ask myself far too rarely.
Some time ago, the project Fünf Bücher asked me exactly that. The answer was surprisingly difficult – not because I couldn't think of any books, but because there would be so many. But five it had to be. Here they are.
1. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
This book left deep traces. What still fascinates me are those endless, nested sentences that build up an incredible inner universe. Mann celebrates illness as the higher form of living, and you believe him – at least as long as you're reading.
There's this scene where a woman lets the dining hall door slam shut. It sounds trivial, but it's one of those moments that burn into your memory. Literature at the highest level.
2. Minima Moralia – Theodor W. Adorno
Adorno was the great passion of my youth. I didn't read Minima Moralia like a normal book – I breathed it in for years. It was always lying around within reach, and I read individual passages over and over again.
The sharpness of thought, the uncompromising nature – that influenced me enormously as a young person. And honestly: it still does.
3. The Assistant – Robert Walser
Robert Walser is the Nabokov of the German-speaking world. I don't say that lightly. In "The Assistant" he oscillates between naive description and deep madness, and you barely notice the transition.
What particularly moved me: the long passages celebrating the beauty of service and humble professions. In a world that places ambition above everything, that's almost subversive.
4. Das Jahr danach (The Year After) – Wolfgang Pohrt
Pohrt belongs to the second generation of the Frankfurt School, and his "Year After" was something like a personal bible for me. Sharper than much else, more accessible and at the same time more resistant.
Unfortunately, Pohrt passed away a few years ago. His work deserves more attention than it gets.
5. Nicht ich: Logik, Lüge, Libido – Christina von Braun
I experienced Christina von Braun as a lecturer, and that was a pivotal moment. Her book about the history of hysteria explains the mechanisms of female oppression and the resistance against it.
The body as simultaneous battleground and refuge – that was the most formative feminist reading for me. It changed my thinking.
What This Has to Do with Hermes 3000
Each of these books taught me that writing is more than words on paper. It's thinking, feeling, and sometimes resistance. When we build Hermes 3000, we do so with respect for this power of the written word.
AI can do a lot – but the impulse to say something that needs to be said still comes from humans. Hermes 3000 is there to support that impulse, not to replace it.