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CONTENTS

The Glass Bead Game: A General Introduction to Its History for the Layman

The Life of Magister Ludi Joseph Knecht

1 The Call

2 Waldzell

3 Years of Freedom

4 Two Orders

5 The Mission

6 Magister Ludi

7 In Office

8 The Two Poles

9 A Conversation

10 Preparations

11 The Circular Letter

12 The Legend

Joseph Knecht’s Posthumous Writings

The Poems of Knecht’s Student Years

The Three Lives

1 The Rainmaker

2 The Father Confessor

3 The Indian Life

IT is OUR intention to preserve in these pages what scant biographical material we have been able to collect concerning Joseph Knecht, or Ludi Magister Josephus III, as he is called in the Archives of the Glass Bead Game. We are not unaware that this endeavor runs, or seems to run, somewhat counter to the prevailing laws and usages of our intellectual life. For, after all, obliteration of individuality, the maximum integration of the individual into the hierarchy of the educators and scholars, has ever been one of our ruling principles. And in the course of our long tradition this principle has been observed with such thoroughness that today it is exceedingly difficult, and in many cases completely impossible, to obtain biographical and psychological information on various persons who have served the hierarchy in exemplary fashion. In very many cases it is no longer even possible to determine their original names. The hierarchic organization cherishes the ideal of anonymity, and comes very close to the realization of that ideal. This fact remains one of the abiding characteristics of intellectual life in our Province.