Career
Under his pseudonym, he wrote Non Olet ("lieutenant does not stink"), an 1100-page scatological collection (1939). His pseudonym, Collofino, is Italian for "slender neck," an approximate translation of his real name, "Feinhals." Feinhals is praised as an important supporter of the expressionist movement in the Rhineland, having contributed to the 1906 Art Exhibit in Cologne. His company also supported individual artists, such as his friend, the poet Johannes Theodor Kuhlemann (1891-1939), who had worked for eight years in Feinhals"s "tobacco museum." Kuhlemann subsequently wrote a book on tobacco, Vom Tabak, which Feinhals published in 1936.
Hesse made a number of (sometimes oblique) references to him and the antiquarian anecdotes he had collected in Die Geschichten des Collofino, a book privately published in In Hesse"s short story "Journey to the East," the character "Collofino der Rauchzauberer" ("Collofino the Smoke Magician") is based on Feinhals.
In turn, Feinhals helped Hesse with translating German passages into Latin for Hesse"s magnum opus, The Glass Bead Game, for which he is thanked and named as "Collof." Feinhals lived in a villa designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich, built 1908-1909, completed by Bruno Paul, and destroyed in World World War World War II Here he had a noteworthy collection of modern art on display.
