Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797
– 17 February 1856) was a
journalist,
essayist,
literary critic, and one of the most
significant
German romantic poets. He is remembered chiefly
for selections of his
lyric poetry,
many of which were set to music in the form of
lieder (art songs) by German
composers most notably by
Robert Schumann. Other composers who have
set Heine's works to music include
Friedrich Silcher,
Franz Schubert,
Felix Mendelssohn,
Fanny Mendelssohn,
Johannes Brahms,
Hugo
Wolf,
Richard Strauss,
Edward MacDowell, and
Richard Wagner; and in the 20th century
Hans Werner Henze,
Carl Orff,
Lord
Berners,
Paul Lincke and
Yehezkel Braun.
Early life
Heine was
born in Düsseldorf
, Rhineland, today North
Rhine-Westphalia
, Germany
, which was
then occupied by France (becoming part of Prussia in 1815), into a family of Jewish
background. He was called "Harry" as a child, but after his
baptism in 1825 he became "Heinrich".
His father was a merchant, and his mother, the daughter of a
physician, was a refined and educated woman.
When his father's
business failed, Heine was sent to Hamburg
. His
wealthy banker uncle,
Salomon,
encouraged him to go into commerce, but his ventures in this sphere
were not successful.
Failing in
this attempt at business life, Heine took up law, studying at the
universities of Göttingen
, Bonn
and Berlin
, where he heard Hegel's lectures on the
philosophy of history (he later wrote a short satirical poem about
Hegel's philosophy "Doctrine"). During his student years he
participated in the "Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft des
Judentumes" ("Society for the Culture and Scientific Study of
Judaism"). Heine finished his studies in 1825 with a doctorate in
law.
The same year, he converted to
Lutheranism. Jews were still subject to severe
restrictions in many of the German states at that time. They were
forbidden to enter certain professions, including an academic
career in the universities, a particular ambition for Heine. As
Heine said in self-justification, his conversion was "the ticket of
admission into European culture".
He wrote, "As Henry IV said, 'Paris
is worth a
mass'; I say, 'Berlin is worth the
sermon.'"
As a poet, Heine made his debut with
Gedichte
(
Poems) in 1821. Heine's one-sided infatuation with his
cousins Amalie and Therese later inspired him to write some of his
loveliest romantic lyrics;
Buch der Lieder (
Book of
Songs, 1827) was Heine's first comprehensive collection of
verse.
For example the poem "Allnächtlich im Traume" of the
Buch der
Lieder was set to music by Robert Schumann as well as Felix
Mendelssohn. It contains the specific ironical disillusionment
which is indeed typical of Heine:

Young Heinrich Heine
- Allnächtlich im Traume seh ich dich,
- Und sehe dich freundlich grüßen,
- Und lautaufweinend stürz ich mich
- Zu deinen süßen Füßen.
- Du siehst mich an wehmütiglich,
- Und schüttelst das blonde Köpfchen;
- Aus deinen Augen schleichen sich
- Die Perlentränentröpfchen.
- Du sagst mir heimlich ein leises Wort,
- Und gibst mir den Strauß von Zypressen.
- Ich wache auf, und der Strauß ist fort,
- Und das Wort hab ich vergessen.
(non-literal translation in verse by Hal Draper:)
- Nightly I see you in dreams-you speak,
- With kindliness sincerest,
- I throw myself, weeping aloud and weak
- At your sweet feet, my dearest.
- You look at me with wistful woe,
- And shake your golden curls;
- And stealing from your eyes there flow
- The teardrops like to pearls.
- You breathe in my ear a secret word,
- A garland of cypress for token.
- I wake; it is gone; the dream is blurred,
- And forgotten the word that was spoken.
(for a more literal translation in particular to assist
singers:
[15337])
In his 1821
tragedy
"Almansor" Heine let the protagonist
Almansor decry the burning of a
Koran in a public fire in re-conquered Spain. To this
Almansor’s servant Hassan replies:
"This was a prelude only;
where they burn books they will eventually burn people."
Starting from the mid-1820s Heine distanced himself from
Romanticism by adding irony, sarcasm and satire
into his poetry and making fun of the sentimental-romantic awe of
nature and of
figures of speech in
contemporary poetry and literature. A nice example are these
lines:
Das Fräulein stand am MeereUnd seufzte lang und bang.Es rührte sie
so sehreder Sonnenuntergang.
Mein Fräulein! Sein sie munter,Das ist ein altes Stück;Hier vorne
geht sie unterUnd kehrt von hinten zurück.
A mistress stood by the seasighing long and anxiously.She was so
deeply stirredBy the setting sun
My Fräulein!, be gay,This is an old play;ahead of you it setsAnd
from behind it returns.

Heine 1829
Heine became increasingly critical of
despotism and reactionary
chauvinism in Germany, of nobility and clerics
but also of the narrow-mindedness of ordinary people and of the
rising German form of
nationalism,
especially in contrast to the French and the
revolution. Nevertheless, he made a point
of stressing his love for his
Fatherland:
Plant the black, red, gold banner at the summit of the
German idea, make it the standard of free mankind, and I will shed
my dear heart’s blood for it. Rest assured, I love the Fatherland
just as much as you do.
Heine unconditionally admired
Napoleon for
his contributions to
enlightenment
which, for some time, the Frenchman had installed in the occupied
German areas.All of Heine’s publications in Germany were subject to
state
censorship which, in 1827, was a
direct target in one of his poems:The German Censors —— ——
—— ———— —— —— —— —— ——
—— —— —— ———— —— —— ——
—— —— —— —— —— ———— ——
—— —— —— —— —— —— ——
———— —— —— —— —— —— ——
—— —— ———— —— —— —— ——
—— —— —— —— ———— —— ——
—— —— Idiots —— ———— ——
—— —— —— —— —— —— ——
———— —— —— —— —— —— ——
—— —— ———— —— —— —— ——
—— —— —— —— ———— —— ——
—— ——
In 1831 Heine left Germany for France, settling in Paris for his
remaining 25 years of life.
Paris years
After arriving in Paris, Heine associated with
Karl Marx, also living in the city at the time,
and he wrote for Marx’s weekly journal
Vorwärts
and the
Deutsch–Französische
Jahrbücher (German–French Annals). Heine also sympathized with
the French
Saint-Simonist.
In 1832, Heine published, in French,
Towards a history of
philosophy and religion in Germany. "Never has a more
extraordinary book sailed into the world under a more ordinary and
discouraging title; yet for sheer literary
panache, for
bizarre anecdotes, historical snap–judgements, and sheer
intellectual wit and vigour, the book has few equals."
Heine’s further work was heavily inspired by socialist ideas.
German authorities banned his works and those of others who were
considered to be associated with the '
Young Germany' movement in 1835. Heine,
however, continued to comment on German politics and society from a
distance.
During his time in Paris Heine only made two visits to Germany
where his beloved mother still lived. One of these visits was in
winter of 1843 and inspired him for his satirical verse-epic
Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (
Germany.
A Winter's
Tale), an account of his journey in which he puts his
socialist vision into contrast with the grim conditions in his
homeland:
Sie sang das alte Entsagungslied,Das Eiapopeia vom Himmel,Womit man
einlullt, wenn es greint,Das Volk, den großen Lümmel.
Ich kenne die Weise, ich kenne den Text,Ich kenn auch die Herren
VerfasserIch weiß, sie tranken heimlich WeinUnd predigten
öffentlich Wasser.
Ein neues Lied, ein besseres LiedO Freunde, will ich euch
dichten!Wir wollen hier auf Erden schonDas Himmelreich
errichten.
Wir wollen auf Erden glücklich sein,Und wollen nicht mehr
darben;Verschlemmen soll nicht der faule BauchWas fleißige Hände
erwarben.
She sang the old song of self-denial,
The halleluiah from heaven,
With which to lull, when complaining,
The big boor, the people.
I know the tune, I know the words,
I also know the authors.
I know they secretly drank wine
While publicly preaching water.
A new song, a better song,
O friends, I shall write for you!
Already here on Earth we shall
Erect a heavenly realm.
It is on earth that we strive to be happy
And we don’t want to suffer from want any more;
The rotten belly shall not feed
On the fruits of hard working hands.
The Winter's Tale was also published in the
Vorwärts
(
Forward) in 1844

hochkant
Heine became very critical of the
working
classes social conditions resulting from the
industrial revolution. After the
bloody suppression of the weaver’s revolt in
Silesia he wrote the poem ‘’’Weaver’s Song’’’
(Weberlied or Die Weber). Many of Heine’s poems appeared in Marx’s
journals which were illegally distributed in Germany. The Weaver’s
Song was explicitly banned in Germany.
Friedrich Engels translated it into English
and had it published in the “
The New
Moral World”.In spite of his friendship to Marx and Engels
Heine also expressed worries about
Communism. Its radicalism and materialism would
destroy much of European culture that he loved and admired. In the
French edition of “Lutetia” Heine wrote, one year before he died:
“This confession, that the future belongs to the Communists, I made
with an undertone of the greatest fear and sorrow and, oh!, this
undertone by no means is a mask! Indeed, with fear and terror I
imagine the time, when those dark
iconoclast come to power: with their raw fists
they will batter all marble images of my beloved world of art, they
will ruin all those fantastic anecdotes that the poets loved so
much, they will chop down my
Laurel forests
and plant potatoes and, oh!, the herbs chandler will use my Book of
Songs to make bags for coffee and snuff for the old women of the
future – oh!, I can foresee all this and I feel deeply sorry
thinking of this decline threatening my poetry and the old world
order - And yet, I freely confess, the same thoughts have a magical
appeal upon my soul which I cannot resist …. In my chest there are
two voices in their favour which cannot be silenced …. because the
first one is that of logic … and as I cannot object to the premise
“that all people have the right to eat”, I must defer to all the
conclusions….The second of the two compelling voices, of which I am
talking, is even more powerful than the first, because it is the
voice of hatred, the hatred I dedicate to this common enemy that
constitutes the most distinctive contrast to communism and that
will oppose the angry giant already at the first instance – I am
talking about the party of the so-called advocates of nationality
in Germany, about those false patriots whose love for the
fatherland only exists in the shape of imbecile distaste of foreign
countries and neighbouring peoples and who daily pour their bile
especially on France”.
Heine also loved to
satirize the utopian
politics of his fellow opponents of the regime in Germany as in
Atta Troll: Ein Sommernachtstraum (
Atta Troll: A
Midsummer Night's Dream) in 1847. In the preface to
Atta
Troll he comments on the risk of arrest that he faced during
his clandestine return visit to Germany.
Heine wrote movingly of the experience of exile in his poem
In
der Fremde ("Abroad"):
- Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland.
- Der Eichenbaum
- Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft.
- Es war ein Traum.
- Das küßte mich auf deutsch, und sprach auf
deutsch
- (Man glaubt es kaum,
- Wie gut es klang) das Wort: »Ich liebe dich!«
- Es war ein Traum.
- I once had a beautiful fatherland.
- The oak
- Grew there so high, the violets gently nodded.
- It was a dream.
- It kissed me in German, it
spoke in German
- (One can hardly believe it,
- It sounded so good) the phrase: "I love you!"
- It was a dream.
Death

Heine on his sickbed 1851
Heine suffered from ailments that kept him bedridden for the last
eight years of his life (some have suggested he suffered from
multiple sclerosis or
syphilis), although in 1997 it was confirmed
through an analysis of the poet's hair that he had suffered from
chronic
lead poisoning. He was
survived by his wife whom he had met and married in Paris. There
were no children.
On 17
February 1856, at the age of , Heine died in Paris
.
He was
interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre
. His last words were:
"God will forgive me.
It's his job."
Legacy
"The highest conception of the lyric
poet was given to me by Heinrich Heine. I seek in vain in all the
realms of millenia for an equally sweet and passionate music. He
possessed that divine malice without which I cannot imagine
perfection... And how he employs German! It will one day be said
that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of the German
language." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo |
Among the
thousands of books burned on Berlin's
Opernplatz
in 1933, following the Nazi
raid on the Institut für
Sexualwissenschaft, were works by Heinrich Heine. To
commemorate the terrible event, one of the most famous lines of
Heine's 1821 play "Almansor" was engraved in the ground at the
site:
"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende
auch Menschen." ("Where they burn books, they will
ultimately also burn people.")
In 1834, 99 years before
Adolf Hitler
and the
Nazi Party seized power in
Germany, Heine made another remarkable prophecy in his work "The
History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany":
- "Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has
somewhat mitigated that brutal germanic love of war, but it could
not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross,
be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that
insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so
often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is
fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse
miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the
forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their
eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer
will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. (...)
Do not smile at my advice -- the advice of a dreamer who warns you
against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature.
Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution
in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the
spiritual.
Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder.
German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very
nimble, but rumbles along ponderously.
Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before
has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the
German thunderbolt has fallen at last.
At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in
the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal
dens.
A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French
Revolution look like an innocent idyll."
Controversy
In the
1890s, amidst a flowering of affection
for Heine leading up to the centennial of his birth, plans were
enacted to honor Heine with a memorial; these were strongly
supported by Heine's admirer
Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of
Austria. The empress commissioned a statue from the sculptor
Louis Hasselriis.
Another memorial, a
sculpted fountain, was created for Düsseldorf
. While at first the plan met with
enthusiasm, the concept was gradually bogged down in
anti-Semitic,
nationalist, and religious criticism; by the
time the fountain was finished, there was no place to put it.
Through
the intervention of German American
activists, the memorial was ultimately transplanted into The Bronx
. Known in English as the Lorelei
Fountain, Germans refer to it as the Heinrich Heine
Memorial. Also, after years of controversy, the
University of Düsseldorf was named Heinrich
Heine University
. Today the city honours its poet with a
boulevard (Heinrich-Heine-Allee) and a modern monument.
The Heine statue,
originally located in Corfu, was rejected by Hamburg
, but
eventually found a home in Toulon
.
In
Israel
, the
attitude to Heine has long been the subject of debate between
secularists, who number him among the most
prominent figures of Jewish history,
and the religious who consider his conversion to Christianity to be
an unforgivable act of betrayal. Due to such debates,
the city of Tel-Aviv
delayed naming a street for Heine, and the street
finally chosen to bear his name is located in a rather desolate
industrial zone rather than in the vicinity of Tel-Aviv
University
, suggested by some public figures as the
appropriate location.
Ha'ir (a
left-leaning
Tel-Aviv magazine) sarcastically suggested that "The Exiling of
Heine Street" symbolically re-enacted the course of Heine's own
life.
Since then, a street in the Yemin Moshe
neighborhood of Jerusalem
and a community center in Haifa have been named
after Heine. A Heine Appreciation Society is active in
Israel, led by prominent political figures from both the left and
right camps.
His quote about
burning books is prominently displayed in the Yad Vashem
Holocaust museum in
Jerusalem. (It is also displayed in the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum
.
File:HeineMonument.jpg|Heine monument in
Düsseldorf
File:Heine-Denkmal Frankfurt.JPG|Heine
monument in Frankfurt
, the only pre-1945 one in
GermanyFile:Brocken_Heine_memorial.jpg|Monument on
Mount Brocken
, Harz
Mountains,
GermanyFile:Waldemar Grzimek -
Heinrich-Heine-Denkmal IIb 01.jpg|Heine monument in Berlin
File:DBP 1956 229 Heinrich Heine.jpg|Stamp
Germany (1956) 100. anniversary of Heine's death
Selected works
- Auf Flügeln des Gesanges
- Gedichte, 1821
- Tragödien, nebst einem lyrischen Intermezzo, 1823
- Reisebilder, 1826-31 (Travel Pictures, 2008.
Translated by Peter Wortsman (Archipelago Books).)
- Die Harzreise, 1826
- Ideen, das Buch le Grand, 1827
- Englische Fragmente, 1827
- Buch der Lieder, 1827
- Zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Religion in
Deutschland, 1832
- Französische Zustände, 1833
- Zur Geschichte der neueren schönen Literatur in
Deutschland, 1833
- Die romantische Schule, 1836
- Der Salon, 1836-40
- Die Lorelei, 1838
- Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift, 1840
- Neue Gedichte (Big Rudy), 1844 - New Poems
- Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, 1844 -
Germany
- Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum, 1847
- Romanzero, 1851
- Der Doktor Faust, 1851
- Les Dieux en Exil, 1853
- Die Harzreise, 1853
- Lutezia, 1854
- Vermischte Schriften, 1854
- Letzte Gedichte und Gedanken, 1869
- Sämtliche Werke, 1887-90 (7 Vols.)
- Sämtliche Werke, 1910-20
- Sämtliche Werke, 1925-30
- Werke und Briefe, 1961-64
- Sämtliche Schriften, 1968
Editions in English
- The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine: A Modern English
Version by Hal Draper, Suhrkamp/Insel Publishers Boston, 1982.
ISBN 3-518-03048-5
See also
References
External links
In English
In German