Information about Heinrich Heine

This article is about the poet; for the mathematician, see Heinrich Eduard Heine.

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (December 13, 1797 – February 17, 1856) was a journalist, an essayist, 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.

Life

Heine was born into a family of assimilated German Jews in Düsseldorf, Germany, which was then occupied by France (becoming part of Prussia in 1815). He was called Harry as a child, but after his baptism in 1825, he became "Heinrich." ^[1]

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 Heine, encouraged him to go into commerce, but his ventures in this sphere were not successful. Instead, he 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, entitled "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 only stayed in the society for three years and left the group before he eventually took a degree in law in 1825 and decided to convert from Judaism to Protestantism that same year.

Jews were subject to severe restrictions in many of the German states at that time. In many cases, they were forbidden to enter certain professions. These included university lecturing, which was a particular ambition for Heine. As Heine said in self-justification, his conversion was "the ticket of admission into European culture". For much of the rest of his life Heine wrestled over the incompatible elements of his German and his Jewish identities.

Heine is best known for his lyric poetry, much of which (especially from his earlier works) was set to music by lied composers, most notably by Robert Schumann. Other composers who have set Heine include Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, and Richard Wagner; and in the 20th century Hans Werner Henze and Lord Berners.

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 lyrics; Buch der Lieder ("Book of Songs", 1827) was Heine's first comprehensive collection of verse.

His poetry modulates continually between a romantic-conservative and a radical, satiric stress. Politics and personal mood made him a commuter in Europe.

Heine left Germany for France in 1831. After arriving in Paris, he associated with utopian socialists, including the followers of Count Saint-Simon, who preached an egalitarian classless paradise based on meritocracy.

German authorities banned his works and those of others who were considered to be associated with the Young Germany movement in 1835. Heine continued, however, to comment on German politics and society from a distance. He remained in Paris, with the exception of a visit in 1843 to Germany, for the rest of his life. Heine wrote Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (Germany. A Winter's Tale), an account of his visit to Germany and the political climate there, in 1844; his friend, Karl Marx, published it in his newspaper Vorwärts ("Forward") in 1844. Heine also satirized the utopian politics of those opponents of the regime still in Germany 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.

Once I had a lovely fatherland.

The oak

Grew there so high, the violets gently swayed.

It was a dream.

I felt a German kiss, heard German words

(One can hardly believe how good it sounded)

''The phrase: "I Love you"

''It was a dream.

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). He died in Paris and is interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre. The Walhalla temple in Bavaria plans to add Heine's bust to their collection in 2009.

Among the thousands of books known to have been burned on Berlin's Opernplatz in 1933, following the Nazi raid on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, were the works of Heinrich Heine. To commemorate the terrible event, one of the most famous lines of Heine's 1821 play Almansor is now engraved on the ground at the site: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." ("Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.")

Although this line is often quoted, it is rarely mentioned that Heine was referring to the burning of the Quran during the Spanish Inquisition in an effort to eradicate Islam from the Iberian Peninsula, which had been a major center of medieval Islamic culture.

Controversy in Israel

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 Christiantity to be an unforgivable act of betrayal. Due to such debates, the city of Tel-Aviv was very late in 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. A sarcastic comment in Ha'ir (a left-leaning local Tel-Aviv magazine) 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 were 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 of books (above) is prominently displayed in the Yad Vashem holocaust museum in Jerusalem.

Selected works

• Auf Flügeln des Gesanges
• Gedichte, 1821
• Tragödien, nebst einem lyrischen Intermezzo, 1823
• Reisebilder, 1826-31
• Die Harzreise, 1826
• Ideen, das Buch le Grand, 1827
• Englische Fragmente, 1827
• Buch der Lieder, 1827
• Französische Zustände, 1833
• Zur Geschichte der neueren schönen Literatur in Deutschland, 1833
• Die romantische Schule, 1836
• Der Salon, 1836-40
• Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift, 1840
• Neue Gedichte, 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

Notes

See also

• Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf
• Heinrich Heine Prize

External links

• Works by Heinrich Heine at Project Gutenberg
• Works by/about Heinrich Heine at Internet Archive
• "Ihr Lieder! Ihr meine guten Lieder!" A guide to musical settings for one or two voices of the poetry of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) by Peter W. Shea.
• Heinrich-Heine-Gesellschaft e.V.
• Heinrich-Heine-Institut
• Heinrich-Heine-Portal: annotated, scholarly electronic edition of Heine's complete works and letters with more than 12.000 digital images of original manuscripts, first editions etc. (in German)
• Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
• Complete works of Heine online (in German)
• Deutsche Welle's review of Heinrich Heine - 150 years after his death.
• Heine Year 2006 includes: Heine-Events, a short multimedial Biography, Interpretation of Works, Heine-Rankings, Heine-Quiz, Heine-Manga etc.
• Selected English translations online
• Art of the States: The Resounding Lyre Musical setting of Heine's poem "Halleluja"
• Heinrich Heine's holy hits, Georg Klein's top ten Heine quotes on religion
• 'The Lorelei' performed by Mark Bellinghaus
• Translation of poem, DISPUTATION.

Persondata
NAME	Heine, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Heine, Christian Johann Heinrich; Heine, Chaim Harry
SHORT DESCRIPTION	journalist, an essayist, and one of the most significant German romantic poet
DATE OF BIRTH	December 13, 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH	Düsseldorf, Germany
DATE OF DEATH	February 17, 1856
PLACE OF DEATH