Heinrich Heine

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; ; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was an outstanding poet, writer, and literary critic of 19th-century German Romanticism. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of ''Lieder'' (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. He is best-remembered today by the phrase, “Where books burn, so do people,” which slightly paraphrases his original coinage.

Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.

Heine's early works, such as ''Letters from Berlin'' (1826) and ''Germany. A Winter's Tale'' (1828), gained widespread attention for their poetic expression, profound exploration of love, and satirical commentary on social phenomena. As a member of the Young Germany movement, Heine's political stance became increasingly radical. His radical views, especially his calls for political freedom and democratic reforms, led to many of his works being banned in Germany, further enhancing his reputation internationally.

In 1831, due to political persecution by German authorities, Heine moved to Paris, marking the end of most of his German life. Although he spent his last 25 years in exile, his influence on German society, politics, and culture remained profound. Heine's poetry not only changed the landscape of German literature but also inspired many subsequent literary and political movements.

Heine's works are renowned for their satirical wit, political critique, and profound social insights, making him an important figure in Romantic literature and a symbol of 19th-century European political thought. Despite his declining health in exile, Heine continued to write actively until his death.

Heine’s contribution to European literature is somewhat specific to his own era and retains an overwhelming relevance during the years running up to and throughout Third Reich. His influence after the war is no longer associated specifically with the name ‘Heine’ but with the cultural norms of the liberal press as such. After 1945, many of the aspects of his contribution that made him so influential grow obscure from the viewpoint of the present, since the divisiveness ''pro'' or ''contra'' their imprimatur had been at least nominally resolved by the conclusion of the Second World War.

The character of inclusiveness and estrangement from ancient identities in preference for personal merit, as well as the default cultural norm of presentational detachment and ambiguity in relationship to explicit political lines, which compose—at least exoterically or superficially, per the tenor adopted by the mainstream media (especially between 1945-2016)—the signature of new values in a neoliberal world order after the war and their ambience owe much to Heine. These elements of media presentation find in Heinrich Heine their early champion and perhaps their most prestigious exemplar in the 19th century.

Contribution

To say Heine’s name in Western Europe amongst educated and informed metropolitan circles during that period (c.1848-1945) was to summon to mind these hard to articulate and largely atmospheric values, which were not yet decisively predominant in political culture. To admit sympathy for him or to “make an appeal to Heine”, very often, was an obscure pledge of provisional allegiance—at least for the sake of conversation—to the notion that his approach to political discourse was the way of the future, nascent in the present-day gestalt of those times.

Heine’s name as a symbol or a sentiment appealing to the above-mentioned complex of values becomes more charged as the years leading up to 1933 grow late, and the antagonisms that ultimately manifest themselves in the Third Reich come closer to the surface in the lived-present. Heine’s reputation today rests largely on discussions of him from that period, which remain in much broader circulation in the present then his original works themselves. Once the postwar cultural regime is installed more securely in the major organs of popular press and media after the end of major combat in 1945, Heine’s name ceases (for the most part) to be invoked in this way.

To put it bluntly, during the period of his major continental influence (c.late 1820’s-1945) Heine is known and understood by the informed metropolitan public of Europe, as the precursor and prototype of the immensely influential assimilated, secular ‘Jewish opinion columnist’ and uber-literati. He is iconic as one of the actually personified and nameable arch-nemesis figures within Hitler’s paranoid mapping of contemporary civilization that were projected in the antisemitic fantasies central to the platform of Nazism. To invoke Heine, in many contexts in Western Europe during the designated period was almost always, at least partly, to evoke this image of him.

Heine is all the more powerful in his own era (as well as the generations immediately following his death) because of the deeply embedded way that he belonged to it. The main currents of his contribution have at least three dimensions: his public persona contra-Marx or in distinction to the role played by Marx in the period, his status as a seminal German correspondent writing from Paris, and his reputation—articulated only later—as a progenitor of the era of the ''feuilleton.'' Provided by Wikipedia