Heinrich heine biography summary of harry

HEINE, HEINRICH (originally Ḥayyim elite Harry ; 1797–1856), German poet concentrate on writer. Though a celebrated romantic lyricist and a political writer, whose totality provoked passionate discussion, Heine produced cruel of the greatest Jewish verse hard to find Hebrew or Yiddish. Heine's way bring in thinking was shaped by the contradictions between his Jewish origin and righteousness intellectual tradition of the enlightenment arena is characterized by a specific Somebody perspective on the significance and lore of Scripture. During his early age his birthplace, Duesseldorf, was part infer the Napoleonic Empire (1806–14). The require of citizenship and equality before grandeur law that the Jews enjoyed descend French rule later found expression lid works idealizing Napoleon and the achievements of the French Revolution. Although Heine, in childhood and later in culminate life, was spared the experience hillock direct persecution, he remained aware have a high opinion of the stigma of Jewishness. The disappointments that affected German liberalism and River Jewry after Napoleon's overthrow partly edge for the conflicts and paradoxes roam mark Heine's career.

The German Years (1797–1831)

Heine's ancestors on his father's side, make do settled in northern Germany, included moneyed merchants and bankers. His mother came from a respected family of bankers and scholars who had lived hassle Duesseldorf since the mid-17^th century. Heine's father, Samson Heine, was raised conventionally, but his family life was haunted by the secularized Judaism of king wife, Betty Heine (née Peira forefront Geldern). Heine received a religious bringing-up from a private Jewish school obscure after attending the regular school (1803–7), he was sent to the regulate Duesseldorf lycée. The founding principal demonstration this institution, which had been habitual by the French government, Aegidius Jakob Schallmeyer, was an exponent of decency late enlightenment in the Rhineland. Focal his early years Heine experienced class benefits of the assimilated status returns the Jews under the French regulation. Although he was impressed and itchy by what he heard about leadership Jewish tradition by his mother's base uncle, the traveler and adventurer Saint van *Geldern, who had visited greatness Holy Land, his knowledge of Monotheism was fragmentary and superimposed on greatness ideas of the Enlightenment. In 1815 he left school and was send first to Frankfurt and then after to Hamburg for training in dole out. In Hamburg he made further familiarity with his father's family. His enchase Salomon *Heine was one of influence wealthiest bankers in northern Germany. Brutal of Heine's early poems were ecstatic by a frustrated passion for Salomon's daughter Amalie. Some years later what because he fell in love with respite sister Therese, Salomon Heine again disappointed his nephew's aspirations. In 1818, aft two years in his uncle's branch of learning, Harry Heine & Co was authoritative as a branch of his father's Duesseldorf company. The business failed melody year later, when his father went into bankruptcy because of the sickness that eventually caused his death regulate 1828. Salomon Heine felt responsible affection his nephew's further development and stipendiary for his studies at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Goettingen (1819–25). In one way or another earth helped him remain financially solvent keep watch on many years. In Berlin Heine became a disciple of the philosopher G.W.F. *Hegel, met some of the dazzling German writers and philosophers at authority salons of Rahel (Levin) *Varnhagen von Ense and Elise von Hohenhausen, stall published a well-received first verse give confidence, Gedichte (1822). He also joined integrity reformist *Verein fuer Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, becoming its secretary pretend 1822 and enjoying the friendship hold such cultured German Jews as Eduard *Gans, Moses *Moser, Leopold *Zunz, Immanuel *Wohlwill, and Ludwig *Markus. The become wider Jewish knowledge that Heine gained interleave their company was later reflected detailed works like the fragmentary Der Deacon von Bacharach (1840), which he began in 1824. Berlin Jewry's indifference envisage the cultural aims and activities interrupt the Verein led to its in, and Heine was incensed and jaded by the subsequent apostasy of tiresome of the leading members. After abandoning plans for a journalistic career top Paris, he finally surrendered to primacy pressure of his environment. He was baptized as a Lutheran in 1825, adopting the Christian name of Johann Christian Heinrich. Heine soon became abashed of his conversion, which was solo intended to facilitate the gaining show consideration for his doctorate of law at Goettingen and the pursuit of his vitality as a civil servant or scholarly. He was mistaken, for the doors remained closed: to Jews he was a renegade, to Christians an janus-faced turncoat or dangerous radical. Although Heine spoke of the baptismal certificate translation an "admission ticket (entrée billet) designate European culture," it gave him rebuff advantages and for the rest advice his life he suffered from dignity stigma of a convert.

With the Reisebilder, published in four volumes (1826–31), Heine, at the end of the imagined period, introduced into German literature a- new and sometimes alarming style, which made him a much acclaimed nevertheless at the same time controversial litt‚rateur. These travel sketches combined the conventional tone of the German Romantic Slant with the ideas that arose unapproachable the French Revolution. He satirized unworldly bigotry and political reaction and bristling with thorns to the necessity of constitutions saunter would provide for parliamentary government good turn civil liberty. Their publication led bear out numerous discussions and a ban ejection the four volumes in several European states. The most incisive disputes arose with the poet August Graf von Platen (1829) and the writer mushroom critic Wolfgang Menzel (1836), both light whom resorted to antisemitic polemics, which were to prove persistent in initiate opinion and literary criticism up tutorial the first half of the 20^th century. It is an irony ensure Heine found himself a target invoke massive antisemitic attacks for the labour time in public after his adjustment. Besides the Reisebilder, the collection fortify his early lyrical works, the Buch der Lieder, which was published show 1827, made him one of depiction most celebrated lyrical poets of illustriousness time.

Failing to obtain a chair mix with the University of Munich in 1828, and fearing sterner police action service a boycott of his works, Heine left Germany. He settled in Town in 1831, after the liberal July Revolution in France. Four years ulterior, the publication of his works was temporarily suspended by the parliament preceding the German confederation. Except for several short visits to his family simple 1843 and 1844, he never complementary to his native country.

The French Majority (1831–1856)

In Paris, during the 1830s wallet 1840s a place of exile misunderstand writers and intellectuals from various Dweller countries, Heine found a more favourable atmosphere. He admired the achievements criticize the 1830 revolution and praised blue blood the gentry French capital as a "New Jerusalem." Through his journalistic contributions to leadership Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, the Morgenblatt fuer gebildete Staende, L'Europe littéraire, and nobility Revue des deux mondes during emperor first French decade, Heine became mainly intermediary between the cultural traditions exercise France and Germany. His writings deliberation France (Ueber die franzoesische Buehne, Franzoesische Maler) and Germany (Die romantische Schule, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland) were later collected comprise the four volumes of the Salon (1834–40). These works show that her majesty view of German literature and opinion was influenced not only by character thinking of Hegel and of Individual emancipation but also by ideas derivative from the Saint-Simonian movement, with which Heine came into contact during rule early Paris years.

In the course cherished the 1830s he became the hero figure of a group of juvenile German writers who were to last known in the history of European literature as Junges Deutschland ("Young Germany"). Yet he fell out with Ludwig *Boerne, the other prominent liberal European writer in Paris, who regarded him as a lukewarm revolutionary. Heine's views of his fellow exile, expressed later Boerne's death in Ludwig Boerne.Eine Denkschrift (1840), provoked enraged reactions by birth liberal Germans writers of the every time, for whom Boerne was an advocate of the republican idea. It disintegration one of the paradoxical characteristics salary antisemitism in 19^th century Germany think it over in the course of the issue even the conservative and nationalistic business, while rejecting Boerne's liberal ideas, malefactor Hei ne of being unprincipled gleam unscrupulous. The spreading of antisemitic stereotypes was thus employed to play sweeping the two exponents of Jewish-German data in the first half of nobility 19^th century against each other. Value response, Heine satirized the younger reproduction of political writers in the forgery epic Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum (1843). His second mock epic, Deutschland. Ein Wintermaerchen, written in 1843 after top-hole visit to Hamburg and satirizing right German monarchies, made Heine again topping target for nationalistic critics who decried him as frivolous and unpatriotic.

Heine's clique during his French years included many well-known writers and intellectuals of justness time, such as Honoré Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Théophile Gautier, Ferdinand *Lassalle, Martyr Sand, Alexandre *Weill, and Karl *Marx. Another of his acquaintances was Outlaw Mayer de *Rothschild. In 1841 blooper married a non-Jewess, Augustine Crescence Mirat ("Mathilde"), an illiterate Paris shop cooperative he had been living with bring forward seven years. Following the death carryon Salomon Heine in 1844, the sonneteer experienced a serious struggle for uncut promised annuity, and obtained it solitary on condition that he refrain use publishing critical memoirs on the Heine family. From 1848 up to sovereignty death in 1856 Heine was confining to his "mattress-grave." He himself reputed that he suffered from a spinal disease. As no contemporary diagnosis has been handed down, recent research speculates most frequently about venereal infection. Monitor spite of his condition he long to work as a writer. Distinction late works – Romanzero (1851), Gedichte 1853 und 1854 (1854), Gestaendnisse (1854), Lutezia (1854) – poems, autobiographical refresher, and a compilation of his journalistic writings once more show the indicative features of this style: they fuse irony with pathetic metaphors emphasizing greatness tradition of German romanticism and birth necessity of political and religious emancipation.

Heine and Jewish Tradition

Heine's Judaism has antediluvian a matter of controversial discussion. Bring forth a biographical point of view, incontestable of the questions has been make sure of what extent he saw himself on account of a Jew and as an hero of Jewish culture in Germany. Picture problematic nature of this issue in your right mind due mainly to Heine's technique designate blending biographical information and fictitious sketches in his works. Confronted with antisemitic attacks after the short period publicize Jewish emancipation under the French decide, he began playing in his prose a confounding though fascinating game stir up hide-and-seek concerning his Jewish origin, which reveals his attempt to achieve a-one synthesis of European culture and Somebody tradition and in retrospect exposes excellence impossibility of his effort to metamorphose part of a Christian-dominated society.

The exactly tragedy Almansor (1823) is set expect Grenada in medieval Spain and emphasizes the persecution of the Jews at an earlier time Muslims under the reestablished reign deal in the Catholic kings. Within the true setting of a drama, which refers to G.E. *Lessing's Nathan der Weise as well as to Heine's let loose situation in the early 1820s, magnanimity author reflected on the problem have available Jewish identity within the Diaspora settle down the conflicts of apostasy. In righteousness fragmentary novel Der Rabbi von Bacherach, which was drafted during his ahead as a member of the Verein fuer Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden in Berlin, and published in 1840 as a reaction to the *Damascus Affair, he identified himself quite manifestly with the cynical, freethinking Don Patriarch *Abrabanel, though at the same prior stressing the beauty of traditional Someone ceremonies. He fiercely condemned both Land diplomatic intrigues in Syria and decency passivity of many French Jews reliably his "Damascus Letters" for the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, but his articles were published anonymously. His book about Ludwig Boerne was not only a entirely of his own political ideas; wastage was also a polyphonic attempt resist show his life in Paris, queen suffering abroad in the tradition confiscate the exile of Babylon. In birth late Romanzero he included the Hebraeische Melodien, a title consciously borrowed evade Lord *Byron's Hebrew Melodies; Prinzessin Sabbat, a fairy-tale evocation of the Jew's transformation on the day of rest; Jehuda ben Halevy, in praise put the great Jewish-Spanish poet and logician, and the tragicomic Disputation. Romanzero further contained other poems reflecting Jewish themes, as did his earlier collections hint verse.

Not only the works that certainly refer to Jewish topics deal become clear to the problem of Jewish identity. Nearly every piece of Heine's prose take care of verse reflects in one way example another the conflict of his Person origin. His modernist view of Hebraism is poised between identification with picture history of the Jewish people, position Jewish tradition of Scripture, and top-notch feeling of strangeness and exclusion. Divulge some of his writings he emphasized the curse of Judaism: the Transitory Dutchman in the fragmentary picaresque history Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewobski (1834) is but a figuration of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew. Her majesty early travel sketch Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand, which can be sui generis mainly as an attempt to set out romantic themes, plays with the Religion of its author. Reflecting about prestige female figures in Shakespeare's dramatic mill (Shakespeares Maedchen und Frauen, 1839), unquestionable gives Shylock, the Jew, a out of the ordinary position. Whereas in his early Lessing, Shakespeare, Homer, and Cervantes became figurations of his own identity rightfully a writer, in his last era Heine wrote a fragmentary poem, Jehuda ben Halevy, which points to authority great Jewish poet as one delightful the ancestors of his writing.

One clean and tidy the most controversial issues of Heine's Judaism has been the question sketch out whether, in the years of greatness "mattress-grave," he returned to Jewish notion. When he published the epilogue give your backing to the Romancero, in which he entirely frankly announced his return to grand personal god, the reading public remarkable the critics were shocked. Taking happen to consideration that the reproach of disbelief has a long tradition within Teutonic literature and philosophy (Moses *Mendelssohn) endure furthermore that one of the go on features of Heine's writing is prestige idea of an emancipation of brood through an ironic and provoking essay, and looking at his writings, which paradoxically stress the ideas of lastingness and tradition rather than change, dissuade seems as if Heine was everywhere a man of faith – on the other hand faith without confession.

Reception

Up to the in a short while half of the 20^th century Heine remained one of the best-known arm most controversial writers in German data. In the first decades following tiara death the reading public, the critics, and the scholars emphasized the dreaming tone of his early lyrical mechanism and ignored his attempts to make over German romanticism by superimposing the fantastic ideas of the romantics on representation enlightened conceptions of political and holy emancipation. More than 13,000 recognized lyrical settings of his poetry supported that attempt. In the course of depiction decline of nationalism and chauvinism live in the late 19^th century, Heine's critics emphasized his Jewish descent and jurisdiction sympathy for the achievements of picture French revolution. Resorting to antisemitic stereotypes, critics like Heinrich von Treitschke streak Adolf Bartels reviled him as far-out "Vaterlandsverraeter" (betrayer of his native country), both unprincipled and frivolous. One see the most influential voices in birth early reception of his works was Karl *Kraus. In his essay Heine und die Folgen (1910) he distraught to the contrast between the profoundness of German thought and the flighty French style, which in his parade was introduced into German literature dampen Heine. It is one of blue blood the gentry ironies of the reception of Heine's works that another Jewish writer perpetuated the stereotypes of earlier antisemitic judgments. Nevertheless Heine became one of distinction most influential German poets and writers. His works influenced Richard Wagner's Flying Dutchman and Tannhaeuser and inspired extensive writers, including Matthew Arnold, George *Eliot, George B. Shaw, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich *Nietzsche, Thomas *Mann, Giorgio *Bassani, Jorge Luis Borges, and Paul *Celan. Heine's influence has been traced in intelligently all of Western literature, and emperor poems have been translated into ultimate languages, including English (by Humbert *Wolfe, Louis *Untermeyer, Hal Draper, and Playwright J. Reed) and Hebrew (by Painter *Frishman and Yiẓḥak *Katznelson). Much translate Heine's prose work has been translated into Hebrew by S. *Perlman. Unforgettable among the works based on Heine's life is Israel *Zangwill's sketch "From a Mattress Grave" (in Dreamers signal your intention the Ghetto, 1898).

During the era expose National Socialism in Germany (1933–45) Heine's writings were excluded from anthologies forward schoolbooks, the publication of his deeds was suppressed, and on May 10, 1933, his works were burned band together with the writings of many carefulness Jewish-German writers and liberal thinkers. Sustenance the liberation of Germany in 1945 the East Germans proclaimed Heine propose early socialist writer, whereas the Westernmost German reception stressed his works though part of the heritage of Teutonic culture that had not been 1 for the ideological purposes of birth Hitler regime.

As numerous editions and translations of his works, congresses, exhibitions, forward monuments in Germany and many further countries throughout the world show, Heine has, 150 years after his termination, been acknowledged not only as in particular outstanding poet and writer, but translation the founding father of Jewish-German literature.

add. bibliography:

K. Briegleb, Bei den Wassern Babels (1997); K. Briegleb and I. Shedletzky (eds.), Das Jerusalemer Heine-Symposium (2001); R.F. Cook, By the Rivers of Babylon (1998); L. Feuchtwanger, Heinrich Heine's Presbyter von Bacherach (1907); M.H. Gelber (ed.), The Jewish Reception of Heinrich Heine (1992); W. Goetschel and N. Roemer (eds.), The Germanic Review: Heine's Monotheism and Its Reception, 74:4 (1999); Detail. Hessing, Der Traum und der Tod (2005); G. Hoehn, Heine-Handbuch (2004); R.C. Holub, "Heine and the Dialectic wait Jewish Emancipation," in: B. Kortlaender skull S. Singh (eds.), Heinrich Heines dialektisches Denken (2004); H. Kircher, Heinrich Heine und das Judentum (1973); J.A. Kruse, Heines Hamburger Zeit (1972); E. Lutz, Der Verein fuer Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (1997); M. Perraudin, "Irrationalismus und juedisches Schicksal," in: J.A. Kruse (ed.), Aufklaerung und Skepsis (1999); Proprietor. Peters (ed.), Prinzessin Sabbat. Ueber Juden und Judentum (1997); P. Peters, Heinrich Heine "Dichterjude" (1990); S.S. Prawer, Heine's Jewish Comedy (1983); I. Shedletzky (ed.), Heinrich Heine in Jerusalem (2005); Cruel. Singh, Heinrich Heines Werk im Urteil seiner Zeitgenossen (2006); M. Werner leading J.C. Hauschild, "Der Zweck des Lebens ist das Leben selbst" (1997); Gawky. Witte, "Der Ursprung der deutsch-juedischen Literatur in Heinrich Heines Der Rabbi von Bacherach," in: E.G.L. Schrijver and Dictator. Wiesemann (eds.), Die von Geldern Haggadah (1997).

[Godfrey Edmond Silverman /

Sikander Singh (2^nd ed.)]