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Heine, Heinrich, 1797-1856We have 7 books for this author.
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. LifeHeine 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. 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 lieder 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. Heine left Germany for Paris, France in 1831. There he associated with utopian socialists, including the followers of Count Saint-Simon, who preached an egalitarian classless paradise based on meritocracy. He remained in Paris, with the exception of a visit in 1843 to Germany, for the rest of his life. German authorities banned his works and those of others who were considered to be associated with the Young Germany movement in 1835. His poetry modulates continually between a romantic-conservative and a radical, satiric stress. Politics and personal mood made him a commuter in Europe. Heine continued, however, to comment on German politics and society from a distance. Heine wrote Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (Germany. A Winter's Tale), an account of his visit to Germany the previous year 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. 
Heine wrote movingly of the experience of exile in his poem In der Fremde ("Abroad"):
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 his most famous lines 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." — Almansor, 1821) 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 IsraelIn 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
Editions in English
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This biographical information was gathered from the Heinrich_Heine page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project. BooksBuch der LiederDe Beurs Lacht De Franse Pers Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen Franse Toestanden Romanzero Runoelmia |
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