Heinrich Heine Biography

Author: Fritz J. Radaatz
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-01-01
Features: He is the gentle hater, the jealous admirer, the born liar—he is a poet: Heinrich Heine. The Germans never forgave him, because beautiful poetry had to be his credit. He was as close to the Rothschild millionaires as family, made friends with Marx, and was persecuted by Metternich; he was praised in France, slandered in Germany, not very successful in his lifetime, and rumors spread as he lay dying in Paris, and became legendary after his burial in Montmartre Cemetery. His life was also his legend, and even fictional. A fabricated birth date, a fabricated name for his wife, and until memoirs that never existed were used to threaten others. His poetic artistry was the most meaningful after Goethe, and there was no one to follow in the German language. For his poetic artistry, he sifted through the world. The world was his enemy, the enemy of this Jew who was slandered all his life, and also the enemy of this artist. His astonishing modernity lay precisely in the fact that he was the sole measure of himself. This might have been his whole life!