Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century.

Heine was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Düsseldorf, Germany. His father was a tradesman.
After his father's business failed, Heine was sent to Hamburg. His uncle in Hamburg was a very successful banker, so Heine started learning banking, but he soon dropped it. Then Heine started to study law at the universities of Göttingen, Bonn and Berlin but was more interested in literature than law. He nonetheless took a degree in law in 1825. At the same time he decided to convert from Judaism to Protestantism because of the severe restrictions on Jews in the German states. Only Christians were allowed to have certain businesses or to be clerks of the state. Jews were also forbidden to become university professors, a particular ambition at the time for Heine. Heine himself said, his conversion was "the ticket of admission into European culture".
Heine is best known for his lyric poetry, much of which was set to music by lieder composers, including especially Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann.

His start as poet Heine was made with Gedichte ("Poems") in 1821. Heine's 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. He met people who followed Count Saint-Simon, who preached an egalitarian classless society.

He remained in Paris for the rest of his life. His only visit to Germany was in 1843. German authorities banned his works and those of others who were considered to be associated with the Young Germany movement in 1835.

Heine continued to comment on German politics and society from a distance. Heine wrote Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (Germany. A Winter's Tale). In 1844; his friend, Karl Marx, published it in his newspaper Vorwärts ("Forward") in 1844.

One of the books was burned by the Nazis. One of Heine's most famous lines is now: "Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too" (Almansor, 1821).

In 1851 Heinrich Heine wrote the "König Richard" poem. The poem was written in tribute to King Richard I of England and it was translated into several languages.

Some works 

 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
 Über Ludwig Börne, 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.) (collected works)
 Sämtliche Werke, 1910-20 (collected works)
 Sämtliche Werke, 1925-30 (collected works)
 Werke und Briefe, 1961-64 (works and letters)
 Sämtliche Schriften, 1968 (all written works)

Other websites 

 "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-Universität Düsseldorf
 Complete works of Heine online (in German)
 Selected English translations online 
 Art of the States: The Resounding Lyre  Musical setting of Heine's poem "Halleluja"

References

1797 births
1856 deaths
Burials at Montmartre Cemetery, Paris
German poets
Jewish German writers
Jews who converted to Christianity
People from Düsseldorf