Heinrich Heine

**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"