page_title: Heinrich Heine
section_title: Foreign correspondent
hierarchical_section_title: Heinrich Heine / Paris years / Foreign correspondent
caption_attribution_description: English: Heinrich Heine Català: Heinrich Heine Čeština: Heinrich Heine Cymraeg: Heinrich Heine Dansk: Heinrich Heine Deutsch: Heinrich Heine Dansk: Heinrich Heine Zazaki: Heinrich Heine Ελληνικά: Χάινριχ Χάινε Español: Heinrich Heine Suomi: Heinrich Heine Français&#160;: Heinrich Heine Galego: Heinrich eHein עברית: היינריך היינה Hrvatski: Heinrich Heine Magyar: Heinrich Heine Interlingua: Heinrich Heine Italiano: Heinrich Heine 日本語: ハインリヒ・ハイネ ქართული: ჰაინრიხ ჰაინე Latina: Henricus Heine Limburgs: Heinrich Heine Latviešu: Heinrihs Heine Монгол: Хайнрих Хайне Nederlands: Heinrich Heine Norsk nynorsk: Heinrich Heine Norsk bokmål: Heinrich Heine Polski: Heinrich Heine Português: Heinrich Heine Română: Heinrich Heine Русский: Гейне, Генрих Slovenčina: Heinrich Heine Slovenščina: Heinrich Heine Svenska: Heinrich Heine Türkçe: Heinrich Heine
context_page_description: Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered part of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.
context_section_description: Heine left Germany for France in 1831, settling in Paris for the remainder of his life. His move was prompted by the July Revolution of 1830 that had made Louis-Philippe the  "Citizen King" of the French. Heine shared liberal enthusiasm for the revolution, which he felt had the potential to overturn the conservative political order in Europe. Heine was also attracted by the prospect of freedom from German censorship and was interested in the new French utopian political doctrine of Saint-Simonianism. Saint-Simonianism preached a new social order in which meritocracy would replace hereditary distinctions in rank and wealth. There would also be female emancipation and an important role for artists and scientists. Heine frequented some Saint-Simonian meetings after his arrival in Paris but within a few years his enthusiasm for the ideology – and other forms of utopianism- had waned.
  Heine soon became a celebrity in France. Paris offered him a cultural richness unavailable in the smaller cities of Germany. He made many famous acquaintances (the closest were Gérard de Nerval and Hector Berlioz) but he always remained something of an outsider. He had little interest in French literature and wrote everything in German, subsequently translating it into French with the help of a collaborator.
  In Paris, Heine earned money working as the French correspondent for one of Cotta's newspapers, the Allgemeine Zeitung. The first event he covered was the Salon of 1831. His articles were eventually collected in a volume entitled Französische Zustände ("Conditions in France"). Heine saw himself as a mediator between Germany and France. If the two countries understood one another there would be progress. To further this aim he published De l'Allemagne ("On Germany") in French (begun 1833). In its later German version, the book is divided into two: Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland ("On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany") and Die romantische Schule ("The Romantic School"). Heine was deliberately attacking Madame de Staël's book De l'Allemagne (1813) which he viewed as reactionary, Romantic and obscurantist. He felt de Staël had portrayed a Germany of "poets and thinkers", dreamy, religious, introverted and cut off from the revolutionary currents of the modern world. Heine thought that such an image suited the oppressive German authorities. He also had an Enlightenment view of the past, seeing it as mired in superstition and atrocities. "Religion and Philosophy in Germany" describes the replacement of traditional "spiritualist" religion by a pantheism that pays attention to human material needs. According to Heine, pantheism had been repressed by Christianity and had survived in German folklore. He predicted that German thought would prove a more explosive force than the French Revolution.
  Heine had had few serious love affairs, but in late 1834 he made the acquaintance of a 19-year-old Paris shopgirl, Crescence Eugénie Mirat, whom he nicknamed "Mathilde". Heine reluctantly began a relationship with her. She was illiterate, knew no German, and had no interest in cultural or intellectual matters. Nevertheless, she moved in with Heine in 1836 and lived with him for the rest of his life (they were married in 1841).
caption: Heine, 1837
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