Heinrich Heine Germany

Heinrich Heine was a leading poet and author of diverse prose works in the generation following Goethe and Schiller. His writings range from lyrical poetry in a Romantic vein to works of biting satire. He was born in Düsseldorf in 1797 and died in Paris in 1856, where for twenty-five years he had lived in exile from his native Germany. His move reflected his attraction to the revolutionary ideas of France and also the struggle for a writer of his political stripe to flourish in Germany. His Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs, 1827) remains among the most widely read of all German books of poetry. One of the reasons for its popularity was that so many of the poems were set to music by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn and many others. His numerous prose works included autobiography, literary criticism, political and cultural commentary. In the last eight years of his life he was confined to bed with a debilitating illness, through which, however, he continued to write and comment on public events.

(2021)