Heinrich Heine
A painting of Heine, by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim
Born	Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (1797-12-13)13 December 1797 Düsseldorf
Died	17 February 1856(1856-02-17) (aged 58) Paris, France
Occupation	Poet, essayist, journalist, literary critic
Nationality	German
Alma mater	Bonn, Berlin, Göttingen
Literary movement	Romanticism
Notable work(s)	Buch der Lieder, Reisebilder, Germany. A Winter's Tale, Atta Troll, Romanzero
Relative(s)	Salomon Heine, Gustav Heine von Geldern
Influences Folk songs · Lessing · Hegel · Friedrich Schlegel · Goethe · Byron · Aristophanes
Influenced German poetry  · Marx · Matthew Arnold · Nietzsche

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose is distinguished by its satirical wit and irony. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities. Heine spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.

Early life[link]

Childhood and youth[link]

Heine's mother, "Betty"

Heine was born in Düsseldorf, Rhineland, into a Jewish family. He was called "Harry" as a child, but became "Heinrich" after his conversion to Christianity in 1825.^[1] Heine's father, Samson Heine (1764–1828), was a textile merchant. His mother Peira (known as "Betty"), née van Geldern (1771–1859), was the daughter of a physician. Heinrich was the eldest of the four children; his siblings were Charlotte, Gustav - who later became Baron Heine-Geldern and publisher of the Viennese newspaper Das Fremdenblatt - and Maximilian, later a physician in Saint Petersburg.^[2]

The Radspielerhaus - Heine's home in Munich from 1827 to 1828

Düsseldorf was then a small town with a population of around 16,000. The Revolution in neighbouring France and the subsequent Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars which involved Germany meant that Düsseldorf had a complicated political history during Heine's childhood. It had been the capital of the Duchy of Jülich-Berg but at the time of his birth it was under French occupation. Then it went to the Elector of Bavaria before being conquered by Napoleon in 1806. Napoleon turned it into the capital of the Grand Duchy of Berg, one of three French states he established in Germany. It was first ruled by Joachim Murat, then by Napoleon himself.^[3] In 1815, on Napoleon's downfall, it became part of Prussia. Heine's formative years were thus spent under French influence. The adult Heine would always be devoted to the French for introducing the Napoleonic Code and trial by jury. He glossed over the negative aspects of French rule: the heavy taxation, conscription and the economic depression brought on by the Continental Blockade. He greatly admired Napoleon as the promoter of the revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality. Heine loathed the political atmosphere in Germany after Napoleon's defeat, which was marked by the conservative policies of the Austrian chancellor Metternich, who tried to reverse the effects of the French Revolution.^[4]

Heine's parents were not particularly devout Jews. When he was a young child they sent him to a Jewish school where he learned a smattering of Hebrew. Thereafter he attended Catholic schools. Here he learned French, which would be his second language, although he always spoke it with a German accent. He also acquired a lifelong love for Rhineland folklore.^[5]

In 1814 Heine went to a business school in Düsseldorf where he learned to read English, the commercial language of the time.^[6] The most successful member of the Heine family was his uncle Salomon, who was a millionaire banker in Hamburg. In 1816 Heine moved to Hamburg to become an apprentice at Heckscher & Co, his uncle Salomon's bank, but he displayed little aptitude for business. He learned to hate Hamburg with its commercial ethos but it would become one of the poles of his life alongside Paris. When he was 18, Heine almost certainly had an unrequited love for his cousin Amalie, Salomon's daughter. Whether he then transferred his affections (equally unsuccessfully) to her sister Therese is unknown.^[7] This period in Heine's life is not very clear, but it seems that his father Samson's business deteriorated and Samson Heine effectively became the ward of his brother Salomon.^[8]

Universities[link]

Salomon realised that his nephew had no talent for trade and it was decided that Heine should enter the law. So, in 1819, Heine went to the University of Bonn (then in Prussia). Political life in Germany was divided between conservatives and liberals. The conservatives, who were in power, wanted to restore things to the way they were before the French Revolution. They were against German unification because they felt a united Germany might fall victim to revolutionary ideas. Most German states were absolutist monarchies with a censored press. The opponents of the conservatives, the liberals, wanted to replace absolutism with representative, constitutional government, equality before the law and a free press. At the University of Bonn, liberal students were at war with the conservative authorities. Heine was a radical liberal and one of the first things he did after his arrival was to take part in a parade which violated the Carlsbad Decrees, a series of measures introduced by Metternich to suppress liberal political activity.^[9]

Heine was more interested in studying history and literature than law. The university had engaged the famous literary critic and thinker August Wilhelm Schlegel as a lecturer and Heine heard him talk about the Nibelungenlied and Romanticism. Though he would later mock Schlegel, Heine found in him a sympathetic critic for his early verses. Heine began to acquire a reputation as a poet at Bonn. He also wrote two tragedies, Almansor and William Ratcliff, but they had little success in the theatre.^[10]

After a year at Bonn, Heine left to continue his law studies at the University of Göttingen. Heine hated the town. It was part of Hanover, ruled by the King of England, the power Heine blamed for bringing Napoleon down. Here the poet experienced an aristocratic snobbery absent elsewhere. He also hated law as the Historical School of law he had to study was used to bolster the reactionary form of government he opposed. Other events conspired to make Heine loathe this period of his life: he was expelled from a student fraternity for anti-Semitic reasons and he heard the news that his cousin Amalie had become engaged. When Heine challenged another student, Wiebel, to a duel (the first of ten known incidents throughout his life), the authorities stepped in and Heine was suspended from the university for six months. His uncle now decided to send him to the University of Berlin.^[11]

The Brocken, in the Harz Mountains, described in Heine's Die Harzreise

Hegel with his Berlin students, by Franz Kugler

Heine arrived in Berlin in March 1821. It was the biggest, most cosmopolitan city he had ever visited (its population was about 200,000). The university gave Heine access to notable cultural figures as lecturers: the Sanskritist Franz Bopp and the Homer critic F.A. Wolf, who inspired Heine's lifelong love of Aristophanes. Most important was the philosopher Hegel, whose influence on Heine is hard to gauge. He probably gave Heine and other young students the idea that history had a meaning which could be seen as progressive.^[12] Heine also made valuable acquaintances in Berlin, notably the liberal Karl August Varnhagen and his Jewish wife Rahel, who held a leading salon.

Another friend was the satirist Karl Immermann, who had praised Heine's first verse collection, Gedichte, when it appeared in December 1821.^[13] During his time in Berlin Heine also joined the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, a society which attempted to achieve a balance between the Jewish faith and modernity. Since Heine was not very religious in outlook he soon lost interest, but he also began to investigate Jewish history. He was particularly drawn to the Spanish Jews of the Middle Ages. In 1824 Heine began a historical novel, Der Rabbi von Bacherach, which he never managed to finish.^[14]

In May 1823 Heine left Berlin for good and joined his family at their new home in Lüneburg. Here he began to write the poems of the cycle Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming"). He returned to Göttingen where he was again bored by the law. In September 1824 he decided to take a break and set off on a trip through the Harz mountains. On his return he started writing an account of it, Die Harzreise.^[15]

On 28 June 1825 Heine converted to Protestantism. The Prussian government had been gradually restoring discrimination against Jews. In 1822 it introduced a law excluding Jews from academic posts and Heine had ambitions for a university career. As Heine said in self-justification, his conversion was "the ticket of admission into European culture". In the event, Heine's conversion, which was reluctant, never brought him any benefits in his career.^[16][17]

Julius Campe and first literary successes[link]

Heine now had to search for a job. He was only really suited to writing but it was extremely difficult to be a professional writer in Germany. The market for literary works was small and it was only possible to make a living by writing virtually non-stop. Heine was incapable of doing this so he never had enough money to cover his expenses. Before finding work, Heine visited the North Sea resort of Norderney which inspired the free verse poems of his cycle Die Nordsee.^[18]

First page of first edition of Heine's Buch der Lieder, 1827

In Hamburg one evening in January 1826 Heine met Julius Campe, who would be his chief publisher for the rest of his life. Their stormy relationship has been compared to a marriage. Campe was a liberal who published as many dissident authors as he could. He had developed various techniques for evading the authorities. The laws of the time stated that any book under 320 pages had to be submitted to censorship (the authorities thought long books would cause little trouble as they were unpopular). One way round censorship was to publish dissident works in large print to increase the number of pages beyond 320.

The censorship in Hamburg was relatively lax but Campe had to worry about Prussia, the largest German state which had the largest market for books (it was estimated that one-third of the German readership was Prussian). Initially, any book which had passed the censor in a German state was able to be sold in any of the other states but in 1834 this loophole was closed. Campe was reluctant to publish uncensored books as he had bad experience of print runs being confiscated. Heine resisted all censorship. So this issue became a bone of contention between the two.^[19] But the relationship between author and publisher started well: Campe published the first volume of Reisebilder ("Travel Pictures") in May 1826. This volume included Die Harzreise, which marked a new style of German travel-writing, mixing Romantic descriptions of Nature with satire. Heine's Buch der Lieder followed in 1827. This was a collection of already published poems. No one expected it would be one of the most popular books of German verse ever published and sales were slow to start with, picking up when composers began setting Heine's poems as Lieder.^[20] For example the poem "Allnächtlich im Traume" of the Buch der Lieder was set to music by Robert Schumann as well as by Felix Mendelssohn. It contains the ironical disillusionment which is typical of Heine:

Allnächtlich im Traume seh ich dich,

Und sehe dich freundlich grüßen,

Und lautaufweinend stürz ich mich

Zu deinen süßen Füßen.

Du siehst mich an wehmütiglich,

Und schüttelst das blonde Köpfchen;

Aus deinen Augen schleichen sich

Die Perlentränentröpfchen.

Du sagst mir heimlich ein leises Wort,

Und gibst mir den Strauß von Zypressen.

Ich wache auf, und der Strauß ist fort,

Und das Wort hab ich vergessen.

(non-literal translation in verse by Hal Draper:)

Nightly I see you in dreams-you speak,

With kindliness sincerest,

I throw myself, weeping aloud and weak

At your sweet feet, my dearest.

You look at me with wistful woe,

And shake your golden curls;

And stealing from your eyes there flow

The teardrops like to pearls.

You breathe in my ear a secret word,

A garland of cypress for token.

I wake; it is gone; the dream is blurred,

And forgotten the word that was spoken.

Starting from the mid-1820s Heine distanced himself from Romanticism by adding irony, sarcasm and satire into his poetry and making fun of the sentimental-romantic awe of nature and of figures of speech in contemporary poetry and literature.^[21] An example are these lines:

<poem style="margin-left:5em;"> Das Fräulein stand am Meere Und seufzte lang und bang. Es rührte sie so sehre der Sonnenuntergang.

Mein Fräulein! Sein sie munter, Das ist ein altes Stück; Hier vorne geht sie unter Und kehrt von hinten zurück.

A mistress stood by the sea sighing long and anxiously. She was so deeply stirred By the setting sun

My Fräulein!, be gay, This is an old play; ahead of you it sets And from behind it returns. </poem>

Heine, 1829

Count von Platen, target of Heine's satire in Die Bäder von Lucca

Heine became increasingly critical of despotism and reactionary chauvinism in Germany, of nobility and clerics but also of the narrow-mindedness of ordinary people and of the rising German form of nationalism, especially in contrast to the French and the revolution. Nevertheless, he made a point of stressing his love for his Fatherland:

Plant the black, red, gold banner at the summit of the German idea, make it the standard of free mankind, and I will shed my dear heart's blood for it. Rest assured, I love the Fatherland just as much as you do.

Travel and the Platen affair[link]

The first volume of travel writings was such a success that Campe pressed Heine for another. Reisebilder II appeared in April 1827. It contains the second cycle of North Sea poems, a prose essay on the North Sea as well as a new work, Ideen: Das Buch Le Grand, which contains the following satire on German censorship:^[22] <poem style="margin-left:5em;"> The German Censors  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——    idiots    ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  —— </poem>^[23]

Heine went to England to avoid what he predicted would be controversy over the publication of this work. In London he cashed a cheque from his uncle for £200 (equal to £15,086 today), much to Salomon's chagrin. Heine was unimpressed by the English: he found them commercial and prosaic and still blamed them for the defeat of Napoleon.^[24]

On his return to Germany, Cotta, the liberal publisher of Goethe and Schiller, offered Heine a job co-editing a magazine, Politische Annalen, in Munich. Heine did not find work on the newspaper congenial, and instead tried to obtain a professorship at Munich University, with no success.^[25] After a few months he took a trip to northern Italy, visiting Lucca, Florence and Venice, but was forced to return when he received news that his father had died. This Italian journey resulted in a series of new works: Die Reise von München nach Genua ("Journey from Munich to Genoa"), Die Bäder von Lucca ("The Baths of Lucca") and Die Stadt Lucca ("The Town of Lucca").^[26] Die Bäder von Lucca embroiled Heine in controversy. The aristocratic poet August von Platen had been annoyed by some epigrams by Immermann which Heine had included in the second volume of Reisebilder. He counter-attacked by writing a play, Die romantische Ödipus, which included anti-Semitic jibes about Heine. Heine was stung and responded by mocking Platen's homosexuality in Die Bäder von Lucca.^[27]

Paris years[link]

Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, celebrating France's 1830 revolution

Foreign correspondent[link]

Heine, 1837

In 1831 Heine left Germany for France, settling in Paris for his remaining 25 years of life. His move was prompted by the July Revolution of 1830 which 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.^[28] 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.^[29][30]

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.^[31]

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").^[32] 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 which 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.^[33]

Heine's wife "Mathilde" (Crescence Eugénie Mirat)

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 fell in love 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).^[34]

Young Germany and Ludwig Börne[link]

Börne. Portrait by Oppenheim.

Heine and his fellow radical exile in Paris, Ludwig Börne, had become the role models for a younger generation of writers who were given the name "Young Germany". They included Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg. They were liberal, but not actively political. Nevertheless, they still fell foul of the authorities. In 1835 Gutzkow published a novel, Wally die Zweiflerin ("Wally the Sceptic"), which contained criticism of the institution of marriage and some mildly erotic passages. In November of that year, the German Diet consequently banned publication of works by the Young Germans in Germany and – on Metternich's insistence – Heine's name was added to their number. Heine, however, continued to comment on German politics and society from a distance. His publisher was able to find some ways of getting around the censors and he was still free, of course, to publish in France.^[35][36]

Heine's relationship with his fellow dissident Ludwig Börne was troubled. Since Börne did not attack religion or traditional morality like Heine, the German authorities hounded him less although they still banned his books as soon as they appeared. Börne was the idol of German immigrant workers in Paris. He was also a republican, while Heine was not. Heine regarded Börne, with his admiration for Robespierre, as a puritanical neo-Jacobin and remained aloof from him in Paris, which upset Börne, who began to criticise him (mostly semi-privately). In February 1837, Börne died. When Heine heard that Gutzkow was writing a biography of Börne, he began work on his own, severely critical "memorial" of the man.

When the book was published in 1840 it was universally disliked by the radicals and served to alienate Heine from his public. Even his enemies admitted that Börne was a man of integrity so Heine's ad hominem attacks on him were viewed as being in poor taste. Heine had made personal attacks on Börne's closest friend Jeannette Wihl so Jeannette's husband challenged Heine to a duel. It was the last Heine ever fought - he received a flesh wound in the hip. Before fighting, he decided to safeguard Mathilde's future in the event of his death by marrying her.^[37]

Illustration by Max Liebermann for a 1920s edition of Heine's historical novel Der Rabbi von Bacherach

Heine continued to write reports for Cotta's Allgemeine Zeitung (and, when Cotta died, for his son and successor). One event which really galvanised him was the 1840 Damascus Affair in which Jews in Damascus had been subject to blood libel and accused of murdering an old Catholic monk. This led to a wave of anti-Semitic persecution. The French government, aiming at imperialism in the Middle East and not wanting to offend the Catholic party, had failed to condemn the outrage. On the other hand, the Austrian consul in Damascus had assiduously exposed the blood libel as a fraud. For Heine, this was a reversal of values: reactionary Austria standing up for the Jews while revolutionary France temporised. Heine responded by dusting off and publishing his unfinished novel about the persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages, Der Rabbi von Bacherach.^[38]

Political poetry and Karl Marx[link]

In 1840 German poetry took a more directly political turn when the new Frederick William IV ascended the Prussian throne. Initially it was thought he might be a "popular monarch" and during this honeymoon period of his early reign (1840–42) censorship was relaxed. This led to the emergence of popular political poets (so-called Tendenzdichter), including Hoffmann von Fallersleben (the author of "Deutschland Über Alles"), Ferdinand Freiligrath and Georg Herwegh. Heine looked down on these writers on aesthetic grounds – they were bad poets in his opinion – but his verse of the 1840s became more political too.

Heine's mode was satirical attack: against the Kings of Bavaria and Prussia (he never for one moment shared the belief that Frederick William IV might be more liberal); against the political torpor of the German people; and against the greed and cruelty of the ruling class. The most popular of Heine's political poems was his least typical, Die schlesischen Weber ("The Silesian Weavers"), based on the uprising of weavers in Peterswaldau in 1844.^[39][40]

Front page of Marx's Vorwärts, featuring Heine's poem "Die schlesischen Weber"

In October 1843, Karl Marx and his wife Jenny von Westphalen arrived in Paris after the Prussian government had suppressed Marx's radical newspaper. The Marx family settled in Rue Vaneau. Marx was an admirer of Heine and his early writings show Heine's influence. In December Heine met the Marxes and got on well with them. He published several poems, including Die schlesischen Weber, in Marx's new journal Vorwärts ("Forwards"). Ultimately Heine's ideas of revolution through sensual emancipation and Marx's "scientific materialism" were incompatible, but both writers shared the same negativity and lack of faith in the bourgeoisie.

In the isolation he felt after the Börne debacle, Marx's friendship came as a relief to Heine, since he did not really like the other radicals. On the other hand, he did not share Marx's faith in the industrial proletariat and remained on the fringes of socialist circles. The Prussian government, angry at the publication of Vorwärts, put pressure on France to deal with its authors and in January 1845 Marx was deported to Belgium. Heine could not be expelled from the country because he had the right of residence in France, having been born under French occupation.^[41] Thereafter Heine and Marx maintained a sporadic correspondence, but in time their admiration for one another faded.^[42][43] Heine always had mixed feelings about communism. He believed its radicalism and materialism would destroy much of the European culture that he loved and admired.

In the French edition of "Lutetia" Heine wrote, one year before he died: "This confession, that the future belongs to the Communists, I made with an undertone of the greatest fear and sorrow and, oh!, this undertone by no means is a mask! Indeed, with fear and terror I imagine the time, when those dark iconoclasts come to power: with their raw fists they will batter all marble images of my beloved world of art, they will ruin all those fantastic anecdotes that the poets loved so much, they will chop down my Laurel forests and plant potatoes and, oh!, the herbs chandler will use my Book of Songs to make bags for coffee and snuff for the old women of the future – oh!, I can foresee all this and I feel deeply sorry thinking of this decline threatening my poetry and the old world order - And yet, I freely confess, the same thoughts have a magical appeal upon my soul which I cannot resist …. In my chest there are two voices in their favour which cannot be silenced …. because the first one is that of logic … and as I cannot object to the premise "that all people have the right to eat", I must defer to all the conclusions….The second of the two compelling voices, of which I am talking, is even more powerful than the first, because it is the voice of hatred, the hatred I dedicate to this common enemy that constitutes the most distinctive contrast to communism and that will oppose the angry giant already at the first instance – I am talking about the party of the so-called advocates of nationality in Germany, about those false patriots whose love for the fatherland only exists in the shape of imbecile distaste of foreign countries and neighbouring peoples and who daily pour their bile especially on France".^[44]

In October–December 1843 Heine made a journey to Hamburg to see his aged mother and to patch things up with Campe with whom he had had a quarrel. He was reconciled with the publisher who agreed to provide Mathilde with an annuity for the rest of her life after Heine's death. Heine repeated the trip with his wife in July–October 1844 to see Uncle Salomon, but this time things did not go so well. It was the last time Heine would ever leave France.^[45] At the time, Heine was working on two linked but antithetical poems with Shakespearean titles: Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen ("Germany. A Winter's Tale") and Atta Troll: Ein Sommernachtstraum ("Atta Troll: A Midsummer Night's Dream"). The former is based on his journey to Germany in late 1843 and outdoes the radical poets in its satirical attacks on the political situation in the country.^[46] Atta Troll (actually begun in 1841 after a trip to the Pyrenees) mocks the literary failings Heine saw in the radical poets, particularly Freiligrath. It tells the story of the hunt for a runaway bear, Atta Troll, who symbolises many of the attitudes Heine despised, including a simple-minded egalitarianism and a religious view which makes God in the believer's image (Atta Troll conceives God as an enormous, heavenly polar bear). Atta Troll's cubs embody the nationalistic views Heine loathed.^[47]

Atta Troll was not published until 1847, but Deutschland appeared in 1844 as part of a collection Neue Gedichte ("New Poems"), which gathered all the verse Heine had written since 1831.^[48] In the same year Uncle Salomon died. This put a stop to Heine's annual subsidy of 4,800 francs. Salomon left Heine and his brothers 8,000 francs each in his will. Heine's cousin Carl, the inheritor of Salomon's business, offered to pay him 2,000 francs a year at his discretion. Heine was furious; he had expected much more from the will and his campaign to make Carl revise its terms occupied him for the next two years.^[49]

In 1844, Heine wrote series of musical feuilletons over several different music seasons discussing the music of the day. His review of the musical season of 1844, written in Paris on April 25, 1844, is the first place where he uses the term Lisztomania, a term used to describe the intense fan frenzy directed toward Franz Liszt during his performances. However, Heine was not always honorable in his musical criticism. In April 1844 he wrote to Liszt suggesting that he might like to look at a newspaper review he had written of Liszt's performance before his concert; he indicated that that it contained comments Liszt would not like. Liszt took this as an attempt to extort money for a positive review and did not meet Heine. Heine's review subsequently appeared on April 25 in Musikalische Berichte aus Paris and attributed Liszt's success to lavish expenditures on bouquets and to the wild behaviour of his hysterical female "fans." Liszt then broke relations with Heine. Liszt was not the only musician to be blackmailed by Heine for the nonpayment of "appreciation money." Meyerbeer had both lent and given money to Heine, but after refusing to hand over a further 500 francs was repaid by being dubbed "a music corrupter" in Heine's poem Die Menge tut es.^[50]

Last years: the "mattress-grave"[link]

Heine on his sickbed, 1851

In May 1848, Heine, who had not been well, suddenly fell paralyzed and had to be confined to bed. He would not leave what he called his "mattress-grave" (Matratzengruft) until his death eight years later. He also experienced difficulties with his eyes.^[51] It had been suggested that he suffered from multiple sclerosis or syphilis, although in 1997 it was confirmed through an analysis of the poet's hair that he had suffered from chronic lead poisoning.^{[citation needed]} He bore his sufferings stoically and he won much public sympathy for his plight.^[52] His illness meant he paid less attention than he might otherwise have done to the revolutions which broke out in France and Germany in 1848. He was sceptical about the Frankfurt Assembly and continued to attack the King of Prussia. When the revolution collapsed, Heine resumed his oppositional stance. At first he had some hope Louis Napoleon might be a good leader in France but he soon began to share the opinion of Marx towards him as the new emperor began to crack down on liberalism and socialism.^[53] In 1848 Heine also returned to religious faith. In fact, he had never claimed to be an atheist. Nevertheless, he remained sceptical of organised religion.^[54]

He continued to work from his sickbed: on the collections of poems Romanzero and Gedichte. 1853 und 1854, on the journalism collected in Lutezia, and on his unfinished memoirs.^[55] During these final years Heine had a love affair with the young Camille Selden, who visited him regularly.^[56] He died on 17 February 1856 and was interred in the Paris Cimetière de Montmartre. His wife Mathilde survived him, dying in 1883. The couple had no children.^[57]

Legacy[link]

Among the thousands of books burned on Berlin's Opernplatz in 1933, following the Nazi raid on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, were works by Heinrich Heine. To commemorate the terrible event, one of the most famous lines of Heine's 1821 play Almansor was engraved in the ground at the site: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." ("That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also.")

In 1834, 99 years before Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party seized power in Germany, Heine wrote in his work "The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany":

"Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. (...)
"Do not smile at my advice -- the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll."

Music[link]

Many composers have set Heine's works to music. They include Robert Schumann (especially his Lieder cycle Dichterliebe), Friedrich Silcher (who wrote a popular setting of "Die Lorelei", one of Heine's best known poems), Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Edward MacDowell, and Richard Wagner; and in the 20th century Hans Werner Henze, Carl Orff, Lord Berners, Paul Lincke, Yehezkel Braun, Marcel Tyberg^[59] and Friedrich Baumfelder (who wrote another setting of "Die Lorelei", as well as "Die blauen Frühlingsaugen" and "Wir wuchsen in demselben Thal" in his Zwei Lieder).

Heine's play William Ratcliff was used for the libretti of operas by César Cui (William Ratcliff) and Pietro Mascagni (Guglielmo Ratcliff). Frank van der Stucken composed a "symphonic prologue" to the same play.

Controversy[link]

Statue of Lorelei: Heine memorial in the Bronx, New York

In the 1890s, amidst a flowering of affection for Heine leading up to the centennial of his birth, plans were enacted to honor Heine with a memorial; these were strongly supported by one of Heine's greatest admirers, Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria. The empress commissioned a statue from the sculptor Louis Hasselriis. Another memorial, a sculpted fountain, was commissioned for Düsseldorf. While at first the plan met with enthusiasm, the concept was gradually bogged down in anti-Semitic, nationalist, and religious criticism; by the time the fountain was finished, there was no place to put it. Through the intervention of German American activists, the memorial was ultimately transplanted into The Bronx. Known in English as the Lorelei Fountain, Germans refer to it as the Heinrich Heine Memorial.^[60] Also, after years of controversy, the University of Düsseldorf was named Heinrich Heine University. Today the city honours its poet with a boulevard (Heinrich-Heine-Allee) and a modern monument. The Heine statue, originally located in Corfu, was rejected by Hamburg, but eventually found a home in Toulon.^[61]

In Israel, the attitude to Heine has long been the subject of debate between secularists, who number him among the most prominent figures of Jewish history, and the religious who consider his conversion to Christianity to be an unforgivable act of betrayal. Due to such debates, the city of Tel-Aviv delayed naming a street for Heine, and the street finally chosen to bear his name is located in a rather desolate industrial zone rather than in the vicinity of Tel-Aviv University, suggested by some public figures as the appropriate location.

Ha'ir (a left-leaning Tel-Aviv magazine) sarcastically suggested that "The Exiling of Heine Street" symbolically re-enacted the course of Heine's own life. Since then, a street in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem and a community center in Haifa have been named after Heine. A Heine Appreciation Society is active in Israel, led by prominent political figures from both the left and right camps. His quote about burning books is prominently displayed in the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. (It is also displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).

• 

  Heine monument in Düsseldorf

• 

  Heine monument in Frankfurt, the only pre-1945 one in Germany

• 

  Monument on Mount Brocken, Harz Mountains, Germany

• 

  Heine monument in Berlin

• 

  Grave in Montmartre Paris

• 

  1956 German stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of Heine's death (Federal Republic of Germany)

• 

  1956 Soviet stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of Heine's death

Works[link]

A list of Heine's major publications in German. All dates are taken from Jeffrey L. Sammons: Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography (Princeton University Press, 1979).

• 1820 (August): Die Romantik ("Romanticism", short critical essay)
• 1821 (20 December ^[62]): Gedichte ("Poems")
• 1822 (February to July): Briefe aus Berlin ("Letters from Berlin")
• 1823 (January): Über Polen ("On Poland", prose essay)
• 1823 (April): Tragödien nebst einem lyrischen Intermezzo ("Tragedies with a Lyrical Intermezzo") includes:
  • Almansor (play, written 1821-1822)
  • William Ratcliff (play, written January 1822)
  • Lyrisches Intermezzo (cycle of poems)
• 1826 (May): Reisebilder. Erster Teil ("Travel Pictures I"), contains:
  • Die Harzreise ("The Harz Journey", prose travel work)
  • Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming", poems)
  • Die Nordsee. Erste Abteilung ("North Sea I", cycle of poems)
• 1827 (April): Reisebilder. Zweiter Teil ("Travel Pictures II"), contains:
  • Die Nordsee. Zweite Abteilung ("The North Sea II", cycle of poems)
  • Die Nordsee. Dritte Abteilung ("The North Sea III", prose essay)
  • Ideen: das Buch le Grand ("Ideas: The Book of Le Grand")
  • Briefe aus Berlin ("Letters from Berlin", a much shortened and revised version of the 1822 work)
• 1827 (October): Buch der Lieder ("Book of Songs"); collection of poems containing the following sections:
  • Junge Leiden ("Youthful Sorrows")
  • Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming", originally published 1826)
  • Lyrisches Intermezzo" ("Lyrical Intermezzo", originally published 1823)
  • "Aus der Harzreise" (poems from Die Harzreise, originally published 1826)
  • Die Nordsee ("The North Sea: Cycles I and II", originally published 1826/1827)
• 1829 (December): Reisebilder. Dritter Teil ("Travel Pictures III"), contains:
  • Die Reise von München nach Genua ("Journey from Munich to Genoa", prose travel work)
  • Die Bäder von Lucca ("The Baths of Lucca", prose travel work)
  • Anno 1829
• 1831 (January): Nachträge zu den Reisebildern ("Supplements to the Travel Pictures"), the second edition of 1833 was retitled as Reisebilder. Vierter Teil ("Travel Pictures IV"), contains:
  • Die Stadt Lucca ("The Town of Lucca", prose travel work)
  • Englische Fragmente ("English Fragments", travel writings)
• 1831 (April): Zu "Kahldorf über den Adel" (introduction to the book "Kahldorf on the Nobility", uncensored version not published until 1890)
• 1833: Französische Zustände ("Conditions in France", collected journalism)
• 1833 (December): Der Salon. Erster Teil ("The Salon I"), contains:
  • Französische Maler ("French Painters", criticism)
  • Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski ("From the Memoirs of Herr Schnabelewopski", unfinished novel)
• 1835 (January): Der Salon. Zweiter Teil ("The Salon II"), contains:
  • Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland ("On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany")
  • Neuer Frühling ("New Spring", cycle of poems)
• 1835 (November): Die romantische Schule ("The Romantic School", criticism)
• 1837 (July): Der Salon. Dritter Teil ("The Salon III"), contains:
  • Florentinische Nächte ("Florentine Nights", unfinished novel)
  • Elementargeister ("Elemental Spirits", essay on folklore)
• 1837 (July): Über den Denunzianten. Eine Vorrede zum dritten Teil des Salons. ("On the Denouncer. A Preface to Salon III", pamphlet)
• 1837 (November): Einleitung zum "Don Quixote" ("Introduction to Don Quixote", preface to a new German translation of Don Quixote)
• 1838 (November): Der Schwabenspiegel ("The Mirror of Swabia", prose work attacking poets of the Swabian School)
• 1838 (October): Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen ("Shakespeare's Girls and Women", essays on the female characters Shakespeare's tragedies and histories)
• 1839: Anno 1839
• 1840 (August): Ludwig Börne. Eine Denkschrift ("Ludwig Börne: A Memorial", long prose work about the writer Ludwig Börne)
• 1840 (November): Der Salon. Vierter Teil ("The Salon IV"), contains:
  • Der Rabbi von Bacherach ("The Rabbi of Bacharach", unfinished historical novel)
  • Über die französische Bühne ("On the French Stage", prose criticism)
• 1844 (September): Neue Gedichte ("New Poems"); contains the following sections:
  • Neuer Frühling ("New Spring", originally published in 1834)
  • Verschiedene ("Sundry Women")
  • Romanzen ("Ballads")
  • Zur Ollea ("Olio")
  • Zeitgedichte ("Poems for the Times")
  • it also includes Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen ("Germany: A Winter's Tale", long poem)
• 1847 (January): Atta Troll: Ein Sommernachtstraum ("Atta Troll: A Midsummer Night's Dream", long poem, written 1841-46)
• 1851 (September): Romanzero; collection of poems divided into three books:
  • Erstes Buch: Historien ("First Book: Histories")
  • Zweites Buch: Lamentationen ("Second Book: Lamentations")
  • Drittes Buch: Hebräische Melodien ("Third Book: Hebrew Melodies")
• 1851 (October): Der Doktor Faust. Tanzpoem ("Doctor Faust. Dance Poem", ballet libretto, written 1846)
• 1854 (October): Vermischte Schriften ("Miscellaneous Writings") in three volumes, contains:
  • Volume One:
    • Geständnisse ("Confessions", autobiographical work)
    • Die Götter im Exil ("The Gods in Exile", prose essay)
    • Die Göttin Diana ("The Goddess Diana", ballet scenario, written 1846)
    • Ludwig Marcus: Denkworte ("Ludwig Marcus: Recollections", prose essay)
    • Gedichte. 1853 und 1854 ("Poems. 1854 and 1854")
  • Volume Two:
    • Lutezia. Erster Teil ("Lutetia I", collected journalism about France)
  • Volume Three:
    • Lutezia. Zweiter Teil ("Lutetia II", collected journalism about France)

Posthumous publications[link]

• Memoiren ("Memoirs", first published in 1884 in the magazine Die Gartenlaube)

Editions in English[link]

• The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine: A Modern English Version by Hal Draper, Suhrkamp/Insel Publishers Boston, 1982. ISBN 3-518-03048-5

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Die Lotosblume
• On Wings of Song
• Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf
• Heinrich Heine Prize

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Jeffrey L. Sammons: Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography (Princeton University Press, 1979)
• Ritchie Robertson Heine (Jewish Thinkers Series, Halban, 1988)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Heinrich Heine

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Heinrich Heine

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Heinrich Heine

• Works by Heinrich Heine (many languages) at Project Gutenberg

In English[link]

• Works by/about Heinrich Heine at Internet Archive
• The German classics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: masterpieces of German literature translated into English" 1913-1914 "Heinrich Heine,". http://www.archive.org/stream/germanclassicsof06franuoft#page/n13/mode/2up. Retrieved 2010-09-24. 
• Parallel German/English text of Heine's poem Geoffroy Rudel and Melisande of Tripoli
• Deutsche Welle's review of Heinrich Heine in 2006, 150 years after his death
• "Ihr Lieder! Ihr meine guten Lieder!" a performer's guide, and "Heine Lieder Query" a searchable database with over 8000 entries, both covering musical settings of Heine's poetry for one or two voices, by Peter W. Shea
• Art of the States: The Resounding Lyre - musical setting of Heine's poem "Halleluja"
• Heinrich Heine's holy hits - Georg Klein's top ten Heine quotes on religion
• Free scores of texts by Heinrich Heine in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Loving Herodias by David P. Goldman, First Things
• Heinrich Heine(German author)-Britannica Online Encyclopedia

In German[link]

• German Heinrich Heine society
• Heinrich Heine institute
• Heinrich Heine portal - annotated, scholarly digital edition of Heine's complete works and letters with more than 12.000 digital images of original manuscripts, first editions, etc.
• Complete works of Heine online
• Heine multimedial - Heine events, multimedial biography, interpretation of works, rankings, quiz, manga, etc.
• All poems of Heinrich Heine
• Rearbuilding is House of Heinrich Heines birth

Robert Schumann in an 1850 daguerreotype

Robert Schumann,^[1] sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann,^[2] (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law to return to music, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.

Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Kinderszenen, Album für die Jugend, Blumenstück and Albumblätter are among his most famous. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication which he jointly founded.

In 1840, against her father's wishes, Schumann married pianist Clara Wieck, daughter of his former teacher, the day before she legally came of age at 21. Had they waited one day, they would have no longer needed her father's consent, which had been the subject of a long and acrimonious legal battle, which found in favor of Clara and Robert. Clara also composed music and had a considerable concert career, the earnings from which formed a substantial part of her father's fortune.

For the last two years of his life, after an attempted suicide, Schumann was confined to a mental institution, at his own request.

Biography[link]

Bust of Robert Schumann in the museum of Zwickau

Music room of Schumann

Early life[link]

House where Robert Schumann was born in 1810

Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony, the fifth and last child of the family.^[3] Schumann began to compose before the age of seven, but his boyhood was spent in the cultivation of literature as much as music – undoubtedly influenced by his father, August Schumann, a bookseller, publisher, and novelist.^[4]

Schumann began receiving general musical and piano instruction at the age of seven from Baccalaureus Kuntzsch, a teacher at the Zwickau high school. The boy immediately developed a love of music and worked at creating musical compositions himself, without the aid of Kuntzsch. Even though he often disregarded the principles of musical composition, he created works regarded as admirable for his age. The Universal Journal of Music 1850 supplement included a biographical sketch of Schumann that noted, "It has been related that Schumann, as a child, possessed rare taste and talent for portraying feelings and characteristic traits in melody,—ay, he could sketch the different dispositions of his intimate friends by certain figures and passages on the piano so exactly and comically that every one burst into loud laughter at the similitude of the portrait." (W.J. von Wasielewski 17–19)

At age 14, Schumann wrote an essay on the aesthetics of music and also contributed to a volume, edited by his father, titled Portraits of Famous Men. While still at school in Zwickau, he read the works of the German poet-philosophers Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as well as Byron and the Greek tragedians. His most powerful and permanent literary inspiration was Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, known simply as Jean Paul, a German writer whose influence is seen in Schumann's youthful novels Juniusabende, completed in 1826, and Selene.

Schumann's interest in music was sparked by seeing a performance of Ignaz Moscheles playing at Karlsbad, and he later developed an interest in the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn. His father, who had encouraged the boy's musical aspirations, died in 1826 when Schumann was 16. Neither his mother nor his guardian thereafter encouraged a career in music. In 1828 Schumann left school, and after a tour during which he met Heinrich Heine in Munich, he went to Leipzig to study law (to meet the terms of his inheritance). In 1829 his law studies continued in Heidelberg, where he became a lifelong member of Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg. (See also: Corps)

1830–34[link]

During Eastertide 1830 he heard the Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer Niccolò Paganini play in Frankfurt. In July he wrote to his mother, "My whole life has been a struggle between Poetry and Prose, or call it Music and Law." By Christmas he was back in Leipzig, at age 20 taking piano lessons from his old master Frederich Wieck, who assured him that he would be a successful concert pianist after a few years' study with him.

During his studies with Wieck, Schumann permanently injured his right hand. One suggested cause of this injury is that he damaged his finger by the use of a mechanical device designed to strengthen the weakest fingers, a device which held back one finger while he exercised the others. Another suggestion is that the injury was a side-effect of syphilis medication. A more dramatic suggestion is that in an attempt to increase the independence of his fourth finger, he may have undergone a surgical procedure to separate the tendons of the fourth finger from those of the third. The cause of the injury is not known, but Schumann abandoned ideas of a concert career and devoted himself instead to composition. To this end he began a study of music theory under Heinrich Dorn, a German composer six years his senior and, at that time, conductor of the Leipzig opera. About this time Schumann considered composing an opera on the subject of Hamlet.

[edit] Papillons

The fusion of literary ideas with musical ones – known as Program Music – may be said to have first taken shape in Papillons, Op. 2 (Butterflies), a musical portrayal of events in Jean Paul's novel Die Flegeljahre. In a letter from Leipzig dated April 1832, Schumann bids his brothers "read the last scene in Jean Paul's Flegeljahre as soon as possible, because the Papillons are intended as a musical representation of that masquerade." This inspiration is foreshadowed to some extent in his first written criticism, an 1831 essay on Frédéric Chopin's variations on a theme from Mozart's Don Giovanni, published in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. Here Chopin's work is discussed by imaginary characters created by Schumann himself: Florestan (the embodiment of Schumann's passionate, voluble side) and Eusebius (his dreamy, introspective side) – the counterparts of Vult and Walt in Flegeljahre. A third, Meister Raro, is called upon for his opinion. Raro may represent either the composer himself, Wieck's daughter Clara, or the combination of the two (Clara + Robert).

A youthful Robert Schumann

In the winter of 1832, Schumann, 22 at the time, visited relatives in Zwickau and Schneeberg, where he performed the first movement of his Symphony in G minor (without opus number, known as the "Zwickauer"). In Zwickau, the music was performed at a concert given by Clara Wieck, who was then just 13 years old. On this occasion Clara played bravura Variations by Henri Herz, a composer whom Schumann was already deriding as a philistine.^[5] Schumann's mother said to Clara, "You must marry my Robert one day."^[6] Although the Symphony in G minor was not published by Schumann during his lifetime, it has been played and recorded in recent times.

The 1833 deaths of Schumann's brother Julius and his sister-in-law Rosalie in a worldwide cholera epidemic brought on a severe depressive episode. The composer made his first apparent attempt at suicide.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Die neue Zeitschrift für Musik

By spring 1834, Schumann had sufficiently recovered to inaugurate Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), first published on 3 April 1834. Schumann published most of his critical writings in the Journal, and often lambasted the popular taste for flashy technical displays from figures whom Schumann perceived as inferior composers. Schumann campaigned to revive interest in major composers of the past, including Mozart, Beethoven and Weber, while he also promoted the work of some contemporary composers, including Chopin (about whom Schumann famously wrote, "Hats off, Gentlemen! A genius!")^[7] and Hector Berlioz, whom he praised for creating music of substance. On the other hand, Schumann disparaged the school of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. Among Schumann's associates at this time were composers Norbert Burgmüller and Ludwig Schuncke (to whom Schumann's Toccata in C is dedicated).

Schumann's editorial duties during the summer of 1834 were interrupted by his relations with 16-year-old Ernestine von Fricken – the adopted daughter of a rich Bohemian-born noble – to whom he became engaged. Schumann broke off that engagement due to his growing attraction to 15-year-old Clara Wieck. They made mutual declarations of love in December in Zwickau, where Clara appeared in concert.

Having learned in August 1835 that Ernestine von Fricken was born illegitimate, which meant that she would have no dowry, and fearful that her limited means would force him to earn his living like a "day-labourer", Schumann made a complete break with her toward the end of the year. His budding romance with Clara was soon brought to an end when her father learned of their trysts during the Christmas holidays; he summarily forbade them further meetings and ordered all correspondence between them burnt.

[edit] Carnaval

Robert Schumann, lithograph by Josef Kriehuber, in 1839.

Carnaval, Op. 9 (1834) is one of Schumann's most characteristic piano works. Schumann begins nearly every section of Carnaval with a musical cryptogram, the musical notes signified in German by the letters that spell Asch (A, E-flat, C, and B, or alternatively A-flat, C, and B; in German these are A, Es, C and H, and As, C and H respectively), the Bohemian town in which Ernestine was born, and the notes are also the musical letters in Schumann's own name. Schumann named sections for both Ernestine ("Estrella") and Clara ("Chiarina"). Eusebius and Florestan, the imaginary figures appearing so often in his critical writings, also appear, alongside brilliant imitations of Chopin and Paganini. The work comes to a close with a march of the Davidsbündler – the league of King David's men against the Philistines – in which may be heard the clear accents of truth in contest with the dull clamour of falsehood embodied in a quotation from the seventeenth century Grandfather's Dance. The march, a step nearly always in duple meter, is here in 3/4 time (triple meter). The work ends in joy and a degree of mock-triumph. In Carnaval, Schumann went further than in Papillons, by conceiving the story as well as the musical representation (and also displaying a maturation of compositional resource).

1835–39[link]

On 3 October 1835, Schumann met Felix Mendelssohn at Wieck's house in Leipzig, and his enthusiastic appreciation of that artist was shown with the same generous freedom that distinguished his acknowledgement of Chopin's greatness and most of his other colleagues, and which later prompted him to publicly pronounce the then-unknown Johannes Brahms a genius.

Clara Wieck in 1838

Despite the opposition of Clara's father, she and Robert continued a clandestine relationship which matured into a full-blown romance. In 1837, he asked her father's consent to their marriage, but was refused. Wieck ridiculed his daughter's wish to "throw herself away on a penniless composer."^{[citation needed]}

In the series of piano pieces Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, Schumann expresses the fusion of literary and musical ideas as embodied conceptions in such pieces as "Warum" and "In der Nacht". After he had written the latter of these two, he detected in the music the fanciful suggestion of a series of episodes from the myth of Hero and Leander. The collection begins, in "Des Abends", with a notable example of Schumann's predilection for rhythmic ambiguity, as unrelieved syncopation plays heavily against the time signature, (leading to a feeling of 3/8 in a movement marked 2/8) somewhat analogous to that of the first movement of Faschingsschwank aus Wien. After a fable – and the appropriately titled "Dream's Confusion" – the collection ends on an introspective note in the manner of Eusebius.^{[citation needed]}

In 1837 Schumann published his Symphonic Studies, a complex set of étude-like variations written in 1834–1835, which demanded a finished piano technique. These variations were based on a theme by the adoptive father of Ernestine von Fricken. The work – described as "one of the peaks of the piano literature, lofty in conception and faultless in workmanship" [Hutcheson] – was dedicated to the young English composer William Sterndale Bennett for whom Schumann had had a high regard when they worked together in Leipzig.

The Davidsbündlertänze, Op.6, (also published in 1837 despite the low opus number) literally "Dances of the League of David", is an embodiment of the struggle between enlightened Romanticism and musical philistinism. Schumann credited the two sides of his character with the composition of the work (the more passionate numbers are signed F. (Florestan) and the more dreamy signed E. (Eusebius)). The work begins with the 'motto of C.W.' (Clara Wieck) denoting her support for the ideals of the Davidsbund The Bund was a work of Schumann's imagination, members of which were kindred spirits (as he saw them) such as Chopin, Paganini and Clara, as well as the personalized Florestan and Eusebius.

Kinderszenen, Op. 15, completed in 1838 and a favourite of Schumann's piano works, depicts the innocence and playfulness of childhood. The "Träumerei", No. 7 of the set, is one of the most famous piano pieces ever written, which has been performed in myriad forms and transcriptions. It has been the favourite encore of several great pianists, including Vladimir Horowitz. Melodic and deceptively simple, the piece has been described as "complex" in its harmonic structure.^[8]

	Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (1838) N8. Schnell und spielend Giorgi Latsabidze, piano
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Kreisleriana (1838), considered one of Schumann's greatest works, carried his fantasy and emotional range deeper. Johannes Kreisler was the fictional poet created by poet E. T. A. Hoffmann, and characterized as a "romantic brought into contact with reality". Schumann used the figure to express emotional states in music that is "fantastic and mad." According to Hutcheson ("The Literature of the Piano"), this work is "among the finest efforts of Schumann's genius. He never surpassed the searching beauty of the slow movements (Nos. 2, 4, 6) or the urgent passion of others (Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7)...To appreciate it a high level of aesthetic intelligence is required...This is no facile music, there is severity alike in its beauty and its passion."

	Fantasie C major, Op. 17 (1836, revised 1839) 1. Sempre Fantasticamente ed Appassionatamente 2. Moderato, Sempre energico 3. Lento sostenuto Sempre piano
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The Fantasie in C, Op. 17, composed in the summer of 1836, is a work of passion and deep pathos, imbued with the spirit of the late Beethoven. Schumann intended to use proceeds from sales of the work toward the construction of a monument to Beethoven (who had died in 1827). The first movement of the Fantasie contains a musical quote from Beethoven's song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98 (at the Adagio coda, taken from the last song of the cycle). The original titles of the movements were to be "Ruins", "Triumphal Arch" and "The Starry Crown". According to Liszt,^[9] who played the work for Schumann, and to whom it was dedicated, the Fantasie was apt to be played too heavily, and should have a dreamier (träumerisch) character than vigorous German pianists tended to impart. Liszt also said, "It is a noble work, worthy of Beethoven, whose career, by the way, it is supposed to represent."^[10] Again according to Hutcheson: "No words can describe the Phantasie, no quotations set forth the majesty of its genius. It must suffice to say that it is Schumann's greatest work in large form for piano solo."^{[citation needed]}

After a visit to Vienna during which he discovered Franz Schubert's previously unknown Symphony No. 9 in C, in 1839 Schumann wrote the Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Prank from Vienna). Most of the joke is in the central section of the first movement, in which a thinly veiled reference is made to the "Marseillaise" (the song had been banned in Vienna due to harsh memories of Napoleon's invasion). The festive mood does not preclude moments of melancholic introspection in the Intermezzo.

After a long and acrimonious legal battle with her father, Schumann married Clara Wieck on 12 September 1840, at Schönefeld. They finally resolved the battle by waiting until she was of legal age and no longer subject to her father's consent for marriage. Their marriage proved a remarkable business partnership with Clara acting as an inspiration, critic, and confidant to her husband. Despite her delicate appearance, she was an extremely strong-willed and energetic woman who kept up a demanding schedule of concert tours in between bearing multiple children. Two years after they married, Friedrich Wieck at last reconciled with the couple, eager to see his grandchildren.

1840–49[link]

In the years 1832–1839, Schumann had written almost exclusively for the piano, but in 1840 alone he wrote 168 songs. Indeed 1840 (referred to as the Liederjahr or year of song) is highly significant in Schumann's musical legacy despite his earlier deriding of works for piano and voice as inferior.

Prior to the legal case and subsequent marriage, the lovers exchanged love letters and rendezvoused in secret. Robert would often wait in a cafe for hours in a nearby city just to see Clara for a few minutes after one of her concerts. The strain of this long courtship (they finally married in 1840), and of its consummation, led to this great outpouring of Lieder (vocal songs with piano accompaniment). This is evident in "Widmung", for example, where he uses the melody from Schubert's "Ave Maria" in the postlude—in homage to Clara. Schumann's biographers have attributed the sweetness, the doubt and the despair of these songs to the varying emotions aroused by his love for Clara and the uncertainties of their future together.

Robert and Clara had eight children, Emil (who died in infancy in 1847); Marie (1841–1929); Elise (1843–1928); Julie (1845–1872); Ludwig (1848–1899); Ferdinand (1849–1891); Eugenie (1851–1938); and Felix (1854–1879).

Profiles of Clara and Robert Schumann

His chief song-cycles of this period were his settings of the Liederkreis of Joseph von Eichendorff, Op. 39 (depicting a series of moods relating to or inspired by nature); the Frauenliebe und -leben of Chamisso, Op. 42 (relating the tale of a woman's marriage, childbirth and widowhood); the Dichterliebe of Heine, Op. 48 (depicting a lover rejected, but coming to terms with his painful loss through renunciation and forgiveness); and Myrthen, a collection of songs, including poems by Goethe, Rückert, Heine, Byron, Burns and Moore. The songs Belsatzar, Op. 57 and Die beiden Grenadiere, Op. 49, both to Heine's words, show Schumann at his best as a ballad writer, although the dramatic ballad is less congenial to him than the introspective lyric. The Opp. 35, 40 and 98a sets (words by Justinus Kerner, Chamisso and Goethe respectively), although less well known, also contain songs of lyric and dramatic quality.

Franz Grillparzer said,

"He has made himself a new ideal world in which he moves almost as he wills."

Despite his achievements, Schumann received few tokens of honour; he was awarded a doctoral degree by the University of Jena in 1840, and in 1843 a professorship in the Conservatory of Music, which Felix Mendelssohn had founded in Leipzig that same year. On one occasion, accompanying his wife on a concert tour in Russia, Schumann was asked whether "he too was a musician". He often harbored considerable resentment over Clara's success as a pianist, which exceeded his own reputation as a composer (Schumann had had dreams of being a concert pianist himself, but his playing abilities were never as good as his wife's, possibly due to muscle damage in his hands from mercury treatment for syphilis).

	Andante and Variations, Op. 46 (1843) Performed by Neal and Nancy O'Doan (pianos), Carter Enyeart and Toby Saks (cellos) and Christopher Leuba (horn) Introduction, Theme and Variations 1–5 Variations 6–10 Variations 11–15
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In 1841 he wrote two of his four symphonies, No. 1 in B flat, Op. 38, "Spring" and No. 4 in D minor (first published in one movement, but later revised extensively and published as Op. 120 – a work that is a pioneering essay in 'cyclic form'). He devoted 1842 to composing chamber music, including the Piano Quintet in E flat, Op. 44, now one of his best known and most admired works; the Piano Quartet and three string quartets. In 1843 he wrote Paradise and the Peri, his first essay at concerted vocal music, an oratorio style work based on Lalla-Rookh by Thomas Moore. After this, his compositions were not confined to any one form during any particular period.

The stage in his life when he was deeply engaged in setting Goethe's Faust to music (1844–53) was a critical one for his health. He spent the first half of 1844 with Clara on tour in Russia. On returning to Germany, he abandoned his editorial work and left Leipzig for Dresden, where he suffered from persistent "nervous prostration". As soon as he began to work, he was seized with fits of shivering and an apprehension of death, experiencing an abhorrence for high places, for all metal instruments (even keys), and for drugs. Schumann's diaries also state that he suffered perpetually from imagining that he had the note A5 sounding in his ears.

His state of unease and neurasthenia is reflected in his Symphony in C, numbered second, but third in order of composition, in which the composer explores states of exhaustion, obsession and depression, culminating in Beethovenian spiritual triumph. Also published in 1845 was his Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, originally published as a one-movement Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra. It is one of the most popular and oft-recorded of all piano concertos; pace Hutcheson "Schumann achieved a masterly work and we inherited the finest piano concerto since Mozart and Beethoven".

In 1846, he felt he had recovered. In the winter, the Schumanns revisited Vienna, traveling to Prague and Berlin in the spring of 1847 and in the summer to Zwickau, where he was received with enthusiasm. This pleased him, since at that time he was famous in only Dresden and Leipzig.

His only opera, Genoveva, Op. 81, was written in 1848. In it, Schumann attempted to abolish recitative, which he regarded as an interruption to the musical flow (an influence on Richard Wagner; Schumann's consistently flowing melody can be seen as a forerunner to Wagner's Melos). The subject of Genoveva—based on Ludwig Tieck and Christian Friedrich Hebbel—was not an ideal choice. The text is often considered to lack dramatic qualities; the work has not remained in the repertoire. As early as 1842 the possibilities of German opera had been keenly realized by Schumann, who wrote, "Do you know my prayer as an artist, night and morning? It is called 'German Opera.' Here is a real field for enterprise . . . something simple, profound, German." And in his notebook of suggestions for the text of operas are found amongst others: Nibelungen, Lohengrin and Till Eulenspiegel.

The music to Byron's Manfred was written in 1849, the overture of which is one of Schumann's most frequently performed orchestral works. The insurrection of Dresden caused Schumann to move to Kreischa, a little village a few miles outside the city. In August 1849, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth, such scenes of Schumann's Faust as were already completed were performed in Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar. Liszt gave him assistance and encouragement. The rest of the work was written later in 1849, and the overture (which Schumann described as "one of the sturdiest of [his] creations") in 1853.

Grave of Robert and Clara Schumann at Bonn

Robert Schumann monument at his birthplace Zwickau, Germany

After 1850[link]

From 1850 to 1854, Schumann composed in a wide variety of genres. Critics have disputed the quality of his work at this time; a widely held view has been that his music showed signs of mental breakdown and creative decay. More recently, critics have suggested that the changes in style may be explained by "lucid experimentation".^[11]

In 1850, Schumann succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as musical director at Düsseldorf, but he was a poor conductor and quickly aroused the opposition of the musicians. According to Schonberg (The Great Conductors) "The great composer was impossible on the platform...There is something heartrending about poor Schumann's epochal inefficiency as a conductor."^{[citation needed]} His contract was eventually terminated. From 1851 to 1853 he visited Switzerland, Belgium and Leipzig. In 1851 he completed his Symphony No. 3, "Rhenish" (a work containing five movements and whose 4th movement is apparently intended to represent an episcopal coronation ceremony). He revised what would be published as his fourth symphony.

On 30 September 1853, the 20-year-old composer Johannes Brahms knocked unannounced on the door of the Schumanns carrying a letter of introduction from violinist Joseph Joachim. (Schumann was not at home, and would not meet Brahms until the next day.) Brahms amazed Clara and Robert with his music, stayed with them for several weeks, and became a close family friend. (He later worked closely with Clara to popularize Schumann's compositions during her long widowhood.)

During this time Schumann, Brahms and Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich collaborated on the composition of the F-A-E Sonata for Joachim; Schumann also published an article, "Neue Bahnen" ("New Paths") in the Neue Zeitschrift (his first article in many years), hailing the unknown young Brahms from Hamburg, a man who had published nothing, as "the Chosen One" who "was destined to give ideal expression to the times."^[12] It was an extraordinary way to present Brahms to the musical world, setting up great expectations which he did not fulfill for many years.^[13] In January 1854, Schumann went to Hanover, where he heard a performance of his Paradise and the Peri organized by Joachim and Brahms. Two years later at Schumann's request, the work received its first English performance conducted by William Sterndale Bennett.

	"Nänie", 3 Lieder für 3 Frauenstimmen, Op. 114, No. 1 (1853) (2.4 Mb)
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Schumann returned to Düsseldorf and began to edit his complete works and make an anthology on the subject of music. He suffered a renewal of the symptoms that had threatened him earlier. Besides the single note (possibly evidence of tinnitus), he imagined that voices sounded in his ear and he heard angelic music. One night he suddenly left his bed, having dreamt or imagined that a ghost (purportedly the spirit of either Schubert or Mendelssohn) had dictated a "spirit theme" to him. The theme was one he had used several times before: in his Second String Quartet, again in his Lieder-Album für die Jugend, and finally in the slow movement of his Violin Concerto. In the days leading up to his suicide attempt, Schumann wrote five variations on this theme for the piano, his last published work.^[14] Brahms published it in a supplementary volume to the complete edition of Schumann's piano music. In 1861 Brahms published his Variations for Piano Four Hands, Op. 23, based on this theme.

In late February 1854, Schumann's symptoms increased, the angelic visions sometimes being replaced by demonic visions. He warned Clara that he feared he might do her harm. On 27 February 1854, he attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine River. Rescued by boatmen and taken home, he asked to be taken to an asylum for the insane. He entered Dr. Franz Richarz's sanatorium in Endenich, a quarter of Bonn, and remained there until he died on 29 July 1856 at the age of 46. During his confinement, he was not allowed to see Clara. She finally visited him two days before his death. He appeared to recognize her, but was unable to speak.

Given his reported symptoms, one modern view is that his death was a result of syphilis, which he may have contracted during his student days, and which would have remained latent during most of his marriage.^[15] According to studies by the musicologist and literary scholar Eric Sams, Schumann's symptoms during his terminal illness and death appear consistent with those of mercury poisoning, mercury being a common treatment for syphilis and other conditions. Another possibility is that his neurological problems were the result of an intracranial mass. A report by Janisch and Nauhaus on Schumann's autopsy indicates that he had a "gelatinous" tumor at the base of the brain; it may have represented a colloid cyst, a craniopharyngioma, a chordoma, or a chordoid meningioma.^[16] In particular, meningiomas are known to produce musical auditory hallucinations, such as Schumann reported.^[17] Still other sources surmise that Schumann had bipolar disorder, citing his mood swings and changes in productivity.^[18][19][20]

From the time of her husband's death, Clara devoted herself to the performance and interpretation of her husband's works. In 1856, she first visited England, but the critics received Schumann's music coolly. Critics such as Henry Fothergill Chorley were particularly harsh in their disapproval. She returned to London in 1865 and made regular appearances there in later years. She became the authoritative editor of her husband's works for Breitkopf & Härtel. It was rumoured that she and Brahms destroyed many of Schumann's later works, which they thought to be tainted by his madness. However, only the Five Pieces for Cello and Piano are known to have been destroyed. Most of Schumann's late works, particularly the Violin Concerto, the Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra and the Third Violin Sonata, all from 1853, have entered the repertoire.

Legacy[link]

Robert Schumann Birth House in Zwickau in 2005

The Schumann/Schubert error: Schubert's music is on the top stamp, and Schumann's on the bottom

1960 Soviet stamp marking the 150th anniversary of Schumann's birth.

Schumann had considerable influence in the nineteenth century and beyond, despite his adoption of more conservative modes of composition after his marriage. He left an array of acclaimed music in virtually all the forms then known. Partly through his protégé Brahms, Schumann's ideals and musical vocabulary became widely disseminated. Composer Sir Edward Elgar called Schumann "my ideal."

Schumann has not often been confused with Austrian composer Franz Schubert, but one well-known example occurred in 1956, when East Germany issued a pair of postage stamps featuring Schumann's picture against an open score that featured Schubert's music. The stamps were soon replaced by a pair featuring music written by Schumann.

Compositions[link]

• List of compositions by Robert Schumann
• Category:Compositions by Robert Schumann

Fictional portrayals[link]

• Song of Love was a 1947 film starring Paul Henreid as Schumann, Katharine Hepburn as Clara Wieck, Robert Walker as Johannes Brahms and Henry Daniell as Franz Liszt.
• Peter Schamoni's 1983 movie Frühlingssinfonie (Spring Symphony) tells the story of Robert and Clara's romance, against her father's opposition. Robert was played by Herbert Grönemeyer, Clara by Nastassja Kinski, and Clara's father by Rolf Hoppe. The role of Niccolò Paganini was played by the violinist Gidon Kremer. The score was written by Grönemeyer and conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch.
• The Andrew Crumey novel Mobius Dick has a chapter depicting Schumann at Endenich.
• Geliebte Clara was a 2008 film taking a look at the lives of 19th-century composers Clara and Robert Schumann.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Daverio, J, "Robert Schumann," Grove music online, L Macy (ed), accessed 24 June 2007 (subscription access)
• Ostwald, Peter, Schumann – The inner voices of a musical genius, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1985 ISBN 1-55553-014-1.
• Scholes, Percy A, The Oxford Companion to Music, Tenth Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1970 ISBN 01931130661.
• Fuller-Maitland, John Alexander. (1884). Schumann. S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00481-7)
• Ostwald, Peter (1985). Schumann, The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius. Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-014-1. 
• Perrey, Beate (ed.) (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Schumann. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78950-8. 
• Rice-See, Lynn (2008). The Piano Teaching of Walter Hautzig with 613 Examples from the Works of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Chopin, Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-4981-7
• Tunbridge, Laura (2007). Schumann's Late Style. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87168-6. 
• Worthen, John (2007). Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11160-6. . The author argues that the composer was mentally normal all his life, until the sudden onset of insanity near the end resulting from tertiary syphilis.

External links[link]

Find more about Robert Schumann on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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Life and works[link]

• [1] More on Robert Schumann and his life
• Robert Schumann – The World's Greatest Composer A personal appreciation
• Complete list of works
• Musical Rules at Home and in Life – Text by Robert Schumann
• Works by or about Robert Schumann in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• German Label Troubadisc with SACD release and Biography of Robert Schumann
• Schumann-Portal
• Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig: edition of all letters written by Robert and Clara Schumann
• The Lied and Art Song Texts Page – Created and mantained from Emily Ezust Texts of Schumann's Lieder with translations in various languages
• The city of Robert Schumann
• Listings of live performances at Bachtrack
• Robert and Clara Schumann and their teacher, Johann Sebastian Bach

Sheet music[link]

• Printable Schumann's piano score in PDF
• Free scores by Robert Schumann at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Robert Schumann in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Schumann's Scores by Mutopia Project
• Works by Robert Schumann at Project Gutenberg
• Free scores by Robert Schumann in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)

Recordings and MIDI[link]

• Schumann cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• Recording of Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood)
• Works for organ or pedal piano by Schumann played on a virtual organ
• Selected Lieder (MIDI)
• Kunst der Fuge Robert Schumann – MIDI files
• Herbert von Karajan / Vienna Philharmonic rehearse the 4th Symphony
• Yaroslav Senyshyn – Live Performance of Robert Schumann: Papillons Op. 2