Heinrich Heine

Independent activity 1797–1856 ○ Died of illness in Paris

Poet who first saw the revolution hidden in German philosophy and befriended Marx in his Paris exile

German poet and journalist, born in 1797 to a Jewish family in Düsseldorf. The Book of Songs (1827) made his name, and in 1831 he moved to Paris, where he worked as correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung and spent the rest of his life in exile. In On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (1834) he predicted that German thought would prove a more explosive force than the French Revolution, and Engels wrote that what neither the governments nor the liberals saw, at least one man saw as early as 1833: Heinrich Heine. In Paris from late 1843 he became close to Marx and wrote for Vorwärts! and the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, and in 1844 he published "The Silesian Weavers" and Germany. A Winter's Tale. Paralysed and bedridden from 1848, he died in Paris in 1856. The Nazis suppressed his work and banned it officially in 1940.

Also known as: Christian Johann Heinrich Heine · Harry Heine