Heinrich Heine and the German Middle Ages

Home , Blue flower, Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Uhland

Andrew William Warren

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto

Heinrich Heine and the Middle Ages

Andrew William Warren

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto

2020 Abstract

Heinrich Heine famously identified German Romantic authors with the “resuscitation of the

Middle Ages”. This identification has long been read as foundational to Heine’s critique of

German Romanticism and what he saw as its political and cultural failings. It has long been assumed that Heine, whose own early poetry was heavily inspired by late Romantic authors such as Ludwig Uhland, rejected the German Middle Ages alongside his rejection of German

Romanticism. Through an examination of Heine’s work, from his earliest poetry up to and including his long mock-epic poems Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen and Atta Troll, I argue that Heine’s fascination and interest in the German Middle Ages is enduring and deeply important to his literary project. I argue that, far from rejecting the Middle Ages, Heine attempts to recast the German Middle Ages in such a way that preserves it as a vital source of poetic inspiration. In addition, Heine’s re-evaluation of the German Middle Ages serves a foundational role in his attempts, primarily in De L’Allemagne (his overview of German culture, religion and philosophy), to develop a counter-narrative of the German Middle Ages that exposes pantheism as the core faith of the German peoples, as well as charts a path towards a politically progressive and emancipated Germany.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project has a lot to do with how the past shapes our presents and our futures. When I first suggested some kind of relationship between Heine and the Middle Ages in a (not great) paper back in the Spring of 2010, it certainly didn’t occur to me at the time that I would be finishing up a dissertation on a similar, but also very different project on the same topic nearly a decade later.

Living with something like this for a decade has a way of involving many people and institutions, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank as many of them as possible (any omissions are entirely my fault).

Thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Joint Initiative in German and European Studies and the School of Graduate Studies, I was able to do research at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany on two separate occasions (2012 and 2014). In December 2017, the Heinrich-Heine-Institut enabled me to present a much earlier version of my first chapter at the 20. Junge Heine Forschung in Düsseldorf, where I received feedback on my work from some of the most important Heine scholars in the world. These opportunities were invaluable in giving me the space and time to develop this project.

I cannot overstate how important Willi Goetschel, my dissertation advisor, has been to guiding this project to completion. Professor Goetschel’s infectious enthusiasm for Heine, his insightful comments, and his support, without which I literally could not have continued, has earned him my eternal gratitude.

My committee members Christine Lehleiter, John Noyes and Markus Stock have been fantastic and supportive interlocutors during this process. Each of them has contributed to giving depth, breadth and clarity to my thoughts and I cannot thank them enough for their help in getting my work to this stage.

I would also like to thank Christian Liedtke of the Heinrich-Heine-Institut for his encouragement and the great conversation we had over coffee about Heine on a snowy morning in Toronto. His advice at that time was greatly appreciated.

I would be remiss to not thank a number of close friends who patiently endured my attempts to explain to them what “Heine and the Middle Ages” meant, when it was clear that I didn’t entirely

iii know myself. John Koster and Jason Lieblang, both former graduate students at the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto, who were close to finishing when I began, provided crucial support and encouragement. Christopher Miller and Tadhg Morris, both of whom I met during a Middle High German class in Toronto during my MA in Toronto, have not only become life-long friends, but also helped me to understand the ways in which this project was not really about the Middle Ages at all, but about how the past gets used by every new generation. I would also like to thank my comrade-in-arms, Yasmin Aly, who has endured so much, but who always found a way to encourage me to finish when I felt I no longer had it in me to do so.

My parents and my sister have relentlessly encouraged me over the years, and I am both happy and relieved that they no longer have to ask me how my dissertation is coming along, something that everyone knows one isn’t supposed to ask – but that never stopped them. The fact that they are around to celebrate the completion of this project is not lost on me, and it is difficult to articulate how important their influence has been on me.

To the people who have had to live with me all these years: Our sickly little dog Pepper, who has somehow managed to hang on until I have finished this work, you have proved more of an inspiration that any of us could have imagined.

My wife Marlo, whom I met in this program, you have been for me everything that I hope I am to you – I really cannot express how much your support and encouragement has meant. I am looking forward to the next decade.

To my son Nathaniel, who has quite literally grown from a kindergartner to a young man during my doctoral studies, I hope one day that you will forgive me for resigning from a good paying government job to write a dissertation in the Humanities. This project has shaped both of us in ways that I still don’t fully understand, but I dedicate this work to you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... vii

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER ONE – FROM MINNESÄNGER TO RITTER: EARLY POETRY AND PROSE, 1815-1823 ...... 9

The Middle Ages of the Adolescent Heine ...... 12

Deutschland ...... 14

The Letter to Christian Sethe ...... 15

Heine’s Minnelieder ...... 20

Minne encounters Das Mittelalter – Heine and his Studies with August Wilhelm Schlegel ....31

Die Romantik ...... 35

Bonn Poetry ...... 39

“Ritterliche” Poems ...... 42

CHAPTER TWO – FROM BONN TO PARIS: HEINE AND THE GERMAN MIDDLE AGES IN THE 1820S ...53

The Vanishing Minnesänger ...... 54

Heine’s Identity and the Circumstances Around his Disillusionment with Romanticism ...... 58

Heine’s April 14th, 1822 Letter to Sethe ...... 60

Almansor (1820-23) ...... 63

The Lyrical Nightingale ...... 70

Der Rabbi von Bacharach ...... 74

Reisebilder: Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand ...... 82

Die Bäder von Lucca and Die Stadt Lucca ...... 93

Die Bäder von Lucca ...... 94

Gumpelino...... 96

Franscheska and Die Stadt Lucca ...... 101

CHAPTER THREE – DE L’ALLEMAGNE: HEINE’S PROGRESSIVE HISTORY OF GERMAN CULTURE .111

Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland ...... 114

Die romantische Schule...... 134

Elementargeister ...... 152

Tannhäuser ...... 162

CHAPTER FOUR – FROM FOREGROUND TO BACKGROUND: THE MIDDLE AGES IN HEINE’S CHARACTER SKETCHES BETWEEN 1835-1840 ...... 169

Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen ...... 171

The Introduction to Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen ...... 171

The Commentaries of Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen ...... 180

Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift ...... 184

CHAPTER FIVE – ATTA TROLL AND DEUTSCHLAND: EIN WINTERMÄRCHEN ...... 197

Background on Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen ...... 199

Atta Troll ...... 201

Laskaro and Uraka ...... 207

The Wild Hunt ...... 212

Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen ...... 223

Charlemagne and the Cologne Cathedral ...... 228

Barbarossa ...... 232

Hammonia ...... 236

CONCLUSION ...... 243

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 246

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

DHA Heinrich Heine, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke, ed. ManfredWindfuhr. Hamburg: Campe, 1973–97.

HSA Heinrich Heine, Säkularausgabe, ed. Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten der klassischen deutschen Literatur and Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1970–.

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INTRODUCTION

Some of the most persistent questions we ask ourselves from the moment we become self-aware until our last days are those that concern cultural identity – Who am I? Where did I come from? The ways in which we answer these questions, or more specifically, the ways in which we can (or are allowed to) answer these questions determine and construct our identities not only as individual subjects, but as people within communities. More ominously, they also determine how we approach and understand those who are not part of those same communities. The tension between the “I” and the “not-I,” and what that “I” constitutes, is not merely an epistemological one, but a social and political one as well. Whether we want to or not, we think about ourselves in relation to others, and define ourselves as ethical and political subjects very much within the social, ethical and political space of the communities we live in.

For a writer like Heinrich Heine, who was born as an emancipated German Jewish subject in territory along the Rhine occupied by Napoleonic France, but who grew up in a region that saw its return to German hands during his adolescence, the question of identity was to become an especially pressing one for him as his adulthood coincided with the re-imposition of discriminatory laws against Jews in German-speaking lands in the 1820s.

The tension between old and new, between political and social progress and the status quo, therefore loomed large in the young Heine’s life. One of his earliest known poems, “Deutschland” of 1815, reflects the cultural and political attitudes of a young German nationalist, who, much to the chagrin of his later self, would even briefly flirt with Roman Catholicism. In this respect, the adolescent Heine was not the least bit unusual by German standards for a young man growing up in the five to ten years after the 1813 Battle of Leipzig. By the time Heine was twenty, the German Middle Ages as reflected in the literature and poetry of the day constituted one of the central cultural paradigms around which the nascent German “nation” thought about itself in a meaningful way. But as Heine was soon to discover, his inclusion within this nation would be challenged, and he would no longer be in a position to take for granted the idea of Jewish emancipation and the idea that German Jews could work and live as equals in the German-speaking lands.

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It is from this standpoint that the German Middle Ages become a problem for Heine. They were the taproot of his artistic identity as a lyric poet, but they also constituted the foundation upon which despotism in post-Napoleonic German-speaking lands was justified. For Heine, the time of Walther von der Vogelweide was also the time of feudalism. Heine understood that the great unity of pre-Reformation Catholic Europe was in reality held in place only by the union of repressive political and religious orders, which sent all of Europe to fight the Crusades, burned heretics, and persecuted Jews at home. This history, transmitted to him through a late Romantic literary culture, was a history with which he had to contend for the rest of his life.

What is important is that, with the exception of a moment of despair that will be examined briefly in chapter two, Heine considered German history as his history, and German suffering as his suffering:

Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter, Bekannt im deutschen Land; Nennt man die besten Namen, So wird auch der mein’ge genannt.

Und was mir fehlt, du Kleine, Fehlt Manchem im deutschen Land; Nennt man die schlimmsten Schmerzen, So wird auch der mein’ge genannt.1

The tension in Heine’s work that is provoked by (among other things) the Middle Ages is reflected neatly in this poem. For Heine, there is an emptiness, a lacuna in German identity in part because although he is a great German poet, the question of his Germanness remained for him – and indeed still remains in some scholarship – a live one: Who was Heinrich Heine?2 He

1 DHA 1/1, 223. 2 This is not a novel question. In fact, the Heine biographer Jeffery Sammons wrote an essay entitled “Who Did Heine Think He Was?” as part of a collected volume entitled Heinrich Heine’s Contested Identities, which surveys the answers to this question and demonstrates that it continues to play a lively role in Heine scholarship. See Jeffrey Sammons, “Who Did Heine Think He Was?” in Heinrich Heine’s Contested Identities, ed. Jost Hermand and Robert C. Holub, (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 1-24.

3 was a German poet. He was also (if one is being wry) the lyricist of the famous German folk song, Die Lorelei. He spent most of his adult life in Paris and not in Germany. And perhaps most importantly, he was Jewish.

These factors – his Jewishness and his exile – force questions upon him, as a poet, as a German, and as a human being, that many authors never have to worry about. No one questions the Germanness of Goethe, or whether or not Thomas Bernhard was Austrian. Yet the question of Heine’s authenticity, as a German or as a Jew, and therefore his ability to speak authoritatively as a force in German culture remains a persistent one. As recently as 2012, Jürgen Habermas felt the need to affirm Heine’s Germanness in his acceptance speech of the Heine Prize, which was entitled: “Zeitgenosse Heine. Endlich ist er “unser” – aber was sagt er uns noch?”3 Even 150 years after Heine’s death, the questions about his claim to Germanness that had been imposed upon him as a young adult remain open.

Heine himself certainly saw himself as German, and so did the French among whom he lived, and I believe that Heine’s continued engagement with the German Middle Ages demonstrates how already from early on he embraced his role as a participant in the production and development of a narrative of the German past that explicitly allowed for a broader interpretation of what it meant to be German.

The aim of this study then is to examine Heinrich Heine’s relationship to the idea of German Middle Ages, as a concept he inherited from the Romantics, and how he engaged and transformed its value to himself and to German culture at large as a poet and cultural critic. He came by his early devotion to the German Middle Ages honestly, but it is not long after he began his university studies that he recognizes the political implications of this devotion, and sets out to articulate these dangers. This culminates in the mid-1830s in his De L’Allemagne, a series of texts that lay out a critique of the reactionary tendencies in German political and cultural life, but which also suggest an alternate reading of German history, one which maintains the value of the Middle Ages as a crucial point of reference for German history and art, but which avoids what Heine saw as the reactionary trajectories of those who failed to understand what he saw as the

3 Jürgen Habermas, “Zeitgenosse Heine. Endlich ist er “unser” – aber was sagt er uns noch?”, Heine Jahrbuch 2013 (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler Verlag), 187–200.

4 true value of the Middle Ages, producing what critic Rüdiger Safranski called Heine’s “Doppelbild der Romantik”:

Es gibt eine Romantik, der er die Treue hält, und eine, die er kritisiert. Seine Romantik ist die der Nachtigallen, die kritisch gesehene Romantik ist diejenige, welche die Passionszeit des Mittelalters verherrlicht, rückwärtsgewandt, christlich, sinnenfeindlich und entsagungsvoll.4

Although this bifurcation is instructive, it obscures the fact that for Heine, both of these aspects of “Romanticism” emerged from the same medievalized late Romantic sources that Heine had devoured as a teenager. As I will show, the “Passionszeit des Mittelalters” came well before the nightingale, which only emerges in Heine’s work in the 1820s from this medieval background as a cipher for a medieval (and Romantic) poetic legacy that Heine was then concerned with concealing.

Nevertheless, Safranski’s characterization reveals an important truth about Heine’s reception as an author and critic of Romanticism, namely that, for Heine, the Middle Ages and Romanticism were inextricably tied together, as evinced by his (in)famous definition of the Romantic “school”:

Was war aber die romantische Schule in Deutschland?

Sie war nichts anders als die Wiedererweckung der Poesie des Mittelalters, wie sie sich in dessen Liedern, Bild- und Bauwerken, in Kunst und Leben, manifestirt hatte. Diese Poesie aber war aus dem Christenthume hervorgegangen, sie war eine Passionsblume, die dem Blute Christi entsprossen. 5

This identification between the German Middle Ages and Romanticism has long been seen as foundational to Heine’s critique of German Romanticism and what he saw as its political and cultural failings. Moreover, it has been taken for granted that given his own definition, Heine’s rejection of Romanticism is tantamount to a rejection of the German Middle Ages. This study

4 Rüdiger Safranski, Romantik: Eine deutsche Affäre (München: C. Hanser, 2007), 252. 5 DHA 8/1, 126.

5 shows how Heine’s engagement with the German Middle Ages (and its relationship to German Romanticism) was more involved and sustained, in large part because Heine very early on maintained that the Middle Ages had a foundational role in the development of modern German poetry, but that he also understood that this foundation was wedded to a political trajectory that Heine rejected.

That the Middle Ages was a political issue for Heine is linked to his disenchantment with his own lyric poetry in the 1820s. As we shall see, the unique cultural conditions of the Middle Ages are inextricably linked to the production of lyric poetry for the young Heine.6 As a result, his growing disenchantment with the Middle Ages in the 1820s saw him trying to find different ways of writing, and avoiding lyric poetry in favour of prose. But even when avoiding lyric poetry, the German Middle Ages remain in the background. In 1824, when he attempted to write a historical novel in the vein of Walter Scott, he chose as its plot an account of the experience of Jews in the late German Middle Ages who had to flee to the Frankfurt ghetto in the midst of a pogrom – even at this early stage in his career as a writer, the idea of recasting the German Middle Ages in a more inclusive way was something that preoccupied Heine. Although Der Rabbi von Bacherach remained a fragment, its subject matter provides an illustration of the centrality of the German Middle Ages for Heine as a cultural background that he needed to engage with, especially in the literary realm. I argue that it is no coincidence that when he attempted to return to writing poetry in all earnestness in the mid-1830s, the first poem that reflects his post-De L’Allemagne approach to the Middle Ages took the medieval Tannhäuser legend as its subject matter (a poem I will examine in chapter three).

Broadly speaking, there are two phases to Heine’s engagement with the Middle Ages: one leading up to his writing of De l’Allemagne in the 1830s and the other comprising what comes afterward. There were the very early, emulative Minnelieder, which he suppressed as he developed, in tandem with his critique of Romanticism and his political progressivism, a much more critical stance toward the Middle Ages. This critical stance reached its height in De L’Allemagne, where he advanced his argument about how the reactionary relationship between

6 I should note that I make no attempt to suggest why, in a psychological sense, Heine remains devoted to the Middle Ages. That being said, its persistence in his life’s work suggests some deep-seated connections that are not entirely explained through a survey of his literary work.

6 the Middle Ages and the Romantic movement developed out of a misreading of the true value of the Middle Ages. In Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and Elementargeister in particular, Heine offered a positive path toward understanding the German Middle Ages as a cultural force. If the earlier phase of his relationship with the Middle Ages could be described as resisting Romanticism while preserving the poetic spirit of the Middle Ages, the later phase can be characterized, in his own words, as an attempt to show how the Romantic vision of the Middle Ages could be rejected through what he described as “classicizing” the Middle Ages.

Heine was therefore, from a very early time, actively concerned with issues of cultural identity and history. He cultivated a style of writing that deftly combined individual, social and cultural memory to push forward a version of the German past that aligned better with his own ideals. In works such as Elementargeister, Heine attempted to rescue from obscurity materials of cultural interest. In doing so he showed that what was culturally important about the German Middle Ages was not its feudalism, but its role as an era which held the repository of Germany’s pantheistic and sensual reality. This advocacy, which I believe begins very early on, but is usually found outside of his lyric poetry, will take many shapes over the years.

In the first chapter, I examine Heine’s earliest poetry and prose and show how Heine was a committed young Romantic, whose naïve understanding of the Middle Ages as “Minne” shifted during his university studies (notably under the tutelage of August Wilhelm Schlegel) to a more didactic understanding of the German Middle Ages and its relationship to the Romantic project.

In the second chapter I survey his growing disenchantment with the Middle Ages in the 1820s, which saw him move away from poetry in favour of prose. I show how in both his poetry and prose of this time, the German Middle Ages remains as part of what he clearly sees as a contested background. However, it is through this contested background that Heine begins to use the nightingale as a cipher for his earlier understanding of the Middle Ages as he wrestles with this legacy while working to develop a counter-narrative.7

7 For more on the idea of Heine as actively engaged in writing counter-narratives to the “standard” history, see Willi Goetschel, “Tradition as Innovation in Heine’s “Juhuda ben Halevy”: Counterhistory in a Spinozist Key” in Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 266– 278.

In chapter three I examine how Heine develops a full-throated critique of Romanticism while simultaneously carving out a new role for the Middle Ages as an emancipatory force within the cultural sphere. In De L’Allemagne, Heine subjected German Romanticism to a withering critique, while the later parts, and in particular Elementargeister and his “Tannhäuser” poem offered examples of how the German Middle Ages could be used as a site for the foundation of a renewed and progressive German political culture.

In the fourth and fifth chapters, I examine how Heine’s post-De L’Allemagne prose and poetry reflect his own newer understanding of the German Middle Ages, one which he now contrasts with the Romantic appropriation of the Middle Ages, and uses to reflect changes in who he saw as his political opponents. In particular, his epic poems Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen and Atta Troll reveal Heine’s fascination with and interest in the German Middle Ages as enduring and deeply important to his literary project.

As I argue, Heine successfully recasts the German Middle Ages in a way that preserves it as a vital source of personal poetic inspiration while retaining its foundational role as part of his progressive counter-narrative of the German Middle Ages, a counter-narrative that exposes pantheism as the core faith of the German peoples, and charts a path towards a politically progressive and emancipated Germany.

However, before all this, when Heine began to think seriously about poetry as an adolescent, it was not in the midst of all the of the republican and cosmopolitan sentiments of early Jena Romanticism, but at the tail end of the Romantic movement. The crucible out of which Heine’s poetic world was forged was in a post-Napoleonic and aggressively nationalistic Germany. Heine, like so many other Germans at the time, had his imagination captured by late Romantic authors such as Ludwig Uhland and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, authors who had explicitly taken up the German scholar and translator August Wilhelm Schlegel’s call to build and develop a new mythology out of the German Middle Ages, a mythology that attempted to refashion the knights and Minnesänger of the German past for a modern audience. Schlegel’s call (and

Schlegel himself) would come to have a profound influence on the young Heine, and it is to the young Heine’s understanding of “Minne” that we now turn.

CHAPTER ONE – FROM MINNESÄNGER TO RITTER: EARLY POETRY AND PROSE, 1815-1823

In 1837, Heinrich Heine wrote a preface to the second edition of his decade-old Buch der Lieder.1 Describing the youthful circumstances out of which the poems of Buch der Lieder emerged, he wrote:

Ja, es sind nun zehn Jahre, seitdem diese Gedichte zuerst erschienen, und ich gebe sie wie damals in chronologischer Folge, und ganz voran ziehen wieder Lieder, die in jenen früheren Jahren gedichtet worden, als die ersten Küsse der deutschen Muse [italics mine] in meiner Seele brannten. Ach! die Küsse dieser guten Dirne verloren seitdem sehr viel von ihrer Glut und Frische!2

Here Heine summarizes what has become something of a truism about his emergence as a poet. Buch der Lieder chronicles his early encounter with the German muse in part to put into relief his gradual disenchantment with her, whose (clearly female) kisses have now lost much of their freshness. As Michael Perraudin remarks, “[t]he great literary-historical importance of Heine’s Buch der Lieder of 1827 is as a document of generational disillusion.”3 Although Heine’s disillusionment continues to be a central concern of Heine studies, this chapter will focus on the period before this disillusionment, as it will help to set this disillusionment into relief, while also providing a clear view of what the German Middle Ages meant to Heine on an emotional, intellectual and cultural level.4

Heine’s primary motivations for his earliest poetry could be characterized as both lower-case “romantic” and capital-R “Romantic.” As the romantic aspect (his crush on his cousin Amelie) has been a long-standing focus of Heine scholarship, the focus here will be on the Romantic aspect of this early poetry: in other words, what were those first metaphorical kisses of the

1 Buch der Lieder was first published in 1827. As an indicator of its accelerating popularity, the third edition of Buch der Lieder appeared a mere two years after the second, in 1839. 2 DHA 1/1, 564. 3 Michael Perraudin, “Illusions Lost and Found: The Experiential World of Heine’s Buch der Lieder” in A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine, ed. Roger Cook (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002), 37. 4 The sources of Heine’s disillusionment and how the Middle Ages functions in that disillusionment will be the subject of chapter two.

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German muse? How does he describe this muse and how does it function in his earliest work? As we shall see, these first kisses are very much tied to the Middle Ages: the young Heine calls his earliest poetry “Minne,” and describes a genre of his lyric poetry that sought to emulate late Romantic authors such as Ludwig Uhland and Baron de la Motte Fouqué, but which Heine, even as a teenager, will begin to inscribe with his own voice.

Although Heine’s preoccupation with Minne lasts only a few years, this encounter with the late Romantic medievalism of his teenage literary idols would prove essential to Heine’s poetic development and his self-conception as a poet. This Verknüpfung had not only a profound effect on his own poetry, but, as we shall see, set a standard for what Heine considered lyric poetry to be, traces of which will remain long after he has abandoned Minne as a descriptor for his poetry. As the above passage indicates, Heine felt the need in the late 1830s to publicly proclaim these kisses had lost their fervour. However, the dying embers of this passion remained stronger than Heine would like his readers to believe. Minne, which was deeply tied to the German Middle Ages as Heine initially conceived of it, will remain an important pillar upon which much of his self-conception as a poet and as a German will rest.

In order to see how Heine’s self-conception as a poet and its relationship to “Minne” and the Middle Ages develops, I will begin by examining a very early and revealing letter Heine wrote to a friend, as well as some of Heine’s earliest poetry, and in particular, poems he explicitly referred to as “Minne.” I will then show how Heine’s understanding of Minne underwent a crucial transformation in 1820, a second kiss from the Muse as it were, as a consequence of his studies with August Wilhelm Schlegel at the University of Bonn. Scholars have argued that Heine’s first-hand knowledge of “medieval” German poetry came entirely from the Romantic reimagining of medieval prose and poetry Heine read up until his university years, when he attended lectures on the German Middle Ages by A.W. Schlegel at the University of Bonn in 1819-20 and was exposed to primary medieval sources.5 There is no dispute that Schlegel is an important early influence on Heine, both in terms of his written poetry and also with respect to how the young Heine understands the relationship between poetry, history and culture. I argue that it is with Schlegel that Heine’s understanding of Minne becomes inexorably tied to the

5 See in particular the first chapter of Georg Mücke, Heinrich Heines Beziehungen zum deutschen Mittelalter (Forschungen zur neueren Literaturgeschichte 34) (Berlin: Verlag von Alexander Duncker, 1908), 24-60.

11 broader cultural and scholarly trends of medieval German scholarship. With this more didactic view on poetry and its role in German culture, a view which he articulates extensively in his first published essay Die Romantik, there is a corresponding shift in Heine’s poetry, which moves away from his adolescent conception of love-struck Minne, and towards a more didactic understanding of the medieval that is more in line with the scholarly trends of the day.

It is in Die Romantik and in the poetry of his early university years that one can see how the “deutsche Muse” has taken on a more learned quality, and where, in discussing medieval poetry, Heine attempts (with mixed results) to set his own work apart from those who he believes to have misunderstood the eternal spirit of poetry, a rhetorical strategy we will see Heine use again and again throughout his life.6 In examining the earliest strata of Heine’s poetry and prose, we not only capture the evolution of Heine’s poetic voice vis à vis the Middle Ages, we will also see where the seeds of his disillusionment are planted, as Heine’s poetic sense shifts away from the fromme Minne of his teenage years, towards a more historically grounded Mittelalter that tries to aim for the heights of medieval lyric poetry without overusing the chivalric and religious clichés he criticized in Die Romantik. Heine’s increasingly historical and scholarly understanding of the Middle Ages brings with it a clearer recognition of the cultural and political implications of the German Romantics’ intellectual and literary project of “reviving” the German Middle Ages. Given the centrality of the Middle Ages to Heine’s earliest self-conception as a poet, this leads to a dilemma: the importance of the Middle Ages (be it from first- or second-hand sources) as a source of poetic inspiration for Heine comes face-to-face with his growing awareness of German scholarly medievalism as the foundation of a reactionary and often anti-Semitic political program.7 The consequences of this tension on Heine’s writing and the function of the Middle Ages within that tension will be examined more closely in the second chapter.

6 This will be a central theme of chapter three and the discussion of De L’Allemagne. 7 It should be noted that even this recognition is fraught with tension, as Heine remains very selective about who he will lump together as “bad” Romantics as opposed to “good” Romantics.

The Middle Ages of the Adolescent Heine

That Heine’s early poetic persona is steeped in the post-Napoleonic medieval renaissance of the first decades of 19th-century Germany (if one can pardon the anachronistic wording) should come as no surprise. In the second decade of the 19th century, Ludwig Uhland and Baron de La Motte Fouqué were perhaps the most popular authors in Germany.8 Heine himself made no secret of their cultural importance as authors. For example, as he wrote in Die romantische Schule on Fouqué:

Sein Lorbeer ist von ächter Art. Er ist ein wahrer Dichter und die Weihe der Poesie ruht auf seinem Haupte... und Herr Fouqué kann sich rühmen, daß er der einzige von der romantischen Schule ist, an dessen Schriften auch die niederen Klassen Geschmack gefunden.9

What is important to note is that Heine’s earliest understanding of the German Middle Ages comes primarily from the poems and novels of these authors, as well as from translations of the works of authors such as Walter Scott and Miguel de Cervantes.10 In other words, Heine’s earliest poetic influences around the Middle Ages were not scholarly at all. As Georg Mücke notes in his examination of the young Heine’s literary understanding of the Middle Ages prior to his university studies:

Hatte er sie bisher immer nur aus den Werken der Romantik, also aus zweiter Hand, kennen gelernt, so begannen ihm jetzt wengistens einige Urquellen zu sprudeln.11

Indeed, as Mücke convincingly argues, there is no evidence that he had any exposure to either scholarly Middle High German primary sources, or even early modern German translations of Middle High German poetry prior to his university studies. Rather, Heine’s understanding of

8 See Katja Diegmann-Hornig, "Sich in die Poesie zu flüchten, wie in unantastbare Eilande der Seeligen": Analysen zu ausgewählten Romanen von Friedrich Baron de La Motte Fouqué (Hildesheim: Olms, 1999), 127. 9 DHA Bd. 8/1, 225. 10 For a comprehensive discussion of these and other contemporary late Romantic sources for Heine’s poetry before attending university, see Mücke, Beziehungen, 1–23. 11 Mücke, Beziehungen, 18.

13 what he terms “Minne” comes mainly from Fouqué (which can be attested to on the basis of pseudo-archaic words for women that Heine clearly took from Fouqué’s work)12 and Uhland, both of whom Heine explicitly mentions in his own account of his youth in Die romantische Schule. This second-hand understanding of the Middle Ages is the crucible out of which, for better or for worse, Heine’s poetic instincts are forged. Therefore, Heine’s adolescent understanding of the Middle Ages is essential to charting his trajectory as a poet and thinker on Romanticism and to appreciating how his encounter with medieval primary sources at university as well as his studies with August Wilhelm Schlegel deepened his understanding of the Middle Ages while simultaneously sowing the seeds of disillusionment that will prove so important to his later reputation as a poet. Although the extent to which Heine understood Romanticism as a philosophical or literary doctrine in his adolescence, beyond what he himself later told his readers, is unclear, what is clear is that the authors he was reading extensively, and who in turn inspired him to write his own poetry, were late Romantic authors and exemplars of an explicitly medievalizing tradition within German culture in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. 13

In other words, Heine’s earliest encounter with poetry from the Romantic tradition, and his understanding thereof, developed prior to his self-conscious understanding of this tradition as explicitly part of German Romanticism as a literary or cultural movement. In other words, Heine was not coming to this poetry from a scholarly or intellectual perspective, but instead as a consumer of popular culture. For Heine, authors like Uhland and Fouqué were not “Romantic” authors, but popular German authors. Contemporary Romantic poetry was simply modern German poetry to him, and what modern poets were writing at the time was highly medieval in character. This accounts for why Heine might refer to his own derivative adolescent poetry as Minne, a word that deliberately evokes the poetry of the Middle Ages, even if it was written without knowledge of what Middle High German poetry looked like. What is important is that Heine imagined himself as a poet of Minnelieder before he had any conscious association with

12 See for example, DHA 1/2, 659. 13 Although Laura Hofrichter argued that Heine was not exposed to Romanticism in any way until 181613, his earliest poetry’s indebtedness to Fouqué would seem to support his later recollection, in Die romantische Schule, of reading Uhland’s poetry in and around 1813 (Heine states that he was reading it 20 years before the publication of Die romantische Schule). Indeed, her conception of Romanticism, in her otherwise highly regarded study on Heine’s poetry, seems to exclude Fouqué and Uhland from early Romanticism. See Laura Hofrichter, Heinrich Heine, trans. Barker Fairley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 9-10.

Romanticism or any self-awareness of a “Romantic” political program. For Heine, “Minne” was contemporary poetry, tout court. To illustrate this, it will be helpful to examine what the German Middle Ages meant to Heine, both as a form of lyric poetry and as a concept, based on his earliest poetry and prose.

Deutschland

In 1815, in commemoration of the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Heine wrote the patriotic poem Deutschland.14 The poem, which reminds one of Ludwig Uhland’s contemporaneous Vaterländische Gedichte, is not only our earliest indication of the artistic milieu from which Heine drew his inspiration, but also his first foray into political poetry; the poem opens with the line “Deutschlands Ruhm will ich besingen…”15 and goes on to depict the Napoleonic invasion and the aftermath of the German victory, focusing eventually on a personified female Germany who tends to her wounded soldiers. Although the Düsseldorfer Heine Ausgabe suggests that some of his imagery might be inspired by the Edda,16 and there is much thematic material here that foreshadows the thematization of women in Heine’s later poems,17 I would like to draw attention to a stanza in the middle of the poem, after Heine has contrasted the retreat of the French with the return of a pure, manly, heroic Germany, as it is the first reference to the medieval in Heine’s known corpus:

Auch die alte fromme Minne Kehrt zurück, die Sängerlust Zierest herrlich, fromme Minne Deutschen Mannes Heldenbrust.18

14 Although it is certainly one of Heine’s earliest poems, it was not published until 1829. 15 DHA 1/1, 512. 16 See ”Deutsche Sonne wurde duster...” and the commentary in DHA 1/2, 1168. 17 For example, the vaguely sexual depiction of a female Germany, as well as the penultimate stanza, which lauds German women and urges them to “Blühet lange, blühet fort” (DHA 1/2, 515). 18 DHA 1/1, 514.

Heine celebrates the return of “fromme Minne,” a phrase which will return often in Heine’s early poetry.19 From this, one can deduce a number of things about how Heine thought about “Minne” at this stage. It is a devotional and “high” love which decorates the hearts of heroic Germans; however, given the tendency of the poem as well as Heine’s own later concentration on unrequited love, it also implies physical attraction towards women, which in turn leads men to action in two particular ways. “Fromme Minne” calls back the desire to sing and to create song, that is, the poetic Muse, which Heine links back to, calling on “fromme Minne” to decorate the heroic hearts of German men. Although the poem does not thematically resemble any of the poems that Heine would later classify as “Minne,” Deutschland is conceived of explicitly as a song, a pure song, and this stanza could be read as Heine valorizing his own poetic process as well as the first example of Heine taking the pulse of German culture, albeit in an uncharacteristically derivative way. Nevertheless, at the beginning of his journey as a poet, Heine specifically connects the return of “Minne” to the health and purity of the German nation, and the relationship between purity, song and patriotism is something we will find reoccurring as a central theme in Heine’s earliest writings around “Minne.”

The Letter to Christian Sethe

In one of his earliest preserved letters, sent on November 20, 1816, the 19-year-old Heine20 laments to his friend Christian Sethe21 that his love for a girl goes unrequited – “Sie liebt mich nicht!”22 The unclear identity of the object of his desire (most likely his cousin Amalie), which fueled the writing of much of the early poetry in Heine’s Buch der Lieder, has long made this

19 DHA 1/1, 1076. 20 Or 17 years old, depending on which account of Heine’s birthdate is accepted. See Jeffrey Sammons, Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1979), 11-55. 21 Christian Sethe was a childhood friend and remained a constant interlocutor for Heine well into the 1820s. For an overview of Christian Sethe’s life and his relationship to Heine, see Han’s Stöcker’s “Heine’s rheinische Zeitgenossen” in Heine Jahrbuch 1972 (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1972), 96-109. 22 HSA 20, 19.

16 one of Heine’s most famous and extensively analysed letters.23 It is not only a classic expression of what we would now call teenage angst, but also a clear prose account of Heine’s pre-1820 (and therefore pre-Schlegel) thoughts about his poetry and in particular his understanding of Minne.

Given this, what did the word “Minne” mean to Heine? Unsurprisingly, its first use in the letter is in the context of a discussion around the aforementioned unrequited love:

Ich bin ein wahnsinniger Schach Spieler. Schon beym ersten Stein habe ich die Königinn verloren, und doch spiel ich noch, u spiele – um die Königinn.

Soll ich weiter spielen? –

ʺquand on a tout perdu et qu'on n'a plus d'espoir

La vie est une opprobre et la mort un devoir.ʺ

Schweige, verfluchter, lästerlicher Franzose, mit deinem feigen Verzweiflungsgegreine! Kennst du nicht die deutsche Minne? Die steht kühn u fest auf zwey ewig unerschütterliche Säulen, Manneswürde u Glauben. – Nur halte mich, O Gott, in sicherer Huth vor die schleichende finstre Macht der Stunde. – Entfernt von ihr, lange Jahre glühende Sehnsucht im Herzen tragen, das ist Höllenqual, und drängt höllisches Schmerzgeschrey hervor. Aber, i n i h r e r N ä h e s e y n , und doch ewig lange Wochen nach ihrem allein- seeligmachenden Anblick oft vergebens schmachten, u – u – und – und – O! – O! – O Christian! da kann auch das frömste und reinste Gemüth in wilder wahnsinniger Gottlosigkeit auflodern. –(emphasis mine)24

Here one can see a number of resonances with the Deutschland poem of 1815. Heine directly connects Minne to both masculinity and Germanness. “Deutsche Minne” is to be contrasted with

23 For an overview of his unrequited love and the identity of the young woman, see Sammons, A Modern Biography, 42-44. 24 HSA 20, 19.

17 the “French” suffering, with Heine arguing, on patriotic grounds, that pining for a lost love in a noble and life-affirming way is something deeply German, and something he clearly wishes to identify with. It is here where one also sees a theme that will crop up repeatedly in Heine’s writings about poetry and Romanticism: in this passage he indicates that he very much wishes not to be the “bleiche Knabe” – the protagonist in much of his earliest poetry, which will be discussed shortly.

Rather, he is identifying what he sees as a problematic (and hopefully not inevitable!) tendency in “French” artistic circles which equates the writing of great poetry with the need to waste away. In contrast, he proclaims that, despite his own sense of suffering, to want to die for love is cowardly, and not only cowardly, but French! Minne is distinctly German, with the French form of mourning a lost love being weak and leading to suicide, while the heroic and strong German love leads to health, connecting this letter to themes he raised in the Deutschland poem. The central thrust of his argument in this letter is that one can suffer nobly over a lost love, but that suffering must eventually be mastered, and the mastery of suffering is, in his view, a particularly German quality. Minne here seems to function as a bulwark against disillusionment and sadness, something that helps him strengthen his resolve to overcome his broken heart, rather than something that allows him to wallow in it. This is perhaps why Heine ties Minne to the two symbols of “Manneswürde u[nd] Glauben” – strong German manhood (in contrast to the French) and belief (here in a Christian sense), both of which arise out of a third – desire.

Manhood, desire and belief fit neatly into the traditional understanding of Minne as unrequited male desire. Although the third symbol, belief, would very briefly push Heine towards the bosom of the very medieval institution he will later vehemently reject and criticize, namely, the Roman Catholic Church (a time which he will refer to late in life as his “Madonna days”),25 it is the tension between these three concepts that form the foundation for Heine’s entire poetic output, and how they function in relation with each other in this letter serves as a basis for the way in which Heine will talk about poetry for much of his life.

Minne here represents not an explicitly Medieval art form, but rather a productive tension, a kind of life skill that has an archaic name for reasons that Heine appears not to be aware of. In order

25 DHA 15, 51.

18 to be a good German man, one’s sensual desire must be grounded in some way by religious belief; however, in order to avoid succumbing to this desire and religious belief, to waste away in the service of these lonely abstractions, one’s physical and religious desires must be sublimated through the act of writing poetry. As we will see in this very early poetry, Minne functions for Heine as Werther did for Goethe - an attempt to write his way out of what he sees as an emotional straightjacket. This element of fitness, and the relationship between health and wellness and the production of art, and in particular poetry, is something that will also recur in Heine’s writing.

This function of Minne is made clear in the letter to Sethe, when Heine takes up again his discussion of his own poetry:

Das ist auch eine herzkränkende Sache daß s i e meine schöne [sic.] Lieder, die nur [ich] für Sie gedichtet habe so bitter und schnöde gedemüthigt und mir überhaupt in dieser Hinsicht sehr häßlich mitgespielt hat. – Aber solltest Du es wohl glauben, die Muse ist mir demohngeachtet jetzt noch weit lieber als je. Sie ist mir eine getreue tröstende Freundinn geworden, die ist so heimlich süß und ich liebe sie recht inniglich. 26

Both his affections and his poetry were rejected, but instead of collapsing into sadness, he transfers his affections to the Muse, to the writing of poetry. Indeed, it is clear that the romantic rejection has done nothing to abate his desire to write poetry. In fact, when Heine tells Sethe that he is writing a lot of poetry, he points out that it is all Minnelieder. However, there is yet another problem writing Minnelieder, namely, he believes this style of poetry is bad for business:

Aber das ist die Schwerenothssache: da es dazu Minneliede sind würde es mir, als Kaufmann, ungeheur schädlich sein.27

This is because Hamburg is a terrible place for poets:

26 HSA 20, 19. 27 HSA 20, 19.

Und, gegen Dich kann ich's aufrichtig gestehen: außerdem daß in dieser Schacherstadt nicht das mindeste Gefühl für Poesie zu finden ist...28

Here is yet another point of tension for Heine that we will see throughout his life. The citizens of Hamburg have no feelings for poetry, yet all he can write is Minnelieder – the implication is that Minnelied are a healthy form of poetic expression for Heine, but that he is often in a milieu where his particular method of aesthetic therapy is unwanted or derided. Heine is all too aware of the tensions between his writing poetry and the emerging mercantile economy, and of being a poet at a time, and in a place, where he is meant to be focusing on business and efficiency. This early articulation of the challenges Heine felt he faced producing poetry in a milieu obsessed with commerce and/or the political is another theme that will occur repeatedly in his work. Heine finds himself at this stage in a place that will become all too familiar to him – the poetry he is writing is fashionable, or at least in emulation of his then literary heroes Uhland and Fouqué, but he is in a place where being a poet in this way, being aesthetically minded, is not valued. At this stage in his life, he was writing Minnelieder in spite of the dangers it might cause him professionally, because this poetry was what provided him the strength to go on. When Heine later refers to the “Deutsche Muse,” it is his encounter with this poetry and its impact on him that he is describing.

As we have seen, “Minne” is both the concept out of which his desire to write poetry emerges, and also the name of the genre of poetry he is writing. Although Heine’s own understanding of Minne ties it thematically to the Minnesang of the German Middle Ages, there is little to suggest that Heine’s work at this time is derived from an appreciation of the poetry of the German Middle Ages. Rather, Heine’s Minne is an idea that ties desire, belief and German nationalism together, an idea that that emerges out of the popular literature of his day, and it is now worth examining some of Heine’s “Minne” poems.

28 HSA 20, 21.

Heine’s Minnelieder

Heine classified a lot of his early poems as Minnelieder. Heine’s published collection of poetry from 1822 contains a section entitled “Minnelieder,” which contains 15 poems. Additionally, Heine’s earliest published poems in 1817 were originally entitled “Zwei Lieder der Minne.” 29 Of all of these explicitly “Minne” poems in the 1822 collection, approximately half of them come from before 1820,30 that is, they predate his studies with Schlegel, and therefore his first documented encounter with actual medieval German poetry. It seems safe to say that many of these pre-1820 poems are very likely the poems Heine was referring to in his letter to Sethe.31

However, like most juvenilia, Heine’s Minnelieder are generally looked upon as some of Heine’s weakest poems. Jeffrey Sammons, for example, can barely hide his contempt for them:

A less promising type [of poem] he called Minnelieder, in reference to Medieval German Minnesang. But, apart from the theme of unrequited love, they bear little resemblance to courtly love poetry; rather, they are marked by excessive use of coy diminutives and other ornaments of pseudo-folk Kitsch.32

This critical dismissal has obscured the fact that Heine nevertheless included many of these poems in Buch der Lieder – which can no longer be counted amongst his juvenilia.33 Moreover, even after his growing disenchantment with Romanticism in the early 1820s, not only did he continue to classify many of his early poems as Minnelieder, he included them at the front of his earliest published collection of poetry in 1822. Even at this time, Heine recognized that this earliest strata of his poetry, considered as a group, was important precisely because of what one

29 DHA 1/1, 18. The “Zwei Lieder der Minne” also appear in the 1822 edition, however, “Der Traum,” is entitled “Die Wundermaid” and appears in the Traumbilder section of 1822 edition as well as the Traumbilder section of Buch der Lieder. “Die Weihe” appears in the 1822 collection under the Romanzen section but does not appear in Buch der Lieder. 30 These include: “Minnegruß,” “Minneklage,” “Die weisse Blume,” “Ahnung,” “Morgens steh ich auf,” “Frage,” and the untitled “Es treibt mich hin,” “Lieb Liebchen,” “Schöne Wiese meiner,” and “Warte Warte.” 31 The post-1820 poems include: “Sehnsucht,” “Der Traurige,” a group of poems Heine entitled “Die Vermählte,” “Ich wandelte unter,” and “Anfangs.” 32 Sammons, A Modern Biography, 64. 33 Albeit under a different heading, the reason for which will be discussed in chapter two.

21 might now term their “Kitsch,” because they revealed to his readers, in a way that the Nordsee cycle would later do (to far greater acclaim), a crucial moment in Heine’s own understanding of his emergence as a poet.

These early poems reveal Heine attempting to work with some of the tensions and contradictions he saw before him, opting for a kind of sincerity that will later seem uncharacteristic. These poems are the fruits of Heine’s first encounter with the echte deutsche Muse, and in his early poetry he is working through his mastery of this aesthetic encounter, borne out of the theme of unrequited love, and this encounter will linger with him long after he has fully developed the self-assurance of his own beliefs and his poetic abilities. As we shall see, these poems are the series of poems against which Heine will judge not only his own work, but also that of an entire generation of writers. In other words, Heine’s own later shifting and dynamic judgements of these early works will form the backbone of his continually evolving thoughts on the relationship between art, politics and history.

This is all being said, Heine’s early Minnelieder (both pre- and post-1820), do feel uncharacteristic when stacked against the entirety of Heine’s poetic corpus. For example, as I have already mentioned, there is rarely a hint of Heine’s famous irony when he refers to these poems. It is difficult to imagine the poet of Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen writing a poem like the following, let alone allowing it to stand at the head of the opening Minnelieder section of his 1822 collection of poems:

Minnegruß

Die du bist so schön und rein, Wunnevolles Magedein, Deinem Dienste ganz allein Möcht ich wohl mein Leben weihn.

Deine süßen Äugelein Glänzen mild wie Mondesschein; Helle Rosenlichter streun Deine roten Wängelein.

Und aus deinem Mündchen klein Blinkts hervor wie Perlenreihn; Doch den schönsten Edelstein Hegt dein stiller Busenschrein.

Fromme Minne mag es sein, Was mir drang ins Herz hinein, Als ich weiland schaute dein, Wunnevolles Magedein!34

One can see here not only the archaic language (Minne, wunnevoll, Magedein) which he inherited from Fouqué, but also a devotional simplicity distinctly unlike Heine’s later work. 35 It is also the only time in these early poems where he writes about the concept of “Dienst,” that is, of love service. As I will show later in this chapter, one of the small things which set apart Heine’s naïve sense of the Middle Ages before he begins his university studies in 1820 is that his earliest poems, although set in medievalized poetic world through their use of archaic language, are curiously absent of courtly features. Rather, they tend to be more religious and devotional in tone than courtly, themes which square up with the “belief, desire and manhood” triad he wrote of in the letter to Sethe. The social aspects of the German Middle Ages in his early poetry are subsumed by the idea of Minne as the poetic mastery of unrequited love and religious fervour by German men.

Heine’s earliest published poems, the “Zwei Lieder der Minne” (“Die Weihe” and “Der Traum”)36 are worth examining in more detail, as they serve as early exemplars of Heine’s Minne and his putting into practice his nascent thinking of the idea of “Minne” as developed in his letter to Sethe. Moreover, given Heine’s own later sharply divergent estimation of these two early poems, one can see in their differing themes a harbinger of Heine’s own inner conflicts around the Minne aspect of his Muse.

34 DHA 1/1, 434. 35 DHA 1/1, 1076. 36 DHA 1/1, 18.

The first of the two poems is entitled “Die Weihe.”37 It dates from around 1816 and was (as has been noted) one of Heine’s first published poems, and although it was included in Heine’s 1822 published collection of poetry, it was omitted from Buch der Lieder. The poem opens with a young man, a “frommer, bleicher Knabe” alone, “in der Waldkapelle/ Vor dem Bild der Himmelsjungfrau,” praying to a statue of the Madonna with a litany-like refrain, with each verse beginning “O Madonna.”38 He begs to remain before the statue forever, and commenting on her beauty, before asking for a sign of her grace. Where things begin to get interesting is that the statue does indeed respond with a sign. She transforms into a beautiful “Maid” who gives the young man a lock of her hair and commands him to journey forward:

Da tät sich ein schauerlich Wunder bekunden, Wald und Kapell sind auf einmal verschwunden; Knabe nicht wußte, wie ihm geschehn, Hat alles auf einmal umwandelt gesehn.

Und staunend stand er im schmucken Saale, Da saß Madonna, doch ohne Strahlen; Sie hat sich verwandelt in liebliche Maid, Und grüßet und lächelt mit kindlicher Freud.

Und sieh! vom blonden Lockenhaupte Sie selber sich eine Locke raubte,

37 DHA 1/1, 431-32. 38 There have been numerous attempts in the literature, dating back to the 19th century, to connect “Die Weihe” to the “Abschied von Maria” from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, primarily through this litany refrain as well as some thematic similarities. Karl Sessel’s 1887 selection of Heine’s poems includes “Die Weihe,” and he mentions that the “Vorbild” for “Die Weihe” is the “Abschied von Maria.” This idea is taken up by Fischer in his 1905 monograph Ueber die volkstümlichen Elemente in den Gedichten Heines, which is then taken up much more recently by Michael Perruadin, “‘Anfang und Ende meines lyrischen Lebens’: Two Key Poems of Heine’s Early Years,” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 22, No. 1(February 1986): 32-54. Indeed, Perraudin’s argument in this essay is to show how Heine develops thematic materials from other poets in order to express what are often very private thoughts. Although it seems entirely possible that Heine had read Des Knaben Wunderhorn in 1816, it seems tenuous to suggest that Heine included a litany-like section in “Die Weihe” solely as a matter of literary quotation, given this kind of Marian plea was (and remains to this day), an extremely common Catholic liturgical form. This is not to say that “Die Weihe” lacks a literary pedigree, rather that the evidence for this specific relationship lacks justification in the secondary literature.

Und sprach zum Knaben mit himmlischem Ton: Nimm hin deinen besten Erdenlohn!

Sprich nun, wer bezeugt die Weihe? Sahst du nicht die Farben wogen Flammig an der Himmelsbläue? Menschen nennens Regenbogen.

Englein steigen auf und nieder, Schlagen rauschend mit den Schwingen, Flüstern wundersame Lieder, Süßer Harmonieen Klingen.

Knabe hat es wohl verstanden, Was mit Sehnsuchtglut ihn ziehet Fort und fort nach jenen Landen, Wo die Myrte ewig blühet.39

Although it has been argued that “Die Weihe” is a complex synthesis of literary paraphrases intended for a very private purpose, I think that “Die Weihe” can be read as a poetic analogue to his letter to Sethe, where he deploys the triad of manhood, desire and belief to develop his idea of Minne in a positive way. 40 The result, I would argue, is an early example of Heine’s bifurcation of the “unhealthy” tendencies in his thoughts and feelings from his healthy side, and to sublimate this personal suffering into an aesthetic form. Here, the unhealthy “Knabe” is

39 DHA 1/1, 432. 40 See, in particular, Michael Perraudin, “Anfang,” 32-54. As noted above, Perraudin’s argument in the article is to show Heine attempting to synthesise a large number of literary influences (such as Brentano, Novalis and Goethe) into a coherent whole in “Die Weihe”. However, aside from the connection to Goethe’s “Mignon” poem, the article tends to overplay the literary references (see the earlier note on Des Knaben Wunderhorn) in the service of a reading of “Die Weihe” that leads to references so private as to be arbitrary, especially with respect to Heine’s Jewishness, arguing for an elaborate private joke between himself and Amelie via the “Englein steigen auf und nieder” line in the poem, which Perraudin connects to Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament, but which again has a number of equally plausible Christian connections as a “path to heaven.” Although I believe Perraudin makes a lot of interesting observations in this article, which he adapted for his book Heinrich Heine: Poetry in Context: a Study of 'Buch der Lieder' (Oxford: Berg, 1989), his reading represents a long-standing tendency to essentialise Heine’s Jewishness at a moment in time when, in the face of his correspondence and poetical output, Heine’s interest in Judaism was at a nadir.

25 restored to health through the favour of a female presence, his stasis before the statue transformed into a command to go forth.

Indeed, the parallel transformation of the statue of Mary into a living, breathing person with the static “bleiche Knabe” into a future-oriented young man suggests, if not a subversion of the pious tone of the poem (as some have argued), at the least an early instance of Heine shifting from the spiritual and/or religious register towards the material/sensual.41 Additionally, Heine is overtly playing with the concepts of belief, desire and masculinity in “Die Weihe,” but in a way that will seem uncharacteristically sincere when set against his later work. “Die Weihe” bears little resemblance to any of Heine’s famous use of Stimmungsbrechung.42 Instead, the transformations have less to do with subversion and more to do with sublimation, that is, with Heine’s understanding of Minne” as a kind of therapeutic approach to poetry. With this transformation, the “bleiche Knabe” of the opening of the poem achieves a positive forward direction.

The timing of the composition of “Die Weihe” and the letter to Sethe provides a guidepost for reading this peculiar poem as Heine attempts to work his way poetically out of the pain caused by unrequited love. It has been argued that this transformation points to a persistent theme in Heine’s work, and one that will become very important in terms of his treatment of the Middle Ages, which is the transformation of a Christian religious figure into something earthly and sensual (even erotic), which, for Heine, often relates it to the classical/pagan traditions.43

41 There is a definitive Romantic provenance for the Venus/Mary transformation and a lovesick young man in “Die Weihe” – Heine had read E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Die Elixiere des Teufels, which depicts a similar scene, prior to the composition of this poem. Interestingly, we know that he had read this novel before he had written “Die Weihe” as he sent a copy of Hoffmann’s novel to his cousin Fanny on January 1, 1816, and the book, with Heine’s dedication, is at the Heine-Archiv in Düsseldorf. See HSA 20-27R, 291. See also Joachim Dyck, “Heines Neujahrsglückwunsch für seine Kusine Fanny in E.T.A. Hoffmannʼs Die Elixiere des Teufels“ in Heine-Jahrbuch 18 (J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart, 1979) , 202-205. 42 See DHA 1/1, 171. Additionally, Manfred Windfuhr, the editor of the Düsseldorfer Heine Ausgabe, used “Die Weihe” as an exemplar of Heine’s “trivialromantischen Klängen.” See Manfred Windfuhr, Heinrich Heine: Revolution und Reflexion (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1969), 21-22. 43 See, for example, Olaf Hildebrand, Emanzipation und Versöhnung: Aspekte des Sensualismus im Werk Heinrich Heines unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Reisebilder (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 2001), 228-231, who effectively argues for “Die Weihe” as an early example of the tendency in Heine to transform the religious into the erotic.

In contrast to Heine’s later use of the clearly ironic Stimmungsbrechung, “Die Weihe” focuses on bringing the godly down to earth, and making the immaterial, or ideal, real and corporeal, the result being a positive outcome for the young man. At this stage in his writing, there seems to be more of a desire to reconcile this dichotomy rather than affirming it, as the last stanza does not twist what has gone on before, but rather sets the “bleicher Knabe” off on a journey to that place “Wo die Myrte ewig blühet.”

The use of “Myrte” or myrtle is also noteworthy, as it is an image likely derived from Goethe’s famous “Mignon” poem, an image Heine rarely takes up again. 44 Myrtle has been historically connected to Venus, which lends support to the idea that the statue’s transformation could be read along the Christian/Pagan axis which Heine will explore his entire life.45

Although neither “Minnegruß” nor “Die Weihe” made it into Buch der Lieder, the companion poem to “Die Weihe”, entitled “Der Traum” in its original publication, not only appears in Buch der Lieder (albeit in a revised form), but is in fact the first poem in the collection, appearing immediately after the dedication and the preface. If “Die Weihe” depicts a moment of religious (and perhaps pagan and sensual) encounter and uplift, “Der Traum” contrasts sharply with its subversion of Romantic dream poetry.46 If the Romantics used dreams as a path to a vision of heaven, Heine’s depiction of the dreamscape in “Der Traum” is one of rejection, where the Romantic landscape is one suffused with death, and it is in waking, and not dreaming, that the poet finds refuge.47

44 It is likely that Heine found this word from a poem that one can be relatively certain that Heine knew, as “Myrte” is in Goethe’s famous poem from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, “Kennst du das Land.” The fact that certain words from the Goethe poem (Land, blühen, Myrte, ziehen) are found in this last stanza, as well as the connection between love and travelling to these lands, would seem to provide some support for the suggestion that Heine is here drawing upon Goethe. See also Perraudin, “Anfang,” 40-41, as well as DHA 1/2, 1077. 45 That being said, it is not clear to what extent he would have been acquainted with the relationship between Venus and Myrte, and he never connects Myrte to Venus again, although Venus will grow in importance for Heine as a figure as he begins to explore the relationship between the pagan and the Christian in the 1820s and ‘30s, and who will make an important appearance in his later poetry (one of which, “Tannhäuser,” will be examined in greater detail in chapter three). 46 For an overview of Heine’s use of the dream motive and its relationship to contemporaneous literatures, see Paul Gerhard Klussmann, “Die Deformation des romantischen Traummotivs in Heines früher Lyrik,” Untersuchungen zur Literatur als Geschichte: Festschrift für Benno von Wiese, edited by Vincent J. Günther et al. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1973), 259-285. 47 Monica Tempian has written about the contrast between the idyllic Romantic setting and the grimness of the young woman’s actions in this poem. See Monica Tempian "ein Traum, Gar Seltsam Schauerlich-":

In “Der Traum” the narrator of the poem recalls a “gar fürchterlich” dream he had. In the opening verses there is a description of a fertile garden, with “Blümlein.” Indeed, Heine here paints a picture of life and health:

Es zwitscherten die Vögelein muntre Liebesmelodeyn; Von Goldglanz schien die Sonn' umstralt, Die Blümchen lustig bunt bemalt.

Süß Balsamduft aus Kräutern rinnt, Die Lüfte wehen lieb und lind; Und alles schimmert, alles lacht, Und zeigt mir freundlich seine Pracht.

Und mitten in dem Blumenland Ein klarer Marmorbronnen stand, Da schaut ich eine schöne Maid, Die emsig wusch ein weißes Kleid.48

With the marble fountain encouraging the recollection of the marble statue of “Die Weihe” one might, at this moment, imagine that “Der Traum” is leading the readers towards a romantic encounter between the narrator and the young woman, and it is difficult to see what might be “fürchterlich” about this dream. However, the horror is apparent immediately, as the narrator describes the “Maid” and then approaches her to ask her what she is doing:

Romantikerbschaft Und Experimentalpsychologie in Der Traumdichtung Heinrich Heines (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005), 45-49. 48 DHA 1/1, 18.

Die Wangen bleich, die Aeuglein mild, Ein wundersames Himmelsbild! Und wie ich schau, die Maid ich fand So fremd und doch so wohlbekannt.

Die schöne Maid beeilt sich sehr, Sie summt ein seltsam Liedchen her: Rinne, rinne Wasserlein, Wasche, wasche Hemde rein!

Ich kam und näh'rte mich zu ihr, Und lispelte: O sage mir, Du wonnevolle, schöne Maid, Wem höret dieses weiße Kleid?49

Her answer is chilling:

Da sprach sie schnell: Sei bald bereit, Ich wasche dir dein Totenkleid!50

The poem continues on this theme, with the narrator leaving her to find another green space, only to encounter the young woman yet again preparing some aspect of an impending funeral, such as cutting down an oak tree for his casket, and digging his grave. Upon seeing his gravesite, he falls in and at that moment wakes up, in a reversal that evokes, but is not, Heine’s later use of Stimmungsbrechung:

Und da ich in die Grube schaut', Ein kalter Schauder mich durchgraut;

49 DHA 1/1, 18-20. 50 DHA 1/1, 20.

Und in die dunkle Mitternacht Stürzt' ich hinein -- und bin erwacht.51

The reader might ask: what do these two poems have in common, aside from their author? Moreover, given what we know of Heine’s understanding of Minne at the time, where does “Der Traum” fit in as an expression of Minne? As with “Die Weihe,” there is a fair amount of archaic language in “Der Traum” (wunnevolle, Maid), but the tone and content is vastly different.

However, consider “Der Traum” in relation to the passage from the letter to Sethe on Heine’s rejection (“Das ist auch eine herzkränkende Sache…”) quoted above. In “Der Traum” one has this set-up of the narrator passing through a “Minne” environment, a poetic landscape where he always winds up finding this woman, who, instead of being an object of affection or inspiration as in “Die Weihe,” prepares for his death. Although this superficially contrasts with “Die Weihe,” the woman’s actions in “Der Traum” suggest a parallel inward transformation to the outward transformation of “Die Weihe,” from the sallow youth of the dream world confronted by his own mortality to the awake, and alive, young poet.

Here Heine’s idiosyncratic understanding of Minne at this stage and its relationship to health and sickness comes into view. As in the letter, where his bitterness is transubstantiated into a closer devotion of the muse, so too in “Der Traum,” which seems to be a bleak poem about the love of his life preparing for his death becomes constrained by the fact that the story the poet tells is nothing more than a dream. If the poem’s ending does prefigure the more explicitly ironic Stimmungsbrechung that Heine’s youthful poetry is so famous for, it does so not to undermine the poem’s content, but rather to contain it. As such, both “Die Weihe” and “Der Traum” gesture towards themes of unrequited love being sublimated through an encounter, even if “Der Traum” in particular lacks the clear markers that might associate it with the medievalized poetry of his literary mentors.

Where “Die Weihe” operates as an explicit reflection of the symbols of manhood, desire and belief that are central to Heine’s conception of Minne, in “Der Traum” these symbols take on a far more psychological and poetic character. The pious fairy-tale setting is replaced by the

51 DHA 1/1, 22.

30 liminal space of a vividly described yet simultaneously vague wooded area, which is a suitable place for a dreamscape. Additionally, the framing of the poem, and its title, is a description of the poet’s psychological state. Heine clearly wishes to indicate that this poem takes place not in the “real” world, but rather in the dreamscape, and the abrupt end of the poem, with the poet’s waking, and not with his death (or his triumph), is an indication that “waking up” to the reality of his situation and to the pain of his heartbreak is also a way of working through his emotionally fraught situation. Here Heine transforms a sequence of dark, even suicidal thoughts in the light of his emotional turmoil, and his anguish over being rejected, into a poem where these thoughts are twice compartmentalized: as a dream and as a poem of a dream.

With “Die Weihe” and “Der Traum,” Heine has provided two distinct answers to the problem of suffering that likely drove him to write “Minne” in the first place, with “Die Weihe” representing an extrinsic solution to his suffering, while “Der Traum” provides an intrinsic one. The distinction between interiority and exteriority will come up in Heine’s early Die Romantik (which will be taken up later in this chapter), and I would like to suggest that perhaps the reason why “Der Traum” finds itself in Buch der Lieder, while “Die Weihe” does not, has something to do with these contrasting approaches to “Minne” and how they accord with Heine’s own developing poetic persona. However, I would like to also suggest that this does not imply the rejection of one over the other, but rather that the extrinsic approach found in “Die Weihe” gets recoded by Heine, while the explicitly Catholic/medieval poetic landscape he loved as a teenager is soured by the political and social upheavals during his early adulthood.

To sum up, for Heine at this moment in his life, “Minne” means something quite different from, for example, unrequited love in a courtly setting. Rather, “Minne” is deeply connected to themes of health and manliness, dreams and desires, and is therefore not exclusively beholden to the realm of the religious and/or spiritual, but retains an important psychological aspect as well. What is then interesting about both poems is that they each attempt to provide various “material” solutions to the problems of Minne. “Die Weihe” ends with the young man’s journey to other lands, and hints towards the more explicitly “ritterliche” conception Heine will have of himself later on, while “Der Traum” ends with him waking up.52 Although awakening from a dream

52 This will be discussed later in this chapter.

31 might seem more despairing, the fact that it was a dream is actually a way of containing suffering to the imagination. Unlike “Die Weihe” which is definitively mystical and quasi-religious, “Der Traum” suggests that this suffering is in fact a part of human psychology that can be dealt with in the “real” world. Belonging to Heine’s earliest poetic impulses, which he much later described as “folles visions,” “Der Traum” is about another sick young man, however, instead of an encounter with the Virgin Mary as in “Die Weihe,” the young man finds himself with the personification of death as a young woman.53

So what was “Minne” to Heine as a young man before setting off to university? At this stage in Heine’s life, it seems safe to say that, although influenced by the popular medievalized works of authors such as Uhland and Fouqué, as well as popular folk poetry and Goethe, Minne itself was to Heine a rather simple thing, at least in definition: it was a German poetic sensibility that could be used to draw strength from the suffering brought about by a lost or unrequited love, and therefore it was a source of inspiration and a broadly conceived symbolic world in which Heine could immerse himself. Although one can already see in these two early poems a tension between ways of writing Minne, it will only be when Heine goes off to the University of Bonn that his conception of Minne will be transformed by his exposure to the literary, historical and scholarly aspects of the German Middle Ages themselves, an exposure mediated primarily through his first poetic mentor, August Wilhelm Schlegel.

Minne encounters Das Mittelalter – Heine and his Studies with August Wilhelm Schlegel

August Wilhelm Schlegel’s formative influence on the early Heine is undisputed, even by Heine himself.54 Heine met Schlegel in 1820, while Heine was a student at the University of Bonn, and Schlegel was one of the recently founded University’s “star” hires and there to both “put Bonn on the map” academically and attract notable students from far and wide.55 Given the newness

53 See DHA 1/2, 655. 54 See, for example, Heine’s note to his sonnet on Schlegel from the 1826 edition of his poems. (DHA 1/1, 114) 55 For a fuller account of the importance of Schlegel to the University of Bonn, see Roger Paulin, The Life of August Wilhelm Schlegel: Cosmopolitan of Art and Poetry (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2016), 457.

32 of Germanistik as a discipline, and Schlegel’s role in its founding – he was arguably the most important academic on German literature in the world at the time – it made perfect sense that Heine, as a student of the University of Bonn and a burgeoning poet, would find himself signing up for Schlegel’s lectures at the start of his university studies.56 While at Bonn, Heine sat in on three of Schlegel’s lectures: “Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Poesie” in the winter of 1819-20, as well as the “Lied der Nibelungen” and “Deutsche Verskunst” in the summer of 1820.57 As such, every lecture Heine sat in on by Schlegel would have either directly addressed medieval poetry, or would have included medieval poetry as a central theme.58 In addition to these lectures likely being Heine’s first exposure to primary sources of medieval poetry, Heine would have also heard Schlegel’s views on the relationship between literature, history and culture during the Middle Ages.59 Although Heine’s admiration for Schlegel (and Romanticism) was intense and brief, this association bore much fruit, not least in Die Romantik, Heine’s first published piece of literary criticism, and it is worth touching upon some of Schlegel’s thoughts on the Middle Ages to see how they influenced Heine’s, both in Die Romantik as well as in later works.

Schlegel typically examines the artistic endeavours of the Middle Ages in relation to classical Greece. As he writes:

Bei den Griechen war die menschliche Natur selbstgenügsam, sie ahnte keinen Mangel und strebte nach keiner andern Vollkommenheit, als die sie wirklich durch ihre eigenen Kräfte erreichen konnte... Jene sinnliche Religion wollte nur äußere vergängliche Segnungen erwerben; die Unsterblichkeit, insofern sie geglaubt wurde, stand in dunkler Ferne wie ein Schatten, ein abgeschwächter Traum dieses wachen hellen Lebestages. In der christlichen Ansicht hat sich alles umgekehrt: die Anschauung des Unendlichen hat

56 Paulin, August Wilhelm Schlegel, 467. 57 The notes for the Bonn lecture of “Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Poesie” that Heine attended were published, however, I have been unable to secure a copy of this text; as a result, I will be using similar texts, most of which were written prior to the Bonn lectures. 58 Paulin, August Wilhelm Schlegel, 469. 59 Sandra Kerschbaumer has convincingly argued that A.W. Schlegel’s conception of Romanticism cast a long shadow on Heine’s work and his understanding of aesthetics. See Sandra Kerschbaumer, Heines Moderne Romantik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000).

das Endliche vernichtet; das Leben ist zur Schattenwelt und zur Nacht geworden, und erst jenseits geht der ewige Tag des wesentlichen Daseins auf... Die Poesie der Alten war die des Besitzes, die unsrige ist die der Sehnsucht; jene steht fest auf dem Boden der Gegenwart, diese wiegt sich zwischen Erinnerung und Ahnung.60

In other words, Schlegel postulates that Christian art tends towards the infinite, in contrast to the immediacy of classical art.61 For Schlegel, this is of crucial importance for the development of medieval art and culture in Germanic lands:

Nächst dem Christentum ist die Bildung Europas seit dem Anfang des Mittelalters durch die germanische Stammesart der nordischen Eroberer, welche in ein ausgeartetes Menschengeschlecht neue Lebensregung brachten, entschieden worden... Aus dem rauhen, aber treuen Heldenmut der nordischen Eroberer entstand durch Beimischung christlicher Gesinnungen das Rittertum, dessen Zweck darin bestand, die Übung der Waffen durch heilig geachtete Gelübde vor jedem rohen und niedrigen Mißbrauch der Gewalt zu bewahren, worin sie so leicht verfällt.

Zu der ritterlichen Tugend gesellte sich ein neuer und sittsamerer Geist der Liebe, als einer begeisterten Huldigung für echte Weiblichkeit, die nun erst als der Gipfel der Menschheit verehrt wurde, und unter dem Bilde jungfräulicher Mütterlichkeit von der Religion selbst aufgestellt, alle Herzen das Geheimnis reiner Liebe ahnen ließ.62

The implications of this cultural mixing are crucial to the development of medieval art:

Rittertum, Liebe und Ehre sind nebst der Religion selbst die Gegenstände der Naturpoesie, welche sich im Mittelalter in unglaublicher Fülle ergoß und einer mehr künstlerischen Bildung des romantischen Geistes voranging. Diese Zeit hatte auch ihre

60 August W. Schlegel, ”Vorlesung über dramatische Kunst und Literatur“ in Kritische Schriften und Briefe. Erster Teil (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer), 1962, 25. 61 It is worth noting that Schlegel’s views here are similar to Hegel’s later pronouncements on the subject. 62 August W. Schlegel, Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1966), 24.

Mythologie, aus Ritterfabeln und Legenden bestehend, allein ihr Wunderbares und ihr Heroismus war dem der alter Mythologie ganz entgegengesetzt.63

It is not difficult to imagine this line of thinking resonating deeply with Heine. Given what we know of his youthful thoughts on Minne and poetry, hearing something along these lines in Schlegel’s lectures would have not only fleshed out his naïve understanding of the culture and art of Middle Ages from which his own Minne were derived (albeit second-hand), but also provided a further intellectual scaffolding to support his own contention about the value of medieval poetry and its value in contemporary society.

However, there is a catch, which Schlegel recognizes and which will have long-term implications for Heine’s own approach to the Middle Ages. As Schlegel writes in his Lectures on the History of Romantic Literature:

Die Gesetze, als der Ausdruck der öffentlichen Moralität, begnügten sich damit, die Rechte der Ehen in dieser Hinsicht und die unverfälschte Abstammung der Kinder zu sichern: außerhalb der bürgerlichen Rücksichten schien fast alles erlaubt. Ganz andere Begriffe über den Wert strenger Zucht und Sittsamkeit machte eine durchaus geistige Religion zu den herrschenden, es wurde für verdienstlich erklärt, dem Triebe der Natur zu entsagen, und mystische Segnungen knüpften sich an diese Herrschaft über sie. In der ritterlichen Zeit versuchte die Liebe nun gleichsam, sich mit diesen Gesinnungen zu vereinigen. Wenn man die klassische Bildung mit einem Worte schildern will, so war sie vollendete Naturerziehung. Jetzt da aus den Trümmern jener und einem Chaos verschiedenartiger Elemente eine neue Welt hervorging, konnte Freiheit mehr das herrschende Prinzip werden, welche denn auch nicht unterließ, die Natur zu unterdrücken, und sich so als Barbarei kundzugeben. Die Natur machte aber ihre Rechte geltend, und dieser Zwist bestimmte den Charakter der modernen Bildung, in welcher die unauflöslichen Widersprüche unseres Daseins, des Endlichen und Unendlichen in uns, mehr hervortreten, aber wieder verschmolzen werden.64

63 August W. Schegel, Vorlesungen, 25.

64 August W. Schlegel, Kritische Schriften und Briefe IV (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1962), 99.

As the last sentence makes clear, for Schlegel, the characteristic feature of modernity is this tension, or more strongly, this contradiction, between the grounded aspects of chivalry and the spiritual aspects of Christianity.65 This conceptual tension, which Schlegel argues is a productive one, will have profound implications for Heine’s thinking about the Middle Ages, and it is in the shadow of Schlegel’s thinking on the Middle Ages that Heine writes Die Romantik.

Die Romantik

Produced in 1820 for the Rheinisch-Westfälischen Anzeiger, Die Romantik contains the seeds of his later views on Romanticism and the Middle Ages, albeit with some important differences. This essay has been described accurately by Jeffrey Sammons as a point where “we find him still astride a transition,”66 illustrated perhaps most clearly by Heine’s (never to be repeated) equation of August Schlegel and Goethe as great representatives of Romanticism. That being said, there are also some important continuities between what he writes here and his later work that will be worth examining. Die Romantik remains a valuable snapshot of his thinking at the time, and serves as a benchmark for his later views on topics such as the Middle Ages and its relation to Germany’s socio-political landscape.

Intending to present a riposte to debates between Romantics and their opponents, Heine begins by outlining the history of poetic themes. Echoing Schlegel, he writes: “Im Altertum, das heißt eigentlich bey Griechen und Römern, war die Sinnlichkeit vorherrschend.”67 Classical poetry was about outward appearances. However, with the rise of Christianity, poets wanted to describe infinite suffering and desires: “[D]a wollten auch die Menschen diese geheimen Schauer, diese unendliche Wehmuth und zugleich unendliche Wollust mit Worten aussprechen und besingen.”68

65 For an excellent discussion on the implications of Schlegel’s thinking on this relationship, to which I am indebted, see Maike Oergel’s Culture and Identity, Historicity in German Literature and Thought 1770-1815 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2006), 129-132. 66 Jeffrey Sammons, A Modern Biography, 66. 67 DHA 10, 194. 68 DHA 10, 194-95.

Out of this tension emerges “romantische Poesie” (italics mine):

So entstand die sogenannte romantische Poesie, die in ihrem schönsten Lichte im Mittelalter aufblühete, späterhin vom kalten Hauch der Kriegs- und Glaubensstürme traurig dahin welkte, und in neuerer Zeit wieder lieblich aus dem deutschen Boden aufsproßte und ihre herrlichsten Blumen entfaltete.69

I do not think it is a coincidence that Heine declares that medieval poetry constitutes the height of Romantic poetry. Heine is making a historical claim that connects his own early poetry to what contemporary scholars (such as Schlegel) argue is the literary high point of post-classical literature. Heine had spent his teenage years writing Minnelieder, and it turns out that actual medieval German lyric poetry (Minnesang), which he has only recently come into contact with, also happens to be some of the greatest poetry ever written. One can imagine a sense of self- satisfaction within Heine as he had discerned the truth of the genius of the Middle Ages from the second-hand “shadow” of his late-Romantic literary sources, and now has the opportunity to flesh out his correct intuition.

In addition to making this connection between the height of lyrical poetry and his own poetic genealogy, he also echoes his own views on the specifically German character of Romanticism:

Es ist wahr, die Bilder der Romantik sollten mehr erwecken als bezeichnen. Aber nie und nimmermehr ist dasjenige die wahre Romantik, was so viele dafür ausgeben; nemlich: ein Gemengsel von spanischem Schmelz, schottischen Nebeln und italienischem Geklinge, verworrene und verschwimmende Bilder, die gleichsam aus einer Zauberlaterne ausgegossen werden, und durch buntes Farbenspiel und frappante Beleuchtung seltsam das Gemüth erregen und ergötzen.70

Heine has broadened his anti-French sentiments to the rest of Europe. However, this is not, as in his letter to Sethe, simply a nationalistic slur, as he does proffer some arguments as to why a specifically German Romanticism is the highest contemporary expression of art in Europe. In

69 DHA 10, 195. 70 DHA 10, 195.

37 doing so Heine echoes what he wrote in the letter to Sethe, writing that true romantic poetry is implicitly German, and does not include “spanischem Schmelz, schottischen Nebeln und italienischem Geklinge” because they are suffused with “verworrene und verschwimmende Bilder”. Having established what true romantic (and German) poetry looks like, he points out that true Romantic poetry must be as clear as the “plastic” poetry of the present:

Wahrlich, die Bilder, wodurch jene romantischen Gefühle erregt werden sollen, dürfen eben so klar und mit eben so bestimmten Umrissen gezeichnet seyn, als die Bilder der plastischen Poesie. Diese romantischen Bilder sollen an und für sich schon ergötzlich seyn; sie sind die kostbaren, goldenen Schlüssel, womit, wie alte Mährchen sagen, die hübschen, verzauberten Feengärten aufgeschlossen werden.71

Interestingly, after using Schlegel and Goethe as examples of this synthetic fusion of the natural with the Christian, Heine modifies Schlegel’s thinking on the art and culture of the Middle Ages by downplaying the Christian and chivalric inheritance for modern poets:

Viele aber, die bemerkt haben, welchen ungeheuren Einfluß das Christenthum, und in dessen Folge das Ritterthum, auf die romantische Poesie ausgeübt haben, vermeinen nun beides in ihren Dichtungen einmischen zu müssen, um denselben den Charakter der Romantik aufzudrücken. Doch glaube ich, Christenthum und Ritterthum waren nur Mittel, um der Romantik Eingang zu verschaffen; die Flamme derselben leuchtet schon längst auf dem Altar unserer Poesie; kein Priester braucht noch geweihtes Oehl hinzuzugießen, und kein Ritter braucht mehr bey ihr die Waffenwacht zu halten.72

Having advised his readers that the (chivalric, Christian) Middle Ages was the model for romantic poetry, he simultaneously attempts to strip away that which, at least superficially, defines the German Middle Ages, namely courtly culture and the Catholic church.

Heine nevertheless recognizes the need to broach the accusation by critics of the “ungeheuren Einfluß das Christentum, und in dessen Folge das Ritterthum” on Romantic poetry. His

71 DHA 10, 195. 72 DHA 10, 195-96.

38 response, one which again would line up with his own youthful experiences, was that Christianity and courtly culture were the foot in the door to the rediscovery of Romantic poetry. However, recognizing this fact, Germans (including of course, Heine) no longer have any need of the priests and knights:

Deutschland ist jetzt frey; kein Pfaffe vermag mehr die deutschen Geister einzukerkern; kein adelicher Herrscherling vermag mehr die deutschen Leiber zur Frohn zu peitschen, und deßhalb soll auch die deutsche Muse wieder ein freyes, blühendes, unaffektirtes, ehrlich deutsches Mädchen seyn, und kein schmachtendes Nönnchen, und kein ahnenstolzes Ritterfräulein.73

Despite his abandonment of the Christian, and to a lesser extent, the courtly aspects of the Romantic heritage, the echoes within Die Romantik of the letter to Sethe should be apparent: Heine again directly connects the “blühende deutsche Muse” to the feminine, which in turn connects the muse to the great lyric poetry of the Middle Ages, “die in ihrem schönsten Lichte im Mittelalter aufblühete.” Moreover, note how the “deutsche Muse” is the healthy and pure form of art, as opposed to the wan “schmachtendes Nönnchen.” Without over-psychologizing, it does seem that in Die Romantik, Heine wishes to validate his own early work and his instincts, having argued that the poems he had been emulating (without even knowing them) also happen to be the first great poems of the post-classical era. In his discovery of Minnesang in Bonn, and with the support and encouragement of Schlegel, he discovers the heart of his own aesthetic impulses, which are both ahistorical (his loyalty to Minne as a genre before having actually encountered medieval examples) and historical (in that this Minne arose out of the German Middle Ages). Scrubbing away the religious and chivalric heritage of Romantic poetry and focusing on what remains provides us with an early glimpse of Heine tending to favour a conception of poetry, and especially lyrical poetry, as essentially timeless and outside the realm of politics and culture, a conception which we will see again in his later work.

Indeed, Die Romantik (as many of Heine’s prose works do) can be helpfully read as an internal monologue about his own attitudes toward his work and where it fits within his literary production, in addition to being a defence of a Schlegelian-inflected Romanticism. However, the

73 DHA 10, 196.

39 key is that in Die Romantik, Heine explicitly connects medieval poetry to Romanticism, thereby reaffirming the centrality of the Middle Ages historically and aesthetically for Heine. Even with his claims in Die Romantik about the contemporary irrelevance of the chivalric and courtly aspects of the Middle Ages, Heine here has made an aesthetic commitment to the primacy of medieval lyric poetry (and its descendants), which includes the historical trajectories out of which it arose. I believe that the implications of the commitment Heine makes in this essay are central to his thinking about German culture (and his own place within that culture) for a very long time. Given this, it is now worth examining how Heine’s shift in thinking in Die Romanik affected his poetry. Several of the medieval-inspired poems Heine wrote during and after his time in Bonn will serve as vivid examples.

Bonn Poetry

Given his abandonment of Christianity and chivalry as important sources of thematic material, it might seem that this study has little left to do. Indeed, if the central argument of Die Romantik is that Romantic poetry need not rely anymore on the Middle Ages, where does that leave Heine and his Minne? Is he himself acknowledging that his early efforts, despite his desire for a “healthy” German poetic voice, were in fact full of “verworrene und verschwimmende Bilder”? Perhaps – and indeed, Heine’s writing of poems that he calls “Minne” does taper off during his time in Bonn; he eventually gives up entirely on the genre. Nevertheless, and perhaps as a result of his shift in thinking, Heine does not abandon writing about the Middle Ages, but shifts away from Minne as a totalizing genre of poetry (for himself), and instead turns toward writing poetry that betrays both his more historically defined understanding of the Middle Ages and his desire to emulate the “plastic” style of poetry he championed in Die Romantik.

For example, at around the same time as the composition of Die Romantik, Heine wrote a trio of sonnets dedicated to Schlegel, one of which was included in Buch der Lieder. Like Die Romantik, the poem is a study in transition, where Heine reflects both the old and the new. It is worth quoting in its entirety:

An A. W. v. Schlegel

Im Reifrockputz mit Blumen reich verzieret, Schönpflästerchen auf den geschminkten Wangen, Mit Schnabelschuhn, mit Stickerein behangen, Mit Turmfrisur und wespengleich geschnüret:

So war die Aftermuse ausstaffieret, Als sie einst kam, dich liebend zu umfangen. Du bist ihr aber aus dem Weg gegangen, Und irrtest fort, von dunkelm Trieb geführet.

Da fandest du ein Schloß in alter Wildnis, Und drinnen lag, wie'n holdes Marmorbildnis, Die schönste Maid in Zauberschlaf versunken.

Doch wich der Zauber bald, bei deinem Gruße Aufwachte lächelnd Deutschlands echte Muse, Und sank in deine Arme liebestrunken.74

This sonnet stands as a poetic reflection of the prose of Die Romantik, where the connection between Romanticism and the Middle Ages as an aesthetic driving force is something to be celebrated. Given his infamous mocking characterization of Schlegel’s dress and manner in Die romantische Schule, it is important to recall that at the time of this poem’s composition, Heine held Schlegel in high regard. 75 As such, the idea of Schlegel as a knight, travelling in darkness, to find a castle in the old woods, is clearly meant to evoke Schlegel’s work in popularizing the German Middle Ages at the University of Bonn and as a leader of the Romantic movement.

74 DHA 1/1, 115. 75 DHA 8/1, 174-75.

In the poem, Schlegel awakens “Deutschlands echte Muse,” and there are numerous continuities between his earlier naïve conception of Minne and this sonnet. As in the letter to Sethe, here Heine goes to great (but now also offensive) lengths to contrast the foreign, baroque (read French) “Aftermuse,” with the true German muse that emerged out of the Middle Ages, and which Schlegel has done so much to popularize. Beyond this opposition to the French style, there is also the assertion that Schlegel has discovered Germany’s “true” muse: there are the symbols such as the castle in the wilderness, and the Marmorbildnis-like German Muse who evokes the marble statue which transforms into a beautiful women in “Die Weihe.” These connections leave little doubt that the German muse Heine is referring to in this sonnet is related not only to the literature and culture of the Middle Ages, but also to his idea of Minne. That being said, where the Muse in “Die Weihe” is partly tied to Christianity (the litany which opens the poem and the statue of the Virgin Mary) here only the sensual aspects of the Muse remain.

Indeed, one could imagine this sonnet as a sequel to “Die Weihe,” where the more mature and confident knight is able to seek out that which is good, rather than praying to a statue which magically grants him his wish. There is a celebration of (male) agency in the sonnet that stands in contrast to the “bleiche Knabe,” who must wait for the female figure to either give him his calling, or to prepare for his impending death. And in perhaps the greatest contrast to Heine’s earlier poetry, where communion with the beloved is never attained, Schlegel “gets the girl” in this sonnet.

It is also worth noting that Heine refers to the Muse initially as “die schönste Maid.” This is the last time that Heine ever refers to a woman as a “Maid”76 in his poetry, although this was a fairly common word in his earlier, pre-Bonn Minne. Its use connects the Schlegel sonnet to his earlier poetry, while moving away from it, as he does away with the archaizing language of his youth. He pivots from a pining and lonely Minnesänger, to a virile and forward-looking Ritter – a persona that Heine will take on with great gusto at this stage. Some twenty years later, he will have occasion to refer back to this sonnet, long after he had repudiated Schlegel’s influence on him.77 So it is ironic that one of the first instances of the knightly persona in Heine’s poems is

76 DHA 1/2, 665. 77 For example, it has been suggested that Heine’s 1839 dedicatory poem to the third edition of Buch der Lieder, “Das ist der alte Märchenwald” calls back directly to this sonnet. (See DHA 1/2, 1239.)

42 actually a flattering caricature of Schlegel, the man whom Heine will, a decade later, take down in a very ad hominem and public way in Die romantische Schule.

Nevertheless, it is only after his Bonn period that Heine uses the metaphor of the knight-poet, in contrast to the Minnesänger.78 Prior to Bonn, the word “Ritter” only appears once in his poetry, in his 1817 poem “Don Ramiro,” whose story was directly inspired by Fouqué’s Ritterroman Der Zauberring.79 However, the word in this poem is used to describe Donna Clara’s husband, and the story in “Don Ramiro” is not at all about the court or knighthood per se, but Minne, or lost/impossible love. For all of the poetry that Heine writes before 1820, the absence of the word “Ritter”, or its connection to the act of poetry, is conspicuous, and points to the fact that his conception of the Middle Ages underwent a change during his time in Bonn.

With the absence of the Ritter comes the diminished importance of the quest narrative in Heine’s poems. In the Schlegel sonnet, Heine connects Schlegel’s research to the quest of a knight, who discovers the sleeping muse and awakens her with a kiss. What could be further from Heine’s old idea of Minne, where the suffering youth has lost the woman before he even had the chance to pursue her, to the scholar-knight who battles the old muse, rides into the dark forest to a castle, and rescues her? It is as though Heine is reimagining the classic medieval quest narrative by superimposing onto it Schlegel’s rediscovery of Medieval German literature. In this sonnet, as well as in Die Romantik, one can see the fusion of Heine’s idiosyncratic adolescent understanding of Minne with a celebration of the more historical conception of the Middle Ages he has acquired. It was through his time with August Wilhelm Schlegel that the German Middle Ages became Romantic for Heine.

“Ritterliche” Poems

Although the importance of Heine’s knightly persona has not been ignored in the scholarly literature, it is worth examining here some of the poems that deal with the Middle Ages and how

78 See DHA 1/2 1076, although the DHA tends to be more vague about the timing of Heine’s transition from Minnesänger to Ritter than I am suggesting. 79 DHA 1/2, 708.

43 they compare with the self-styled Minnelied of his adolescence. 80 I want to show how a number of these poems, which date up to and including the publication of Heine’s first collection of poetry in 1822, and which he himself grouped together, reveal his increasingly didactic understanding of the German Middle Ages. With this group of poems (“Die Minnesänger,” “Die Fensterschau,” “Der wunde Ritter,”81 and “Das Liedchen von der Reue”), which have remained relatively unexamined by scholars, Heine turns the theory of Die Romantik into praxis, developing the connections between knights, poets and courtly culture in a way that is largely absent from his earlier Minne, even as he has declared Christianity and chivalry unnecessary for the creation of good modern poetry. Indeed, if his pre-1820 poetry seems emblematic of his “Madonna days,” then after 1820, his poetic preoccupation seems to be more around exploring the relationship between poetry and chivalry.

Perhaps most emblematic of this exploration is “Die Minnesänger,” which dates from 1820. Before his time at Bonn, one might have expected a poem with such a title to be some kind of lament by a Minnesinger over a lost love. Instead, Heine here describes a medieval singing contest right out of the Wartburgkrieg, explicitly connecting his juvenile conception of Minne with the broader world of medieval courtly culture. It can be imagined as an echo to both “Die Weihe” and the Schlegel Sonnet, but tellingly, it was not included in the “Minne” section of his 1822 collection, but in the “Romanzen,” signaling that despite its subject matter, the way in which he approaches the topic of the Middle Ages has changed:

Zu dem Wettgesange schreiten Minnesänger jetzt herbei; Ei, das gibt ein seltsam Streiten, Ein gar seltsames Turnei!82

Here, Heine, perhaps heavy-handedly, directly connects the poet to the knight:

80 DHA 1/2, 771-772 and 1076. 81 The 1822 version of this poem is two stanzas longer than the 1827 version. See DHA 1/1 98-99. 82 It is interesting to note here that in the 1827 version of “Der Traum,” which was examined earlier, Heine changes “gar fürchterlich” to “gar seltsam schauerlich.” The emphasis on introducing the poem via its “strangeness” seems to be a way for Heine to establish a distance from the content of the poem, which may have a more powerful emotional connotation to him than he is prepared to admit.

Phantasie, die schäumend wilde, Ist des Minnesängers Pferd, Und die Kunst dient ihm zum Schilde, Und das Wort, das ist sein Schwert.

The poet-knight, properly armed, fights for “Minne” and for fame:

Hübsche Damen schauen munter Vom beteppichten Balkon, Doch die rechte ist nicht drunter Mit der rechten Lorbeerkron. 83

However, here Heine makes a telling contrast between the historical knights and the poet-knight. Where the knights of old take to the lists healthy, the Minnesinger arrives to the tournament with a fatal wound, from unrequited love, likely from the “Minne” Heine was so fixated on in his youth. This connection is made stronger by this being the only instance in the poem where he explicitly connects himself (the poet narrator) to the Minnesänger:

Andre Leute, wenn sie springen In die Schranken, sind gesund; Doch wir Minnesänger bringen Dort schon mit die Todeswund.

Und wem dort am besten dringet Liederblut aus Herzensgrund, Der ist Sieger, der erringet Bestes Lob aus schönstem Mund.84

Heine nearly hits the reader over the head with this depiction of a medieval singing contest as a courtly battle. However, there is a distance (with the one noted exception) between the poet himself and the contest. This poem is not about the young man’s suffering, but about an

83 DHA 1/1, 95-96. 84 DHA 1/1, 97.

45 historical event, and the poet’s place within that history. Like his earlier poetry, the (possibly unattainable) women are still present, and the Minnesänger, like the “bleiche Knabe,” remain wounded by a love which they cannot attain. And yet, like the Schlegel Sonnet, and unlike his more famously ironic poems, this poem ends on an optimistic note: the winner of the contest will receive praise (and perhaps something more material) from the ladies for whose affections they were all competing. The fusion of his earlier conception of “Minne” with his improved knowledge about the German Middle Ages begins to give shape to the figure of the poet-knight, a figure that Heine will identify with for the rest of his life. 85 For now, this figure is something that he seems to be freely exploring, as evinced in the radically different poem that directly follows “Die Minnesänger,” entitled “Die Fensterschau.”86

“Die Fensterschau” takes up yet another well-known medieval theme, that of the lady looking at her beloved from the window. Right from the beginning, there are some clear echoes to his earlier poetry:

Der bleiche Heinrich ging vorbey, Schön Hedwig lag am Fenster. Sie sprach halblaut: Gott steh mir bey, Der unten schaut bleich wie Gespenster!87

“Der bleiche Heinrich” evokes his “Zwey Lieder der Minne” of 1817, with the “bleiche Knabe” of “Die Weihe” and “Der Traum” appearing here as (perhaps ironically) Heine himself.88 In contrast to those earlier poems, where it is the woman who is the prime actor in the poem, it is the man’s glance that leads to Hedwig’s longing and suffering:

Der unten erhub sein Aug in die Höh',

85 As an example of this knowledge, Heine uses the Middle High German of Turnier (Turnei) in the poem. (See DHA 1/2, 713.) 86 DHA1/1, 96-97. 87 DHA 1/1, 96. 88 Indeed, Hal Draper’s English translation of this poem makes this explicit by translating “Heinrich” into “Harry”, the name Heine actually used at the time. See Heinrich Heine and Hal Draper. The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine: A Modern English Version (Cambridge, MA: Suhrkamp/Insel Publishers Boston, 1982), 39.

Hinschmachtend nach Hedewigs Fenster. Schön Hedwig ergriff es wie Liebesweh, Auch sie ward bleich wie Gespenster.

Schön Hedwig stand nun mit Liebesharm Alltäglich lauernd am Fenster. Bald aber lag sie in Heinrichs Arm, Allnächtlich zur Zeit der Gespenster.89

Although the dating of this poem is uncertain, I believe there are a number of compelling reasons to place it during this transitional time in Bonn.90 Firstly, where his earlier poetry is nearly always about unrequited love and its impact, “Die Fensterschau” playfully upends this theme having Hedwig (as opposed to Heinrich) succumb to lovesickness, and also allows for the consummation of their love by the end. Indeed, there are a number of humorous inversions: in contrast to nearly all of Heine’s poems, this poem is told with a focus on the woman (Hedwig), evoking the Frauenlied of medieval poets such as Reinmar and Walther von der Vogelweide. More specifically, the poem features Hedwig looking out at Heinrich through a window, which is again an explicitly medieval theme, and likely the result of his Bonn studies.91 In addition, just as medieval representations of female desire were often projections of a male understanding of that desire, Heine here shows that women are also susceptible to contracting love as a disease. By making lovesickness gender neutral, “Die Fensterschau” shows Heine exploring an ironic distance to the idea of lovesickness, while also approaching it more seriously and objectively as an avenue of poetic exploration.

If “Die Fensterschau” hints at the playful irony that will become representative of Heine’s poetry, “Der wunde Ritter” perhaps points towards a lingering darkness in Heine’s feelings on love, with the title itself centering the knight’s love-wound. The poem opens with a description of the knight:

89 DHA 1/1, 96. 90 The DHA places it “spätestens der Bonner Zeit,” although indicates the possibility of its being composed earlier due to the archaic language. See DHA 1/2, 714. 91 For more on Heine’s use of windows, see DHA 1/2, 714.

Ich weiß eine alte Kunde, Die hallet dumpf und trüb'; Ein Ritter lag liebeswunde, Doch treulos ist sein Lieb.92

Using these Bonn poems as a guide, one could surmise that Heine could be talking about himself in this poem, or perhaps more accurately his younger self, no longer a “bleicher Knabe” but now “eine alte Kunde,” an old memory of the poet’s. However, the next stanza evokes the immediacy of lovesickness of his earliest poetry and the letter to Sethe:

Als treulos muß er verachten Die eigne Geliebte sein, Als schimpflich muß er betrachten Die eigne Liebespein.

Er möcht' in die Schranken reiten, Und rufen die Ritter zum Streit: Der mag sich zum Kampfe bereiten, Wer mein Lieb eines Makels zeiht!

Da würden wohl Alle schweigen, Nur nicht sein eigener Schmerz; Da müßt' er die Lanze neigen Wider 's eigne klagende Herz.93

Here the knight is left with the acknowledgement that this pain and his anger is ultimately his own. One can see here Heine’s attempting a kind of folk ballad here, although one situated in a historical context that connects it to his studies and medieval literature: as the editors of the Düsseldorf critical edition suggest, there is a relationship between the first lines of Der wunde

92 DHA 1/1, 99. 93 DHA 1/1, 99.

Ritter and the beginnings of both the Hildebrandslied (Ik gihôrta dat seggen) and the Nibelungenlied (Uns ist in alten maeren wunders vil geseit), both poems that Heine would have encountered during his studies with Schlegel.94

However, the following two stanzas, which complete the poem in the 1822 collection, were removed by Heine from the 1827 publication of Buch der Lieder:

Er möchte mit eignem Blute Abwaschen den Fleck seines Liebes; Mit dem eignen Himmelsgute Möcht' er sühnen die Schuld seines Liebs.

Am liebsten möcht' er liegen Mit Liebchen im Todtenschrein, Ans kalte Lieb sich schmiegen; Der Tod macht alle rein.95

Although Heine’s subtle erasure of his medievalizing tendencies will be the subject of the next chapter, it is worth noting here that the exclusion of these two stanzas from the 1827 Buch der Lieder is probably connected to the fact that the fifth stanza quite clearly alludes to the possibility of an outside or supernatural solution to the problem of lovesickness, a cleaning or atoning of the “sin” of love, as opposed to an internal self-actualization, with the former being an approach which Heine had resisted since his youth, and might very well be why a poem like “Die Weihe,” which allows for a similar external redemption, was not included in Buch der Lieder. Further to this, the final stanza, with its articulating death as the solution to his lovesickness, points away from his typically therapeutic approach to poetry, and seems to point towards some of the themes he will explore in the dramatic works he wrote around this time, such as Almansor. It is as though the critical distance he was working to achieve led him inexorably back to the kind of Christian, chivalric Romanticism he would always be most afraid of. Writing poetry

94 DHA 1/2, 715. 95 DHA 1/1, 96.

49 about the Middle Ages while trying to avoid what made the Middle Ages a time of great poetry is no small task, and here one sees Heine’s own self-editing at work when he recognizes that perhaps that critical distance had briefly collapsed.

The poem which most explicitly ties together his studies with his earlier poetic instincts while hinting a more ironic or distanced take on this material is the last poem I will be examining in this chapter, entitled “Das Liedchen von der Reue.” The use of “Liedchen,” something which Heine used sincerely in his early poetry, is clearly meant ironically at this stage as a title for this rather long and repetitive poem. “Das Liedchen von der Reue,” which dates from the fall of 1820, is likely the latest of the poems discussed here, and recounts the story of Sir Ulrich, a knight riding through the woods.96 During his ride, Herr Ulrich sees a young “Mägdlein” (a word he borrowed from Fouqué) who (as in “Die Fensterschau”) is watching him. However, instead of hearing of the knight’s lovesickness, or hers, he recalls her behaviour, with quatrains that spend two lines reciting the usual clichés about her beauty, while the following two lines interrupt these clichés with a caustic criticism of her behaviour:

Zwey Röslein sind die Lippen dort Die lieblichen, die frischen; Doch manches häßlich bittre Wort Schleicht tückisch oft dazwischen.97

Nevertheless, despite her awfulness, he is enchanted by her:

Und jenes blaue Auge dort, So klar wie stille Welle, Das hielt ich für des Himmels Pfort', Doch war's die Pforte der Hölle. --98

96 The name of “Sir Ulrich” probably comes from Petrarch, via “Ulrich und Aennchen,” a Volkslied by Herder. See DHA 1/2, 718-19. 97 DHA 1/1, 102. 98 DHA 1/1, 102.

As he rides, his thoughts turn away from this lost love, and towards another form of feminine affection – his mother:

Der Junker sprach: O Mutter dort, Die mich so mütterlich liebte, Der ich mit bösem Thun und Wort Das Leben bitterlich trübte!99

Unlike “Die Weihe,” where the motherly figure not only answers the young knight’s prayers but turns them into an object of sensual desire, the motherly figure here, be it the Virgin Mary or the knight’s mother, never answers his plea. Instead, he is consigned to continue his ride, his sorrow deepening as darkness envelops him. However, Heine refuses to allow this poem to collapse in a maudlin display of pathos. Instead, he evokes the song of forest birds that awaken the reader from this sorrow by reminding us that this poem is merely a story, albeit a story that will recur again and again. As we shall see in chapter two, these forest birds will evolve into a potent encapsulation of the medieval for Heine in the coming years:

Das thaten die spöttischen Waldvöglein, Die zwitschern laut und singen:

Herr Ulrich singt ein hübsches Lied, Das Liedchen von der Reue, Und hat er zu Ende gesungen das Lied, So singt er es wieder aufs neue.100

In opposition to “Die Weihe,” this poem ends not in the young knight discovering the world, but with Sir Ulrich stuck in a perpetual loop of sadness and finding himself singing the same song over and over again. Here we see Heine beginning to wrestle with a problem that to some extent emerges out of the very aesthetic commitment he made in Die Romantik: how does one take

99 DHA 1/1, 102. 100 DHA 1/1, 104.

51 these materials of the past, materials which led to the highest expression of lyric poetry, and fashion something new out of them, without eventually becoming clichéd? This is a question that Heine will be deeply preoccupied with throughout the 1820s as he begins to recognize that the aesthetic commitments he had made cannot be so cleanly separated from their cultural and historical conditions, and especially when that culture hegemonically champions a narrative of that past which will exclude Heine on account of his Jewish background.

Both Heine’s Minnesänger period and his treatment of the poet in a medieval mode are brief. They can be (and have been) treated as juvenilia and signposts in Heine’s intellectual and aesthetic development. However, one can also see that as Heine’s understanding of the Middle Ages becomes more scholarly, the Middle Ages, for Heine, becomes more deeply connected to contemporary life and therefore, more closely tied to the Romantic reception of the Middle Ages. As Heine begins to recognize that his early Minne were very much a part of an ancient and storied tradition of Minnesang, they were also very much indebted to the contemporary cultural and political trends of his age, trends he would soon have to confront.

By the time of the composition of “Das Liedchen von der Reue,” it is clear that Heine has largely emerged from the anachronistic poetic fantasy world of noble suffering, his world of “Minne.” His university education served to draw his Minne into the real world, fleshing out the cultural background and context of his naïve understanding of the Middle Ages he had borrowed from Fouqué and Uhland. In Die Romantik Heine argues that there is some kind of aesthetic core to modern Romantic poetry that requires neither courtly culture, nor Catholicism, nor the influence of non-German poetic traditions. One might presume that this means that the German Middle Ages can be safely dispensed with. However, as his Bonn poetry implies, dispensing with the Middle Ages will prove much more difficult for Heine than his confident rhetoric would suggest. He cannot, it seems, entirely shake the Romantic idea (derived from Schlegel) that a new national culture needs to be built upon the foundation of an older one. Another strategy is needed.

In the next chapter, I will examine Heine’s transformation from a young Romantic poet to a more mature and increasingly famous author and critic in light of his treatment of the Middle Ages. We will see how he undermined and hid the medieval foundations of his lyrical voice, as he sought to reconcile this voice with the political and social reality that Heine would be forced

52 to confront as he left university and sought gainful employment. However, as he concealed those foundations, we will also discover Heine making his first attempts at writing a counter- narrative of the German Middle Ages, one which articulated a more inclusive and progressive vision of the German past, revealing how the conflict between despairing over a lost past and the hope in a better future continues to play out in Heine work, a hope which, like the Middle Ages, Heine cannot so easily abandon.

CHAPTER TWO – FROM BONN TO PARIS: HEINE AND THE GERMAN MIDDLE AGES IN THE

1820S

In the previous chapter I examined Heine’s youthful predilection for Minne and how his subsequent studies of the German Middle Ages at Bonn led to him argue in Die Romantik that although the Middle Ages were a high point in modern poetry, the chivalric/religious context out of which medieval poetry arose was no longer necessary for the creation of great Romantic poetry. Nevertheless, this did not stop Heine from revisiting some of these chivalric tropes in his own poetry (such as “Das Liedchen von der Reue”) during his time in Bonn.

In this chapter, I will examine how Heine’s thinking about the German Middle Ages changes during the 1820s, as I explore Heine’s growing disenchantment with German Romanticism, and how this disenchantment impacted his understanding and treatment of the Middle Ages as a thematic subject and as a source for poetic inspiration. With the renewed marginalization of Jews in Germany in the 1820s after the re-conquest of German territories that had been occupied by Napoleon, Heine came to realise that the German patriotism for which he had written poetic odes (which in turn had been heavily influenced by German Romanticism) began to explicitly exclude Jewish Germans such as himself. Although scholars have often conflated Heine’s rejection of German patriotism with a rejection of German Romanticism (and by implication, the German Middle Ages), I will show that something more complicated is going on. In this chapter we will see how, in an examination of Heine’s poetry and prose from the 1820s, as Heine leaves university and wanders Germany before eventually settling in Paris, the intrinsic poetic value of the Middle Ages that Heine had argued for in Die Romantik will cast a shadow over his thinking around culture and art. Even as he tried to erase those traces of a medieval influence on him from public view, we will observe Heine simultaneously attempt to resituate the Middle Ages within his own literary and intellectual project.

53 54

The Vanishing Minnesänger

It is apparent that even during his studies in Bonn, Heine’s youthful affection for his early Minne was on the wane. The dedicatory poem from his 1822 collection of poetry1 nearly amounts to a disclaimer of the poetry that is to follow:

Mir träumte einst von wildem Minneglüh'n, Von hübschen Locken, Myrten und Resede, Von süßen Lippen und von bittrer Rede, Von düst'rer Lieder düster'n Melodie'n...

Verblichen und verweht sind längst die Träume, Verweht ist auch mein liebstes Traumgebild! Geblieben ist mir nur was gluterfüllt Ich einst gegossen hab' in weiche Reime.

Du bliebst, verwaistes Lied! Verweh' jetzt auch, Und such' das Traumbild, das mir längst entschwunden, Und grüße mir's, wenn du es aufgefunden, -- Dem luft'gen Schatten send' ich luft'gen Hauch.2

It might be tempting, given a holistic view of Heine’s work, to read this poem ironically, and to suppose that at some point, in the dark past (of three to five years ago, depending on the dating of the poem)3 the author of the attached collection of poems dreamt of warm, wild Minne, of

1 This poem will serve the same function in Heine’s 1827 Buch der Lieder. 2 DHA 1/1, 16. 3 The DHA suggests that the poem, based on textual evidence could not have been written any later than the fall of 1820 as it likely served as the dedicatory poem for Heine’s first (and failed) attempt at publishing a collection of his verse. (See DHA 1/2, 652.) However, given its seemingly self-aware distancing, as well as the fact that there is no copy of the poem prior to its publication in 1822, it might date to as late as the fall of 1821 (See HSA 1K, 142.), a date which I find more plausible on stylistic grounds.

55 myrtle (directly referencing “Die Weihe”) but also ultimately of gloominess, a gloominess he no longer understands.4

However, the tone of the poem never really breaks out of its own sad mood and instead ends on a valedictory note. All that remains of these dreams are the poems themselves, artefacts of a moment in his life he no longer fully identifies with. Indeed, this poem, especially given its position in these various collections, could be read as a self-conscious reflection on the act of publication, which will breathe life into these “dead” words, as an adieu to his old poetry.

What makes this poem of particular interest for this study is that when he republished this poem in Buch der Lieder, he replaced “Minneglühn,” a word that he would only use once in all of his published writings, with “Liebesglühn.”5 Between 1821 and 1827, Heine’s distancing from his youthful poetic musings becomes a clear distancing from the medievalized poetic landscape of his adolescence. Indeed, Heine’s substitution of “Liebe” for “Minne” in this poem is not an isolated case. In “Im süßen Traum, bei stiller Nacht,” which was entitled “Der Kampf” in the 1822 collection, Heine replaces the word “Minneglut” with “Liebesgluth” in the 1827 version. Moreover, the “Minnesang” section in the 1822 collection was removed entirely from Buch der Lieder and the poems which were part of this section were either omitted or re-classified under new headings. 6

Given the centrality of “Minne” to his early poetry, its erasure as a category is telling: if, in 1822, “Mir träumte einst von wildem Minneglüh'n” at least gestured towards dedicating his poetry to that lonely Minnesänger, by the 1827 publication of Buch der Lieder, the mere suggestion of “Minne” has been erased, and with it, the explicitly medieval identity upon which Heine’s entire poetic project had been grounded. By scrubbing his early work of anything that might betray his literary pedigree, Heine makes a case for his earlier work reflecting his later criticisms of German Romanticism in the 1830s (most notably in Die romantische Schule). In other words, it positioned him as someone who has not only rejected Romanticism, but who even in his youth

4 Monica Tempian notes that this dream/waking distinction that one finds in Heine’s poems stands in contrast to the more liminal approach to dreams by Romantic authors such as Tieck and Novalis. See Tempian, ‘ein Traum’, 43. 5 DHA 1/2, 654. 6 The DHA refers to this process as “verallgemeinern” a term, which, while accurate, forecloses the question of why Heine turns a specifically medieval reference of “Minne” into the more generic signifier of “love.”

56 had maintained an agnosticism towards Romanticism. The repeated earnest use of “Minne” might call that agnosticism into question.

However, I believe this erasure, when examined in light of much of his other work from the 1820s, suggests not so much a divorce from German nationalism and Romanticism but a regrouping in the service of a longer-term intellectual project that sought to expand the franchise of both. Crucial to this project will be reimagining the German Middle Ages as something more complex than the chivalric/Christian dyad Heine had outlined in 1820 in Die Romantik.

Given that the 1820s are a time of transition for Heine, with the sheer variety of his output (including plays, travel writing, poetry, novels, among other genres) reflecting his changing attitudes throughout this time, I will explore in this chapter how Heine’s shifting attitudes are reflected in the variety of ways in which he reinterprets the Middle Ages in his work during this period. These reinterpretations serve as early attempts on Heine’s part to extend and resituate the Romantic project. If, as scholars have argued, German Romanticism is a radicalization of the Enlightenment, and not a repudiation of it, then perhaps Heine’s development of a counter- narrative of the German past in the 1820s is an extension of the Romantic project, and not a wholesale rejection of it.7

Instead, we will see Heine adopt numerous strategies vis-à-vis the Middle Ages, as he goes from rejection, to concealment, towards a kind of nostalgia towards the Middle Ages. Heine will distance himself from his earlier persona of a young German patriot and Minnesänger and move towards seeing himself as a politically progressive German-Jewish-Lutheran poet and critic. The ways in which Heine represents (or as we saw above, represses) the Middle Ages in the 1820s help to set up how Heine will characterize the Middle Ages in the 1830s in De L’Allemagne, where he lays out his vision of German history and myth in a comprehensive and rigorous way (and which will be examined in chapter three).

7 A good example of recent scholarly attempts to situate Romanticism as an extension, and not merely a rejection, of Enlightenment can be found in Frederick Beiser’s The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), and in particular, chapter three, “Early Romanticism and the Aufklärung,” 43-55.

What’s important to note is that, even if Heine had taken quite deliberate steps to sever the connection between the specifically medievalized “Minne” of his youth from his poetry, the concept of Minne is something we will see Heine attempting to find a place for throughout the 1820s. Although Heine is deeply critical of Romanticism, especially with what he sees as the pernicious relationship between Catholicism and Romanticism, he returns time and time again to the Romanticism-tinged Middle Ages, sometimes angrily, sometimes nostalgically. He does not abandon the Middle Ages entirely, and it continues to occupy his thoughts and his work during the 1820s, albeit in more complex and abstract ways.

As Heine moves away from his youthful focus on poetry and begins to write more prose, in part because his “Muse” is so tightly bound to the “Middle Ages” of his youth, one can nevertheless see in his writings of the 1820s a persistent attempt to re-inscribe the Middle Ages into contemporary German culture in such a way that allows for Jews (among others) to constitute a central part of German history. Despite Heine’s erasure of Minne in his poems, the Middle Ages will continue to play a role, either as a setting, or in the case of the nightingale, a thematic cipher that carries that which is good about the Middle Ages forward, while leaving out the more reactionary aspects of German Romanticism. For example, we will see in the Rabbi of Bacherach how Heine attempts to use a late medieval setting and German history to argue for the centrality of Jewish life in German lands. Heine will also use the figure of the nightingale (and to a lesser extent the linden tree), which I will argue arises not from Heine’s “exotic” Jewish roots, but from German sources, such as the poetry of Walther von der Vogelweide and Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The nightingale will take flight throughout the 1820s in ways that affirms the persistence and importance of the German Middle Ages in Heine’s work. This conception of the Middle Ages will serve as a source for poetic inspiration, as well as sow the seeds for an inclusive reading of the Middle Ages that accommodates a progressive vision of German cultural and political life, a representing the early stages of a project that will bear fruit in the 1830s with De L’Allemagne.

We will also see how Heine’s turn to prose in the 1820s in his Reisebilder has many moments of reflection on the creative “catacombs”8 he had found himself in at that time, and to address the fact that his poetic soul was tied to a Romantic vision of German cultural memory which, in many ways, was increasingly being used to exclude Heine and other German Jews from the German polity. As a result, as much as one discovers him attempting to scrub Minne from his earliest poetry, Heine also makes his first deliberate attempts towards preserving, in the figure of the nightingale on the linden tree (among other examples), that which he would always consider most valuable about the Middle Ages – a period that produced great poetry and whose cultural tensions might continue to serve as an inexhaustible inspiration for modern poetry, once properly purged of the cultural tendencies that lead to what Heine might have termed the Romantic “sickness.”

In emulation of the Romantic desire for a new mythology, and yet in rejection of their first results, we will see Heine develop a Romantic mythology for Germany that serves an aesthetically refined and politically progressive end. The nightingale, with its symbolic roots both within and (outside of) the German tradition allows him to preserve that which he finds valuable about the Middle Ages. The nightingale becomes an ingenious cipher for Heine’s views on poetry, capturing the Medieval character of his early work, while also extending it beyond narrowing the confines of Minne, and protecting “the realm of poetry” as Heine might put it, from the contemporary cultural milieu out of which a more reactionary and nationalist strain is emerging.

Heine’s Identity and the Circumstances Around his Disillusionment with Romanticism

When Heine arrived in Berlin in March of 1821, there was little to suggest that he would, in a few short years, undergo a profound identity crisis. As Robert Holub writes:

In any case, during his stays in Bonn and Göttingen, he does not appear to have hidden his religious affiliation, but he also does not seem to have emphasized his Jewishness in

8 The Heine scholar Laura Hofrichter’s word for this time in Heine’s life.

his dealings with friends and acquaintances. Indeed, his main interests before he arrived in Berlin in March of 1821 were related to romantic poetry, to the theoretical and poetic insights of his teacher at Bonn, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and to a progressive strand of German nationalism, which was commonplace for the liberal young men of his era.9

In other words, and as the previous chapter emphasized, at this stage in his life Heine was a willing participant in the German Romantic tradition. However, this self-identification was challenged once he arrived in Berlin and spent more time in explicitly Jewish circles: he frequented the salons of Rahel von Varnhagen and met with Eduard Gans, who headed Der Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden,10 which Heine joined in August of 1822.11 The Verein would have given Heine the opportunity to explore his Jewish heritage, while the salons were a place where Jews and non-Jews mixed and experienced secular culture. In any case, both were implicitly or explicitly committed to the pursuit of the idea of a harmonious co-existence between German Christians and Jews.

However, against Heine’s increasing engagement with progressive Jewish circles in Berlin were contemporaneous political shifts in Prussia that, even without his intellectual engagement with German Jewish figures, would have forced him to confront his religious background. Despite the Emancipation Edicts of 1812, which had emancipated the Jews in Prussian territories as a result of the Napoleonic conquests of that era, by the 1820s the Prussian government began to make it increasingly difficult for Germans of Jewish heritage to occupy official posts without converting to Lutheranism, effectively forcing them into choosing between Germany and Judaism, which meant converting to Christianity.

One can imagine that someone like Heine, who had held quite patriotic views about Germany and German nationhood as a young man, would have been deeply troubled by these measures. Indeed, given his youthful ambivalence towards Judaism, an ambivalence one can see throughout

9 See Robert Holub, “Confessions of an Apostate: Heine’s Conversion and Its Psychic Displacement,” in Heinrich Heine's Contested Identities: Politics, Religion, and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Germany, ed. Jost Hermand and Robert C. Holub (New York: P. Lang, 1999), 71. 10 Holub, “Confessions,” 70. The most recent comprehensive study and analysis of Heine’s involvement in the Verein is Edith Lutz’s Der "Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden" und sein Mitglied H. Heine (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997), in particular 121-34. 11 Holub, “Confessions,” 71.

60 his life, the idea of being forced to identify not simply as a German of Jewish extraction, but as a Jew and therefore “not-German,” might have been especially frustrating.12 Indeed, one can see how this transition unfolds in Heine’s poetry: between March and October of 1821, when he submits the manuscript and appends the dedicatory poem which opens his 1822 collection of poetry, a sense of disillusionment and alienation (which we saw in his dedicatory poem) with his old self is plain. By April of 1822, this disillusionment had evolved into a full blown identity crisis. Heine clearly articulates the source of this crisis in a letter to a familiar old friend.

Heine’s April 14th, 1822 Letter to Sethe

There is perhaps no clearer contrast between Heine’s pre-Berlin thinking and the difficulties he went through than what he writes to his friend Christian Sethe, the very same friend to whom he wrote his 1816 letter discussed in chapter one. Like that letter, this one reveals Heine in a state of turmoil, although in this case, rather than his being upset over unrequited love and singing the praises of “deutsche Minne,” he is in a state of deep conflict as a consequence of his “Germanness.”

He begins the letter by enumerating the things that he loves, which include “ein weiblicher Schatten, der jetzt nur noch in meinen Gedichten lebt,” his new tragedy (presumably William Ratcliff), as well as “eine olla Potrida von: Familie, Wahrheit, französische Revolution, Menschenrechte, Lessing, Herder, Schiller &c &c &c &c.”13

When one thinks back to the previous letter to Sethe, one can see that something is conspicuously absent from his list of beloved things: Germany. There is a good reason for this, as Heine declares that he and Sethe can no longer be friends for a very specific reason, one which has nothing to do with each other’s conduct towards each other, but rather, resides entirely in the now seemingly impassible gap of their respective German/non-German identities:

12 For a broader discussion on the topic of conversion and assimilation of Jewish Germans during Heine’s time in Berlin, see Deborah Hertz How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press), 2007. 13 HSA 20, 49.

Ich erkläre Dir: daß ich vom 15ten April an Dein Freund nicht mehr seyn werde...und Lieber Christian, glaube nicht, daß ich Dir böse sey; wenn ich Dir sage, daß ich Dein Freund nicht mehr seyn kann, so geschieht dieses, weil ich immer ganz ehrlich und offen gegen Dich handelte, und ich Dich auch jetzt nicht hintergehn möchte. Ich lebe jetzt in einer ganz besondern Stimmung, und die mag wohl an allem den meisten Antheil haben. Alles was deutsch ist, ist mir zuwider; und Du bist leider ein Deutscher. Alles Deutsche wirkt auf mich wie ein Brechpulver. Die deutsche Sprache zerreißt meine Ohre [sic.]. Die eignen Gedichte ekeln mich zuweilen an, wenn ich sehe, daß sie auf deutsch geschrieben sind. Sogar das Schreiben dieses Billets wird mir sauer, weil die deutschen Schriftzüge schmerzhaft auf meine Nerven wirken.14

Heine’s revulsion at the German language is then instantiated by his switching languages to French:

Je n'aurais jamais cru que ces bêtes qu'on nomme allemands, soient une race si ennuyante et malicieuse en même temps. Aussitôt que ma santé sera rétablie je quitterai Allemagne, je passerai en Arabie..15.

Although by the end of the letter, Heine seems to take it all back, and wishes to see his friend soon, his statements about Germans and the German language fly directly in the face of his earlier writings. Why might this be? Although he never mentions his being Jewish in this letter, the timing of the letter, and the fact that he explicitly indicates that he can no longer be friends with Christian Sethe because Sethe is German and Heine is not, leads one to conclude that Heine is at least in part motivated by a need to distance himself from his older primarily German identity, and doing so with his principal interlocutor makes this need for distance highly charged.

This shift in his identity has led many scholars to take this letter, along with other letters expressive of similar sentiments, as representative of Heine’s rejection of Romantically-inclined German nationalism. As Robert Holub notes in a discussion of the same letter, “from this point in time onward, we have to consider Heine cured of his youthful flirtation with Germanness, at

14 HSA 20, 49. 15 HSA 20, 49.

62 least of the nationalist variety.”16 However, I believe there are at least two important qualifications to his having been “cured” of Romantically-inclined nationalism. Firstly, consider the first of the things which Heine declares his love for in this letter, namely: “ein weiblicher Schatten, der jetzt nur noch in meinen Gedichten lebt.”17 Although it has been suggested that this is a reference to his cousin Amalie Heine,18 I would suggest that it is just as likely that he is referring to the “deutsche Muse.” In support of this, consider the last line of the dedicatory poem: “Dem luft'gen Schatten send' ich luft'gen Hauch.” Beyond the recurrence of shadows in both the letter and the poem, it seems that there is a connection between Heine’s suffering about his Germanness and “Zerissenheit.” Although he has moved intellectually beyond the poetry of his youth, it is something that he continues to deeply treasure.

Secondly, given that Heine devotes the rest of his life to commenting on German nationalism and Romanticism, as well as developing his own thesis about the nature of the German psyche, it might be more appropriate to think of Heine as someone who worked to expand the franchise of German nationhood within the conceptual framework of German Romanticism rather than abandon it entirely.

As we shall see, throughout the 1820s, Heine vacillates between anger and dismissal of the Romantically-derived Middle Ages while simultaneously evoking a nostalgic admiration for this past, which he attempts to rewrite to include the German Jewish community within the history of the German nation. In his novel fragment Der Rabbi von Bacherach (which will be examined later in this chapter), this desire to re-inscribe German Jews back into German history is quite explicit. Although there is a real bitterness to be found in some of his work that dates from the first half of the 1820s, there is also, as in the Reisebilder, a kind of nostalgia for Medieval poetry, encapsulated in the symbol of the nightingale.

For Heine, the nightingale will serve as a red thread that will help to lead him out of these catacombs. However, like Theseus in the labyrinth, this journey outwards, and towards a poetics and a Germany that he can be reconciled with, is an ongoing project, and there will be some

16 Holub, “Confessions”, 74. 17 HSA 20, 49. 18 HSA 20K, 35.

63 twists and turns. Nevertheless, he does eventually find his way forward, and in chapter three we will examine Heine’s vision for the German future, a future that, like the Romantics before him, will arise out of a mythical past of his own devising. To that end, I would like to begin with an early play of Heine’s, Almansor, which contains one of the first instances where Heine refers to the nightingale. It is where the red thread begins.

Almansor (1820-23)

Written in 1820-21 but published and staged in 1823, Heine’s Almansor is perhaps best known today as the source for the quote that is featured at the Bebelplatz book burning memorial in Berlin: “Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.”19 For our purposes however, as Heine had been working on Almansor since 1820, it therefore serves as a fascinating document which incorporates (albeit often awkwardly) some of the transitions Heine himself was going through between 1820 and 1823.

The play, set in recently re-Christianized Spain, and which revolves around doomed lovers who were swapped at birth and raised by the other lovers’ father (!), opens with a short poem, which emphasizes the idea of various styles and cultures blending together:

Glaubt nicht, es sei so ganz und gar phantastisch Das hübsche Lied, das ich euch freundlich biete! Hört zu: es ist halb episch und halb drastisch, Dazwischen blüht manch lyrisch zarte Blüte; Romantisch ist der Stoff, die Form ist plastisch, Das Ganze aber kam aus dem Gemüte; Es kämpfen Christ und Moslem, Nord und Süden, Die Liebe kommt am End und macht den Frieden.20

19 DHA 5, 16. 20 DHA 5, 8.

The poem rings out a hopeful note about love making, which is strange, given that at the end of Almansor the titular character and his love interest Zuleima both jump to their deaths. Nevertheless, Almansor opens in a vein that parallels his own views in Die Romantik, with Heine’s opening concerns being about a synthesis of forms and attitudes which come out of the mind, suggesting that one can tame one’s own inner passions for a positive result. In other words, even if Almansor and Zuleima do not survive the play’s end, at least the act of writing it will have brought peace to the play’s author!

The play opens in a nostalgic mode. Almansor, who was presumed dead, has returned to Spain after years of exile. His opening monologue talks about the castle, its soil, and all the “good old” things he once knew, before the Christians conquered the region. The tension is apparent: Almansor revisits his own past longingly, but he recognizes that things have changed irrevocably and he must figure out how to navigate this new world. This change is reflected in his wardrobe, as he must wear Spanish (Christian) clothes, which protect him from danger. However, despite appearances, in his heart he remains a Muslim, even if he himself, who was born in this newly Christianized land, is now a stranger.

This sense of alienation is only deepened when Almansor learns that his beloved Zuleima is to be married the next day. Worse, she is also now a devout Christian. Further complicating matters (while making it difficult to avoid comparisons to Lessing’s Nathan der Weise), it turns out that Zuleima’s father, Aly, is not her birth father but her adoptive father. Aly goes on to tell the story that his son, who is not named (but who is obviously Almansor), made him sad because his wife died giving birth to him. Coincidentally, his friend Abdullah (Almansor’s adoptive father) had had a daughter under similar circumstances, so they decided to switch children so that each would raise an ideal spouse for the other child. However, during the Christian conquest of Spain, Aly and Zuleima converted to Christianity, while Abdullah and Almansor refused, with Almansor supposedly perishing in Morocco.

However, as the play opens, Almansor is indeed alive and has returned to take back not only Zuleima, but Spain from the Christians. These cases of deliberately mistaken identity serve to show the limitations of a polity founded on religious identity – Zuleima, the faithful Christian, has a biological father who remained steadfastly Muslim, while the arch-Muslim Almansor’s birth father is a devout Christian. It is unfortunate that, although Heine foregrounds the issue of

65 national identity versus religion using the age-old dramatic device of mistaken identity, as we shall see, he does not really follow up on its implications in Almansor, which again points to the possibility that, at least at this time, these kinds of questions were not at the forefront of Heine’s mind.

Moreover, the idea of the past to be found in Almansor definitely has a romanticized tint to it, if not a full blown Romanticism, as there are numerous instances of Almansor not only pining for a Muslim Spain which no longer exists, but advocating for its return. For example, in scene three he laments that all the converted Muslims are no longer hospitable because they have converted to Christianity, and they have all changed their names to reflect their baptisms.21 They are all new people, born again, whereas Almansor represents the authentic (and healthy) past. Heine’s growing ambivalence to his own past during this time is reflected in his tendency to write Almansor’s character as both a throwback to a lost age as well as a healthy, if lovesick, forward looking young man. It also (unwittingly) foreshadows the predicament of his own later baptism, which not only failed to change him, but also failed to change people’s perceptions of him as a Jew.

This ambivalence is very much reflected in the relationship between Almansor and Zuleima, and it is at the start of their relationship in Almansor I believe one finds Heine’s first use of the nightingale in his literary works. In the scene where Almansor and Zuleima finally meet again and eventually proclaim their love for each other, Almansor notes that a number of trees in her father’s garden have been replaced, in particular the myrtle tree.22 Zuleima tells him that the myrtle tree died and was replaced by a “sad” cypress.23 Both trees have a symbolic function that interests Heine: as was mentioned in chapter one, the myrtle tree was connected to love through Venus, while the cypress tree has been connected to death since classical antiquity. Heine must have known this, hence his reference to the tree as “sad”, as well as the idea that it was the tree connected to “love”, i.e. their lost love, which withered and died in his absence.24 Almansor

21 DHA 5, 28. 22 It is worth noting that the myrtle tree figures both in “Die Weihe” as well as the dedicatory poem in Buch der Lieder that were discussed earlier in this chapter. 23 DHA 5, 40-41. The DHA also notes that “der Todesbaum ersetzt das Hochzeitsemblem“. See DHA 5, 435. 24 DHA 6, 594.

66 then notes that another tree has been cut down and replaced, this time a pomegranate tree. He then recalls that the nightingale sang at night on this tree. Zuleima informs him bluntly that the nightingale has died and the pomegranate tree has been cut down, further emphasizing the symbolic relationship between his absence and its effect on her world. The nightingale serves as a musical symbol of their love through song, a song which dies after Almansor’s departure.

At this stage, it is important to briefly discuss the genealogy of the nightingale reference in light of the fact there is a long-running tendency to associate much of Heine’s symbolic world with his Jewish background, and as such, there is a tendency to prioritize Middle Eastern traditions instead of European ones when it comes to looking at Heine’s sources.25 The nightingale reference in Almansor is an excellent example of this tendency. The Weimar Säkularausgabe’s commentary on this passage in Almansor connects it directly to Persian poetry and Hafiz, as the figure of the nightingale and the rose are often linked in Persian poetry as the lover and the beloved.26 As the commentary notes, Hafiz’s poems had been both translated and popularized in Heine’s time, and I do not want to imply that Heine was not drawing on this tradition, especially when writing a play with Muslim characters. However, there is another important literary reference that I believe Heine is drawing upon here, which serves to point away from the idea that Heine was predisposed to Orientalizing narratives as a result of his Jewish background and towards something more complex, and this has to do with the tree upon which the nightingale sat. Heine likely equated the nightingale on the pomegranate tree with (doomed) love because he knew Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Act 3, Scene 5:

JULIET Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fear-full hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pom’granate-tree.

25 For a thorough and excellent overview and discussion of Heine’s sources for Almansor, and in particular the connection between Almansor and the poetry of Lord Byron, see Nigel Reeves, “From Battlefield to Paradise: A Reassessment of Heinrich Heine’s Tragedy Almansor, its Sources and their Significance for his Later Poetry and Thought” in Heine und Die Weltliteratur, ed. T.J. Reed and Alexander Stillmark (Oxford: Legenda, 2000), 24-50. 26 HSA 4K, 78.

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. ROMEO It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale.[…] 27

Indeed, unlike many of the vague references we have as to what Heine might (or might not have) read in terms of medieval sources, Heine himself, in his much later book Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen (which will be discussed in chapter four), discussed this exact scene from Romeo and Juliet, and we know that he had most likely seen Romeo and Juliet in Berlin in and around the time of the composition of Almansor. 28 Moreover, his mentor in Bonn, August Wilhelm Schlegel, was the era’s pre-eminent translator of Shakespeare. Indeed, we have a list of the books that Heine borrowed from the libraries of Bonn and Göttingen, which shows that he withdrew both the Voss translations of Shakespeare as well as an edition of Shakespeare in English during the time of composition of Almansor. Conspicuous by its absence is any borrowing of books on Persian poetry by Heine.29

Although both Shakespeare and the setting of Almansor (later 15th century Spain) may seem to be very late as a reference to the Middle Ages, we will see in chapter four of this study that, given Heine’s later more conceptual understanding of the Middle Ages, he explicitly connected Juliet (as well as Shakespeare for that matter) with a “medieval” sensibility in Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen, and there is nothing to indicate that his later understanding of Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare as representatives of the Romantic tradition and therefore of medieval poetry was completely different in the 1820s. At this time, it suffices to note that the provenance of the nightingale here, especially when connected to the pomegranate tree, seems to be more

27 William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet (1595)”: 17 (3.5) in The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition, ed. Gary Taylor, John Jowett, Terri Bourus, and Gabriel Egan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 3.5.1-7. 28 DHA 5, 1043. 29 Walter Kanowsky, “Heine als Benutzer der Bibliotheken in Bonn und Göttingen,” in Heine–Jahrbuch 12 (Hamburg: Hofmann und Campe, 1973), 132. It should be noted that although Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan had been published in 1819, it is not clear when Heine had actually read it. As Nigel Reeves notes in his aforementioned article on Almansor, our first indication that he had read it was in a letter dated January 24, 1824. See Reeves, “From Battlefield to Paradise,” 41-42.

68 closely connected to the primacy of Shakespeare as a model poet in German Romanticism than to Persian poetry.

Heine’s use of the beautiful vibrant nightingale dying and of trees being cut down and being replaced with less symbolically hopeful plants or shrubs is a clear example of Heine’s self- conscious adaptation of these culturally rich symbols into his own poetic language. Indeed, Almansor can be read as an allegory of the virtues of the authentic Middle Ages against its contemporary Christianized reimagining, in a way which reflects his writings in Die Romantik. Almansor hence emerges as the “true” medieval Muslim knight, while these later converts, i.e. Muslim in now Christian clothes, turn out, for the most part, to be inauthentic usurpers. In a soliloquy reminiscent of some of Novalis’ arguments in Die Christenheit oder Europa (if Novalis were a Muslim)30, the play’s chorus goes as far as to argue that, in large part due to its synthesizing aspects, Spanish Islam was better than its Middle Eastern counterpart, and that those features which Heine finds entrancing about the Middle Ages, its poetry and art, the chorus finds entrancing about Spanish Islam.31 By robbing Muslim Spain of its most powerful virtue, which was its ecumenism, the “real” world (the Spain Almansor grew up in), which contained the nightingale on the pomegranate tree, and which allowed art and culture to flourish, has died and disappeared, and as a result, the world has become disenchanted for Almansor. This aporia between the real (Christian) world they inhabit and the imagined, unified Medieval (Muslim) past leads, perhaps predictably, to the suicides of Almansor and Zuleima, who jump off a cliff together, where Almansor invokes the call of the nightingale, drawing them down to their deaths.

Almansor certainly can also be read as an allegory for Heine’s contemporary concerns about the increasing German Christian persecution of German Jews, despite the fact that he seems to have finished Almansor before these concerns emerged.32 However, it is also important to note that one of the primary sources for the Almansor plot comes from the arch-Romantic Baron de le Motte Fouqué’s 1813 Der Zauberring, a Ritterroman that we know Heine had read and

30 It is worth noting here that there is another possible resonance between Novalis and Heine: In Heinrich von Ofterdingen, it is “Zulima,” an Arab girl, who introduces the titular protagonist to poetic world of the Orient. 31 DHA 5, 47-49. 32 See, for example, the commentary on Alamansor in DHA 5, 385-392.

69 considered a model for Almansor.33 In Der Zauberring, during a series of campfire stories, Don Hernandez recounts the story of the Moor Don Gayferos and his lover, the Christian Donna Clara. Don Gayferos is murdered by her brothers, and she winds up spending the rest of her life alone and in prayer. Although there are clear differences between Almansor and the tale found in Der Zauberring, Heine was never shy about his enthusiasm for Fouqué’s novel, and it serves to connect this play to his preoccupation with the German Middle Ages as a teenager.

Almansor is a deeply paradoxical work. The play ends with a poem that serves to refute the hopeful tone of the poem at the beginning of the play. Zuleima’s father, ruminating on the tragedy before him, has the final word:

Doch Ahnung sagt mir: ausgeräutet wird Die Lilie und die Myrthe auf dem Weg, Worüber Gottes goldner Siegeswagen Hinrollen soll in stolzer Majestät.34

In other words, the hopeful sense of reconciliation which began the play has been replaced by an expression of the very symbols of poetry and beauty being trampled by the force of the “new” God. Almansor was not successful, and after William Ratcliff (Heine’s other play), Heine never really returned to drama. However, if the nightingale died in Almansor as a result of the changes wrought by the forces of history, it would come to outlive its Shakespearean provenance in Almansor to be recast into a more hopeful and secure place within his poetry, as the bird begins to serve as a symbol for that which is worth preserving from the medieval past – its poetics.

33 Heine says as much in a letter to Fouqué in 1823. See HSA 20, 88, as well as Nigel Reeves, “From Battlefield to Paradise,” 29-31. 34 DHA 5, 68.

The Lyrical Nightingale

As we have seen, the first instance of the nightingale in Heine’s writings likely emerged from Shakespeare, who, if not a German source, had been de facto adopted by the Germans as one of their own. However, in Heine’s poetry of the 1820s, the nightingale appears less often as a specifically Shakespearean metaphor for doomed love and more as a metaphor for poetry itself, especially when Heine is reflecting on his own life and work as a poet well into his own middle age.35 What I would like to do here is explore where and how the nightingale emerges as a symbol in his poetry in the 1820s.

Surprisingly, given Heine’s later use of the nightingale as a cipher for poetry in his prose (works which will be examined in this chapter as well as later on), the nightingale appears rather seldom in his early poetry. Indeed, the earliest instance of Heine’s inclusion of the nightingale within his poetry appears to be in the early summer of 1822, a year after the composition of Almansor, with Lyrisches Intermezzo 25.36 Here, Heine quite explicitly contrasts the symbolized and aesthetically beautiful setting with the “frosty” reality of the poem’s ending, a contrast that evokes Almansor’s shift between the living and the dead nightingale, except here the contrast is not to death but to a raven:

Die Linde blühte, die Nachtigall sang, Die Sonne lachte mit freundlicher Lust; Da küßtest du mich, und dein Arm mich umschlang, Da preßtest du mich an die schwellende Brust.

Die Blätter fielen, der Rabe schrie hohl, Die Sonne grüßte verdrossenen Blicks; Da sagten wir frostig einander: »Lebwohl!« Da knixtest du höflich den höflichsten Knix.37

35 His poem in the preface to the Third edition of Buch der Lieder in 1839 has the nightingale taking on an important role in terms of Heine’s own retrospective re-casting of his early poetry as an example of youthful folly. 36 DHA 1/1, 157. 37 DHA 1/1, 157.

Crucially, instead of a pomegranate tree, Heine associates the nightingale here with the linden tree. This turns out to be a not uncommon connection in Heine, as in Lyrisches Intermezzo 53 the nightingale again is on a linden tree, singing at night.38 There are surprisingly only seven poems in the entirety of Buch der Lieder that mention the nightingale, and in the one instance where the tree the nightingale is perched upon is specifically mentioned, it is a linden tree.39 Moreover, the only other tree type mentioned in any of these poems adjacent to the linden is the oak, another tree that has a deep and longstanding association as a quintessentially “German” tree.40

This is all to reinforce the idea that much of the symbolic language Heine is using at this time, even as he is beginning to become disaffected with German Romanticism, nevertheless resides firmly within this tradition. We should therefore be suspicious of the tendency of associating Heine’s use of the nightingale (or other symbols for that matter), too quickly with either love or “orientalism.” 41 In other words, Heine’s Jewish background and increased involvement in Jewish cultural life did not automatically turn him into an ardent reader of Middle Eastern poetry. Rather, much like the connection between Shakespeare and Almansor, Heine’s introduction of the nightingale into his poetry is more likely correlated with his background in the German Romantic tradition. This means not only his reading of Fouqué and Uhland in his youth, (or of Goethe and Schiller for that matter) but also of Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which Heine would go on to effusively praise in Die romantische Schule (which will be discussed in chapter three). Although one cannot be certain

38 DHA 1/1, 187. 39 The nightingale appears in the following poems in Buch der Lieder (all dates of composition are from the DHA): Lyrisches Intermezzo 2 (autumn 1822), Lyrisches Intermezzo 25 (early summer 1822), Lyrisches Intermezzo 53 (autumn 1822), Die Heimkehr 87, Die Heimkehr: “Ratcliff” (1822), Die Heimkehr: “Donna Clara” (autumn 1823). Aus der Harzreise 3 (1825). 40 The oak and the nightingale also have classical associations, which we will not be delving into here, except to say that the German Romantics were probably not unaware of this association. See Otto Keller. Thiere Des Classischen Alterthums in Culturgeschichtlicher Beziehung (Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner'schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1887), 466. 41 For example, when discussing Heine’s use of the nightingale in Lyrisches Intermezzo 2 (discussed below), it suggests that the Nachtigallchor is an “orientalisches motiv” and cites Sohraworthy, A. “Heine and Persian Poetry” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland 35, (1903): 365-367. However, the article cited by the DHA is tendentious and suggests a thematic relationship between Persian poetry and Heine’s own that is not backed up by the evidence in the article itself.

72 as to when Heine read Des Knaben Wunderhorn, resonances between this collection and Heine’s poetry only begin to emerge in and around 1822, which is around the same time that Heine begins to use the nightingale as a figure in his poetry.42

In Des Knaben Wunderhorn the nightingale and the linden are often paired together. For example, in “Frau Nachtigal”:

Nachtigal ich hör dich singen, Das Herz möcht mir im Leib zerspringen, Komme doch und sag mir bald, Wie ich mich verhalten soll.

Nachtigal ich seh dich laufen, An dem Bächlein thust du saufen, Du tunkst dein klein Schnäblein ein, Meinst es wär der beste Wein.

Nachtigal wo ist gut wohnen, Auf den Linden, in den Kronen, Bei der schön Frau Nachtigal, Grüß mein Schätzchen tausendmal […]43

Compare this work to the second poem from the Lyrisches Intermezzo, the poem which the critical editions specifically connect to Persian poetry:

Aus meinen Thränen sprießen Viel blühende Blumen hervor, Und meine Seufzer werden

42 For example, the DHA notes some resemblances between some lines in Heine’s play William Ratcliff and some of the poems in Des Knaben Wunderhorn. See DHA 5, 482. 43 Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. Des Knaben Wunderhorn; Alte Deutsche Lieder Gesammelt Von L. Achim Von Arnim Und Clemens Brentano. (mit Einem Nachwort Versehen Von Willi A. Koch). (Munchen: Winkler-Verlag,1962), 65.

Ein Nachtigallenchor.

Und wenn du mich lieb hast, Kindchen, Schenk' ich dir die Blumen all, Und vor deinem Fenster soll klingen Das Lied der Nachtigall. 44

Heine`s poem is less a description of the nightingale`s activities than a contrasting of these images of sadness (Thränen, Seufzer) with positive poetic imagery (Blumen, Nachtigallenchor). However, both “Frau Nachtigal” and Heine’s poem end with the association of the acknowledgement of love with the song of the nightingale.45 When we consider Heine’s literary and cultural background, we find the genealogy for Heine’s use of the nightingale in Shakespeare and Uhland, as well as Des Knaben Wunderhorn.46

With the nightingale’s association with what Heine saw as the “authentic” German folk poetry of Des Knaben Wunderhorn on a reasonably sure footing, it is worth then considering Heine`s acquaintance with German medieval poetry and where the nightingale fits into his studies. Given that he had been reading and studying medieval poetry with A.W. Schlegel, and specifically, the poetry of Walther von der Vogelweide since his time in Bonn, it seems probable that his nightingale references might also be related to works such as Walther’s famous “Unter den Linden.”47 The poem, which involves a couple making love at night under a linden tree, with a nightingale singing above them, would not seem out of place with Buch der Lieder. 48 Moreover, although I believe Heine’s interest in dream imagery comes out of the Romantic tradition, there remains a possibility that Heine was acquainted with Walther’s dream poetry at

44 DHA 1/1, 135. 45 It is worth at least noting that poem which immediately follows “Frau Nachtigall” in Des Knaben Wunderhorn is “Die Juden in Passau” which depicts the desecration of the Host by the local Jewish population in Passau. 46 Jeffrey Sammons notes that when Heine himself discusses Romantic lyric poetry, in for example Die romantische Schule, he tends to restrict himself to citing either Uhland or Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which would again indicate that these influences are those which Heine himself is most conscious of. See Jeffrey Sammons, Heinrich Heine: Alternative Perspectives 1985-2005 (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006), 158. 47 For more on this, see Daniel V.B Hegeman, “Heine's Indebtedness to Walther Von Der Vogelweide.” Monatshefte 42, no. 7 (November 1950): 331–340. See also Mücke, Beziehungen, 29. 48 See, for example Lyrisches Intermezzo 52, “Mir träumte wieder der alte Traum,” DHA 1/2, 185.

74 some point during his studies, which would have served to confirm that his youthful poetic instincts had recognized a longstanding German poetic tradition, even if he had not actually read any of these works in his youth. This background will help to explain later on why Heine would later write without a trace of irony in Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift that Walther von der Vogelweide was the greatest German lyric poet.

The connections between Des Knaben Wunderhorn, medieval poetry and their resonances in Heine’s poetry at the time explicitly tie Heine’s poetic output to the Germanic tradition, even at the moment of some of his most serious expressions of disenchantment. The symbols of the nightingale and the linden tree, symbols in which the folk tradition and the Medieval tradition coincide, are what Heine will carry with him as he grapples with moving forward in an increasingly reactionary political and cultural environment. If the nightingale becomes a cipher for what Heine valued about the past, both his own past and the German past, Heine also made an attempt to grapple with the German history of anti-Semitism in a more direct way. In his unfinished novel fragment Der Rabbi of Bacharach, Heine, despite his clear anger and frustration with the reinstitution of anti-Semitic laws and a promulgation of anti-Semitic views, nevertheless attempted to shift the narrative of the German past towards more inclusive possibilities.

Der Rabbi von Bacharach

Der Rabbi von Bacharach, along with his Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski and Florentinsche Nächte, represent Heine’s (not entirely successful) attempts at writing a novel. While the latter two works date from the 1830s, most of Der Rabbi von Bacherach predates both of these works in terms of the bulk of its composition. Although Der Rabbi von Bacherach was not published until 1840, he had started work on it much earlier, in early 1824.49 There is textual evidence that the first two chapters date from this earlier period of composition, with the third

49 See Sammons, A Modern Biography, 94.

75 and final chapter likely were written by Heine much closer to its publication as a novel fragment in 1840.50

Given the chronological nature of this survey, this may appear to present a problem; however, the two particular moments from the first chapter which I examine, I believe, based on stylistic grounds, most likely date from the earlier period of composition. Given that Der Rabbi von Bacherach’s genesis relates directly to Heine’s reaction to anti-Semitism in Germany, and moreover, represents an early example of Heine trying to intervene in the cultural narrative being promulgated by more conservative forces within Germany, Der Rabbi von Bacherach serves as an early example for how Heine attempts to wrestle with the cultural baggage of the Middle Ages.

The story, fragment though it is, is straightforward enough: Rabbi Abraham and his wife Sara flee the Rhenish town of Bacherach during the first Passover night because two Christians have left a dead child under the couple’s table during the Seder in the (successful) hopes that this will lead to a pogrom. Abraham and Sara wind up in Frankfurt am Main, where they enter the ghetto and attend a Synagogue service, and the second chapter ends with Sara fainting upon hearing the Rabbi say a prayer for the dead of Bacherach.

Although this plot summary does not necessarily immediately evoke Der Zauberring or Achim von Arnim’s Die Kronenwächter, to take two late-Romantic medievalizing novels that were explicit influences on Heine, I do not think it is a coincidence that Heine decided to situate his first attempt at novel writing in the late Middle Ages, given that the historical novel was one of the more popular forms of contemporary literature in his day. Therefore, it should come as little surprise that the opening of Der Rabbi von Bacherach evokes the opening to perhaps the most famous European historical novel of the day, Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, right down to the reference of the river.51 Compare the opening of Der Rabbi von Bacherach:

50 For an overview of the context out of which Der Rabbi of Bacherach was written, see Jeffrey Sammons, The Elusive Poet, 305. 51 This comparison between Ivanhoe and Der Rabbi is not a novel one. For an overview of Heine’s modelling of Rabbi on Ivanhoe see for example, Lion Feuchtwanger and Heinrich Heine. Heinrich Heines "Rabbi von Bacherach": Mit Heines Erzählfragment : Eine Kritische Studie (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag), 1985. (despite the 1985 publication date the text was originally published in 1907) as well as DHA 5, 525-6.

Unterhalb des Rheingaus, wo die Ufer des Stromes ihre lachende Miene verlieren, Berg und Felsen, mit ihren abenteuerlichen Burgruinen, sich trotziger gebärden, und eine wildere, ernstere Herrlichkeit emporsteigt, dort liegt, wie eine schaurige Sage der Vorzeit, die finstre, uralte Stadt Bacherach.52

With the opening of Ivanhoe:

In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster.53

Moreover, like Scott, Heine attempts to situate historical setting of Der Rabbi von Bacherach within the cultural conflicts of his own time. Where Scott in Ivanhoe sets up in his introduction an explicit contrast between the power of the nobility and the “sufferings of the inferior classes,”54 Heine will adapt this by contrasting the Jewish and Christian communities of Bacherach. As the opening sentence indicates, Heine begins by situating the reader in the present day, with his description of the town evoking a Caspar David Friedrich painting. At the time of writing, the narrator notes, Bacherach was “finster” and “uralt.” However, it was not always this way:

Nicht immer waren so morsch und verfallen diese Mauern mit ihren zahnlosen Zinnen und blinden Warththürmchen [...].55

Rather, it was once a thriving and prosperous city, dating (according to the narrator) back to Roman times that, even through various rulers, had maintained a reasonable amount of independence. Crucially for this story is the fact that there is a community that has been here

52 DHA 5, 109. 53 Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 15. 54 Scott, Ivanhoe, 16. 55 DHA 5, 109.

77 since Roman times, namely, “die kleine Judengemeinde, die schon zur Römerzeit in Bacherach sich niedergelassen.”56

By asserting that Bacherach’s Jewish community has been there since the town’s foundation, perhaps even a time that predates a Teutonic presence, Heine is making a radical and important claim about the status of Jews in “German” lands. Rather than being interlopers or occupants of a “native” German land, the Jewish community, although religiously separate, maintain a claim to these lands that is as persistent and ancient as the Germanic tribes through which 19th century Germany would stake their indigenous claim to the land. Although the narrative of Der Rabbi von Bacherach is ultimately about exile, right from the beginning Heine makes a distinctly German Jewish claim to Germany equal to that of Christian Germans, a claim which is nevertheless denied by the German Christians up to Heine’s time (and our own). To be clear, Heine never suggests that the German Jewish population have a more authentic claim to German lands, but that their presence is just as ancient.

Establishing the age of Bacherach’s Jewish community as dating back to Roman times only heightens the historical tragedy of what is to come. As the narrator shifts toward the late medieval setting of the novel itself, the narrator goes on to connect the persecution of the Jewish communities via the blood libel with times of social upheaval, such as the Crusades and the bubonic plague. As we shall see, although Heine will more or less continue to argue in his own work that the Middle Ages were a time of unity when it came to its poetry, thus aligning it with classical poetry, in Der Rabbi von Bacherach Heine depicts the reality that this Romantic ideal of medieval cultural unity was superficial, and that the price of this Christian unity was constant attacks on Jewish communities. These tensions between an idealized Christian unity and a more fragmented historical reality will be openly explored by Heine for the rest of his life, as they contain within them both the flowering of German medieval art and culture, but also the seeds of modern anti-Semitism.

There is perhaps no better illustration of these bloody yet aesthetically productive tensions than the narrator’s recounting of the story behind the erection of the Wernerkapelle in Bacherach in

56 DHA 5, 109.

78 the introduction. These gothic ruins, which to this day remain Bacherach’s most visible landmark, are the stark reminder of the direct consequence of an accusation of blood libel. In 1287, Werner von Oberwesel was allegedly murdered by Jews and his blood used for a Passover feast, an accusation which led not only to the persecution and murder of many Jews in the region, but also to the construction of the Wernerkapelle, as well as the foundation of a cult of worship around Werner, a cult that was only officially expunged by the Catholic Church in 1963. As Heine writes:

Eine andre Beschuldigung, die ihnen schon in früherer Zeit, das ganze Mittelalter hindurch bis Anfang des vorigen Jahrhunderts, viel Blut und Angst kostete, das war das läppische, in Chroniken und Legenden bis zum Ekel oft wiederholte Mährchen: daß die Juden geweihte Hostien stählen, die sie mit Messern durchstächen bis das Blut herausfließe, und daß sie an ihrem Paschafeste Christenkinder schlachteten, um das Blut derselben bey ihrem nächtlichen Gottesdienste zu gebrauchen. Die Juden, hinlänglich verhaßt wegen ihres Glaubens, ihres Reichthums, und ihrer Schuldbücher, waren an jenem Festtage ganz in den Händen ihrer Feinde, die ihr Verderben nur gar zu leicht bewirken konnten, wenn sie das Gerücht eines solchen Kindermords verbreiteten...57

However, out of this horror comes the wonder and beauty of the Wernerkapelle, whose history is rarely known to those who would now come to visit it:

Sankt Werner ist ein solcher Heiliger, und ihm zu Ehren ward zu Oberwesel jene prächtige Abtey gestiftet, die jetzt am Rhein eine der schönsten Ruinen bildet, und mit der gothischen Herrlichkeit ihrer langen spitzbögigen Fenster, stolz emporschießender Pfeiler und Steinschnitzeleyen uns so sehr entzückt, wenn wir an einem heitergrünen Sommertage vorbeyfahren und ihren Ursprung nicht kennen.58

Heine eventually can no longer dance around these tensions and finally comes out and bluntly writes:

57 DHA 5, 110. 58 DHA 5, 110.

Zu Ehren dieses Heiligen wurden am Rhein noch drey andre große Kirchen errichtet, und unzählige Juden getödtet oder mißhandelt. Dies geschah im Jahr 1287, und auch zu Bacherach, wo eine von diesen Sankt-Wernerskirchen gebaut wurde, erging damals über die Juden viel Drangsal und Elend.59

Here we see perhaps the earliest instance of a strategy Heine will use again and again when discussing the Middle Ages. By tying the Wernerkapelle to the blood libel, Heine is alluding to the fact that despite its horrific origins, the uninformed observer would nevertheless see the beauty of the edifice itself. In the story of the Wernerkapelle, the crisis of Heine’s own religious and aesthetic circumstances are historicized, revealing that the sublime poetic tradition out of which his own work emerged is bound to a medievalizing tradition that was now being used increasingly to promulgate and justify anti-Semitism. Although this moment can be read as an ironic commentary on the idea of medieval Christian unity, it also bears the traces of Heine’s autobiographical circumstances, where he was in the process of renegotiating his own understanding of the German past in light of his own Jewish roots. In Der Rabbi of Bacherach, this tension between these two communities, Jewish and Christian, will be what drives the initial narrative action.

After the opening scene setting, the narrative proper begins with a Passover Seder, where two men who claim to be Jewish arrive in order to leave a dead child under the table. Bacherach’s Rabbi, Abraham, and his wife Sara, then flee. After Abraham provides a bizarre justification for their escape (an escape that comes presumably at the expense of every other Jew in Bacherach!) the narrator shifts focus away from Abraham and onto Sara, and the first chapter ends with a remarkable recounting of Sara’s thoughts as she falls in and out of consciousness during their furtive boat ride to Frankfurt am Main, where the rest of the fragment will take place. It is to this boat ride that I would like to now turn, and examine how Sara’s dream-like state, where she dreams of her childhood and youth, further reveals the possibility of a deep link between Jewish and Christian life.

59 DHA 5, 110.

If the opening of Der Rabbi von Bacherach worked to establish the persistence of the German Jewish community despite Christian persecution, Sara’s dream suggests the possibility that both Christians and Jews can lay claim to an older folk tradition. As the narrator recounts Sara’s thoughts, one thing becomes clear, namely that her youth, much like Heine’s, existed within an environment where there was the interplay of Christian and Jewish traditions:

Wahrlich, der alte, gutherzige Vater Rhein kann's nicht leiden wenn seine Kinder weinen; thränenstillend wiegt er sie auf seinen treuen Armen, und erzählt ihnen seine schönsten Mährchen und verspricht ihnen seine goldigsten Schätze, vielleicht gar den uralt versunkenen Niblungshort.60

Heine connects this young Jewish couple’s Rhine journey to perhaps the most famous Middle High German text, the Nibelungenlied, as the Rhine narrates its own history to Sara, calming her (and distracting her) from the horrors currently befalling her friends and relatives back in Bacherach.

In contrast to the disenchanting horrors of her current reality, Sara’s dreams take her back to the stories of her childhood. In the telling of her dream, Heine develops a kind of progression from the German folk story, common to both Christian and Jewish Germans, and which is distinctly medieval in character, to an interruption of the dream by her father, who, in waking her, reorients her thoughts towards the reality of her Jewish heritage:

[...] und der schönen Sara war es zu Muthe, als sey sie wieder ein kleines Mädchen und säße wieder auf dem Schooße ihrer Muhme aus Lorch, und diese erzähle ihr die hübsche Geschichte von dem kecken Reuter der das arme, von den Zwergen geraubte Fräulein befreite, und noch andre wahre Geschichten, vom wunderlichen Wisperthale drüben, wo die Vögel ganz vernünftig sprechen, und vom Pfefferkuchenland, wohin die folgsamen Kinder kommen, und von verwünschten Prinzessinnen, singenden Bäumen, gläsernen Schlössern, goldenen Brücken, lachenden Nixen ... Aber zwischen all diesen hübschen Mährchen, die klingend und leuchtend zu leben begannen, hörte die schöne Sara die

60 DHA 5, 118.

Stimme ihres Vaters, der ärgerlich die arme Muhme ausschalt, daß sie dem Kinde so viel Thorheiten in den Kopf schwatze!61

I would suggest that the tension in Sara’s life between this pre-Christian folk cultural heritage, shared by everyone, which is then supplanted by the Jewish or Christian traditions, is something shared by Heine. It has been observed by scholars such as Jeffrey Sammons that “the effort at synthesis is evident, but not without incongruities. The Romantic landscape belongs to Christian Europe; the Jews of the fifteenth century do not live in it.”62 However, this argument just seems to reify the very Christian/Jewish distinction that Heine is attempting to undermine in this passage. The reader is meant here to identify with Sara. Heine’s mention of the Nibelungenlied and of fairy tales reminds the readers that Abraham and Sara, despite their religious affiliation, have an authentic claim to these German traditions as well, be they folk or medieval literary epic traditions.63 What I would emphasize here is Heine’s early suggestion of a relationship between the Jewish and Christian German traditions whose shared tradition is found in these non-/pre- Christian sources. This nexus, which Heine will flesh out more in his later work, might serve as a reason as to why he struggled with the composition of Der Rabbi von Bacherach in the 1820s.64 Ultimately however, Der Rabbi von Bacherach was, at least during its initial period of composition, an unsuccessful and unpublished attempt to represent the present within the past. It was followed by a more successful (and published) work, one where Heine attempted to represent the past within the present, the second of his Reisebilder, Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand.

61 DHA 5, 118. 62 Jeffrey Sammons, The Elusive Poet, 311. 63 It is worth noting that the Nibelungenlied, of all medieval German epics that had seen renewed attention in the early 19th Century, wears its pre-Christian origins more lightly than any of them. 64 It also might suggest why Heine gravitated towards pantheism in the 1830s instead of reasserting his Jewish heritage; however, this suggestion is well beyond the scope of this current study.

Reisebilder: Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand

Although Heine’s early attempt at writing a historical novel turned out to be a struggle, his next prose works, the series of travel narratives he called Reisebilder, proved that Heine was not only a great poet, but a great prose stylist as well. Heine’s travel narratives, beyond securing his reputation as a preeminent author, are also the site where many of the themes that have been explored in this study shift away from German Romantic medievalism, and towards something more ecumenical.

For much of the 1820s, for financial and educational reasons, Heinrich Heine began travelling and his travels in turn took on a foundational role in his literary output right up to his arrival in Paris in 1831. If one charitably counts the escape narrative of Der Rabbi von Bacherach as well as many of the poems he wrote during his youth that explore themes of travel, most of his writing during the 1820s was devoted to travel narratives of a fictional or quasi-autobiographical bent. Moreover, Heine himself was happy to identify himself, if not as a traveller, then at least as the writer of travelogues. As Anthony Phelan writes of the first of Heine’s Reisebilder, Die Harzreise:

Throughout his life Heine liked to identify himself as the 'author of the Reisebilder', those 'travel pictures' that brought him his first public success, whether as fame or notoriety – cardinally through the cheeky combination of wit and sentiment in his Harzreise.65

Moreover, Die Harzreise was

Heines erste Prosaarbeit mit der für ihn von nun an typischen Mischung von empfindsamen (Gemüthskehricht sagte er selber dazu) und satirischen Stilementen, wie er es zuvor schon in der Lyrik, den Heimkehr-Gedichten, praktiziert hatte.66

In other words, Die Harzreise not only inaugurated Heine's fame but also a prose style that he would employ effectively for the remainder of his literary career. The highly literary and self-

65 Anthony Phelan, Reading Heinrich Heine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 91. 66 Jan-Christoph Hauschild and Michael Werner, Das Zweck Des Lebens Ist Das Leben Selbst: Heinrich Heine : Eine Biographie (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1997), 105.

83 aware texts of the Reisebilder not only betray aspects of Heine's psychology and his biography; these “real-life” elements refract themselves back into the text in an illuminating way.

To add to the complications of his own life and its relationship to his work, in and around the time of composition of Die Harzreise, Heine converted to Lutheranism, which created a whole new series of issues with respect to Heine’s personal identity, and in doing so, transformed the way in which he was to approach religion and the past. He was no longer a German Jew, but a baptized Christian of German Jewish extraction. In this (albeit) dimmed religious light, Heine’s Reisebilder detail Heine’s own journey away from his early Romantic leanings towards a kind of melancholy nostalgia about the past, and it is out of the aftermath of his conversion, that Heine wrote Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand.

The text, regarded by many as Heine’s first true prose masterwork,67 is not, despite its inclusion in the Reisebilder series, a recounting of a physical journey. It is instead, as the title suggests, an exploration of ideas, mainly through a recounting of Heine’s childhood in Düsseldorf during the Napoleonic Wars. Combining autobiography, fantasy and cultural criticism, Ideen marks a turning point for Heine in terms of how he approaches the past, be it Germany’s or his own. If Der Rabbi von Bacherach attempted to project contemporary problems back into a historical setting, Ideen approaches things from the opposite direction, by reimagining his own present circumstances in the service of a rejection of the German Romantic past.

Given this, a reformulation of the question posed at the outset still arises: Where might the German Middle Ages fit into Ideen, a text that is not set in or around the Middle Ages? Thankfully, Heine himself provides an answer in a letter to his friend Rudolph Christiani from November 1826. Heine asks him to take a look at the second chapter of what he then called “Ideen zur Geschichte.” After asking Christiani not to tell anyone about his new work, and to give feedback about its form and content, he writes:

Lies es ohne V o r u r t h e i l . Verdamme nicht meine Härte; man hat mich gezwungen zum Schwert zu greifen, aber ach! ich weiß sehr gut daß wer das Schwert führt auch durch das Schwert umkommen wird. Warlich meine Stellung begünstigte nie meine

67 See, for example, Jeffrey Sammons’ praise for Ideen in The Elusive Poet, 118.

Ausbildung zum weichen Minneliederlieder – aux armes! armes! dröhnte mir immer in die Ohren – Alea jacta est.68

Heine’s wholesale rejection of his “Minnelieder” days, those “weiche” poems, evoking the poem from the beginning of this chapter, seems clear. And indeed, it is around this time that Heine scrubs his early poetry of the word “Minne” in preparation for the publication of his Buch der Lieder in 1827. The clarity of his words in this letter have led scholars to argue that it is in Ideen where Heine’s break with the medievalized German Romanticism of his past is completed, and where he devotes himself completely to the development of a positive political future. As Richard Grey writes:

Heine deems it necessary-and this is itself noteworthy-to justify the polemics of the travelogues, and he does so by pointing to the wretchedness of the age. Heine associated this "wretchedness" with the popularization of certain romantic attitudes, especially romanticism's valorization of the Middle Ages.69

He goes on to note, in reference to the aforementioned letter:

From the very outset Heine viewed Ideen as the text which bore witness to the repudiation of his past as a romantic minnesinger. The "harshness" of this text, as Heine implies by means of semantic opposition, stands in stark contrast to the "gentleness" of his romantic love poetry.70

An astute reader would observe that at some point between his early Bonn years and the composition of his dedicatory poem to Buch der Lieder, his Minne had gone from being a prophylactic against masculine weakness, to a potential source of the weakness itself. However, I do not believe that this move away from the medievalizing traditions of his youth constitutes a complete rejection of the German Romantic project of looking to the past as a guide to the future. Heine in fact devotes much of his time and energy to reinvigorating this project and redeploying

68 HSA 20, 274. 69 Richard T. Gray “Romanticism and the Discourse of Revolution: Heine's Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand and Literature in the Public Sphere,” Monatshefte 81, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 29. 70 Grey, “Romanticism”, 31.

85 it against the reactionary forces he opposes. The dichotomy between a progressive future and a romanticized past is not mutually exclusive and this allows for the possibility that Heine could advocate for a progressive future within the framework of a romanticized past. Moreover, much of the conceptual material out of which he develops his literary oeuvre, and indeed what motivates him, is a progressive response to that same material. What is perhaps most interesting about this time in Heine’s life (1825-26), is that, in the wake of his conversion, he writes some of his most experimental poetry (the North Sea poems) and the Reisebilder, which remain to this day inimitable. Even at the apex of his rejection of his youthful Minne, where he scours his texts of any mention of his medievalized past, in Ideen Heine introduced the metaphors of the nightingale and the linden tree, which had emerged out of a specifically medievalized Romantic tradition, into a contemporary setting better suited to his own politically progressive aims.

Ideen is framed narratively in a way that would not be at all out of place in a medieval literary setting. There is a male narrator (who will soon assert a courtly connection) regaling a tale to a woman of some social standing.71 Moreover, like many medieval prose works, it begins with a meta-commentary on the production of narratives (cf. Hartmann von Aue’s Der arme Heinrich, Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan, the Nibelungenlied, and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival).

Ideen itself opens with a quote from Adolph Müllner’s 1813 play Die Schuld:

Das Geschlecht der Oerindur, Unsres Thrones feste Säule, Soll bestehn, ob die Natur Auch damit zu Ende eile.72

The play, nearly forgotten today but popular in Heine’s day, concerns a case of mistaken identity and revolves around the tensions between the north and the south of Europe. The lines, which

71 Given the fact that the work is in many respects autobiographical, the identity of the female listener is not known, although much scholarly time has been expended on attempting to ascertain her identity. See Sammons, The Elusive Poet, 120. 72 DHA 6, 170.

86 proclaim the eternity of the House of Oerindur, serve an ironic function, as by the end of Die Schuld, the House of Oerindur is no more. From the very beginning of Ideen, Heine is suggesting that the stories he is about to tell about his past, and the pasts of the people who populate this work, should be taken as objects of hermeneutic suspicion.

This is made clear by the fact that Ideen proper begins with the discussion of some lines of a drama that does not exist outside of Ideen: “Sie war liebenswürdig, und Er liebte Sie; Er aber war nicht liebenswürdig, und Sie liebte Ihn nicht.”73 Heine (or “Heine” if one is to be rigorous about avoiding completely conflating the author with the narrator) is introducing his own part in this story, which is a distilled and distanced invocation of the dedicatory poem from Buch der Lieder, where he casts a retrospective (and critical) glance towards his own work:

Ich hab' mahl die Hauptrolle darin gespielt, und da weinten alle Damen, nur eine Einzige weinte nicht, nicht eine einzige Thräne weinte sie, und das war eben die Pointe des Stücks, die eigentliche Katastrophe –74

This is a thinly veiled metaphor for Heine’s own life and work. Like Heine, the hero of this drama neither dies tragically nor commits suicide, despite his extreme suffering over unrequited love. The narrator begins to unfold the heart of the play, which involves the ensnaring of the hero by the heroine:

Madame! das alte Stück ist eine Tragödie, obschon der Held darin weder ermordet wird, noch sich selbst ermordet. Die Augen der Heldinn sind schön, sehr schön – Madame, riechen Sie nicht Veilchenduft? – sehr schön, und doch so scharfgeschliffen, daß sie mir wie gläserne Dolche durch das Herz drangen, und gewiß aus meinem Rücken wieder herausguckten – aber ich starb doch nicht an diesen meuchelmörderischen Augen. Die Stimme der Heldinn ist auch schön – Madame, hörten Sie nicht eben eine Nachtigall schlagen? – eine schöne, seidne Stimme, ein süßes Gespinnst der sonnigsten Töne, und meine Seele ward darin verstrickt und würgte sich und quälte sich.75

73 DHA 6, 171. 74 DHA 6, 171. 75 DHA 6, 173.

The appearance of the nightingale here is telling. If one accepts that Heine is providing his reader with an allegorical retelling of his own autobiographical suffering from unrequited love, then the appearance of the nightingale should not come as a surprise, especially if the nightingale serves as a metaphor for the medieval tensions within his own poetry, then the “heroine” here could be the deutsche Muse, especially when one considers that it is heroine’s voice that becomes entangled with his soul, leading to his torment.

However, Heine throws this neat reading into disarray by proclaiming that he, the narrator, is the Count of Ganges (and not a medieval knight), and that, moreover, he is in Venice. This deliberate act of self-exoticization is important because while it aligns with the courtly tradition of stories focusing on the trials and tribulations of the aristocracy it also expands the horizon of that aristocracy beyond the bounds of the European tradition. Although it is again unclear as to what extent Heine had read works like Parzival, he certainly understood the courtly tradition, and the idea of an international multi-ethnic aristocracy again allows for Heine to highlight the similarities between various traditions instead of drawing a sharp line between them.

The fact that this Count of Ganges is a conceit is confirmed only a few lines later when the narrator mentions that he went to buy pistols with which to commit suicide at a shop on the Via Burstah, which is not the name of a Venetian canal, but is in fact a street in the Altstadt of Hamburg. This fact also dates this recounting of the “drama” to his Hamburg years, where his medieval/German patriotic leanings were not in dispute. The “return” to Hamburg will serve a parallel function in the Lucca books, and will play a crucial role much later in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen; this is important because it reinforces Heine’s stated preoccupation with this moment in his life, and more particularly, how it defined him.

The narrator, as the Count of Ganges, then proceeds to a restaurant for a final meal, and afterwards recites a monologue from Almansor and notes: “Es ist allgemein rezipirt, Madame, daß man einen Monolog hält, ehe man sich todt schießt.”76 However, before he is able to kill himself, the narrator is “rescued” from his own suicide by the very woman who caused his pain:

76 DHA 6, 174.

Sie trug ihr blauseidnes Kleid, und den rosarothen Hut, und ihr Auge sah mich an so mild, so todtbesiegend, so lebenschenkend – Madame, Sie wissen wohl aus der römischen Geschichte, daß, wenn die Vestalinnen im alten Rom auf ihrem Wege einem Verbrecher begegneten, der zur Hinrichtung geführt wurde, so hatten sie das Recht, ihn zu begnadigen, und der arme Schelm blieb am Leben. – Mit einem einzigen Blick hat sie mich vom Tode gerettet, und ich stand vor ihr wie neubelebt, wie geblendet vom Sonnenglanze ihrer Schönheit, und sie ging weiter – und ließ mich am Leben.77

Here, the deutsche Muse, who Heine had explicitly connected to the nightingale, is the very person who saves him from his own sorrow. He recognizes that her fatal beauty can also be a source of strength. This triumph over death is, however, muted:

Bin ich auch nur das Schattenbild in einem Traum, so ist auch dieses besser als das kalte, schwarze, leere Nichtseyn des Todes. Das Leben ist der Güter höchstes, und das schlimmste Uebel ist der Tod.78

Nevertheless, it is an affirmation of the life of the poet over the death of the individual. During this affirmation the nightingale once again appears, except this time nature is overrun with their species:

Und ich lebe! Der große Pulsschlag der Natur bebt auch in meiner Brust, und wenn ich jauchze, antwortet mir ein tausendfältiges Echo. Ich höre tausend Nachtigallen.79

This passage speaks to the dual nature of the German muse for Heine. It is a source of despair, but it is also the source of poetry. Presciently, the narrator then turns to a premonition of his own death (of old age). He muses that, at the twilight of his own life, he will sing once again the songs of the dreams of his youth:

Dann ergreif' ich die Harfe, und die alten Freuden und Schmerzen erwachen, die Nebel zerrinnen, Thränen blühen wieder aus meinen todten Augen, es frühlingt wieder in

77 DHA 6, 175. 78 DHA 6, 175. 79 DHA 6, 176.

meiner Brust, süße Töne der Wehmuth beben in den Saiten der Harfe, ich sehe wieder den blauen Fluß und die marmornen Paläste, und die schönen Frauen- und Mädchengesichter – und ich singe ein Lied von den Blumen der Brenta.80

Heine concludes this section with noting that at the moment of the poet’s death, although the nightingales have already died, they continue to sing, and after the poet had closed his eyes for the last time, he will be buried under a linden tree.

It is not difficult to see the ways in which Heine has not only masterfully retold his own poetic awakening, his origins as a poet, but also presented his stated rejection of that culture in such a way as to leave a sense of a nostalgic longing for his youthful suffering, a nostalgia which will stay with him for many years. What drives this nostalgia is not, as I shall show, a love of German Romantic authors, but rather the concepts that they (perhaps inadvertently) promoted, embodied in the “medieval” tensions which they espied but failed to fully understand. Heine himself will not fully articulate this understanding until De L’Allemagne, nearly a decade after Ideen.

It is noteworthy that, in opposition to a lot of thinking about Heine’s identity, the overlaying of Indian nobility and the Italian location come after his engagement with the symbols of the nightingale and the linden tree, and not the other way around. Heine is superimposing another identity onto his own younger medievally-tinged German romantic self. He is effectively lampooning the question of his “true” identity, an identity that will become an increasingly common question directed at Heine, both during his lifetime as well as long afterwards. Nevertheless it is here where Heine reads his own cultural substrata as a German Romantic, fused with the poetic imagery and cultural history of the German Middle Ages, which, in the form of the nightingale, is allowed to fly away and transcend its current cultural limitations in the service of a narrow minded German nationalism.

After his beautiful prose soliloquy around his own death, Heine immediately disenchants the reader by indicating that he is not the Count of the Ganges, and instead cites Franz Bopp as providing him with the idea that he, like all Germans, comes from Hindustan, on account of the

80 DHA 6, 177.

90 relationship between Sanskrit and the other Indo-European languages. The nightingale makes yet another appearance, where Heine again deliberately conflates various traditions and cultures to indicate the universality of the nightingale, and thus, of Heine’s own poetic heritage:

Eine verzauberte Nachtigall sitzt auf einem rothen Korallenbaum im stillen Ocean, und singt ein Lied von der Liebe meiner Ahnen.81

It is also the moment where Ideen turns into a more straightforward autobiographical recounting of his childhood during the French occupation of Düsseldorf by Napoleon’s French army.

Although this move away from a dreamy recollection of the past signals a shift towards a more direct narration of his past, it also introduces some new symbols, like the drum, played by the titular character of Le Grand, a drum major in the French Army. Le Grand teaches the young Heine modern history by drumming the marches used in various battles during the French Revolution. If the nightingale represents the song of poetry, the drum is the relentless beat of the history of ideas moving forward.

That the nightingale and the drum are both to be embodied by the Heine who is now writing Ideen should be clear. He has already indicated his affinity with the nightingale and he now also remarks on his proficiency with the drum, a proficiency which is connected to the underlying folk wisdom of the German people that will come to loom large in Heine’s later thinking on the nature and shape of German identity, and from which Heine will draw connections between this wisdom and the Middle Ages later on in De L’Allemagne:

Ist nun das Trommeln ein angeborenes Talent, oder hab' ich es früh zeitig ausgebildet, genug, es liegt mir in den Gliedern, in Händen und Füßen, und äußert sich oft unwillkührlich.82

It is in his laudatory description of his hero Napoleon where Heine finally ties all of these symbols of the past and the future together.83 As he mentions the various moments in his life

81 DHA 6, 178. 82 DHA 6, 192.

91 where he found himself drumming unconsciously, usually in opposition to some school or university lecture, he recalls a time when he found himself drumming his feet at a slander of Napoleon by a professor. It is at this moment where the seeming reality of his autobiography gives way to a memory of Napoleon that would not seem out of place stylistically with his earlier musing of his life as the Count of Ganges:

Denke ich an den großen Kaiser, so wird es in meinem Gedächtnisse wieder recht sommergrün und goldig, eine lange Lindenallee taucht blühend empor, auf den laubigen Zweigen sitzen singende Nachtigallen, der Wasserfall rauscht, auf runden Beeten stehen Blumen und bewegen traumhaft ihre schönen Häupter – ich stand mit ihnen im wunderlichen Verkehr, die geschminkten Tulpen grüßten mich bettelstolz herablassend, die nervenkranken Lilien nickten wehmüthig zärtlich, die trunkenrothen Rosen lachten mir schon von weitem entgegen, die Nachtviolen seufzten – mit den Myrthen und Lorbeeren hatte ich damals noch keine Bekanntschaft, denn sie lockten nicht durch schimmernde Blüthe, aber mit den Reseden, womit ich jetzt so schlecht stehe, war ich ganz besonders intim84

All of these symbols, of his poetic past and political present, gather together in the presence of Napoleon. By framing them with Napoleon, Heine is making an explicit connection between the German Romantic past and the possibility of that past coexisting with an emancipated future, if only for a brief moment. However, as is often the case in Heine, and especially in Ideen, the euphoria that Heine describes upon seeing Napoleon in person in chapter eight is broken by beginning chapter nine with “Der Kaiser ist todt.”85 The tension between life and death, between hope and despair, between emancipation and reaction, recurs throughout Ideen, and I believe it reflects Heine’s own attempts to reproduce these tensions within his own work.

83 Heine’s admiration of Napoleon was well-known. For a dated but thorough survey of Heine’s views and writings on Napoleon, see Paul Holzhausen’s book Heinrich Heine und Napoleon I. (Frankfurt am Main: M. Diesterweg, 1903). For a much more recent and succinct discussion about Heine’s views on Napoleon and their relationship to modernity, see Willi Goetschel’s Heine and Critical Theory (London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 18-23. 84 DHA 6, 193. 85 DHA 6, 195.

This conflict later reappears in Ideen as the dreams of the old give way to the bitter sadness of the new, when Heine recounts a meeting with Le Grand years later, with Heine as a wiser (and sadder) adult, a meeting that becomes a tale of two souls who were untrue and broke faith. In this reverie, there appears an aged Monsieur Le Grand, who drums the Battle of Moscow and Napoleon’s defeat, revealing the sadness of the recent past. Napoleon’s defeat leads to Le Grand’s decision to never drum again, and Heine, in an act of closure, pierces Le Grand’s drum with a sword. Here, at the moment when Ideen’s symbol of a progressive history has been broken by Heine’s sword, Heine then proceeds immediately to a discussion of poetry:

Sie haben's alle dem großen Urpoeten abgesehen, der in seiner tausendaktigen Welttragödie den Humor aufs Höchste zu treiben weiß, wie wir es täglich sehen: – nach dem Abgang der Helden kommen die Clowns und Graziosos mit ihren Narrenkolben und Pritschen, nach den blutigen Revoluzionsscenen und Kaiseractionen, kommen wieder herangewatschelt die dicken Bourbonen mit ihren alten abgestandenen Späßchen und zartlegitimen Bonmots, und graziöse hüpft herbey die alte Noblesse mit ihrem verhungerten Lächeln, und hintendrein wallen die frommen Kaputzen mit Lichtern, Kreuzen und Kirchenfahnen; sogar in das höchste Pathos der Welttragödie pflegen sich komische Züge einzuschleichen…86

After tragedy come the clowns, who, for Heine, refer to the (bad) Romantics, the aristocracy, and the church. Ideen ends on a kind of aporia, with the current historical narrative of the past remaining entirely in the hands of reactionary forces, although he does suggest a possible alternative towards the end. In a discussion of the Iliad, Heine points out that one cannot understand epic poetry without an understanding of their mythic past, a past which grounds all art. This understanding of the mythic past is something that Heine will continue to explore in much greater detail in De l’Allemagne, but which here and in the rest of the Lucca books, to which I will now turn, will be evoked more than it is explained.

86 DHA 6, 200.

Die Bäder von Lucca and Die Stadt Lucca

By the time Heine comes to write Die Bäder von Lucca and Die Stadt Lucca, the two books based on his month in the Italian city of Lucca in September of 1828, Heine had been without a proper home base for nearly a decade. In contrast to Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand, these books mark a return to a more standard type of travel narrative and purport to describe his time in the Tuscan city of Lucca. However, much like Ideen, both Lucca books betray a narrative and formal complexity that is often masked by Heine’s easy-going prose style, and although they were published separately, the Lucca books are connected in terms of characters and events. For the purposes of this study, what I want to focus on is the idea that, for the most part, some of the main characters who populate the story world are in fact projections of Heine’s own inner conflicts around religion and art, and when viewed in this way, there are numerous moments where one can see Heine acknowledging and working through his past.

Although we know that Heine indeed spent a month in Lucca in 1828, the people Heine interacts with in these works are highly fictionalized, and this fictionalization includes the narrator “Heine” himself. What I want to explore is how, in Die Bäder von Lucca and Die Stadt Lucca, Heine, or more accurately, his conflicted views on culture and religion, are projected into a variety of characters. As in the previous Reisebilder, “Heine” the narrator is the main voice; however, and more than in any of the Reisebilder books, within the various characters who populate the Lucca books are reflections of Heine’s own thinking and identity. If, in Ideen, Heine used his autobiography to insert himself (and others) into history, in the Lucca books Heine attempts to reflect on the tensions governing his own thoughts by having the various characters in the Lucca books express more radical or extreme versions of positions that he himself might have taken, leaving “Heine” the narrator to act as a neutral foil for his own feelings.87 Although the Lucca books have a wider scope than the Middle Ages, my intention here is to focus on the moments in the text where the Middle Ages and the nightingale crop up. Doing so will make clearer the narrative strategy that Heine developed in the Lucca books, a strategy that allows him to openly reflect on the legacy of the Middle Ages, which clearly

87 This observation about Heine’s use of his characters in the Lucca books as mouthpieces for his own thoughts is explored more broadly in Jeffrey Sammon’s chapter on the Lucca books in chapter six of The Elusive Poet, 151-174.

94 remained unsettled despite Heine’s stated desire for Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand to serve as a repudiation of his “Minne” past.

Like his other Reisebilder, at the centre of the Lucca books is the ubiquitous narrator, who identifies as Heine himself. It is important to note that the narrator, like all of the other characters, represents an idealized perspective. Heine the author would very much like people to identify himself with “Heine” the narrator, although this conflation will come back to haunt him in his attack on Count August von Platen in Die Bäder von Lucca.

The idea of Heine putting his own words or perspectives into other people’s mouths is neither novel, nor is it abandoned as a technique (he will do something similar a decade later in his book on Ludwig Börne, which will be looked at in chapter four). However, what I want to suggest is that with so many different characters, this technique not only allows Heine the narrator to come off as the reasonable, sophisticated poet, it also allows him to stage, in the manner of an 18th century philosophical dialogue, a conversation between characters where Heine can debate and portray some of his own vacillating positions in a way that can be taken as ironic. These dialogues-as-travelogues then serve as a cover for Heine’s own conflicted feelings about the Romantic tradition as well as a place to explore those views from a distance.

In the following, I want to examine a few of the scenes in Die Bäder von Lucca that involve the male characters Gumpelino and Hirsch, and then move on to the sections of Die Stadt Lucca that primarily involve the female characters Mathilde and Franscheska. Where I would argue that Gumpelino and Hirsch represent alternate trajectories of Heine’s life had he remained in Hamburg and given up poetry, Mathilde and Franscheska represent trajectories of Heine’s aesthetic desires, and we will see how these desires intersect with his youthful relationship to German Romanticism and the Middle Ages as they reappear as echoes throughout the Lucca books.

Die Bäder von Lucca

Die Bäder von Lucca, which was published at the end of 1829, is most famous (or infamous) for its attack on the poetry of the German poet Count August von Platen by way of an allusion to Platen’s homosexuality. Although this polemic has been well-examined, I am more interested in the fact that Heine frames his narrative self in Die Bäder von Lucca explicitly as a Lutheran poet.

I believe that he does this to distance himself from the eventual object of his criticism (von Platen), as well as to set himself up as a “neutral Christian German male” standard upon which everyone else in both texts will be contrasted. His being Lutheran here is then not to be interpreted to mean that he is a deeply religious figure, rather, it is code for his persona as a secularized German intellectual and poet. This identity will be contrasted with the two main male figures in Die Bäder von Lucca: Gumpelino, a banker who converted to Catholicism from Judaism, and Hyacinth-Hirsch, a Jewish lottery salesman and chiropodist. That both men are of Jewish extraction, like Heine, immediately suggests that one read these characters as possible trajectories of Heine’s own life who, had he not taken the path he did, might have wound up as a Gumpelino or Hirsch.88

That both men originate from Hamburg is our first clue that they are meant to be acquaintances of Heine’s from his own time in Hamburg as a teenager, a time which, as we know from chapter one, proved to be crucial for Heine’s poetic and personal development, as well as for his views on the Hamburg merchant class.89 As foils, they bring out some of the themes that we have been exploring. They also foreshadow Heine’s more explicit examination of the relationship between culture, religion, and philosophy in the 1830s, and serve as an instructive prelude to the more obvious medieval connections that Heine will present in Die Stadt Lucca.

My interest is in how Heine feels the need to personify aspects of his own younger self in a text set a decade after his time in Hamburg, and how some of the other characters, notably Franscheska, will come to represent Heine’s more conflicted feelings around the impact of the legacy of German Romanticism on him, revealing a less decisive stance on the Middle Ages than Ideen and the erasure of “Minne” from his poems might have suggested.

88 Gumpelino and Hirsch also allude to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza albeit with their girths reversed. For a recent discussion on this aspect of the Lucca characters, see Goetschel, Heine and Critical Theory, 228-29. Ritchie Robertson also reads these characters under the sign of Cervantes in his The 'Jewish Question' in German Literature, 1749-1939: Emancipation and its Discontents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 86-88. 89 Cf. Sammons, The Elusive Poet, 158: “These features [of Gumpelino’s character], it will be noted, are not entirely unrelated to some of the characteristics of Heine at the outset of the period of Buch der Lieder.”

Gumpelino

Gumpelino, the ex-Jewish Catholic businessman functions primarily as a figure of mockery in the Lucca books. However, the very things that Heine finds amusing and worthy of mockery in Gumpelino are connected to Heine’s recognition that, if it had not been for poetry, he might have wound up as Gumpelino. This becomes increasingly clear as the reader gets to know Gumpelino. When the narrator first encounters him, it is in the midst of a conversation with the Englishwoman Mathilde (who will become a more important figure in Die Stadt Lucca).

After Heine mentions that he has been rolling a stone uphill, the stone that covers the tomb of God, this Christian allusion prepares us for the arrival of the arch-Catholic Gumpelino, whose presence is announced with the utmost seriousness:

Als John hereintrat, und mit dem steifsten Lakayen-Pathos Seine Excellenz den Markese Christophoro di Gumpelino anmeldete. 90

Mathilde then briefs Heine on the man he is about to meet:

Stoßen Sie sich nicht an sein Aeußeres, besonders nicht an seine Nase. Der Mann besitzt vortreffliche Eigenschaften, z. B. viel Geld, gesunden Verstand, und die Sucht alle Narrheiten der Zeit in sich aufzunehmen.91 (Emphasis mine)

Here Heine is already setting up the contrast between himself and Gumpelino, who, as far as the reader knows at this moment, is a member of the Italian aristocracy. Firstly, by commenting on Gumpelino’s nose, he is playing with his reader’s expectations by pointing out a physical feature which is often used as a caricature of both Italians and of Jews. More importantly, Mathilde points out that Gumpelino himself embodies the ridiculousness of their time, meaning that he will be the figure who represents that which is fashionable and popular, but not necessarily what is right.

90 DHA 7/1, 87. 91 DHA 7/1, 88.

These assumptions that Heine sets up for the reader are immediately overturned when Gumpelino actually arrives, and Heine realizes that Gumpelino is “zu meinem höchsten Erstaunen, mein alter Freund, der Banquier Christian Gumpel.”92 It is clear that, like Heine, Gumpelino has changed since Heine knew him. As Heine begins chapter two of Die Bäder von Lucca he does so with an emphasis on Gumpelino’s nose, setting off on a discussion of Gumpelino’s origins, namely that he is of Jewish extraction:

Man konnte es ihm nemlich an der Nase ansehen, daß er von gutem Adel war, daß er von einer uralten Weltfamilie abstammte, womit sich sogar einst der liebe Gott, ohne Furcht vor Mesallianz, verschwägert hat. 93

However, Gumpelino was clearly no longer Jewish:

Oder sind diese langen Nasen eine Art Uniform, woran der Gottkönig Jehovah seine alten Leibgardisten erkennt, selbst wenn sie desertirt sind? Der Markese Gumpelino war ein solcher Deserteur, aber er trug noch immer seine Uniform, und sie war sehr brillant...94

Heine’s emphasis on Gumpelino’s Jewishness and his conversion is interesting because Heine, who was also Jewish, and who had also converted, is nevertheless, in a good “Christian” fashion, using Gumpelino’s conversion as a source of contrast, namely that Gumpelino chose the wrong sect of Christianity. It is here, in deeply Catholic Italy, where Heine will begin to clearly articulate his distaste for modern Catholicism, and in particular the German form which will be discussed later in De L’Allemagne.

Here, Gumpelino embodies the implications of an adherence to a German Romantic heritage without what Heine believes is a necessary dose of critical self-reflection. This is supported by the fact that Gumpelino converted to what Heine will argue is the religion of choice for all “sick” German Romantics – Roman Catholicism. Although there are hints of this early on (the new Italian name, Gumpelino’s constant use of “Jesu!” as an interjection), it is only made clear that

92 DHA 7/1, 88. 93 DHA 7/1, 88. 94 DHA 7/1, 88-9.

Gumpelino is now a Catholic when he tells Heine that he manages to get by with only one servant, aside from hiring a chaplain for his private chapel in Rome. This revelation that Gumpelino is a Roman Catholic is then immediately followed by the introduction of the other male character in Die Bäder von Lucca who is meant to be a figure of contrast to both Heine and Gumpelino: Hirsch, who, like Gumpelino, also has a new name (although it was given to him by his master): Hyacinth.95

After the introduction of Hirsch and Gumpelino, two men who represent possible trajectories of Heine’s non-poetic Jewish Hamburg past, as if to emphasize what separates Heine from them, and in response to Gumpelino’s recitation of a poem by the German poet Friedrich von Matthisson, Heine begins a new chapter (chapter four) with a discussion of the state of modern poetry, and his own self-conception as a poet. This discussion begins with an amusing anecdote that includes a reference to a linden tree:

Als ich einst an einem schönen Frühlingstage unter den Berliner Linden spatzieren ging, wandelten vor mir zwey Frauenzimmer, die lange schwiegen, bis endlich die Eine schmachtend aufseufzte: ach, die jrine Beeme! Worauf die Andre, ein junges Ding, mit naiver Vewundrung fragte: Mutter, was gehn Ihnen die jrine Beeme an?... Ueberall, wo ich unwahre Naturempfindung und dergleichen grüne Lügen ertappe, lacht sie mir ergötzlich durch den Sinn.96

This anecdote is clearly referring back to Gumpelino’s recitation from the previous chapter, although it is not absolutely clear if Heine is referring specifically to the poem, or to Gumpelino’s declamation of the poem as an example of an inauthentic reverence for nature. However, given that Gumpelino is a collection of the very things that Heine opposes, namely the German Catholic aristocracy, an opposition which he will articulate fully in De L’Allemagne, it seems safe to say that his objection is not to von Matthisson’s verse, but rather Gumpelino’s clumsy delivery. Here the linden trees, like the nightingale, stand in as objects of “true”

95 Although Hyacinth-Hirsch is a fascinating character, his presence is less germane to the current topic, so I am restricting my discussion of him to merely pointing out that he is also a figure of contrast, that of the secularized Jewish entrepreneur, yet another of the lost trajectories from Heine’s time as an incompetent small businessman. 96 DHA 7/1, 94-5.

99 reverence of the “true” beauty of nature, and Gumpelino, recognizing that Heine sees through his affected ramblings, asserts that it is Heine who fails to understand the natural, and says “Sie sind ein zerrissener Mensch, ein zerrissenes Gemüth, so zu sagen, ein Byron.”97

It is here where Heine begins a concise overview of the state of modern poetry:

Lieber Leser, gehörst du vielleicht zu jenen frommen Vögeln, die da einstimmen in das Lied von byronischer Zerrissenheit, das mir schon seit zehn Jahren, in allen Weisen, vorgepfiffen und vorgezwitschert worden, und sogar im Schädel des Markese, wie du oben gehört hast, sein Echo gefunden? Ach, theurer Leser, wenn du über jene Zerrissenheit klagen willst, so beklage lieber, daß die Welt selbst mitten entzwey gerissen ist. Denn da das Herz des Dichters der Mittelpunkt der Welt ist, so mußte es wohl in jetziger Zeit jämmerlich zerrissen werden. Wer von seinem Herzen rühmt, es sey ganz geblieben, der gesteht nur, daß er ein prosaisches weitabgelegenes Winkelherz hat. Durch das meinige ging aber der große Weltriß, und eben deßwegen weiß ich, daß die großen Götter mich vor vielen Anderen hochbegnadigt und des Dichtermärtyrthums würdig geachtet haben.98

In other words, the current poetic age is an age of “byronischer Zerrissenheit,” an age whose presence he had mentioned as far back as Almansor, and Heine, like any good authentic poet, has a heart that is torn in two. Anyone who says they are whole fails to grasp the current aesthetic conditions out of which poetry is produced. From here Heine proceeds to a discussion on the essence of classical and medieval poetry in contrast to modern poetry:

Einst war die Welt ganz, im Alterthum und im Mittelalter, trotz der äußeren Kämpfe gabs doch noch immer eine Welteinheit, und es gab ganze Dichter.99

This assertion is remarkable, because it is in stark contrast to his earlier thoughts in Die Romantik, where he made a sharp distinction between the outwardness of classical poetry versus

97 DHA 7/1, 95. 98 DHA 7/1, 94. 99 DHA 7/1, 95.

100 the inwardness of Romantic poetry, which, in Die Romantik, included medieval poetry. However, this conflation serves a particular purpose:

Wir wollen diese Dichter ehren und uns an ihnen erfreuen; aber jede Nachahmung ihrer Ganzheit ist eine Lüge, eine Lüge, die jedes gesunde Auge durchschaut und die dem Hohne dann nicht entgeht.100

In other words, Heine has grandfathered medieval poetry into the realm of the classical in order to protect it from the critique that he will later perform on von Platen, which Heine foreshadows in the next sentence by way of a joke about another poet, Wilhelm Neumann:

Jüngst, mit vieler Mühe, verschaffte ich mir in Berlin die Gedichte eines jener Ganzheitdichter, der über meine byronische Zerrissenheit so sehr geklagt, und bey den erlogenen Grünlichkeiten, den zarten Naturgefühlen, die mir da, wie frisches Heu, entgegendufteten, wäre mein armes Herz, das schon hinlänglich zerrissen ist, fast auch vor Lachen geborsten, und unwillkürlich rief ich: Mein lieber Herr Intendanturrath Wilhelm Neumann, was gehn Ihnen die jrine Beeme an?...Armer Byron! solches ruhige Genießen war dir versagt! War dein Herz so verdorben, daß du die Natur nur sehen, ja sogar schildern, aber nicht von ihr beseligt werden konntest? Oder hat Bysshe Shelley Recht, wenn er sagt: du habest die Natur in ihrer keuschen Nacktheit belauscht und wurdest deßhalb, wie Aktäon, von ihren Hunden zerrissen!101

If this torn condition is a necessary precondition for the creation of modern poetry, it is nevertheless noteworthy that Heine, by placing classical and medieval poetry on the same footing, here inoculates medieval poetry from itself being a problem, and its poets remain a source of inspiration and honour. What cannot occur, according to Heine, is the rote reproduction of their poetry, because those conditions no longer obtain. Although this conflation of the status of classical and medieval poetry is an outlier for Heine, and in De L’Allemagne he will go back to a contrasting position between the two that more closely resembles his views in

100 DHA 7/1, 95. 101 DHA 7/1, 94-5.

101

Die Romantik, it does nevertheless reveal that his concerns about the German Middle Ages are more restricted to their modern function than the entirety of the Middle Ages.

This chapter of Die Bäder von Lucca serves not only as a prelude to his critique of Count August von Platen’s poetry, but also illustrates Gumpelino as a cautionary tale of someone whose personality is taken over by the very type of German Romanticism that Heine had first come to love, but then came to fear. Gumpelino, aristocratic and Catholic, is sick and wan, and he, like many “converts” to Romanticism, has lost his perspective on the world. Heine concludes this chapter with a decision to turn to more interesting matters, namely the female characters in the Lucca books, and so it is to them that we now turn.

Franscheska and Die Stadt Lucca

If Gumpelino represents the modern Romantic who has been exposed to the “bad” Middle Ages, that is, the blind sympathy to a form of German Romanticism that leads to a sickly, overly aristocratic, Roman Catholic perspective, and worst of all produces bad poetry, then Franscheska, the narrator’s love interest throughout the Lucca books, might serve to represent a more hopeful, if complicated path that is clearly indebted to the very Catholic Middle Ages whose German Catholic/aristocratic iteration Heine mocked in Gumpelino.

When the reader is first introduced to Franscheska, it is in the fifth chapter of Die Bäder von Lucca, where an unnamed woman is heard in the next room, singing:

Im Nebenzimmer flatterten dann und wann ebenfalls die Fetzen eines süßen Liedes oder eines noch wundersüßeren Lachens....Wie ein lieblich neckendes Nachtigall-Echo schmetterte im Nebenzimmer eine ähnliche Melodie. 102

Before the reader has even seen Franscheska, Heine has deliberately tied her sweet singing to his current metaphor for the poetic muse, uniting his poetic desires with his carnal desires. Given what I have already shown about how the nightingale functions within Heine’s thought during

102 DHA 7/1, 97.

102 this period, this is a clear signal that this “nightingale” is an analogue for his poetic muse. When Heine finally meets her in the next chapter, it is love at first sight, and she remains a persistent object of sensual desire throughout the Lucca books.

If this linking of Franscheska with the nightingale is not enough to convince one that Heine is making an explicit association between his romantic desires and the production of poetry, it is worth noting that, in his devastating critique of Platen at the end of Die Bäder von Lucca, Heine argues that, had Platen followed the nightingale in his heart and not been obsessed with the formal aspects of poetry he might have become a true poet, the implication being that that which the nightingale symbolizes is a necessary condition for the creation of true poetry.

Here one can see what Heine believes are the basic conditions for the writing of good modern poetry – Zerrissenheit and the nightingale, with Zerrissenheit being a recognition of the torn nature of modern society and the nightingale serving as a recognition of the eternally beautiful in poetry. However, if Franscheska stands in as an analogue for the Muse as a precondition for poetic success, Heine both complicates things and evokes his own youth by making Franscheska, like Gumpelino, a Roman Catholic. When Heine first meets Franscheska again after their dalliance in Die Bäder von Lucca, it is in Die Stadt Lucca, in a Catholic Church, with Franscheska praying before a picture of the Virgin Mary: “Wer ist die Verschleyerte, die dort kniet vor dem Bilde einer Madonna?”103

However, before their actual encounter comes an elaborate rumination by Heine on German Catholicism and health. This is important because it serves to show that Heine’s critique of Catholicism is sharper than is often assumed. In chapter four of Die Stadt Lucca, Heine complains that German Catholic priests are lacking when compared to Italian priests:

Um gegen die katholischen Pfaffen zu schreiben, muß man auch ihre Gesichter kennen. Die Originalgesichter sieht man aber nur in Italien. Die deutschen katholischen Priester und Mönche sind bloß schlechte Nachahmungen, oft sogar Parodien der italienischen; eine Vergleichung derselben würde eben so ausfallen, als wenn man römische oder florentinische Heiligenbilder vergleichen wollte mit jenen heuschrecklichen, frommen

103 DHA 7/1, 173.

103

Fratzen, die etwa dem spießbürgerlichen Pinsel eines nürrenberger Stadtmalers, oder gar der lieben Einfalt eines Gemüthsbeflissenen aus der langhaarig kristlich neudeutschen Schule, ihr trauriges Daseyn verdanken.104

He goes on to note that Italian priests (and by implication Italians themselves), have, if not completely done away with conflating the spiritual aspect of the world with the pleasures of the flesh, at least acknowledged that both sides play a role in a healthily-functioning religious society:

Die Pfaffen in Italien haben sich schon längst mit der öffentlichen Meinung abgefunden, das Volk dort ist längst daran gewöhnt, die geistliche Würde von der unwürdigen Person zu unterscheiden, jene zu ehren, wenn auch diese verächtlich ist. Eben der Contrast, den die idealen Pflichten und Ansprüche des geistlichen Standes und die unabweislichen Bedürfnisse der sinnlichen Natur bilden müssen, jener uralte, ewige Conflikt zwischen dem Geiste und der Materie, macht die italienischen Pfaffen zu stehenden Charakteren des Volks-Humors, in Satyren, Liedern und Novellen.105

This distinction, between the “copy” Catholicism of the Germans and the “true” Catholicism of the Italians signals a prefiguration of his more fully developed views on spiritualism and sensualism (views that will be discussed in the next chapter). Heine notes that in Italy the contrast between spirit and matter is understood, and therefore out in the open, in terms of the spiritual aspects of the priests not aligning with their physical desires. By contrast, in Germany the priest is not only to represent his dignity through his priestly position, but also through his person. For Heine, this emphasis on “dignity” at the expense of the flesh is the source of his grievances against German Catholicism.

This distinction is what allows Heine to identify with the Italian priests he observes during a procession through the streets of Lucca. During the procession, Heine makes a startling admission, that he has the same “affliction” as the Italian priests:

104 DHA 7/1, 165. 105 DHA 7/1, 165.

104

Auf jeden Fall schien mir solche Kerzenträgerey eine gute Einrichtung, denn ich konnte dadurch um so heller die Gesichter besehen, die zum Katholizismus gehören. Und ich habe sie jetzt gesehen, und zwar in der besten Beleuchtung. Und was sah ich denn? ...aber in allen diesen Gesichtern lagen die Spuren derselben Krankheit, einer schrecklichen, unheilbaren Krankheit, die wahrscheinlich Ursache seyn wird, daß mein Enkel, wenn er hundert Jahr später die Prozession in Lukka zu sehen bekommt, kein einziges von jenen Gesichtern wieder findet. Ich fürchte, ich bin selbst angesteckt von dieser Krankheit, und eine Folge derselben ist jene Weichheit, die mich wunderbar beschleicht, wenn ich so ein sieches Mönchsgesicht betrachte, und darauf die Symptome jener Leiden sehe, die sich unter der groben Kutte verstecken: - gekränkte Liebe, Podagra, getäuschter Ehrgeitz, Rückendarre, Reue, Hämorrhoiden, die Herzwunden die uns vom Undank der Freunde, von der Verläumdung der Feinde, und von der eignen Sünde geschlagen worden, alles dieses und noch viel mehr, was eben so leicht unter einer groben Kutte wie unter einem feinen Modefrack seinen Platz zu finden weiß. O! es ist keine Uebertreibung, wenn der Poet in seinem Schmerze ausruft: das Leben ist eine Krankheit, die ganze Welt ein Lazareth!106

Although, as in Ideen, there is an (albeit amusing) emphasis on the cultural sickness of the world, in Die Stadt Lucca, Heine decides to go along with these feelings, and enters a Catholic church to seek refuge from the strangeness of what he had just witnessed. However, the church pushes him into an even stranger frame of mind:

Dem Menschengewühl entfliehend, habe ich mich in eine einsame Kirche verloren, und was du, lieber Leser, eben gelesen hast, sind nicht so sehr meine eignen Gedanken, als vielmehr einige unwillkührliche Worte, die in mir laut geworden, während ich, dahingestreckt auf einer der alten Betbänke, die Töne einer Orgel durch meine Brust ziehen ließ. Da liege ich, mit phantasierender Seele, der seltsamen Musik noch seltsamere Texte unterdichtend...107

106 DHA 7/1, 171. 107 DHA 7/1, 173.

105

Again, as in his first meeting with Franscheska in Die Bäder von Lucca, Heine’s second meeting with Franscheska is presented to the reader by Heine in the presence of music, noting her without the reader yet knowing who she is. And as in Ideen, he begins to describe a feeling of death and emptiness coming over him, a feeling that is dispelled when he realizes that the kneeling woman is his Franscheska:

Ja, sie war es, schon ihr lebendiger Schatten verscheuchte die weißen Gespenster, ich sah jetzt nur sie, ich folgte ihr rasch zur Kirche hinaus, und als sie vor der Thüre den Schleyer zurückschlug, sah ich in Franscheskas bethräntes Antlitz.108

Upon seeing her, his Catholic nightingale, Heine is immediately cured of what ailed him. Heine’s encounter with Franscheska, his muse in the Lucca books, like all of his muses, emphasizes the relationship between Heine’s emphasis on spiritual and emotional health, and the ways in which poetry and desire are critical factors for good health.

If one can say comfortably that Franscheska represents Heine’s poetic muse in the Lucca books, his source of inspiration, it seems worth pointing out how closely Heine’s views on poetry still align with what he called, over a decade earlier in his letter to Christian Sethe, “Minne.” As he wrote back then: Kennst du nicht die deutsche Minne? Die steht kühn u fest auf zwey ewig unerschütterliche Säulen, Manneswürde u Glauben.109 If in his youth, his “Madonna days,” Heine might have found himself praying before the statue, it is now one step removed, where he venerates his muse, who herself prays before the statue, giving him a modicum of control and distance from the overwhelming power of his poetic desires, but also revealing a maturity in terms of his relationship to women, as the abstracted virgin/goddess has been replaced by a flesh and blood woman. Nevertheless, Heine is staging the idea that his poetic desires, whether he likes it or not, are fused with the very German Catholicism he mockingly embodied in Gumpelino. In contrast to Gumpelino’s “copy” German Catholicism, Franscheska’s authentic Italian Catholicism contains the seeds of the productive tension that propelled Heine to write poetry in the first place.

108 DHA 7/1, 174. 109 HSA 20, 19.

106

Although Franscheska is deep in Catholic guilt, presumably as a result of her romantic liaisons with Heine, he tries to persuade her to let him into her room in part by allowing himself to become a Catholic, if only just for one night. The beneficial effects of this proposed evening of “Catholic” carnal congress is made clear by Heine:

Ich glaube, ich bin seelig, ich schlafe ein - aber sobald ich des anderen Morgens erwache, reibe ich mir den Schlaf und den Katholizismus aus den Augen, und sehe wieder klar in die Sonne und in die Bibel, und bin wieder protestantisch vernünftig und nüchtern, nach wie vor.110

And indeed, as morning dawns, Heine writes:

Als am anderen Tage die Sonne wieder herzlich vom Himmel herablachte, erloschen gänzlich die trübseligen Gedanken und Gefühle, die von der Prozession des vorhergehenden Abends in mir erregt worden, und mir [sic.] das Leben wie eine Krankheit und die Welt wie ein Lazareth ansehen ließen.111

If one can go beyond Heine’s braggadocio in light of his successful seduction of Franscheska, then the fact that the narrator awakens feeling healthy and revitalized puts a fine point on the relationship between his (sensual) poetic desires and his (spiritual) emotional well-being. This is not to declare Heine a hypocrite prepared to embrace a reactionary Catholicism for sexual conquest. Rather, it is to suggest that underneath the fusty and reactionary narrative that Heine has developed around modern Catholicism and its relationship to Romanticism in the Lucca texts, there remains a “good” Middle Ages, embodied in the Catholic “nightingale” Franscheska.

Further evidence of this “good” Middle Ages in Die Stadt Lucca is Heine’s depiction of the very next day when he and Franscheska attend mass at the cathedral in Lucca, a scene that will begin in chapter seven and take up much of the remainder of Die Stadt Lucca. It is here where Heine meets up again with the Englishwoman Mathilde. Although I have not discussed her yet, she is the first character “Heine” encounters in Die Bäder von Lucca. There, Heine compares Mathilda

110 DHA 7/1, 176. 111 DHA 7/1, 176.

107 to a cracked bell, whose brokenness can only be discerned by its sound, a secret sadness. If one imagines this cracked bell as a metaphor for Zerrissenheit, Heine will use Mathilde as a cipher for his own sentiments, providing him with a character through which he can safely express some of his more extreme thoughts on religion from a distance, while “Heine” the narrator affirms his own more sophisticated and nuanced position on religion.

The moment which I would like to focus in comes in chapter eleven, after the mass, and as Heine, Franscheska and Mathilde have moved on to a tour of a medieval chapel. Here Heine recounts his encounter with a famous medieval cross, which is almost certainly the Holy Face of Lucca, a prominent Catholic relic mentioned in Dante’s Inferno, and whose presence in the city can be dated back to 742 and of which a copy remains in Lucca to this day. Here Mathilde’s role as a contrastive figure is apparent, as she is constantly mocking and cynical, reflecting an entirely secular attitude towards this encounter with the relic, an attitude which has often been associated with Heine himself. Here, however, Heine admits, as he stands before the medieval cross, that he is prone to fits of faith in miracles, especially when the time and place favour the miraculous. At such moments he finds himself somewhere between the secular views of Mathilde and the passionate religiosity of Franscheska. Here he admits that, in moments like these, he sometimes believes that the world is a miracle and all of world history a legend:

Launisch, wie ich bin, habe ich vielleicht kein ungläubiges Gesicht dazu gemacht; ich habe dann und wann Anfälle von Wunderglauben, besonders wo, wie hier, Ort und Stunde denselben begünstigt. Ich glaube dann, daß alles in der Welt ein Wunder sey, und die ganze Weltgeschichte eine Legende. War ich angesteckt von dem Wunderglauben Franscheskas, die das Kreuz mit wilder Begeisterung küßte? Verdrießlich wurde mir die eben so wilde Spottlust der witzigen Brittinn.112

In the presence of this medieval cross, Mathilde’s disenchantment unnerves him, in part because he admits to a certain sympathy for religious feeling, especially in the presence of Franscheska:

Vielleicht verletzte mich solche um so mehr, da ich mich selbst nicht davon frey fühlte, und sie keineswegs als etwas Lobenswerthes erachtete. Es ist nun mahl nicht zu läugnen,

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daß die Spottlust, die Freude am Widerspruch der Dinge, etwas Bösartiges in sich trägt, statt daß der Ernst mehr mit den besseren Gefühlen verwandt ist - die Tugend, der Freyheitssinn und die Liebe selbst sind sehr ehrhaft. Indessen, es giebt Herzen, worin Scherz und Ernst, Böses und Heiliges, Glut und Kälte sich so abentheuerlich verbinden, daß es schwer wird darüber zu urtheilen. Ein solches Herz schwamm in der Brust Mathildens;113

In contrast, Franscheska in this moment betrayed a Catholic unity, the same unity he had reserved for classical and medieval poetry in Die Bäder von Lucca:

Wie ganz anders war Franscheska! In ihren Gedanken, Gefühlen war eine katholische Einheit. Am Tage war sie ein schmachtend blasser Mond, des Nachts war sie eine glühende Sonne - Mond meiner Tage! Sonne meiner Nächte! ich werde dich niemals wiedersehen!114

Heine acknowledges Franscheska’s hold over him, while simultaneously regretting that he will never see her again. If one accepts that Heine’s encounter with the Holy Face of Lucca is not entirely ironic, and I do not believe that it is, as Heine devotes the remainder of the book to a discussion on the value of “true” religion versus “state” religion, his time in the cathedral and his description of Franscheska serve to thematize the relationship between desire and the aesthetic that is so central to Heine’s understanding of poetry, while continuing to affirm that an important source of tension within that relationship is to be found within the Middle Ages, now split between the “good” and the “bad.” His encounter with the relic, and with Franscheska and Mathilde, affirms his youthful views that there is something about the Middle Ages that is vital to the creation of modern art.

However, like so much of Heine’s writing during the 1820s, Die Stadt Lucca ends with an aporia, as he admits that he no longer believes in the sweet lies of the nightingale. In the moment of the encounter with the medieval, Heine can appreciate the value of this religious- aesthetic feeling, but once back at his writing desk, reality sets back in, and he must admit that he

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109 is more on the side of Mathilde than of Franscheska: by the end of the text, he writes he imagines winter everywhere, but he nevertheless continues to love the heart of man and wishes to destroy every last vestige of the chivalric age.

What might one make of this paradox? It seems to me that for all of Heine’s forceful renunciation of German Romanticism from a political perspective, at this stage, he continued to struggle with the aesthetic heritage of German Romanticism. Although I will refrain from a longer discussion of Heine’s Neue Gedichte, which, like Buch der Lieder, was published years after the composition of many of the poems, the initial poems of Neue Gedichte were written immediately prior to his move to Paris. I believe that these poems, such as the third poem of the opening section, embody this contradiction. After years of developing a critical stance towards German Romanticism, and of erasing his past persona as a Minnesänger, he writes this:

Die schönen Augen der Frühlingsnacht, Sie schauen so tröstend nieder: Hat dich die Liebe so kleinlich gemacht, Die Liebe sie hebt dich wieder.

Auf grüner Linde sitzt und singt Die süße Philomele; Wie mir das Lied zur Seele dringt, So dehnt sich wieder die Seele.115

If Heine had fully convinced himself of the idea that one cannot allow the medieval (and recently expired) political systems that had ruled the German speaking-lands the chance to rule again in modernity, he remains, at this point in his life, unwilling to fully jettison those symbolic materials that led him to poetry in the first place, even if this might lead to charges of hypocrisy. Both the linden tree and the nightingale (here in the form of Philomele) remain. Nevertheless, by the time of his arrival in Paris in 1831, even if he was aware of this contradiction, Heine wrote

115 DHA 2, 13.

110 the following preface to the second edition of Reisebilder I, where he published the Neuer Frühling poems for the first time:

Die neuen Frühlingslieder übergebe ich um so anspruchloser, da ich wohl weiss, dass Deutschland keinen Mangel hat an dergleichen lyrischen Gedichten. Ausserdem ist es unmöglich, in dieser Gattung etwas Besseres zu geben, als schon von den älteren Meistern geliefert worden, namentlich von Ludwig Uhland, der die Lieder der Minne und des Glaubens so hold und lieblich hervorgesungen aus den Trümmern alter Burgen und Klosterhallen. Freilich, diese frommen und ritterlichen Töne, diese Nachtklänge des Mittelalters, die noch unlängst in der Periode einer patriotischen Beschränktheit von allen Seiten widerhallten, verwehen jetzt im Lärmen der neuesten Freiheitskämpfe, im Getöse einer allgemeinen europäischen Völkerverbrüderung, und im scharfen Schmerzjubel jener modernen Lieder, die keine katholische Harmonie der Gefühle erlügen wollen und vielmehr jakobinisch unerbittlich die Gefühle zerschneiden, der Wahrheit wegen. Es ist interessant, zu beobachten, wie die eine von den beiden Liederarten je zuweilen von der andere die äussere Form erborgt. Noch interessanter ist es, wenn in ein und demselben Dichterherzen sich beide Arten verschmelzen...

Ich würde mich vielleicht noch weitläufig über deutsche Dichter aussprechen, aber einige andere Zeitgenossen, die jetzt damit beschäftigt sind, die Freiheit und Gleichheit in Europa zu begründen, nehmen zu sehr meine Aufmerksamkeit in Anspruch.116

Heine’s statement here serves as confirmation for the hypothesis given at the outset of this chapter. It is to this longer conversation about German poets and authors that we will now turn, as I examine De L’Allemagne, Heine’s boldest and furthest reaching attempt to rewrite the narrative of German culture towards a more progressive end.

116 It is worth noting that this Preface is completely absent from the Düsseldorfer Heine Ausgabe. Heinrich Heine, Heine Sämtliche Schriften Band 2, ed. Klaus Briegleb, (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005), 209-210.

CHAPTER THREE – DE L’ALLEMAGNE: HEINE’S PROGRESSIVE HISTORY OF GERMAN

CULTURE

If the 1820s were for Heine a time of uncertainty, his arrival in 1831 in Paris, a city which he would call home for the rest of his life, provided him a modicum of stability that he had long lacked in Germany. His liminal status as a German Jew with French citizenship (a legacy of the Napoleonic occupation of Heine’s hometown of Düsseldorf) also provided him with a unique vantage point from which to serve as a self-appointed liaison between German and French culture, a role that would occupy him on both fronts for the rest of his life. It is out of this milieu that De l’Allemagne was born.

The works which comprised De l’Allemagne (Die romantische Schule, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, and Elementargeister) were produced as a large scale summary of German culture and philosophy for a French audience, although each work was also adapted and published for a German audience as well.1 De L’Allemagne was initially intended to serve as a rejoinder to Madame de Staël’s 1813 De L’Allemagne, a work which not only had a similar purpose to Heine’s own, but was also influenced heavily by August Wilhelm Schlegel (an important figure for Heine as well, as seen in the preceding chapters). Heine sought to correct what he saw as the errors of Madame de Staël’s book, errors that Heine attributed in large part to Schlegel’s ideological influence on her work.

In this chapter, I will examine De L’Allemagne and how it reflects Heine’s ever evolving perspective on the German Middle Ages. I will argue that De L’Allemagne is (among many other things) an attempt to flesh out the idea of the “good” German Middle Ages that Heine had been suggesting in some of his earlier work. As I have shown in the previous chapters, Heine’s early poetics emerged from his encounter with the late Romantic German Middle Ages, and in De L’Allemagne he establishes a firmer intellectual foundation that not only supports his poetic instincts about the intrinsic aesthetic value of the Middle Ages but also presents a narrative of German cultural, philosophical and religious history that leads towards a bright and progressive

1 These three books were published as separate works in Germany, and because of this, they have typically been treated in the scholarly literature as three individual texts. They were published in France together as De L’Allemagne in 1835.

111 112 future rather than to a resurgent feudal and authoritarian one. Building and synthesizing arguments he had made over the years about German history dating back to Die Romantik (see chapter one), De L’Allemagne provides a far richer and thorough accounting that factors in his development as a poet and thinker in the ensuing decade.

When read as a whole, De l’Allemagne argues for the possibility of a future Germany that is as politically and culturally sophisticated and forward looking as its philosophy. However, this version of German history becomes only visible through a new reading of its “deep grammar,” whose syntax has been long obscured and misunderstood, and which Heine wants to bring to the fore, tying philosophy, religion, literature and even the supernatural together in a tour de force of German cultural history, arguing that it is not Christianity, but pantheism that forms the foundation of German cultural unity, and that this fact has radical implications for German culture, philosophy and its current and future political situation.

The task before Heine in De L’Allemagne is to literally rewrite German history. Doing so will allow Heine both to condemn the aspects of the Middle Ages which he believes have led to a dead-end politically and culturally, and to argue for the value of the Middle Ages as a genuine source of poetic inspiration. As was observed in his failed attempt to write a historical novel, Der Rabbi von Bacherach, in chapter two, a progressive rewriting of history is no simple task. Trying to find a way to argue for the intrinsic aesthetic value of the Middle Ages, while at the same time recognizing that many authors under the sway of the Romantic movement succumbed to a reactionary politics, a politics from which they use the German Middle Ages as an inspiration, will pose a challenge to Heine, and the extent to which the entirety of De L’Allemagne hangs together coherently is debatable.

Heine, echoing Goethe, repeatedly referred to Romanticism as a chronic illness, a “sickness,” one which he himself has been afflicted with, and for which, as we saw in chapter two, he spent most of the 1820s seeking treatment. De L’Allemagne is not only a cultural survey of Germany; it is a handbook on how to cure oneself of reactionary German Romanticism. The text serves as an inoculation against the dangers of Romanticism. However, like any vaccine, Heine himself had been infected with the virus of German Minne, and De L’Allemagne will serve as the foundation for a cure. As Jeffrey Sammons has noted:

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For him not only was the Romantic the past, and therefore in dire need of supersession; the past was Romantic, the lost realm of poesy. Thus his rational allegiances, his inability to identify with any of the philosophical, ideological and religious doctrines of the past or any effort to restore them, were somewhat at war with his allegiance to poesy and a sense of homelessness in an emerging utilitarian and philistine present…This split was indeed very deep-seated in him and robs De L’Allemagne of some of its coherence as a manifesto, while at the same time making of it the most detailed map of the landscape of his mind.2

However, where Sammons sees as a split that robs De L’Allemagne of its coherence, I would argue that, if one takes as axiomatic that De l’Allemagne is a defence of Heine’s aesthetic, political and philosophical project to restore pantheism (and more specifically, Spinozist pantheism) to its place as the cultural heart of the German people, then Heine, who is not here to overthrow Romanticism but to develop an emancipatory vision for it, will have the German Middle Ages play a crucial role in a progressive vision of history. At its core then, as much as De L’Allemagne is an argument for the idea that there has always been a progressive Germany, lying secretly in wait, it also must be a survey of the great misreadings that the artists, philosophers and theologians of Germany have established over time about German history, including the Middle Ages, and which Heine is here to clarify.

I will suggest that this need to build a case for his position beyond chronicling these misreadings is why, as we shall see later in the chapter, that Elementargeister, which seems only tangentially related to the other two works, assumes such a prominent role in Heine’s initial conception of De L’Allemagne. Although Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and Die romantische Schule are often placed together, Elementargeister has historically been treated as a bit of a curiosity, even though Heine included it as the third and final section of De L’Allemagne. Heine saw great value in reminding his readers of the importance and centrality of German folk beliefs (which had been Christianized over the years) as part of his project of cultural re- education, and Elementargeister furnishes yet more evidence for the pantheistic foundation of German culture. However, it is clear that even Heine was not entirely certain of the aim of this

2 Sammons, A Modern Biography, 189.

114 collection, as he wrote two distinct endings: one for a French audience and the other for a German one. While both endings situate the Middle Ages as the key historical site out of which Heine’s new vision of the nature of German culture must derive, they offer two radically different approaches towards justifying the role of the folkloric material he presented in the first part of Elementargeister.

Finally, I will examine the poem Heine includes at the end of the German version of Elementargeister that is based on the Tannhäuser legend. This 1836 poem reveals Heine attempting to tie many strands together, revealing an altered approach to poetry and the role of the Middle Ages in his vision of poetry. Although “Tannhäuser” did not appear initially in the French publication of De L’Allemagne, it was appended to a slightly later German version of Elementargeister,3 tying it directly to the contents of De L’Allemagne. “Tannhäuser” will serve as an early example of Heine putting into practice what he had just preached, and to begin to write poetry which reflects the implications of the new German history he had imagined.

Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland4

Although Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland constitutes the first volume of De L’Allemagne, it was developed and published after Die romantische Schule. However, as the more philosophical text, it is worth looking at Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland first, in order to see how Heine fleshes out some of the arguments that appear in a different form in Die romantische Schule. Furthermore, the text provides the rationale for producing Elementargeister. I would like to begin with a summary quote from a passage towards the end of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland. There Heine recapitulates:

Hier muß ich erinnern an das erste Buch, wo ich gezeigt wie das Christenthum die Elemente der altgermanischen Religion in sich aufgenommen, wie diese nach

3 It was added in the Salon III of Heine, published in 1836. 4 Although I am discussing these books in the order in which they initially appeared in the French publication of De L’Allemagne, I am using their German titles as this is how the books are most commonly known.

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schmähligster Umwandlung sich im Volksglauben des Mittelalters erhalten haben, so daß der alte Naturdienst als lauter böse Zauberey, die alten Götter lauter häßliche Teufel und ihre keuschen Priesterinnen als lauter ruchlose Hexen betrachtet wurden. Die Verirrungen unserer ersten Romantiker lassen sich, von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus, etwas milder beurtheilen als es sonst geschieht. Sie wollten das katholische Wesen des Mittelalters restauriren, weil sie fühlten, daß von den Heiligthümern ihrer ältesten Väter, von den Herrlichkeiten ihrer frühesten Nazionalität, sich noch manches darin erhalten hat; es waren diese verstümmelten und geschändeten Reliquien, die ihr Gemüth so sympathetisch anzogen, und sie haßten den Protestantismus und den Liberalismus, die dergleichen mitsammt der ganzen katholischen Vergangenheit zu vertilgen streben.5

Much of the philosophical spade work Heine does in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland serves to support this claim, that the German Romantics misapprehended the true value of the Middle Ages when they began to revere and appropriate it. However, in order to show how he arrives at this point, we will need to trace Heine’s philosophical arguments about Christianity and German culture and how they relate to the German Middle Ages, both as a moment in the historical past, and as a concept in the cultural present.

From the outset, Heine is clear that the main purpose of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (and De L’Allemagne as a whole) is to present a new narrative of German history, initially to the French, and later to his German brethren. Instead of the feudal, Catholic Germany of Romantic artists and overly idealistic thinkers Madame de Staël had presented in her A.W. Schlegel-infused De L’Allemagne, Heine will make the counterclaim that Germany is in reality a pantheistic and secretly revolutionary culture. This new narrative of German cultural memory, Heine argues, could lead to a new self-awareness that would help Germany become politically more progressive and also address the contemporary concerns that while Germany was at the forefront of philosophy and other intellectual pursuits, it was, at least relative to the French, politically and culturally backwards looking.6

5 DHA 8/1, 101-2. 6 The literature on the philosophical and political aspects of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland are numerous and wide-ranging. For an excellent overview of Zur Geschichte der Religion und

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The problem, Heine will argue, is that when the Romantics are looking at the Middle Ages, their focus is on the feudal and Catholic aspects of the era, whose political structures and approach to religious life can only support despotism and what he terms “spiritualism” (more on this later). Heine will argue that the tension between the Catholic-feudal tendencies and the pantheistic tendencies that Heine wants to promote served as the main generative source for the beauty of medieval poetry. Therefore, by extension, the beauty of his own medievally-derived poetry is itself on a more solid ideological footing. To understand this, it will help to trace out some of the arguments that Heine makes in Book One of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and to examine the role of the Middle Ages in these arguments.

Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland presents basically a prolegomenon to Die romantische Schule. That is, Heine’s aim in writing this text is to support his contention that any literary account of Germany (and, in particular, Heine’s own place in German letters) requires an accounting of its religion and philosophy in order to be made sense.7 As such, before he discusses the history of Germany itself, he opens the text with an account of Christianity (the exercise of distinguishing between Catholicism and Protestantism will come later). Here he makes two claims: firstly, that Christianity is not merely a religion, but an “idea,” and as such, is “unzerstörbar und unsterblich,” and secondly, that a history of Christianity as an idea has not yet been written.8 Although Heine never fully defines what he means by idea, he is treating it here as a philosophical concept. For Heine, his concept of an idea can be pictured as a kind of psychological drive and it so the “idea” of Christianity, then, is to suggest that Christianity is an ideological project and not just a variety of religious institutions. In particular, the idea of Christianity is the drive to celebrate the spirit and to denounce matter. As he writes:

Philosophie in Deutschland as a philosophical text and in particular its debt to Hegel, see Terry Pinkard’s introduction to the English translation of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland in Heinrich Heine, Terry P. Pinkard, Howard Pollack-Milgate. On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), vii-xxxii. For an overview and examination of Zur Geschichte’s thesis about the progressive possibilities of German history for modernity, and how it relates to Hegel’s and Marx’s ideas on the same topic, see Howard Mah, “The French Revolution and the Problem of German Modernity: Hegel, Heine, and Marx,” New German Critique 50 (Spring - Summer 1990): 3-20. 7 DHA 8/1, 13. 8 DHA 8/1, 14.

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Diese Idee hat sich in der Dogmatik nur sehr verworren und im Kultus nur sehr trübe aussprechen können. Doch sehen wir überall die Lehre von den beiden Prinzipien hervortreten; dem guten Christus steht der böse Satan entgegen; die Welt des Geistes wird durch Christus, die Welt der Materie durch Satan repräsentirt; jenem gehört unsere Seele, diesem unser Leib; und die ganze Erscheinungswelt, die Natur, ist demnach ur- sprünglich böse, und Satan, der Fürst der Finsterniß, will uns damit ins Verderben locken, und es gilt allen sinnlichen Freuden des Lebens zu entsagen, unseren Leib, das Lehn Satans, zu peinigen, damit die Seele sich desto herrlicher emporschwinge in den lichten Himmel, in das stralende Reich Christi.9

To use Heine’s own terminology – Christianity is the drive to eliminate the sensual in favour of the spiritual, to eliminate any and all physical pleasures and replace them with purely spiritual ones. Moreover, in a way that prefigures Nietzsche’s treatment of Christianity in Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift (which very likely borrows from Heine)10, he explains that this is why, in Christianity (and other religions he defines as “spiritual”) the sensual is to be feared and eliminated; a “good” Christian is someone who actively represses and destroys anything pleasing about the material world. In this way, Christianity is synonymous with “spiritualism,” Heine’s term of art for what he argues is one of two competing tendencies in the world, the other being “sensualism”, which, taken to its own extreme, would create a world that utterly denies the spirit and only focusses on sensual pleasure.

Since an idea, for Heine, is the interplay between how the world is (metaphysics) and how the world should be (ethics), it should come as no surprise that the adoption of Christianity by Europeans has had a remarkably profound effect on the material conditions of German culture and politics.11 By characterizing the idea of Christianity as a drive, Heine shifts Christianity out of the realm of theology and towards psychology, and in particular, mass psychology, where this drive will often come into violent contact with what Heine believes to be an even older (more

9 DHA 8/1, 16. It should also be noted Heine’s treatment of ideas in Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand would also benefit from treating his use of “ideas” there in a similar conceptual fashion. 10 For a recent discussion of Heine’s influence on Nietzsche, see Goetschel, Heine and Critical Theory, 64-78. 11 As we shall see, in a kind of Kantian symmetry, these metaphysical and ethical issues will have important implications on the aesthetic as well. For a fuller discussion of the concept of “idea” in Heine see Goetschel, Heine and Critical Theory, 138-41.

118 authentic) drive operating within German culture: pantheism, the doctrine that the world is suffused with divinity.

And yet, it is this violent contact between these two conflicting ideas or drives – Christianity, which despises matter, and pantheism, which celebrates the union of matter and spirit in a delicate balance – that Heine argues is what makes the Middle Ages such a fertile ground for poets. After pointing out the imagery of the crucifixion, he writes:

Besonders der Dichter wird die schauerliche Erhabenheit dieses Symbols mit Ehrfurcht anerkennen. Das ganze System von Symbolen, die sich ausgesprochen in der Kunst und im Leben des Mittelalters, wird zu allen Zeiten die Bewunderung der Dichter erregen... Gott wird reiner Geist! Ein hergiebiger, unversiegbar kostbarer Stoff für die Dichter ist das christliche Leben im Mittelalter. Nur durch das Christenthum konnten auf dieser Erde sich Zustände bilden, die so kecke Contraste, so bunte Schmerzen, und so abentheuerliche Schönheiten enthalten, daß man meinen sollte, dergleichen habe niemals in der Wirklichkeit existirt, und das alles sey ein kolossaler Fiebertraum, es sey der Fiebertraum eines wahnsinnigen Gottes.12

Here Heine lays bare the paradoxical genesis of his own poetics – the Middle Ages is an inexhaustible source of deeply sensual poetic insight and imagery, precisely because one of his eras’ dominating cultural drives (spiritualism) was in conflict with pantheism, and so it was in the Middle Ages, where one sees this contest between spirit and matter play out, producing shocking and astounding imagery. For Heine, this conflict is both repellent and attractive, and many of his comments about the Middle Ages later on in Die romantische Schule can be read as both a rejection of the Middle Ages and an expression of his fascination and debt to the images that arose out of metaphysical conflict that took place in the Middle Ages.

The difficulty, then, for the (astute) poet is how to stop and vividly chronicle the effect of this drive on their own society in poetic form, while avoiding the conceptual pull of Christianity, that

12 DHA 8/1, 18.

119 is, of the spiritual, away from matter and the sensual.13 The pull of Christianity has had a tremendous effect on the German people and their art (including Heine’s) and has the potential to overwhelm everything else. Heine goes on to illustrate in very next section of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland how the “Christian” worldview obscures one’s ability to see beauty in art. He uses a story from the Middle Ages which just happens to “occur” to him just after he explains the supreme value of the Middle Ages as a source of poetic imagery.

Heine takes the story from Dobeneck’s 1815 Des Deutschen Mittelalters Volksglauben und Heroensagen, his main source when discussing the Middle Ages in De L’Allemagne.14 In May 1433, a group of clergy was walking in a grove near Basel. Their theological discussions were interrupted by the sound of a nightingale atop a linden tree:

Aber plötzlich, mitten in ihren dogmatischen und abstrakten Diskussionen, hielten sie inne, und blieben wie angewurzelt stehen vor einem blühenden Lindenbaum, worauf eine Nachtigall saß, die in den weichsten und zärtlichsten Melodien jauchzte und schluchzte.15

The melody of the nightingale is so beautiful and tender that the assembled clergy are astonished. However, instead of falling into an aesthetic reverie, as good Christians they instead denounce the nightingale as the devil, tempting them with sinful thoughts. As a result, they decide to exorcise the nightingale “mit der damals üblichen Formel: adjuro te per eum, qui venturus est, judicare vivos et mortuos etc. etc.”16

Astonishingly, the nightingale answers that they were indeed correct about its being an evil spirit. It then flies away, leaving the attending clergy with a mysterious illness that eventually kills them all. The moral, to Heine, is obvious:

13 Heine’s “Tannhäuser” poem, which will be discussed later in this chapter, was written quite deliberately in this vein. See DHA 9, 238. 14 For more on Heine’s use of Dobeneck’s book, see DHA 8/2, 824, which also quotes Dobeneck’s version in full. Dobeneck also features frequently as a source of medieval material in Heine’s other texts. For an accounting of Heine’s reliance on Dobeneck, see Mücke, Beziehungen, 114. 15 DHA 8/1, 19. 16 DHA 8/1, 19. The Latin phrase Heine uses here, which is taken from the Catholic Rite of Exorcism, translates roughly into the following: “I implore you in the name of He who comes to judge the living and the dead”.

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Diese Geschichte bedarf wohl keines Commentars. Sie trägt ganz das grauenhafte Gepräge einer Zeit, die alles was süß und lieblich war als Teufeley verschrie. Die Nachtigall sogar wurde verläumdet und man schlug ein Kreuz wenn sie sang. 17

Heine treats the story of the Nightingale of Basel as a parable for the idea of Christianity’s pernicious effects on art. However, as we shall see, this presents us with some interpretive challenges.

It is worth noting that Heine adds a linden tree to his version of Dobeneck’s story. Its inclusion with the nightingale reinforces the idea that the nightingale and linden tree are Heine’s stand-ins for the spirit of poetry in the Middle Ages, and the reaction of the clergy represents the rejection of this spirit in the Middle Ages. There are two important points to consider. Firstly, the nightingale’s singing reminds us that even with the clergy’s reaction, the Middle Ages were a time when beauty in the arts thrived. However, and I believe this is where the cautionary tale for modernity emerges, Heine contends that those in positions of spiritual power both recognize and reject this beauty, in part because they conflate the reality of beauty with sensual pleasure. They therefore preserve, in an albeit contained way, the very idea that Christianity seeks to destroy. The twist here is the fact that the nightingale is in fact the devil (at least according to the legend).

This story depicts a theme that will be repeated and unfolded throughout De L’Allemagne: those who are in positions of cultural or political influence espy the beauty of the Middle Ages, only to reject this intrinsic beauty in favour of worshiping the religious and institutional structures out of which this beauty emerged. However, the fact that Christian culture conditions people to see horror in beauty does not imply the absence of beauty. This story offers his readers a preview of the conceptual conflict that Heine will examine in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, and serves as a reinforcement of the value of beauty in art, a value Heine wishes to emerge stronger out of the modern version of this conflict.

The story of the Nightingale of Basel provides a mirror for Heine’s own contemporary situation, with the clergy as Heine’s reactionary enemies and himself as the nightingale. The task Heine has set up for himself in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland is a

17 DHA 8/1, 19.

121 daunting one, but also a joyous one, because it gives Heine an opportunity to reveal the positive impact of this demonic nightingale, which will afflict the spiritualist powers that be with a new “illness” (pantheism), altering what Heine saw as the increasingly spiritualist trajectory of German cultural life, and in turn renewing German art, its culture and its politics. The intervention of the nightingale in the lives of the clergy also reveals something about the possibility that the poet is not entirely outside of the world but stands in a relation to the spirit of its age as both observer and participant.

Although Heine defers discussion of the non-metaphorical nightingale, that is, the natural world, and Christianity until Elementargeister, he begins to narrow his discussion of the Christian idea by discussing how this general idea intermingled with the pre-Christian European societies. Here Heine distinguishes between the “germanischen Norden” and “romanischen Süden,” as well as between “das gute Prinzip” and “das böse Prinzip,” the latter simply referring to the treatment of God or the Devil in these societies.18 Heine argues that while “das gute Prinzip” was effectively pan-European, “das böse Prinzip” was given different treatment by these two cultures. Where the South gave up on paganism entirely, in the North the pagan gods were left alive, so to speak, but as agents of Satan. As such, the Greek gods are alive and well in Germany, although the Germans themselves recognize them only as ghosts:

Der ganze Olymp wurde nun eine luftige Hölle, und wenn ein Dichter des Mittelalters die griechischen Göttergeschichten noch so schön besang, so sah der fromme Christ darinn doch nur Spuk und Teufel.19

It is telling here that the poet is both medieval and German. For Heine, echoing his adolescent self, the German poet, whether medieval or modern, occupies a privileged position in the world, and Heine will repeatedly carve out a space for the poet in opposition to the “Christian.” As such, given the status of the pagan Gods in Heine’s metaphysics, the nightingale of the

18 DHA 8/1 20. 19 DHA 8/1, 20. It is also worth noting that most of his examples of the Gods surviving in Germany after the rise of Christianity are Greek, and indeed, Heine maintains a lifelong interest in Greek gods that vastly overshadows his interest in the old Norse gods. For an examination of Heine’s abiding interest in ancient Greece see Robert Holub, Heinrich Heine's Reception of German Grecophilia: The Function and Application of the Hellenic Tradition in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1981).

122 aforementioned story is no longer a “devil,” an image which arises out of the life denying spiritualism of the Christian “idea”, but instead a misunderstood muse who cursed the Christian clergymen not for their sinfulness, but for their failure to understand with whom it was they were dealing.

To emphasize his point, Heine ingeniously brings these various threads together and reminds his readers of how terribly Venus is treated in this demonization of the Greek gods by Christianity. He points out how badly she is portrayed in the “Tannhäuser” poem of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the very poem upon which he will base his own “Tannhäuser” poem, which will be examined later in this chapter. For now, it is worth noting that the Tannhäuser myth is a nexus for the themes that Heine is exploring throughout De L’Allemagne: the interactions between the medieval and the classical worlds, Christianity and paganism, and the desire for something repellant. Suffice to say, for Heine, there is a reason why Venus lives in Germany – even though Christianity had turned the pagan gods into demons, the Germans could not help but continue to love them. This love is the reason, Heine argues, that belief in supernatural figures persisted in Germany even after the radical upheaval of the Protestant Reformation.

In fact, Heine begins his discussion of the Reformation and Martin Luther by pointing out that although Luther no longer believed in Catholic miracles, he continued to believe in the devil.20 If there is anything that characterizes German culture, it will be the persistence of “das böse Prinzip” as a carrier for the pantheistic soul of Germany. However, this strand of thought about the preservation of the Greek gods in German culture is something that Heine puts away and does not return to fully until the end of Elementargeister and the “Tannhäuser” poem.

To summarize, the Middle Ages preserved the old gods and spirits by demonizing them. Heine illustrates this process in the first part of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland with a discussion of dwarves and kobolds of German folk culture. He will devote an entire book (Elementargeister) to the same theme, a book that explicitly aims to recast medieval history in a way that supports the position that Heine outlines in Zur Geschichte der

20 DHA 8/1 26. There is an excellent recent discussion and overview of Heine’s Lutherbild in Peter Routledge “Selective Affinities: Luther within Heine’s Historical Discourse,” in Heine Jahrbuch 2019, (Berlin: J.B. Metzler Verlag), 27-45.

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Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland. Just as the Greek gods were denatured, so to speak, the mythical creatures of the German folk traditions became demonic, and it was only the German penchant for “gloominess,” as Heine might say, that allowed them to survive the onslaught of Christianity.

It is important to recognize that Heine is not always clear about establishing the differences between pantheism and paganism. Indeed, throughout the course of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, the two concepts often seem to overlap. However, I think some of this can be explained by the fact that Heine’s real object of concern is not a precise accounting of the past. Heine’s aim is to counter what he sees as an increasingly spiritualist culture within contemporary Germany, a culture he felt was heavily influenced by German Romanticism’s misreading of the German Middle Ages from a spiritualist and not a sensualist and/or pantheist perspective. His focus on the need for sensualism in Germany is to encourage the return of German culture to a state of balance, and he believes that showing the persistence of the pagan gods and the supernatural in German material culture might help to accomplish this. Despite Heine’s ambiguity, the overall structure of his argument about the nature of the German people’s supernatural beliefs remains undiminished. It is important to also recognize that this connection between the classical (or pagan) and the Christian is something that Heine alluded to in some of his earliest poetry (see “Die Weihe” in chapter one), and the claim that neither the classical pantheon nor the national gods of Germany really vanished in Germany will remain a preoccupation for Heine until the end of his life.

For Heine, the preservation of revulsion and attraction forms an essential part of his poetics, and it is precisely in this tension where he locates the affective power of medieval poetry. The work of preservation fell to the medieval poet, who chronicled the imagery produced out of this synthesis of the pagan and the Christian. The poet’s central role in this work constitutes another valuable aspect of the Middle Ages, as the poet provides a model for the production of the aesthetic during times of conceptual conflict.

However, where the medieval German poet and the modern German poet differ is in the fact that the modern poet must also live in the shadow of the Reformation. Heine’s discussion of Luther will have a crucial bearing on his later discussion of medieval poetry and its relationship to the modern world. Although the Reformation produced great changes, Heine argues, the one thing

124 that it shared with the introduction of Catholicism in German lands was the persistence of a belief in spirits.21 This leads to the claim that although Martin Luther believed in the devil, he misunderstood the nature of the devil, because, as Heine notes, given the devil’s dominion over the material world, the devil cannot be a spiritualist.22 Here Heine makes a remarkable admission, and one that is important to recognize. He explains that Luther fundamentally misunderstood the idea of Catholic Christianity, and failed to see that although Catholicism was the unified material representative of the Christian idea on earth, the medieval Church was itself compromised, because the Christian idea so strongly denies matter that its “pure” realization simply is not possible in the long run.

In a similar way to Heine’s distinction between the “good” and the “copy” Catholicism in the Lucca books, I believe what he says here is crucial to understanding his concept of the Middle Ages throughout De L’Allemagne.23 By making a distinction between medieval “Catholic” Christianity, and the Catholicism of his own day, it allows him to argue positively for the poetry that emerged from medieval German culture without committing the same error that the other Romantics did. For Heine, the medieval “Catholic” Church was a key player in the management of these competing ideas, and it consequentially (if unintentionally) helped to facilitate the cultural milieu out of which Heine believes modern lyric poetry arose.

He dramatically illustrates the shrewdness of the medieval Church, and its understanding of its role as a manager between its governing idea (Christianity) and the material conditions under which this idea had to operate by pointing out that that the Reformation was built upon Luther’s opposition to indulgences, which were material concessions to sins, and that therefore, St. Peter’s in Rome was built entirely on money raised by sensualism (i.e. sin). In Heine’s understanding of the medieval “Catholic” economy, the Church provided equilibrium between matter and the spirit, and Luther’s intervention disrupted this equilibrium entirely, which, Heine will later note,

21 DHA 8/1, 27. 22 DHA 8/1, 27. 23 This was discussed at some length in chapter two.

125 had a profound impact on poetry.24 The return of equilibrium between the sensual and the spiritual is Heine’s ultimate goal. He writes,

Aber warum ist uns denn der Spiritualismus so sehr zuwider? Ist er etwas so schlechtes? Keineswegs. Rosenöhl ist eine kostbare Sache, und ein Fläschchen desselben ist erquicksam, wenn man in den verschlossenen Gemächern des Harem seine Tage vertrauern muß. Aber wir wollen dennoch nicht, daß man alle Rosen dieses Lebens zertrete und zerstampfe, um einige Tropfen Rosenöhl zu gewinnen, und mögen diese noch so tröstsam wirken. Wir sind vielmehr wie die Nachtigallen, die sich gern an der Rose selber ergötzen, und von ihrer erröthend blühenden Erscheinung eben so beseligt werden, wie von ihrem unsichtbaren Dufte.25

This is perhaps Heine’s most succinct summation of his goal in De L’Allemagne. Tellingly, Heine compares himself to the nightingale, who only wishes to enjoy the fruits of the earth without crushing them under any kind of ideology. I believe that what is perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind with Heine is the idea that the preservation of the poetic is in and of itself a political position. As the Nightingale of Basel reminds the reader, the artist may be above the fray, but they are not outside of society.

Remarkably, Luther’s misunderstanding of the Catholic Church wound up producing both German philosophy as well as the conditions for modern German literature. However, the progressive history of Christianity, embodied in Catholicism, is jettisoned. This is why, despite Luther’s errors, Heine can claim that:

Die nächste Ursache dieses Nichtbegreifens, liegt wohl darinn, daß Luther nicht bloß der größte, sondern auch der deutscheste Mann unserer Geschichte ist; daß in seinem Charakter alle Tugenden und Fehler der Deutschen aufs Großartigste vereinigt sind; daß er auch persönlich das wunderbare Deutschland repräsentirt. Dann hatte er auch

24 DHA 8/1, 28-9. 25 DHA 8/1, 31.

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Eigenschaften, die wir selten vereinigt finden, und die wir gewöhnlich sogar als feindliche Gegensätze antreffen.26

On a conceptual level, Heine argues that Luther’s revolution caused the “Jewish-Deistic” element to rise up in German culture, crushing the Indian-Gnostic element of the Middle Ages, a distinction which he will discuss in short order with respect to medieval and modern poetry.27 However, this tectonic shift came at a great cost. As Heine writes:

Indessen, wenn bey uns in Deutschland, durch den Protestantismus, mit den alten Mirakeln auch sehr viel andere Poesie verloren ging, so gewannen wir doch mannichfaltigen Ersatz.28

The powerful poetic imagery of the Middle Ages has been swept away, but the trade-off is that the Reformation made people more critical and nicer. Reason now had sovereignty over faith, which led to freedom of thought. 29

Consequently, Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible as well as his poetry inaugurates the modern German language as well as modern German literature. By contrast, he sharply characterizes the late-medieval poet Hans Sachs as a phony mimic of “naïve” medieval literature:

Wer über die neuere deutsche Literatur reden will, muß daher mit Luther beginnen, und nicht etwa mit einem nüremberger Spießbürger, Namens Hans Sachs, wie aus unredlichem Mißwollen von einigen romantischen Literatoren geschehen ist. Hans Sachs, dieser Troubadour der ehrbaren Schusterzunft, dessen Meistergesang nur eine läppische Parodie der früheren Minnelieder und dessen Dramen nur eine tölpelhafte Travestie der alten Mysterien, dieser pedantische Hanswurst, der die freye Naivität des Mittelalters

26 DHA 8/1, 33. 27 DHA 8/1, 34. 28 DHA 8/1, 35. 29 Despite this claim, it should be mentioned here that Heine, as far as anyone can tell, had virtually no knowledge or interest in Baroque poetry, and makes little (if any) mention of Paul Fleming or Martin Opitz. Although their omission constitutes a problem for Heine’s thesis, I will not comment on it except to note it.

127

ängstlich nachäfft, ist vielleicht als der letzte Poet der älteren Zeit, keineswegs aber als der erste Poet der neuern Zeit zu betrachten.30

After all of this philosophical and historical groundwork, Heine begins to explain what he sees as some of the philosophical differences between medieval and modern German literature. For Heine, the art of the pre-Luther Middle Ages has a number of primary qualities:

Betrachten wir daher die deutsche Literatur die vor Luther blühte, so finden wir:

1.° ihr Material, ihr Stoff, ist, wie das Leben des Mittelalters selbst, eine Mischung zweyer heterogener Elemente, die in einem langen Zweykampf sich so gewaltig umschlungen, daß sie am Ende in einander verschmolzen, nemlich: die germanische Nazionalität und das indisch gnostische, sogenannte katholische Christenthum.31

Although Heine characterizes this fusion as “romantic,” he insists that the term “romantisch” is not always properly used. Recalling his essay Die Romantik (and also echoing Hegel),32 Heine makes a firm distinction between the “classical” and the “romantic” as a way of thinking of poetry. However, in contrast to his comments in Die Bäder von Lucca, where he says classical and medieval poetry are both effectively classical in presentation, Heine here is making a subtler contrast. Instead of classical and romantic poetry merely referring to the time of their composition, “Die Ausdrücke »klassisch« und »romantisch« beziehen sich also nur auf den Geist der Behandlung.”33

This enigmatic definition has some profound implications for poetry. If “classical” and “romantic” do not simply refer to historical periods, but also to modes of presentation, it opens up the possibility of looking at the Middle Ages from a “classical” perspective:

30 DHA 8/1, 42-3. Heine’s spite towards Hans Sachs’ place in the pantheon of German letters is worthy of further examination although there is not a lot to go on beyond the fact that he had no respect for his poetry. The DHA mentions that both Tieck and August Wilhelm Schlegel viewed Sachs as the inaugurator of modern German literature, so perhaps his ire is nothing more than an another example of his total rejection of Schlegel’s thought and work. See DHA 8/2, 845. 31 DHA 8/1, 43. 32 See Heine, History of Religion, 40. 33 DHA 8/1, 43.

128

Abusive sagt man dasselbe auch von dem Material jener Literatur, von allen Erscheinungen des Mittelalters, die durch die Verschmelzung der erwähnten beiden Elemente, germanische Nazionalität und katholisches Christenthum, entstanden sind. Denn, wie einige Dichter des Mittelalters die griechische Geschichte und Mythologie ganz romantisch behandelt haben, so kann man auch die mittelalterlichen Sitten und Legenden in klassischer Form darstellen. Die Ausdrücke »klassisch« und »romantisch« beziehen sich also nur auf den Geist der Behandlung. 34

Here Heine is explicitly making a case for examining the art of the past, and specifically the Middle Ages, and to depict it “classically,” an idea that will be explored further towards the end of the German version of Elementargeister.

Although his meaning will not be immediately clear, Heine wants to establish a relationship between bringing balance back to German culture and the idea of classicizing the Middle Ages:

Die Behandlung ist klassisch, wenn die Form des Dargestellten ganz identisch ist mit der Idee des Darzustellenden, wie dieses der Fall ist bey den Kunstwerken der Griechen, wo daher in dieser Identität auch die größte Harmonie zwischen Form und Idee zu finden. Die Behandlung ist romantisch, wenn die Form nicht durch Identität die Idee offenbart, sondern parabolisch diese Idee errathen läßt. Ich gebrauche hier das Wort »parabolisch« lieber als das Wort »symbolisch.«.35

A similar remark in Die romantische Schule (which will be discussed at length shortly) further clarifies this definition:

die plastischen Gestalten in der antiquen Kunst [sind] ganz identisch [...]mit dem Darzustellenden, mit der Idee die der Künstler darstellen wollte, while one the other hand,

34 DHA 8/1, 43. 35 DHA 8/1, 43.

129

Anders ist es in der romantischen Kunst; da haben die Irrfahrten eines Ritters noch eine esoterische Bedeutung... Das ist nun der Charakter der mittelalterlichen Poesie, die wir die romantische nennen.36

This symbolic, or parabolic quality of romantic art is what gives it its power, but as Heine argues in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, it is also what makes it so problematic:

Daher in der Poesie des Mittelalters jene mystische Allgemeinheit; die Gestalten sind so schattenhaft, was sie thun ist so unbestimmt, alles ist darin so dämmernd, wie von wechselndem Mondlicht beleuchtet; die Idee ist in der Form nur wie ein Räthsel angedeutet; und wir sehen hier eine vage Form, wie sie eben zu einer spiritualistischen Literatur geeignet war.37

Nevertheless, despite this imbalance between form and content, the medieval poet managed to rise above all of it:

Der Dichter wandelte, mit der Sicherheit eines Maulesels, längs den Abgründen des Zweifels, und es herrscht in seinen Werken eine kühne Ruhe, eine selige Zuversicht, wie sie später unmöglich war, als die Spitze jener Autoritäten, nemlich die Autorität des Pabstes, gebrochen war und alle andere nachstürzten. Die Gedichte des Mittelalters haben daher alle denselben Charakter, es ist als habe sie nicht der einzelne Mensch, sondern das ganze Volk gedichtet; sie sind objektiv, episch und naiv.38

The Middle Ages, for Heine, is effectively a war between the German national spirit (pantheism) and Catholic Christianity. But it is from this very conflict, borne out of the tension between pantheism, sensualism and spiritualism, that the most potent poetic imagery in human history emerged. However, if the lack of the classical in medieval art is a problem, it is especially so for the modern poet: as an inheritor of modern German philosophy, the poet who is intoxicated by

36 DHA 8/1, 130-1. 37 DHA 8/1, 44. 38 DHA 8/1, 44.

130 the alluring and grotesque imagery of the Middle Ages runs the risk of becoming a wan shadow of an artist. Exposing and examining this sickness in order to find a cure is a central theme of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and a focus for the remainder of De L’Allemagne and the later “Tannhäuser” poem. However, before leaving Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and turning to the other books of De l’Allemagne (Die romantische Schule and Elementargeister), it is worth examining some of the other passages in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland that concern the Middle Ages, to see how Heine’s more philosophically-grounded approach towards Middle Ages as a concept affects how he discusses the era.

Part way through book two of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, as Heine discusses the need to rehabilitate matter, he notes that:

Die heiligen Vampire des Mittelalters haben uns so viel Lebensblut ausgesaugt. Und dann müssen der Materie noch große Sühnopfer geschlachtet werden, damit sie die alten Beleidigungen verzeihe.39

Looking at this comment in isolation would lead one to believe that Heine is arguing that one should turn away from the Middle Ages. However, it seems that he is referring to the “copy” Catholic Christianity that he has referred to repeatedly in this text and in works such as Die Stadt Lucca. Heine is arguing that the revivified Middle Ages of the German Romantics, with its attendant spiritualism, has led to a situation where much of contemporary Germany is in the thrall of a medievalism that promotes the idea of Christianity. One runs the risk here of making the same mistake the clergy in the story of the Nightingale of Basel did. What is required instead is the reconciliation of matter and spirit.

Heine’s desire for balance between matter and spirit comes about again during his discussion of Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, best known as a critic, promotor of the Enlightenment, and friend of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn. Heine writes:

39 DHA 8/1, 59.

131

So stritt Nicolai z. B. gegen die aufkommende Vorliebe für altdeutsche Volkslieder. Aber im Grunde hatte er wieder Recht; bey aller möglichen Vorzüglichkeit, enthielten doch jene Lieder mancherley Erinnerungen, die eben nicht zeitgemäß waren, die alten Klänge, der Kuhreigen des Mittelalters, konnten die Gemüther des Volks wieder in den Glaubensstall der Vergangenheit zurücklocken. Er suchte, wie Odysseus, die Ohren seiner Gefährten zu verstopfen, damit sie den Gesang der Sirenen nicht hören, unbekümmert, daß sie alsdann auch taub wurden für die unschuldigen Töne der Nachtigall. 40

The return of the nightingale reminds the reader that the tendency of the Christian idea is not restricted to German Romanticism, but is a larger feature of modern German culture, even in its secularized version. Nicolai was no Romantic but a blunt realist. Indeed, Nicolai represents the polar opposite of the arch-Romantic Heine has often been preoccupied with. However, here Heine notes that the Romantics at least respected the Middle Ages, even if they misunderstood its value. Nicolai goes too far in the opposite direction, and opposes the Middle Ages entirely, and as such, also fails to see not only the beauty, but also the revolutionary potential within the poetics of the Middle Ages, as well as the pantheistic core of its transmission of folk beliefs. I believe this is how one can come to understand Heine’s following comments:

Dagegen erhob sich nun feindlichst die Parthey der Blumen und Nachtigallen, und alles was zu dieser Parthey gehört, Schönheit, Grazie, Witz und Scherz, und der arme Nicolai unterlag.

Jetzt haben sich die Umstände in Deutschland geändert, und eng verbunden mit der Revoluzion ist die Parthey der Blumen und Nachtigallen. Uns gehört die Zukunft, und es dämmert schon der Tag des Sieges. Wenn einst dieser schöne Tag unser ganzes Vaterland überstralt, dann wollen wir auch der Todten gedenken, dann wollen wir auch deiner gedenken, alter Nicolai, armer Martyrer der Vernunft!41

40 DHA 8/1, 70. 41 DHA 8/1, 70.

132

It is crucial to appreciate that Heine is equating these poetic symbols, his poetic symbols, with the revolution, symbols that I have shown very much represent Heine’s own advocacy for the “true” spirit of the Middle Ages. At this point, the flowers and nightingale represent his own progressive vision of German history, and are no longer beholden to a reactionary Romantic imagery, as they are expressions of the emancipatory impulse which the Middle Ages harboured underneath its Christian veneer, something poets such as Walther von der Vogelweide recognized. Nicolai is important for Heine’s discussion because of his blindness to the emancipatory and progressive force of beauty and his Puritan grasp of reason. Like Heine, Nicolai recognized the potential dangers of a Romantic world view, but so severely, he threw out the baby with the bathwater, and jettisoned the nightingale along with everything else. Nevertheless, one can see that Heine recognizes Nicolai as a fellow traveler, but one who, like the Romantics, misapprehended the “true” value of the Middle Ages and its revolutionary potential to provide a counter-narrative to the Romantic view of the Middle Ages.

Instead, Heine admits, one must allow the sickness of Romanticism to at least touch oneself, in order to take in the power of the poetic imagery and appreciate the tensions out of which these images arose, because it is only at that moment that one can appreciate one’s “health”:

Denn ach! ich gehöre ja selber zu dieser kranken alten Welt, und mit Recht sagt der Dichter: wenn man auch seiner Krücken spottet, so kann man darum doch nicht besser gehen. Ich bin der krankste von Euch allen und um so bedauernswürdiger, da ich weiß was Gesundheit ist.42

Health for German culture at this stage of Heine’s life requires the renewal of pantheism, but the historical foundation for this renewal is to be found in a post-Romantic appreciation of Middle Ages. In a key moment, after Heine has discussed Goethe’s connection to pantheism via Spinoza, he asserts that the love of the Middle Ages is nothing less than a love of pantheism. He writes: “In der That, unsere ersten Romantiker handelten aus einem pantheistischen Instinkt, den sie selbst nicht begriffen.”43 This was the crucial Romantic insight, but also the source of their error. They recognized the pantheistic spirit of the Middle Ages, but did not fully understand its

42 DHA 8/1, 80. 43 DHA 8/1, 101-2.

133 nature, and, instead of taking up the pantheistic aspects, they were led astray to submit to the rule of the repressive regime of the Church:

Das Gefühl, das sie für Heimweh nach der katholischen Mutterkirche hielten, war tieferen Ursprungs als sie selbst ahnten, und ihre Verehrung und Vorliebe für die Ueberlieferungen des Mittelalters, für dessen Volksglauben, Teufelthum, Zauberwesen, Hexerey ... Alles das war eine bey ihnen plötzlich erwachte aber unbegriffene Zurückneigung nach dem Pantheismus der alten Germanen, und in der schnöde beschmutzten und boßhaft verstümmelten Gestalt liebten sie eigentlich nur die vorkristliche Religion ihrer Väter. 44

Heine is on a grand journey to move the Middle Ages away from the influence of the Romantics’ misreading of German history, while retaining the idea that the pure spirit of poetry lies in the Middle Ages. This is why he devotes the rest of De L’Allemagne to an appreciation of the errors of the Romantics in understanding the Middle Ages, and why Elementargeister is devoted entirely to the folk beliefs of medieval Germans. Heine wants to convince others by revealing to his readers that the “true” Middle Ages that has been hiding in plain sight, so that he can liberate Germans, allowing them embrace the same pantheistic impulse that had allowed him to veer away from his adolescent temptation to become a Catholic, and towards the progressive path on which he now stands.

If the German Romantic’s error is fundamentally one of misrecognizing the emancipatory promise of the remnants of pantheism within medieval art, then examining how their literature (unwittingly) promoted this misunderstanding will be one of the main aims of the second book of De L’Allemagne.

44 DHA 8/1, 101-2.

134

Die romantische Schule

Die romantische Schule is both widely known and poorly appreciated. If Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland has remained until fairly recently an underappreciated philosophical text, Die romantische Schule has served a similar function in German studies. Jeffrey Sammons, in a 1997 paper on Die romantische Schule and its lack of critical reception (at the time), noted that although it was the first work of Heine’s to be translated into English, and was widely read in its day, its absence from most contemporary surveys on German Romanticism is part of a much longer tendency in German studies to neglect Heine, in part due to its polemical thrust.45 Like his attack on Platen in Die Bäder von Lucca, Heine’s sustained and vicious attack on his former mentor August Wilhelm Schlegel threatens to overshadow what is, for the most part, a highly sensitive and appreciative summation of trends in German literature from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.46

If one also takes into account the fact that Die romantische Schule was both written before Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and has a different aim, some of its rougher polemical edges and inconsistencies can be smoothed out. This helps to further understand Heine’s attempt to reshape the German view of their own cultural past.

Heine’s central argument in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland was that, culturally speaking, the Germans are a pantheist people, as opposed to materialist (as he sees the French and English) or spiritualist (which, Heine argues, is what the reactionary forces of contemporary Catholicism and the German aristocracy would have one believe Germans are). As a result, he argues that there is a strand within German culture that could resist the spiritualist tide of Romanticism and reverse the romanticizing of the world by “classicizing” the Middle Ages. Heine argues that the great mistake of the Romantics was that they recognized the aesthetic power of medieval symbols, but in doing so, took on only the medieval political and

45 Sammons’s essay argues that the failure of Die romantische Schule to receive a wider audience is directly connected to the book’s tone. See Jeffrey Sammons, “‘Die romantische Schule’ as Evasion and Misdirection” in Heinrich Heine: Alternative Perspectives 1985-2005. (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006), 149-161. 46 Interestingly, although Heine will devote some of his late prose output to publicizing renaissance texts on the medieval thinking, renaissance literature, such as the Narrenschiff or Simplissicissimus, or the hyper-Catholic poetry of the 17th century Silesian poets and dramatists (Opitz, Gryphius) are curiously absent from his account.

135 religious aspects that justified their immanent reactionary political sensibilities, and completely misunderstood the deeper pantheistic and sensual origins of German culture.

However, Heine’s polemical tone has led readers to view Heine’s characterization of the Romantic interest in the Middle Ages in purely negative terms. For example, there is a tendency in Die romantische Schule for Heine to discuss Catholicism in purely pejorative terms, where “Catholicism” often collapses into a synonym for “spiritualism”, just as, “Protestantism” will come to stand in for “sensualism.”47 However, it is worth bearing in mind that Heine has repeatedly argued that there are different kinds of Catholicism – the medieval Church as opposed to modern Catholicism, and within modern Catholicism, there is German Catholicism (bad) and what might be termed “Latin” Catholicism (less bad). Knowing this allows us to make some distinctions in Die romantische Schule that are not immediately apparent.

Similarly, when discussing his impetus for writing Die romantische Schule, Heine explains that his French audience needs a new overview of German culture and history since the French, under the influence of de Staël’s work, have a very one-sided image of German culture. He lays the blame for the deficiencies in her book almost entirely at the feet of his former mentor and now ideological opponent, August Wilhelm Schlegel, who had a hand in its composition, and which Heine argues biases Schlegel’s “ultramontane” (Catholic) tendencies against her “Protestant” spirit.48

This lack of nuance, a nuance that is provided in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, has led to some more explicit divergences between the two texts. One example of how the later text serves to elucidate the former can be found in Heine’s oft-quoted definition of the Romantic school itself:

Was war aber die romantische Schule in Deutschland?

Sie war nichts anders als die Wiedererweckung der Poesie des Mittelalters, wie sie sich in dessen Liedern, Bild- und Bauwerken, in Kunst und Leben, manifestirt hatte. Diese

47 For evidence of Protestantism as a synonym for sensualism, note Heine’s rather odd remark in Die romantische Schule that Titian was a Protestant because of the fleshy thighs he painted! (DHA 8/1, 124.) 48 DHA 8/1, 125-6.

136

Poesie aber war aus dem Christenthume hervorgegangen, sie war eine Passionsblume, die dem Blute Christi entsprossen. Ich weiß nicht, ob die melancholische Blume, die wir in Deutschland Passionsblume benamsen, auch in Frankreich diese Benennung führt, und ob ihr von der Volkssage ebenfalls jener mystische Ursprung zugeschrieben wird. Es ist jene sonderbar mißfarbige Blume, in deren Kelch man die Marterwerkzeuge, die bey der Kreuzigung Christi gebraucht worden, nemlich Hammer, Zange, Nägel, u.s.w. abkonterfeyt sieht, eine Blume die durchaus nicht häßlich, sondern nur gespenstisch ist, ja, deren Anblick sogar ein grauenhaftesVergnügen in unserer Seele erregt, gleich den krampfhaft süßen Empfindungen, die aus dem Schmerze selbst hervorgehen. In solcher Hinsicht wäre diese Blume das geeignetste Symbol für das Christenthum selbst, dessen schauerlichster Reitz eben in der Wollust des Schmerzes besteht.49

Although there is a (largely correct) tendency to read this as part of his caustic description of the authors he is about to examine, reading this passage in light of Heine’s very similar comments in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland suggests an alternative reading. Note that the passion flower here produces a “grauenhaftes Vergnügen” in the modern German soul (including Heine’s), just as the story of the Nightingale of Basel is “das grauenhafte Gepräge einer Zeit.” The repeated use of “grauenhaft” is interesting, suggesting that the attraction to the passion flower is harrowing and very dangerous, but also perhaps unavoidable. Moreover, his description of the passion flower serves to highlight its strangeness: the flower is not “häßlich, sondern nur gespenstisch.” However, the grotesque and supernatural power of the Middle Ages has overwhelmed many of the German Romantics, to the extent that it is what defines them.

If Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland helps to shine a light on Die romantische Schule I do not want to imply that Die romantische Schule fails as its own text, rather, given its different aim (to provide an overview of contemporary German literary culture to a French audience) and its earlier date of composition, it lacks some of the philosophical clarity of the former text. As a result, Die romantische Schule does often read more like a condemnation of the German Middle Ages. However, it is more productive to read it as an

49 DHA 8/1, 126.

137 exploration of the extent to which each profiled author understood (or misunderstood) the dangers that the ideas behind the Middle Ages might pose. This approach allows Heine to be more charitable than one might imagine with Ur-Romantic authors such as Novalis, but leads to what could be construed as a blanket dismissal of the German Middle Ages as he had not yet developed the path forward for the “good” Middle Ages that he had argued for in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and that he attempts to portray in Elementargeister. As will be seen in his discussions of various Romantic authors, and in particular in his discussion on Uhland towards the end of Die romantische Schule, there are some unfortunate missed opportunities on Heine’s part in drawing a stronger connection between the political and the poetic.

Heine’s assumption about the poet’s privilege, and its connection to the tension between the poetic and the political helps to clarify some of his more enigmatic remarks about medieval poetry in Die romantische Schule. After his initial definition of the Romantic school, he begins a Cook’s tour of German literature, where he explains that he is not going to discuss lyric poetry of the Middle Ages, that is, he is not going to discuss Minnesang. Why? He writes:

Die Kunstwerke des Mittelalters zeigen nun jene Bewältigung der Materie durch den Geist und das ist oft sogar ihre ganze Aufgabe. Die epischen Dichtungen jener Zeit könnte man leicht nach dem Grade dieser Bewältigung klassifiziren.

Von lyrischen und dramatischen Gedichten kann hier nicht die Rede seyn; denn letztere existirten nicht, und erstere sind sich ziemlich ähnlich in jedem Zeitalter, wie die Nachtigallenlieder in jedem Frühling.50

This peculiar omission of a discussion of lyric poetry has often been explained away as an example of Heine’s cursory knowledge of German lyric poetry, and his overreliance on a single source when writing Die romantische Schule.51 However, if one takes seriously his comments five years later visiting the National Library in Paris for the sole purpose of seeing the Manessische Handschrift with his own eyes, and his other comments about medieval poetry, this

50 DHA 8/1, 128. 51 Georg Mücke argues that Heine relied entirely on Karl Rosenkranz‘ Geschichte der deutschen Poesie im Mittelalter for this discussion (See Mücke, Beziehungen, 49). See also Sammons, A Modern Biography, 194.

138 passage calls for a more careful reading.52 In Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, Heine carved out a specific role for the medieval poet as perceptive chroniclers of their own sickly era, who, like the nightingale, are above if not outside of the world. This might better explain why Heine removed lyric poetry (and by extension his own work) from consideration in Die romantische Schule; they are not (or he does not want them to be) part of the problem he is discussing.

Instead, he focuses on the spiritualist and sensualist traditions in medieval epic poetry. He begins this discussion of epic literature with Barlaam and Josaphat, a thirteenth century epic by Rudolf von Ems and the Eulogy of St. Anno, written at the end of the eleventh century, both of which he argued are exemplars of the spiritualist trend in medieval German literature. 53 In contrast, the Nibelungenlied, among other well-known works of epic poetry, represents

die ganze vorkristliche Denk- und Gefühlsweise, da ist die rohe Kraft noch nicht zum Ritterthum herabgemildert, da stehen noch, wie Steinbilder, die starren Kämpen des Nordens, und das sanfte Licht und der sittige Athem des Christenthums dringt noch nicht durch die eisernen Rüstungen.54

Given the importance of the Nibelungenlied for not only the Romantics, but also as the representative text of the emerging medievally-tinged German national consciousness, Heine makes it clear that the Nibelungenlied deserves its praise. However, the true value of its reputation should be founded on its pre-Christian aspects, and it is these aspects that give it its contemporary power, as it reflects the productive aesthetic tensions he argued arose out of the Middle Ages. The figures of Sivrit, Prünhilt and Hagen are beacons pointing to a lost age, and the Nibelungenlied is the medieval chronicle of their uneasy conversion into the Christian sphere. Although Heine does not explicitly take up the Nibelungenlied again, or even foreground its relationship to moments when he discusses similar themes in later parts of De L’Allemagne, he suggests that it is a good example of the kind of cultural and religious “translation” that he will

52 Given that Heine actually mentions the Manessische Handschrift in Die romantische Schule, it lends credence to his claim in Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift that he had in fact seen the manuscript. See DHA 8/1, 194. 53 As the DHA notes, this might also be connected to the fact that the conflict between spiritualism and sensualism is better represented through a discussion of epic poetry as a genre as opposed to lyric poetry. See DHA 8/2, 1300-01. 54 DHA 8/1, 129.

139 aim for in his later prose and poetry. Unfortunately, the nuance that he brings to his discussion of epic poetry is not always apparent in other discussions – such as that of the Romantics’ adoption of medieval literature as a model. 55

After this brief history of German literature,56 Heine examines the history of German Romanticism in a series of vignettes that discuss the extent to which various authors fell prey to the trap laid by the Schlegel brothers. Die romantische Schule then reconstructs the story of contemporary German literature as a series of misreadings and misunderstandings that led Romantic authors down an unhealthy path, in large part the result of their problematic view of the Middle Ages (although this is not always explicit in the text itself). It is a chronicle of failure, even if many of the literary failures are nevertheless beautiful and worth examining. Die romantische Schule is a diagnosis of what ails German literature. However, what Heine believes to be the “cure,” the restoration of pantheism, is less explicit in Die romantische Schule, and really only becomes clearer when read in conjunction with Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland.

As I noted in the previous paragraph, there is no disputing that, for Heine, the poster children of German Romantic failure were the Schlegel brothers. Heine begins his survey of German Romanticism by noting:

Diese Literatur war es wogegen sich, während den letzten Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts, eine Schule in Deutschland erhob, die wir die romantische genannt, und als deren Gerants sich uns die Herren August Wilhelm und Friedrich Schlegel präsentirt haben. Jena, wo sich diese beiden Brüder nebst vielen gleichgestimmten Geistern auf und zu befanden, war der Mittelpunkt, von wo aus die neue ästhetische Doktrin sich verbreitete. Ich sage Doktrin, denn diese Schule begann mit Beurtheilung der Kunstwerke der Vergangenheit und mit dem Rezept zu den Kunstwerken der Zukunft.57

55 Heine will discuss the Nibelungenlied again in the last book of Die romantische Schule, where he notes that it is, next to Des Knaben Wunderhorn, an important influence on Ludwig Uhland and highlights its role as a founding document for German Romanticism. See DHA 8/1, 207-8. 56 It should be noted again that there is a peculiar omission of German Baroque literature in Heine’s work. 57 DHA 8/1, 137.

140

This framing of the Romantic project as a kind of doctrine is important, in part, because this is very much what Heine himself is attempting to do in De L’Allemagne as a whole – develop an account of German culture that emancipates its progressive tendencies. Heine then argues that the Schlegel brothers had two important problems to overcome: firstly, their criticisms of literature were only negative, and they lacked a capacity to develop a positive doctrine that could develop into a coherent theory of literature.58 Secondly, in a criticism that Heine used before with August Graf von Platen (and which he will use with Ludwig Börne a few years later), he noted that they were not good artists, and as such, could produce no positive examples of the kind of literature they wished to develop. In light of this, Heine argued that they substituted the creation of new works of art with a recommendation to emulate the artwork of the Middle Ages:

Wenn aber die Herren Schlegel für die Meisterwerke, die sie sich bey den Poeten ihrer Schule bestellten, keine feste Theorie angeben konnten, so ersetzten sie diesen Mangel dadurch, daß sie die besten Kunstwerke der Vergangenheit als Muster anpriesen und ihren Schülern zugänglich machten. Dieses waren nun hauptsächlich die Werke der christlich katholischen Kunst des Mittelalters.59

I believe that this idea of replacement is key to Heine’s critique of the Schlegels’ approach to new literature. In the absence of a new philosophy – one which is not quite here in Die romantische Schule but is present in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland – the German Romantics were stuck with emulating old works. Moreover, and Heine will discuss this again when he discusses the Schlegel brothers individually in book two of Die romantische Schule, their own lack of talent and politically suspect tendencies led them to emphasize the very aspects of the medieval German culture that led to the cultural cul-de-sac Heine argues that the Germans are currently living in. As he writes:

Unsere Poesie, sagten die Herren Schlegel, ist alt, unsere Muse ist ein altes Weib mit einem Spinnrocken, unser Amor ist kein blonder Knabe, sondern ein verschrumpfter Zwerg mit grauen Haaren, unsere Gefühle sind abgewelkt, unsere Phantasie ist verdorrt: wir müssen uns erfrischen, wir müssen die verschütteten Quellen der naiven

58 DHA 8/1, 137. 59 DHA 8/1, 138.

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einfältiglichen Poesie des Mittelalters wieder aufsuchen, da sprudelt uns entgegen der Trank der Verjüngung.60

There is an ironic resonance here with Heine’s own Schlegel sonnet.61 There, August Wilhelm Schlegel is credited with reinvigorating German literature through the discovery of medieval German literature, rescuing Germany from the French. Here, for obvious reasons, the reference to the French is omitted and instead Heine uses more generalized images of decay. However, the point is the same: the Schlegel brothers’ recommendation to use the literature of the Middle Ages as a model was meant to reinvigorate modern German culture by returning to the German past. Here Heine begins to suggest his earlier distinction between the “good” Middle Ages and the “copy” Middle Ages again, with mixed results. For example, in the case of Ludwig Tieck, the problem with his taking up the call to emulate the Middle Ages is that there can be too much of a good thing, as:

Tieck, einem der besten Dichter der Schule; er hatte von den Volksbüchern und Gedichten des Mittelalters so viel eingeschluckt, daß er fast wieder ein Kind wurde.”62

The problem with this is that Heine is susceptible to his own criticisms here, that he too has taken in too much of the Middle Ages. Perhaps this is why, after poking fun at Tieck and his work, he will later note that Tieck, like himself, found a way out of Romanticism:

Eine merkwürdige Veränderung begiebt sich aber jetzt mit Herren Tieck, und diese bekundet sich in seiner dritten Manier. Als er nach dem Sturze der Schlegel eine lange Zeit geschwiegen, trat er wieder öffentlich auf, und zwar in einer Weise, wie man sie von ihm am wenigsten erwartet hätte. Der ehemalige Enthusiast, welcher einst, aus schwärmerischen Eifer, sich in den Schooß der katholischen Kirche begeben, welcher Aufklärung und Protestantismus so gewaltig bekämpft, welcher nur Mittelalter, nur feudalistisches Mittelalter athmete, welcher die Kunst nur in der naiven Herzensergießung liebte: dieser trat jetzt auf als Gegner der Schwärmerey, als Darsteller

60 DHA 8/1, 138. 61 This sonnet was examined this sonnet in chapter one. 62 DHA 8/1, 139.

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des modernsten Bürgerlebens, als Künstler, der in der Kunst das klarste Selbstbewußtseyn verlangte, kurz als ein vernünftiger Mann.63

Note here Heine’s clarifying that Tieck’s earlier problem was his focus on the “feudal” Middle Ages, again implying some “other” Middle Ages that offers a healthier kind of inspiration.64 Heine will repeatedly sequester the “real” Middle Ages from their Romantic reception. Take for example, his characterization of medieval artists:

Als nemlich die alten Künstler des Mittelalters, die empfohlenen Muster, so hoch gepriesen und bewundert standen, hatte man ihre Vortrefflichkeit nur dadurch zu erklären gewußt, daß diese Männer an das Thema glaubten, welches sie darstellten, daß sie in ihrer kunstlosen Einfalt mehr leisten konnten als die späteren glaubenlosen Meister, die es im Technischen viel weiter gebracht, daß der Glauben in ihnen Wunder gethan [...]65

In other words, the old artists were better presumably because they had faith. Therefore, Heine charges, although Romantics became Catholics to become better artists, they lacked the naïve faith of the medieval poets, and in failing to understand this, they missed out on what gave the medieval artists their power. Instead, the pull of Christian spiritualism only made these Romantics sick.

As a result, much of the remainder of Die romantische Schule is like a physician’s medical chart of all of the patients who “didn’t make it” when it came to resisting Catholicism. For example, in his discussion of the German poet Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg, Heine notes that he was a good liberal poet, until he converted to Catholicism and lost his way.66 The important point, for Heine, is the causal relationship between Catholicism and spiritualism. Even though Stolberg predates the Romantic school, he is nevertheless an example of the sickness brought about by Catholicism/spiritualism, a sickness that misleads people in their understanding

63 DHA 8/1, 182. 64 It is worth noting that Heine does not seem to have encountered Tieck’s 1803 Minnelieder aus dem schwäbischen Zeitalter. 65 DHA 8/1, 142. 66 DHA 8/1, 145.

143 of their own cultural situation. And indeed, no two figures represent this misunderstanding more for Heine than the “inventors” of German Romanticism: Friedrich and August Schlegel.

In characterizing Friedrich Schlegel, Heine recognizes his great intellect; however, Schlegel’s interest in the Middle Ages led him to squander the progressive promise of the Middle Ages and to move in what Heine’s suggests was the opposite direction from where the early Romantics hoped that the Middle Ages would reinvigorate German literature and thought. Instead, his interest in the Middle Ages conditioned Friedrich Schlegel to hate the present, love the past, and miss the future, which Heine notes led inexorably to his conversion to Roman Catholicism.67 Friedrich Schlegel mistook the Middle Ages as a paradigm for the present political and cultural situation, leading him far astray from his initially emancipatory ideas. His leadership, for Heine, is precisely what has led so many German authors and thinkers astray, leading them to the corner that Heine believes many Romantic authors (including perhaps, the adolescent Heine) have put themselves into.

This helps to explain why Heine reserved the most spite for his former mentor, August Wilhelm Schlegel. Long gone are the sonnets and comparisons to Goethe, and instead, Heine characterizes A.W. Schlegel as a thin, wan opportunist, whose fame is based on attacking other writers, but it is not founded on a philosophy. He is, rather, the very definition of a reactionary, his thin, aristocratic appearance betraying the rot of spiritualism within him.68 This is not to say that Heine dismisses August Schlegel entirely. He concedes that he was the first great man Heine ever met, and his translations of Shakespeare into German remain unsurpassed.69 Moreover, much like his brother Friedrich, August Schlegel understood the power of the images of the past and in particular the Middle Ages, which is why he worked so hard to demonstrate their beauties. Unfortunately, Schlegel’s failure to understand the present led him to misunderstand the direction that art needed to take before his vision of Romanticism choked off

67 It is also in his discussion of Schlegel where he clarifies his accusation of every Romantic converting to Catholicism and notes the he believes that Friedrich Schlegel was the only Romantic really serious about Roman Catholicism as a religion. See DHA 8/1, 166. 68 DHA 8/1, 168-69. 69 Even his modest praise of Schlegel’s translations of Shakespeare will be gone by the time Heine writes Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen. (See chapter four).

144 all avenues of creative production, and to understand the role of the past in modern art.70 Heine’s own philosophical work in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and the rest of De L’Allemange serves as a concerted effort not only to avoid the Schlegel brothers’ ideological and aesthetic failures, but to propose a new way of looking at the German Middle Ages, one which sidesteps the pitfalls of the Schlegels.

Perhaps the most powerful example in Die romantische Schule of the dangers of Romanticism, and the pressing need for a cure, comes in Heine’s discussion of the other main protagonist in the development of early German Romanticism, Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, better known as Novalis. As has been noted, Heine often associates the Romantic vision of Middle Ages with illness, and no one, for Heine, was as sick as Novalis. However, unlike his discussion of Friedrich and August Schlegel, where the brothers’ lack of talent makes them an easy target for Heine’s criticisms, Novalis represents the paradigmatic Romantic poet, worthy of respect.71 As a result, Heine’s treatment of Novalis and Heinrich von Ofterdingen is one of the most sensitive, genuine and moving moments in the entirety of Die romantische Schule.

Heine begins his discussion of Novalis in contrast with E.T.A. Hoffman. Where, Heine argues, Hoffmann only saw ghosts and dragged them down to earth, Novalis saw in the world only marvels and when nature died, as it does in the autumn, so did he.72 In other words, a poet can remain strong and vigorous as long as he doesn’t leave the ground of reality, but becomes feeble if he loses his footing. After an admiring discussion of Novalis’ work, and in particular Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Heine shifts his discussion of Novalis to the cautionary tale of Sophia. To begin, Heine imagines Novalis’s muse. For Heine, she was

70 In what can be read as Heine making amends for his patriotic youthful follies, he also spends a bit of time in Die romantische Schule defending French poetry from Schlegel, in some ways countering his youthful dismissal of French poetry in favour of German “Minne.” 71 Note, for example, Heine’s repeated evocation of “blue flowers” in his own writing, or more tellingly, his renaming of his own wife Crescence Eugénie Mirat to “Mathilde,” both of which are references to Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen. 72 DHA 8/1, 192.

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ein schlankes, weißes Mädchen mit ernsthaft blauen Augen, goldnen Hyazinthenlocken, lächelnden Lippen und einem kleinen rothen Muttermahl an der linken Seite des Kinns.73

Coincidentally, this description of Novalis’ muse happens to match the description of Sophia, the young woman who Heine will claim introduced him to Novalis. Sophia, whose name sounds suspiciously similar to Novalis’ own great love, lived with her sister, a practical woman and a postmaster’s wife.74 This practicality extended to literary taste - while her sister read Hoffmann (an admittedly odd example of practicality!), Sophia read Novalis. Nevertheless, Heine found Sophia intoxicating:

Ich habe manches was sie sprach aufgeschrieben und es sind sonderbare Gedichte, ganz in der Novalisschen Weise, nur noch geistiger und verhallender.75

However, in Heine’s account, he leaves and does not return to see Sophia again until the autumn of 1828.76 When he returns, he discovers that Sophia is close to death, with everything around her sick and yellow. Heine’s diagnosis for her illness? That she caught tuberculosis from reading too much Novalis. Sophia then dies, and Heine notes that he is using her copy of Ofterdingen while writing this passage on Novalis.

There is perhaps no clearer description of Heine’s belief in the unhealthiness of Romanticism than this story. Despite the clear absurdity of attributing Sophia’s death to Novalis, there is a lot here that reveals Heine’s complex feelings about Romanticism and the Middle Ages. Despite the wisdom of her namesake, and her clear talent for poetry, she, like Novalis, died from the spiritualizing drive of Romanticism and its unchecked love of the Middle Ages. Heine wants to determine how to write great poetry without dying or becoming a Catholic, which is, for Heine, equivalent to dying.

73 DHA 8/1, 195. 74 Novalis’ great love was Sophie von Kühn. See DHA 8/1, 1361. 75 DHA 8/1, 195. 76 It should be noted that whether or not Sophia and her sister were real people is difficult to discern. See DHA 8/2, 1362.

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A possible answer to this question is to recognize that whatever faith modern Germans might have, the kind of faith that the medieval poet had in the past is lost. As he writes:

For Heine, the medieval poet traversed a path that the modern poet cannot follow, and attempting to take the same path is what led so many Romantics to become Catholics.78 Indeed, when one considers his own flirtation with Catholicism, it seems clear that Heine is here talking about the dangers of Romantic medievalism as a drive towards spiritualism.

Heine devotes most of the final book of Die romantische Schule to a discussion of some of the authors who had most influenced his own Romanticism, such as Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, Baron de la Motte Fouqué and Ludwig Uhland. Heine will discuss their own limitations and failures, although these failures come in radically different forms.

He begins his discussion with Brentano, who he notes has become a Catholic, and has therefore as a consequence sequestered himself away from social and political life. Heine suggests that the only thing anyone remembers about him is the book he co-authored with Arnim, Des Knaben Wunderhorn:

Dieses Buch kann ich nicht genug rühmen; es enthält die holdseligsten Blüthen des deutschen Geistes und wer das deutsche Volk von einer liebenswürdigen Seite kennen

77 DHA 8/1, 142 78 Heine’s contention that many of the German Romantics converted to Catholicism is highly disputed, both factually and ideologically. A model of this genre of criticism of Heine, one which also criticizes Heine’s tying together of German Romanticism and the Middle Ages, is A. W. Porterfield’s “Some Popular Misconceptions Concerning German Romanticism,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 15, no. 4 (October 1916): 479- 511.

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lernen will, der lese diese Volkslieder. In diesem Augenblick liegt dieses Buch vor mir, und es ist mir als röche ich den Duft der deutschen Linden. Die Linde spielt nemlich eine Hauptrolle in diesen Liedern, in ihrem Schatten kosen des Abends die Liebenden, sie ist ihr Lieblingsbaum, und vielleicht aus dem Grunde weil das Lindenblatt die Form eines Menschenherzens zeigt. Diese Bemerkung machte einst ein deutscher Dichter der mir der liebste ist, nemlich ich.79

Here Heine makes explicit that which he had suggested in much of his writing in the 1820s, namely the profound influence that this work had on him, an influence which was based, in large part, on the erroneous assumption that Des Knaben Wunderhorn was a collection of authentic German folk poetry, and not an anthology of poems which, although inspired by folk traditions, were in fact largely authored by Brentano and Arnim themselves.80 Nevertheless, in his discussion of these poems, one can see the seeds of Heine’s more developed philosophical project in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland as he praises the “pure” Germanness of this collection. The beauty of this poetry is connected to the deeper vision of the German people the poems supply, and not the Catholic/feudal qualities that they evince. Des Knaben Wunderhorn then emerges in Heine’s eyes as a work that was greater than the sum of its authors, neither of whom escape Die Romantische Schule unscathed.

In what is possibly the most auto-biographical section of Die romantische Schule, Heine’s discussion turns to Fouqué and Uhland. Heine begins with a discussion of Fouqué, whom he acknowledged as a “true” poet, meaning that Heine includes him in his pantheon of great writers, noting that the titular character in his most famous work, Undine, could be considered the Muse of Fouqué’s poetry. However, this is not an entirely positive association:

Aber welch ein wunderliebliches Gedicht ist die Undine! Dieses Gedicht ist selbst ein Kuß; der Genius der Poesie küßte den schlafenden Frühling, und dieser schlug lächelnd die Augen auf, und alle Rosen dufteten und alle Nachtigallen sangen, und was die Rosen

79 DHA 8/1, 201. 80 For an exhaustive overview of the sources of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Ferdinand Rieser’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn und Seine Quellen: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Deutschen Volksliedes und der Romantik (Dortmund: F.W. Ruhfus, 1908).

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dufteten und die Nachtigallen sangen, das hat unser vortrefflicher Fouqué in Worte gekleidet und er nannte es: Undine...Obgleich sie unendlich schön ist, obgleich sie eben so leidet wie wir und irdischer Kummer sie hinlänglich belastet, so ist sie doch kein eigentlich menschliches Wesen.81

Fouqué’s tendency towards superficiality is important in other ways, as Heine has an interesting explanation for Fouqué’s decline in popularity. Like the Schlegel brothers, Fouqué also succumbed to the particular allure of the German Middle Ages, and in doing so, lost his capacity to direct his art towards the present, instead sinking deeper into the stale clichés of the Middle Ages, and in the process, losing his art and his friends:

In der That, dieser beständige Singsang von Harnischen, Turnierrossen, Burgfrauen, ehrsamen Zunftmeistern, Zwergen, Knappen, Schloßkapellen, Minne und Glaube, und wie der mittelalterliche Trödel sonst heißt, wurde uns endlich lästig; und als der ingeniose Hidalgo Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué sich immer tiefer in seine Ritterbücher versenkte, und im Traume der Vergangenheit das Verständniß der Gegenwart einbüßte: da mußten sogar seine besten Freunde sich kopfschüttelnd von ihm abwenden.82

However, Fouqué’s concentration on superficiality has had a larger impact, as Heine argues that Fouqué’s model of literary superficiality had spread into the broader literary culture. Even though people are bored with the Fouqué’s clichéd chivalric subject matter, the superficial style that Fouqué developed was being emulated in works with modern subject matter:

Bey den Nachahmern Fouqués wie bey den Nachahmern des Walter Scott ist diese Manier, statt der inneren Natur der Menschen und Dinge nur ihre äußere Erscheinung und das Costum zu schildern, noch trübseliger ausgebildet...Wenn auch die Darstellungen nicht mehr die Ritterzeit verherrlichen, sondern auch unsere moderne Zustände betreffen, so ist es doch noch immer die vorige Manier, die statt der Wesenheit der Erscheinung nur das Zufällige derselben auffaßt. Statt Menschenkenntniß bekunden unsere neueren

81 DHA 8/1, 225. 82 DHA 8/1, 225-6.

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Romanzièrs bloß Kleiderkenntniß, und sie fußen vielleicht auf dem Sprüchwort: Kleider machen Leute.83

Heine is drawing a clear correlation between post-Romantic literature and the problematic aesthetic legacy of German Romanticism. Fouqué, like so many of the other authors Heine profiled in Die romantische Schule, had increasingly come to rely on the Middle Ages as a prop, without understanding its essence, and how that essence might be used to say something about Germany’s contemporary cultural and political situation. This reliance led to the stagnation of Germany’s contemporary literary culture, even when those authors are not discussing the Middle Ages. In Heine’s view, Fouqué has spread the sickness beyond the medieval fortifications he himself had built. For this reason, although Heine clearly admired Fouqué as a writer, he recognizes that he must be put aside.

Unlike Fouqué, Heine’s other childhood idol, Ludwig Uhland, presents a greater dilemma for Heine.84 This problem is practically a structural feature of Die romantische Schule itself, where Heine begins to discuss Uhland immediately after Fouqué, outlining Uhland’s biographical details and then praising his play Herzog Ernst von Schwaben. 85 However, just as he is about to begin a discussion of Uhland’s work, he launches into a digression on the impoverished state of the contemporary German theatre scene. Heine seems to appreciate the difficulty that Uhland poses for his thesis, and indeed acknowledges that this digression was necessary in order to let his readers know about the terrible state of German theatre before discussing Uhland.

After this digression, Heine informs the reader that discussing Uhland is indeed difficult for him, as he finds himself in “einer sonderbaren Verlegenheit.”86 This quandary comes from the fact that although he has no desire to diminish Uhland’s greatness as a poet, he is all too aware of the gap between his adolescent affection for Uhland and the present cultural situation:

83 DHA 8/1, 226. 84 For an alternative reading of Heine’s thoughts on Uhland, please see Jerome McGann’s The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 49-56. I should note that his reading is basically opposed to my own, as he sees Heine’s reading of Uhland as affirming Uhland’s poetry as timelessly progressive. 85 DHA 8/1, 226-7. 86 DHA 8/1, 231.

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Was mir so herrlich dünkte, jenes chevalereske und katholische Wesen, jene Ritter die im adligen Turney sich hauen und stechen, jene sanften Knappen und sittigen Edelfrauen, jene Nordlandshelden und Minnesänger, jene Mönche und Nonnen, jene Vätergrüfte mit Ahnungsschauern, jene blassen Entsagungsgefühle mit Glockengeläute, und das ewige Wehmuthgewimmer, wie bitter ward es mir seitdem verleidet!87

Here Heine skillfully uses the final line of Uhland’s own poem “Der Schäfer,” which, fittingly, concerns a lost love, to justify his own goodbye to Uhland and to the rest of the Romantic school. Heine admits that the beliefs that he had as a child no longer mean the same thing to him, and as such, these poems no longer speak to him in the same way, in part because he is too aware of the modern world. Heine notes that this awareness of the exhaustion of the Romantic Middle Ages as a progressive source of poetic inspiration is perhaps why Uhland had stopped writing poetry himself, as he notes that

Mit gringen Ausnahmen hat er seit zwanzig Jahren keine neue [sic.] Gedichte zu Markte gebracht. Ich glaube nicht, daß dieses schöne Dichtergemüth so kärglich von der Natur begabt gewesen und nur einen einzigen Frühling in sich trug.88

The problem Uhland presents to Heine now comes into full view. Heine still considers Uhland to be the greatest German Romantic poet, who remained one of Heine’s own favourite poets. Moreover, Uhland, like Heine, was not only committed to a more progressive and liberal Germany, but as a member of the Landstände des Königreichs Württemberg, was actually living proof of the possibility of someone coming out of the study of the German Middle Ages with a politically progressive agenda. However, as Uhland’s political and academic involvement increased, he essentially stopped writing poetry. For Heine, Uhland’s silence is the contradiction between the inclinations of his medieval muse and the demands of his liberal politics. In other words, Uhland’s solution to the problem of writing progressive poetry in the shadow of the Middle Ages was to give up writing poetry altogether, an option which, at this stage, seems unpalatable to Heine.

87 DHA 8/1, 231. 88 DHA 8/1, 234.

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It is only at this point that Heine mounts something of a critique of Uhland’s poetry, not as poetry per se, but in its tendency to represent the Middle Ages in an overly sentimental way in part to make them suitable to modern readers. However, the difference between Uhland and any of the other authors who had profiled in Die romantische Schule was that Uhland himself was aware of the fact that his take on the Middle Ages was merely a reflection:

Herr Uhland wollte uns keineswegs in wahrhafter Copey die deutsche Vergangenheit vorführen, er wollte uns vielleicht nur durch ihren Widerschein ergötzen; und er ließ sie freundlich zurückspiegeln von der dämmernden Fläche seines Geistes. 89

This self-awareness was in turn what allowed Uhland to remain a great poet, but to also escape the irrelevance of his contemporaries. Heine then strikes a crucial autobiographical note as he admits that the past (when properly represented) will always have a powerful pull:

Die Bilder der Vergangenheit üben ihren Zauber, selbst in der mattesten Beschwörung. Sogar Männer, die für die moderne Zeit Parthey gefaßt, bewahren immer eine geheime Sympathie für die Ueberlieferungen alter Tage; wunderbar berühren uns diese Geisterstimmen selbst in ihrem schwächsten Nachhall.90

This comment is crucial to understanding not only Heine’s position on Uhland, but the motivation for De L’Allemagne as a whole. Heine’s own poetry of the early 1830s ran the risk of exhausting his own exploration of the thematic exhaustion of Romantic symbols. Heine saw Uhland as an alter ego, and moreover as someone who, under similar cultural circumstances to Heine, and with similar political instincts, gave up on poetry entirely when he no longer saw poetry as a positive contribution to the emancipation of Germany. Unlike Uhland, giving up on writing poetry was unacceptable to Heine, but like Uhland, he wanted to continue to shape the representation of the past in order to effect progressive change in the present. But if the past was to remain an essential part of Heine’s poetic project, it was up to Heine to “discover” a German past that allowed him to continue to write poetry, a task that was ultimately outside of the scope

89 DHA 8/1, 234-5. 90 DHA 8/1, 235.

152 of Die romantische Schule, and it would fall to the other works in De L’Allemagne to supply the missing pieces to Heine’s project.

If Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland then set out the intellectual justification for a “new” German past, the third part of De l’Allemagne, Elementargeister, was deemed necessary to provide concrete examples of the reality of this history in the past. In the third part of De l’Allemagne, Heine will chronicle an alternate history of medieval Germany, one which, through its examination of the various spirits which populate medieval German texts, reveals Germany’s secret pantheist reality, while retaining the importance of the German Middle Ages as a crucial mediator in preserving these folk beliefs up to modern times.

Elementargeister

If Die romantische Schule’s earlier date of composition gives it something of an anachronistic feel within the entirety of De L’Allemagne, Elementargeister picks up where Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland left off. That this is intentional on Heine’s part is signalled in an early introduction to Elementargeister, where he reaffirms his claim in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland that the Romantics had misunderstood the value of the Middle Ages:91

Ihr seht, ich thue alles mögliche um die mittelalterliche Tendenz unserer Romantiker nicht bloß aus tadelhaften Quellen herzuleiten. Die beste Justifikazion gab ich bereits in der dritten Parthie [of Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland], wo ich angedeutet, daß die Mittelaltersucht am Ende vielleicht nur unbewußte Liebe für den altgermanischen Pantheismus sey, indem sich im Volksglauben des Mittelalters die Reste dieser älteren Religion noch erhalten haben.92

91 This introduction is not to be found in later versions of Elementargeister. It was likely omitted from subsequent editions and versions of Elementargeister as this book was separated from the other two texts and published separately. This publication history is reinforced by the fact that in the DHA Elementargeister is published separately from its companions in De L’Allemagne. 92 DHA 9, 258.

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Elementargeister therefore serves as a necessary supplement to the earlier book, and a compendium of the material imprints that pantheism left upon Germany, whose spiritual presence Heine argues is found even in his day in the “Drudenfuß” that was stamped on loaves of bread.93 This literal nourishment is to be contrasted with the thin gruel of the spiritualized Middle Ages:

Wie bedeutungsvoll konstrastirt dieses wahrhafte Brod mit jenem dünnen, unnahrhaften Scheinbrod womit der Spiritualismus uns füttert! Ja, die Erinnerungen an den altgermanischen Glauben sind noch nicht ganz erloschen.94

Although Heine connects Elementargeister to his earlier work, the clear lines which he drew in both Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and Die romantische Schule between the desire for the old and its pernicious effect on the modern are lacking. Instead, the purpose of Elementargeister seems to be that, by developing a rough taxonomy of the elementary spirits (but expressly not a system),95 he will reawaken the pantheistic spirit in his readership, as they will begin to recognize what remains of that old religion living on in their own modern folk beliefs.

Whether or not Elementargeister succeeds in this respect is difficult to say. It seems clear that Heine himself treasures these stories and believes that sharing them will inspire others to recognize an alternative pagan current that informs the German understanding of the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, it is not always clear in the first part of the text where exactly Heine is leading the reader. The author himself seems to have recognized this, as the last parts of the various extant versions of Elementargeister attempt to derive some kind of connection between this collection of folk tales and Heine’s larger cultural project. For example, when coming to the

93 DHA 9, 258. As an aside, the nineteenth century English translator of Heine’s work, Charles Godfrey Leland, provides a helpful commentary on “Druid’s feet” on page 109 of his translation of Elementargeister. Leland was himself very interested in the occult and as a result, he provides a helpful (and often amusing) critical commentary to Heine’s Elementargeister from the perspective of someone who believed in the reality of the elementary spirits Heine was describing. For a discussion of Leland’s life and his translations see Jeffrey Sammons, “Charles Godfrey Leland and the English-Language Heine Edition” in Heinrich Heine: Alternative Perspectives 1985-2005 (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006), 163-188. 94 DHA 9, 258. 95 He discusses this in a brief section on Paracelsus. See DHA 9, 12

154 end of one of these folk stories, he takes the opportunity to point out that the desire for a didactic explanation is actually a reflection of cultural differences between the French and the German:

Und die Moral? Die Franzosen, denen ich dieses Mährchen mahl erzählt, verlangten immer die Moral desselben. Das ist aber eben, meine Freunde, der Unterschied zwischen uns und Euch. Wir verlangen die Moral nur im wirklichen Leben, aber keineswegs in den Fikzionen der Poesie.96

However, he goes on to develop a rationale for the value of these stories, which is to reveal a previous set of social relations, which were suppressed by the Christian idea:

Die Aufgabe des Heidenthums war eben die Erkämpfung des Glücks; der griechische Held nennt es das goldne Fließ und der germanische Held nennt es den Nibelungenhort. Die Aufgabe des Christenthums aber war die Entsagung, und seine Helden suchten die Leiden des Martyrthums, sie belasteten sich selbst mit dem Kreuze, und ihr größter Kampf galt nur der Eroberung eines Grabes.

Man wird freylich dran erinnert daß das goldene Fließ und der Nibelungenhort seinen Inhabern großes Unheil bereitet; aber das war ja eben der Irthum jener Helden, daß sie Gold für Glück ansahen. In der Hauptsache hatten sie immer Recht, der Mensch soll auf Erden das Glück zu gewinnen suchen. Das süße sonnige Glück, nicht das Kreuz .... ach! er mag warten bis er nach dem Kirchhof kommt, da setzt man auf sein Grab das Kreuz.97

It should be noted here that there are two entirely different versions of the second part of Elementargeister: a French version which was the final section of Traditions Populaires, itself the sixth part of the French version of De L’Allemagne. The French ending to Elementargeister discusses the return of Barbarossa (a topic Heine will take up again in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen).

The second version, which is to be found in the German publication of Elementargeister in Salon III, concerns the demonification of the Greek gods by Christianity, and includes the

96 DHA 9, 262. 97 DHA 9, 262.

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“Tannhäuser” poem (which will be discussed later). As a result, if the first part of Elementargeister reads like a disenchanted grimoire, the varying second parts connect more directly to the broader themes of De L’Allemagne, and both versions offer radically different alternatives to the questions that Heine has been addressing in De L’Allemange. While the French version takes a more straightforwardly political and polemical tone, one which lines up with the thesis of this study, the German version reveals the start of what will be a much longer lasting engagement with Greece and its relationship to German culture, and attempts to put into more serious practice some of the questions he raised back in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, namely, what might a “classicized” Middle Ages look like, under the aspect of modern poetry?98 Both endings are well worth examining, as they provide two distinct approaches to how Elementargeister connects to some of the larger themes in De L’Allemange concerning the Middle Ages as well as various trajectories in Heine’s own later work.

The French version of the ending begins with Heine again reiterating one of the critical differences between the Germans and the French, which is that the Middle Ages are “dead” to the French, and as such, they can appreciate their customs, artifacts, and costumes without falling into the nostalgic trap in which the Germans often find themselves. In contrast, the Germans are still beholden to the feudal and religious institutions of the Middle Ages:

Mais chez nous, Allemands, la chronique du moyen âge n'est pas encore close; les pages les plus récentes sont encore humides du sang de nos parents et de nos amis, et ces harnais étincelants protégent [sic.] encore les corps vivants de nos bourreaux…Pour vous, les grandes cathédrales, comme Notre-Dame de Paris, ne sont autre chose que de l'architecture et du romantisme; pour nous, ce sont les plus terribles forteresses de nos ennemis. 99

98 For a thorough and convincing discussion of Heine’s relationship with the classical world, see Robert Holub, Heinrich Heine's Reception of German Grecophilia: The Function and Application of the Hellenic Tradition in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Heidelberg: Winter, 1981). 99 DHA 9, 189.

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Heine argues here that the entire project of De L’Allemagne has been to demonstrate to the French that the modern Germans’ misdirected love of the Middle Ages is the central impediment in the self-actualization of the German people on a political level. While the French can enjoy these artefacts as art, the Germans are still busy wrestling with the legacies of feudalism and the church, and as a result, they continue to misunderstand the pantheistic reality of these folk beliefs, a misunderstanding that is encouraged by reactionary forces such as the Catholic Church. Heine further distinguishes between the “real” pantheistic elementary spirits that he is interested in, and the “false” examples that he is accusing the Catholic Church of continuing to propagate:

O noirs fripons! et vous imbéciles de toutes couleurs! accomplissez votre œuvre, enflammez la cervelle du peuple par les vieilles superstitions, précipitez-le dans la voie du fanatisme; vous-mêmes un jour deviendrez ses victimes; vous n'échapperez pas à la destinée des conjurateurs maladroits qui ne purent à la fin maîtriser les esprits qu'ils avaient évoqués, et qui furent mis en pièces par eux.100

Heine concedes that the prevalence of this mistaking spirits for demons might make his work in De L’Allemagne too much of an uphill battle. He has used reason and evidence so far in order to make his case, but what might really be necessary to rescue pantheistic Germany from its spiritualist trajectory is the embodiment of its own medieval mythology, in the form of Friedrich Barbarossa:

Peut-être le génie de la Révolution ne peut-il remuer par la raison le peuple allemand; peut-être est-ce la tâche de la folie d'accomplir ce grand labeur? Quand le sang lui montera une fois, en bouillonnant, à la tête, quand il sentira de nouveau battre son cœur, le peuple n'écoutera plus le pieux ramage des cafards bavarois, ni le murmure mystique des radoteurs souabes; son oreille ne pourra plus entendre que la grande voix de l'homme.101

Although Heine admits that Friedrich Barbarossa, as an historical figure, does not fall under his own classificatory scheme for an elementary spirit, there are so many points of congruence

100 DHA 9, 189. 101 DHA 9, 189.

157 between the legend of a Barbarossa and elementary spirits that Barbarossa is deserving of inclusion in this pantheon. Moreover, unlike the spirits, the legend of Barbarossa, which is that he is not dead but sleeping, and will return to restore Germany to its previous greatness, has an implicitly emancipatory potential. The importance of Barbarossa as an emancipatory figure for Heine is shown when Heine inserts himself into the legend by revealing that he himself has journeyed to Kyffhäuser to beg for Barbarossa to return:

Cette montagne est en Thuringe, non loin de Nordhausen. J'ai passé devant bien des fois, et par une belle nuit d'hiver, j'y suis resté plus d'une heure en criant à plusieurs reprises: «Viens Barberousse, viens;» et le cœur me brûlait comme du feu dans la poitrine, et des larmes ruisselaient de mes joues. Mais il ne vint pas, le cher empereur Frédéric, et je ne pus embrasser que le rocher qu'il habite.102

Who could better represent the reality of German pantheism than Friedrich Barbarossa, who literally lives inside a rock? Germany’s potential for political freedom resides within the Kyffhäuser, which makes the image of Heine begging for the return of a medieval German emperor all the more powerful and poignant. In one fell swoop, Heine’s cry of «Viens Barberousse, viens» ties his own desire to keep the Middle Ages as a crucial site of modern German cultural development to his unceasing quest to see Germany politically emancipated.

Heine ends the French version of Elementargeister with an affirmation that the return of Barbarossa would signal the emancipatory moment that Germany so desperately requires. His return also requires that politically progressive people like Heine, as well as the oppressed classes, play a crucial role, and that if the spirit of revolution won’t awaken Germany through reason, then Barbarossa must awaken it through violence. However, Heine is prepared to do his part:

Quand l'empereur rentrera un jour dans le monde, il pourra bien trouver sur son chemin plus d'un corbeau percé de flèches. Et le vieux seigneur remarquera en riant, que l'archer qui les a frappés portait une bonne arbalète.103

102 DHA 9, 190. 103 DHA 9, 188-90.

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If the French ending to Elementargeister echoes an almost adolescent hope in the restoration of Germany via the Middle Ages, with a pantheistic Barbarossa standing in for “deutsche Minne,” the German version charts a different, more cosmopolitan course. It is not entirely clear why Heine rewrote the ending to Elementargeister for Salon III, although he seems to have considered it definitive, as the French version was never published in Germany and does not occur in subsequent editions, and he will use this ending to Elementargeister as the first section of his 1853 Die Götter im Exil.104

Heine begins the German version with a dialogue (which supposedly occurred in Göttingen in 1820) between one Hinrich Kitzler and himself. It turns out that Kitzler, who is deeply religious, wants to burn his own books about the triumph of Christianity because they are so well reasoned, and so comprehensive, that the writing of them had led him to a crisis of faith. Kitzler then makes a startling and insightful confession:

Ja, ich muß gestehen, daß mich endlich für die Reste des Heidenthums, jene schönen Tempel und Statuen, Dein schauerliches Mitleid anwandelte; denn sie gehörten nicht mehr der Religion, die schon lange, lange vor Christi Geburt, todt war, sondern sie gehörten der Kunst, die da ewig lebt.105

In other words, the remnants of pagan religions persisted, and moreover, they persisted as art, which is timeless. It is out of Kitzler’s love of this classical art, whose destruction at the hands of the Christians he decries, that he destroys his book:

Und Euch, Ihr zerschlagenen Statuen der Schönheit, Euch Ihr Manen der todten Götter, Euch die Ihr nur noch liebliche Traumbilder seyd im Schattenreiche der Poesie, Euch opfere ich dieses Buch!106

104 The possible reasons for this change are numerous, including censorship, as well as the effect that Grimm’s 1836 Deutsche Mythologie had on him, an effect that led him to move quite radically away from a strictly Germanic trajectory that the Barbarossa ending implied. See Paul Reitter’s “Heinrich Heine and the Discourse of Mythology” in A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine, ed. Roger Cook (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002), 208-09. 105 DHA 9, 44-45. 106 DHA 9, 45.

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Kitzler’s burning of his work is an allegory (one which calls back to the Nightingale of Basel) that affirms Heine’s thesis about the life denying power of Christianity and its unwillingness to live in a world where sensual beauty persists. At this stage Heine recognized that the compendium of elementary spirits he provided up to this point in Elementargeister was insufficient as a rationale for an embrace of pantheism, and that something more was needed, namely some kind of explanation as to why Christianity defeated paganism, and why this is a problem for contemporary society.

He begins this explanation by noting that Kitzler is mistaken in condemning the ancient Christians for destroying the classical world. Unlike Kitzler, who simply saw the objects of the classical world as art, the early Christians saw the Greek and Roman temples as repositories of demons:

Ich bin gar nicht der Meinung meines Freundes Kitzler, daß die Bilderstürmerey der ersten Christen so bitter zu tadeln sey; sie konnten und durften die alten Tempel und Statuen nicht schonen, denn in diesen lebte noch jene alte griechische Heiterkeit, jene Lebenslust, die dem Christen als Teufelthum erschien. In diesen Statuen und Tempeln sah der Christ nicht bloß die Gegenstände eines fremden Cultus, eines nichtigen Irrglaubens, dem alle Realität fehle: sondern diese Tempel hielt er für die Burgen wirklicher Dämonen, und den Göttern, die diese Statuen darstellten, verlieh er eine unbestrittene Existenz; sie waren nemlich lauter Teufel.107

The Greco-Roman religious institutions might have died, but their objects of veneration lived on. The death of paganism did not result from people no longer believing in the old gods, but from the fact that they still did. Philosophy and reason were no match for the belief in the old gods recast as demons because they mistook the shift in belief for disbelief:

Arme, griechische Philosophen! Sie konnten diesen Widerspruch niemals begreifen, wie sie auch späterhin niemals begriffen, daß sie in ihrer Polemik mit den Christen

107 DHA 9, 46.

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keineswegs die alte erstorbene Glaubenslehre, sondern weit lebendigere Dinge zu vertheidigen hatten.108

For Heine, the pagans and philosophers would have been much better off defending the Greek mode of thinking and feeling, that is, sensualism, than attempting to justify the old religions themselves, as they would have been tackling the question that had preoccupied Heine throughout De L’Allemagne:

Die Frage war: ob der trübsinnige, magere, sinnenfeindliche, übergeistige Judäismus der Nazarener, oder ob hellenische Heiterkeit, Schönheitsliebe und blühende Lebenslust in der Welt herrschen solle?109

By justifying the value of pagan doctrine instead of affirming the healthy sensuality of the classical world, the pagan philosophers lost themselves in the Christian/spiritual worldview, providing an eerie parallel to the early Romantics and their misunderstanding of the German Middle Ages:

All diese Lust, all dieses frohe Gelächter ist längst verschollen, und in den Ruinen der alten Tempel wohnen, nach der Meinung des Volkes, noch immer die altgriechischen Gottheiten, aber sie haben durch den Sieg Christi all ihre Macht verloren, sie sind arge Teufel, die sich am Tage, unter Eulen und Kröten, in den dunkeln Trümmern ihrer ehemaligen Herrlichkeit versteckt halten, des Nachts aber in liebreitzender Gestalt emporsteigen, um irgend einen arglosen Wandrer oder verwegenen Gesellen zu bethören und zu verlocken.110

It is now up to Heine to recover this worldview on behalf of these philosophers, with the added difficulty that he, like Kitzler, no longer really believe in the old gods, but continue to appreciate their value for art.

108 DHA 9, 47. 109 DHA 9, 47. 110 DHA 9, 47.

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At this point Elementargeister pivots to a discussion that would not seem out of place in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland. Heine wants to illustrate the ways in which this twilight of the Greek gods was represented in modern German art. Heine begins this discussion of the persistent fear of the demonic within classical culture in Germany by summarizing Das Marmorbild by Joseph von Eichendorff. Here one sees some resonances not only with his earlier story about the Nightingale of Basel, and the fear of beauty that Christianity inspired, but also his very early poem “Die Weihe” (discussed in chapter one):

Auf diesen Volksglauben beziehen sich nun die wunderbarsten Sagen, und neuere Poeten schöpften hier die Motive ihrer schönsten Dichtungen....Da geht er nun, an schönen Herbsttagen, mit seinen einsamen Träumen spatzieren, denkt vielleicht an die heimischen Eichenwälder und an das blonde Mädchen, das er dort gelassen, der leichte Fant! Aber plötzlich steht er vor einer marmornen Bildsäule, bey deren Anblick er fast betroffen stehen bleibt. Es ist vielleicht die Göttinn der Schönheit, und er steht ihr Angesicht zu Angesicht gegenüber, und das Herz des jungen Barbaren wird heimlich ergriffen von dem alten Zauber. Was ist das? So schlanke Glieder hat er noch nie gesehen, und in diesem Marmor ahndet er ein lebendigeres Leben, als er jemals in den rothen Wangen und Lippen, in der ganzen Fleischlichkeit seiner Landsmänninnen gefunden hat.111

There is a connection both between Heine’s youthful poetry and the broader German Romantic tradition, as well as between the statue of the Virgin Mary (which transforms into a more sensual figure in “Die Weihe”) from his adolescent poem and that of classical Greece. What is absent from “Die Weihe,” but all too common in other Romantic works, is the idea that this encounter with beauty is dangerous and, as a result, that beauty itself is doomed, as in Das Marmorbild, where the knight destroys the statue which represented his object of desire as well as classical Greece:

Erst spät morgens, als die Sonne schon hoch am Himmel stand, erwachte der Ritter aus seinem Schlafe. Aber statt in der prächtigen Villa, worin er übernachtet zu haben vermeinte, befand er sich inmitten der wohlbekannten Ruinen, und mit Entsetzen sah er,

111 DHA 9, 47.

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daß die schöne Bildsäule, die er so sehr liebte, von ihrem Postamente heruntergefallen war, und ihr abgebrochenes Haupt zu seinen Füßen lag.112

The connection between the Kitzler parable and Das Marmorbild should be clear at this stage. For Heine, the German Romantics both desired and feared the classical world, and this tension is reflected in their literature and culture, and there is perhaps no clearer demonstration of this tension than Heine’s subsequent introduction of the Tannhäuser legend in Elementargeister.

Tannhäuser

Heine introduces the Tannhäuser legend by pointing out the symmetries between Elementargeister and Hermann Kornmann’s 1614 book Mons Veneris, which, like Heine’s work exists as a compendium of the elementary spirits which also understands the ontological reality of the Greek gods:

Eben nach dem Beyspiele Kornmanns, habe auch ich bey Gelegenheit der Elementargeister von der Transformazion der altheidnischen Götter sprechen müssen. Diese sind keine Gespenster, denn, wie ich mehrmals angeführt, sie sind nicht todt; sie sind unerschaffene, unsterbliche Wesen, die nach dem Siege Christi, sich zurückziehen mußten in die unterirdische Verborgenheit, wo sie mit den übrigen Elementargeistern zusammenhausend, ihre dämonische Wirthschaft treiben.113

Although Heine recognizes that, much like the sleeping Friedrich Barbarossa, the connection between dwarves and the Greek pantheon is perhaps more tenuous than Heine would like, Kornmann’s earlier work, with its similar aims and older provenance, strengthens this connection because it demonstrates the persistence of the idea that the gods and the spirits underwent a similar process of demonification. Kornmann’s stories ground Heine’s own narrative in a broader historical context, and for Heine, there is perhaps no more enticing story in Kornmann’s work than that of Venus and Tannhäuser.

112 DHA 9, 49. 113 DHA 9, 52.

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Like Barbarossa, Venus lies trapped inside a mountain. However, given her status as a demonified Greek Goddess, she remains trapped eternally in the Venusberg, whose entrance is guarded by an old knight named Eckhart.114 She is not there to emancipate Germany, but rather to tempt men with a taste of the pre-Christian pantheistic/sensual realm, and perhaps the most famous man to have succumbed to her charms was the knight and minnesinger Tannhäuser, whose legend in poetry Heine now sets forth.115 After presenting what he claims is the Mons Veneris version of the poem, he proceeds to describe the effect his initial encounter with the poem had on him. In contrast to the “verlateinisirten” poetry of 17th Century Germany, the Tannhäuser poem pierces the veil of history and speaks to him directly in a voice thought long lost:116

Es war mir als hätte ich in einem dumpfen Bergschacht plötzlich eine große Goldader entdeckt, und die stolzeinfachen, urkräftigen Worte stralten mir so blank entgegen, daß mein Herz fast geblendet wurde von dem unerwarteten Glanz. 117

In the Tannhäuser poem Heine hears the oft-muted nightingale, the very nightingale whose song he has longed to hear again, a song that had been hidden by the idea of Christianity:

Ich ahnte gleich, aus diesem Liede sprach zu mir eine wohlbekannte Freudenstimme; ich vernahm darin die Töne jener verketzerten Nachtigallen, die, während der Passionszeit

114 DHA 9, 52. 115 Interestingly, Heine discusses the Tannhäuser legend in a way that suggests that he did not know Tannhäuser was the name of an actual 13th century minnesinger, who appears in the Manessichen Handschrift, which Heine claimed a number of times to have seen in Paris. Recently, Leah Garrett has traced the background of the “Tannhäuser” poems that Heine relied upon for his own version, and provides a reading of Heine’s “Tannhäuser” poem against the backdrop of its significance as a German Romantic foundation myth and its relationship to the anti-Semitism of his day. She argues that Heine’s sarcastic version is meant to disrupt the often anti-Semitic folk traditions of which the Tannhäuser myth was a part. See Leah Garrett, A Knight at the Opera: Heine, Wagner, Herzl, Peretz, and the Legacy of Der Tannhäuser. (West Lafayette, Ind: Purdue University Press, 2011), 8-39. 116 The genealogy of the poem Heine cites is bit more complicated than he lets on. Heine took the quoted version from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which in turn took it from Johannes Praetorious’ 1668 Blockes-Berges Verrichtung oder ausführlicher geographischer Bericht von den hohen trefflich alt- und berühmten Blockes-Berge, which took it nearly verbatim from Kornmann. (See DHA 9, 519-20.) It is also worth noting that although he acknowledges that his version comes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, he does not discuss other contemporary versions of the Tannhäuser myth, such as Tieck’s 1799 novella Der getreue Eckart und der Tannhäuser, although his mentioning of Eckart in conjunction with the Tannhäuser legend in Elementargeister suggests that he was aware of it. 117 DHA 9, 56.

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des Mittelalters, mit gar schweigsamen Schnäblein sich versteckt halten mußten, und nur zuweilen, wo man sie am wenigsten vermuthete, etwa gar hinter einem Klostergitter, einige jauchzende Laute hervorflattern ließen. 118

Although Heine seems to be affirming the idea that the medieval Christianity was unhealthy to art, there is no mistaking the fact that the Tannhäuser legend has a medieval foundation, and that the nightingale to which Heine refers is also medieval. This is supported by Heine’s discussion of the poem’s age. Although Heine does not know how old the Tannhäuser poem really is, the oldest version that he has been able to get his hands on is, to him, the one with the most “poetic” character, and the only thing that prevented him from reproducing it here was its archaic language:

Das eigentliche Alter des Tannhäuserlieds wäre schwer zu bestimmen. Es existirt schon in fliegenden Blättern vom ältesten Druck. Ein junger deutscher Dichter, Herr Bechstein, welcher sich freundlichst in Deutschland daran erinnerte, daß, als ich ihn in Paris bey meinem Freunde Wolff sah, jene alten fliegenden Blätter das Thema unserer Unterhaltung bildeten, hat mir dieser Tage eins derselben, betitelt »das Lied von dem Danheüser« zugeschickt. Nur die größere Alterthümlichkeit der Sprache hielt mich davon ab, an der Stelle der obigen jüngeren Version, diese ältere mitzutheilen. Die ältere enthält viele Abweichungen und trägt, nach meinem Bedünken, einen weit poetischeren Charakter.119

Heine is drawing a clear connection between the age of the Tannhäuser poem and its value as true poetry. As it represents the best of the classical/medieval synthesis which Heine had been discussing up to this point in the second part of Elementargeister, the poem serves as an ideal model for the new kind of poetry Heine wishes to develop. In Heine’s own version of the Tannhäuser poem he will try to replicate the “feel” of the original poem, but for a modern age, in such a way that provides an example as to what Heine meant when he suggested the “classicizing” of the Middle Ages.

118 DHA 9, 56. 119 DHA 9, 56.

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If Elementargeister represents Heine’s attempt to play the chronicler, giving his readers a picture of a Middle Ages populated by denatured pagan gods as well as spirits who, in their persistence, support Heine’s argument that pantheism is the true secret religion of Germany, then “Tannhäuser,” the poem that ends the 1836 version of Elementargeister, reveals Heine putting into practice the ideas advanced in De L’Allemagne and his re-evaluation of the Middle Ages as a necessary site of poetic inspiration. As such, the poem reveals a new way of writing poetry that is both deeply connected to his poetic instincts but also reflective of his vastly more nuanced position.

Heine initially ascribed the poem to an anonymous source.120 The poem then begins with a warning that this story will help to keep souls from Satan, and it is apparent rather quickly that something is amiss with Tannhäuser on the salvific front. As in the Wunderhorn poem, Tannhäuser, who has lived with Venus for years in sensual bliss, suddenly asks to leave. However, in the older poem Tannhäuser wishes to leave because his conscience is bothering him, whereas in Heine’s “Tannhäuser” the knight is literally sick of all of the sensual pleasures of the Venusberg:

Frau Venus, meine schöne Frau

120 Heine confessed that he wrote the poem in the French edition of Die Götter im Exil in 1853. However, given how clearly he sets out his intentions in writing the “Tannhäuser” poem at this later stage, it is instructive as to why he wrote it back in the 1830s and worth quoting in full: Je ne veux en imposer au public ni en vers ni en prose, et j'avoue franchement que le poëme qu'on vient de lire est de mon propre cru, et qu'il n'appartient pas à quelque Minnesinger du moyen âge. Cependant je suis tenté de faire suivre ici le poëme primitif dans lequel le vieux poëte a traité le même sujet. Ce rapprochement sera très-intéressant et très-instructif pour le critique qui voudrait voir de quelle manière différente deux poëtes de deux époques tout à fait opposées ont traité la même légende, tout en conservant la même facture, le même rhythme et presque le même cadre. L'esprit des deux époques doit distinctement ressortir d'un pareil rapprochement, et ce serait pour ainsi dire de l'anatomie comparée en littérature. En effet, en lisant en h3même temps ces deux versions, on voit combien chez l'ancien poëte prédomine la foi antique, tandis que chez le poëte moderne, né au commencement du XIXe siècle, se révèle le scepticisme de son époque; l'on voit combien ce dernier, qui n'est dompté par aucune autorité, donne un libre essor à sa fantaisie, et n'a en chantant aucun autre but que de bien exprimer dans ses vers des sentiments purement humains. Le vieux poëte, au contraire, reste sous le joug de l'autorité cléricale; il a un but didactique, il veut illustrer un dogme religieux, il prêche la vertu de la charité, et le dernier mot de son poëme, c'est de démontrer l'efficacité du repentir pour la rémission de tout péché; le pape lui-même est blame pour avoir oublié cette haute vérité chrétienne, et par le bâton desséché qui reverdit entre ses mains, il reconnaît, mais trop tard, l'incommensurable profondeur de la miséricorde divine. Voici les paroles du vieux poëte… (DHA 9, 238.)

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Von süßem Wein und Küssen Ist meine Seele geworden krank Ich schmachte nach Bitternissen.121

Rather than looking for salvation, Heine’s Tannhäuser seeks out bitterness. He has had too much of a good thing, too much sensual pleasure, and he must seek pain and suffering again. In other words, despite his seven years in Venusberg, Tannhäuser is revealed to be nothing more than the modern German arch-romantic, wishing to forget matter and live again for only the spirit of Christianity. Predictably then, when he leaves the Venusberg, he goes to Rome to seek forgiveness. Like the Wunderhorn poem, in Heine’s version he appeals to the Pope for forgiveness because

Ein armes Gespenst bin ich am Tag Des Nachts mein Leben erwachet Dann träum ich von meiner schönen Frau Sie sitzt bei mir und lachet.

Sie lacht so gesund, so glücklich, so toll, Und mit so weißen Zähnen! Wenn ich an dieses Lachen denk So weine ich plötzliche Tränen.122

The antithetical nature of Christianity and the enjoyment of any sensual pleasure is revealed here by the fact Tannhäuser is terrified by what is effectively a scene of domestic bliss. Instead of restoring him to life, Tannhäuser’s renewed commitment to Catholicism has literally turned him into a spirit. It is into the dream world, in his memories of Venus, where Tannhäuser must now turn for material comfort, and he begins to recognize that only from within the Venusberg can he find not only happiness, but health.

121 DHA 9, 57. 122 DHA 9, 60.

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What is fascinating about this moment in “Tannhäuser” is that the dream world, which Heine has used so often as a place to contain his sufferings and longings, becomes a place of comfort and rest. The “real” modern world that Tannhäuser now inhabits has been so denuded of its sensual aspect that the dream world comes to represent the “sensual” reality. In other words, the real modern world is a world consumed by spiritualism. Nevertheless, like a good Romantic, Tannhäuser refuses to walk away from spiritualism, and continues to beg the Pope’s forgiveness. The Pope however, refuses to absolve Tannhäuser of his sins.

Mit deiner Seele mußt du jetzt Des Fleisches Lust bezahlen Du bist verworfen, du bist verdammt Zu ewigen Höllenqualen.123

One can see why the Tannhäuser myth resonated with Heine. Tannhäuser is a medieval figure whose life was devoted to the pursuit of sensual desire, but who in striving to become a “normal” medieval German, is rejected by the very authority whose approval he sought. Heine, whose conversion to Lutheranism placed him in a similar position, could not have missed the irony. The wages of sensualism are death, and Tannhäuser must pay this debt with his soul. In both poems, it is in the Pope’s stubborn refusal to absolve him that Tannhäuser recognizes that the jig is up, so to speak, and that the path of the spirit leads only to cultural death and emptiness.

In the original version of the poem the poet recognizes this and in a deus ex machina, God saves Tannhäuser in the end by having the Pope’s staff sprout leaves, a miracle which overrides the Pope’s fickle withholding of Tannhäuser’s absolution. In contrast, Heine’s “Tannhäuser” simply follows him home, revealing the irrelevance of salvation for one’s enjoyment of material life and the cultivation of the spirit. In realizing that the outside world is currently consumed by the sickness of spiritualism, Tannhäuser returns to the relative health of the Venusberg.124

123 DHA 9, 61. 124 The idea of the protagonist being tempted into a feminine (and demonic) space is not unique to Heine, and is found in other works of the period, such as Tieck’s Der Runenberg and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Die Bergwerke zu Falun. However, as opposed to Heine’s return to the “health” of the Venusberg, the stories of Tieck and Hoffmann

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This change in sensibility from the original poem accounts for one of the more jarring and, for many scholars, unsuccessful aspects of the poem – the ending, where Tannhäuser recounts to Venus his journey through a thoroughly modern Germany in a way that foreshadows Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen. Although the discussion of his travels might seem out of place, it also allows Tannhäuser to recount the modern versions of the (now-renounced) spiritualist tendencies that he found across Germany. The last lines of “Tannhäuser” imply that German culture’s only path out of the Catholic/Romantic sickness that Heine has gone to such great lengths to chronicle is through a thoroughly poetic re-encounter with the (now classical) pagan sensualism that lies at the heart of the Middle Ages. By the end of “Tannhäuser,” we have come full circle, literally and figuratively.

Heine had set himself in De l’Allemagne a Herculean task – to replace the emerging cultural memory of Germany with a new vision, a vision which relies on many of the same historical materials, but transposes them into a progressive key. Given the numerous ways in which Romantic history was told, it stands to reason that Heine’s “new” history sought to avoid a rigid ideological paradigm but instead offers a way of looking at these older materials in a new light. This is not to endorse a stereotypically post-modern view of the world, or of Heine for that matter. However, it is worth recalling here what Jan Assmann said about cultural memory as opposed to history, that it is “not the past as such, as it is investigated and reconstructed by archaeologists and historians, but only the past as it is remembered.”125 In the works which make up De L’Allemagne, Heine was not merely trying to reconstruct the history of Germany; he was attempting to help Germans remember their past in a way that allows them to forge ahead on the path to revolution, and in doing so, to cure them of the sickness Heine himself understood all too well.

suggest that the returning protagonist has gone insane as a result of these mysterious encounters and cannot help themselves but to return to these sites of temptation, a return that dooms them. 125 Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997), 9.

CHAPTER FOUR – FROM FOREGROUND TO BACKGROUND: THE MIDDLE AGES IN HEINE’S

CHARACTER SKETCHES BETWEEN 1835-1840

In De L’Allemagne Heine began to develop an intellectual programme for a progressive Germany. As part of this programme, he argued for a new role for the legacy of the German Middle Ages and its potential as a source of inspiration for modern artists. Taking his own programme to heart, Heine built upon his cultural project in some fascinating ways: between 1835 and 1840, he wrote a number of seemingly unconnected character studies on Shakespeare, Cervantes, the Swabian School of poets and most (in)famously, the German writer Ludwig Börne. Heine took these projects up in large part as a result of the fact that, in 1835, in the midst of the publication of De L’Allemagne (in both its German and French versions) he, along with the members of the (very loose) movement known as “Young Germany” were struck with a publication ban in Germany in 1835.1 This ban would have a strong impact not only on Heine’s finances, but pushed him towards writing what he termed as “potboilers”, that is, texts that would sell (or pay him) well but might not necessarily meet Heine’s own stringent artistic standards.

The time between 1835 and the publication of the now notorious Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift, saw Heine preoccupied with two main activities: he was either overseeing new editions of his increasingly famous Buch der Lieder and his Reisebilder, or writing collections filled with occasional pieces, such as part of his Salon III (Which included De L’Allemagne), Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen and his introduction to a new edition of Don Quixote.2 However, despite their more mundane genesis, these texts allowed Heine to pursue the lines of thought about the role and function of the Middle Ages as history and artistic inspiration that he had developed in De L’Allemagne. In these works, he continues to rehabilitate the role of the Middle Ages as a source of thematic material and develops his ideas about the ways in which tensions between cultural drives are essential to the creation of great art. The character sketches to be looked at here are Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen (1838) and Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift (1840). These texts serve to not only pave the way for his most politically radical

1 Jeffrey Sammons has a detailed summary of the publication ban and its impact on Heine. See Sammons, A Modern Biography, 205-12. 2 Sammons, A Modern Biography, 219.

169 170 phase during the 1840s, but rehearse arguments in prose that he will develop in poetry in Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen.

In a similar vein to Die romantische Schule, these biographical sketches serve either as models of great artistic accomplishment or cautionary tales. On one side, Shakespeare serves as an exemplar of Heine’s own approach, and Shakespeare’s close relationship to the Middle Ages will serve as an important factor in Heine’s argument for Shakespeare’s greatness. On the other side, those who Heine terms the “Swabian” School and Ludwig Börne are examples of authors who “miss the point” of the Middle Ages in a way that is typical of the “spiritualist” Romantics, and as a result, misunderstand what makes for good art, which connects to how they themselves regard and use the Middle Ages in their own work.3 Knowing this will help to make sense of what is his most explicitly positive statement about the literary legacy of the German Middle Ages in Ludwig Börne: his declaration that Walther von der Vogelweide was the greatest German lyric poet.

In addition, looking at how Heine uses the Middle Ages in these texts serves to show how his own thinking about this era had shifted, while also reflecting the fact that the political circumstances to which he was responding had also changed. In Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift in particular, one can see how Heine’s reimagined role for the value of the Middle Ages serves as a background upon which he criticizes what he saw as an anti-aesthetic tendency on the progressive side of politics, a tendency that he will challenge in prose in the Börne book, but also in poetry with Atta Troll as well as Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen.

3 Heine discussed the Swabian school of poets at length in his 1838 essay Der Schwabenspiegel, whose title refers to a 13th century legal code, and is meant to play upon the Heine’s argument that of the Swabians were adhering to an “outdated” aesthetic code.

171

Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen

This volume, published in October of 1838, is a series of commentaries on engravings of nearly every female character in Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories, accompanied by an extensive introduction where Heine engages in a literary-critical survey of Shakespeare and his reception. Although Heine considered this one of his lesser works, Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen presents a transposition of the ideas he promulgated in De l’Allemagne into a new register, as Heine connects Shakespeare directly to his claim in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland that it is the poet, and not the historian, who is best able to depict history.4 Moreover, Heine argues that Shakespeare instinctively embodied the approach Heine had been developing in his understanding of history and its relationship to poetry. In taking this approach with Shakespeare, Heine winds up writing (albeit much less comprehensively or systematically than in De L’Allemagne), a kind of “History of Religion and Philosophy in England”, where he surveys English literature and its relationship to its own place in modernity. It is also at this stage Heine’s distinction between “spiritualism” and “sensualism” is modulating into a distinction between what he will term “Hellenes” and “Nazarenes.” This distinction, which was seen in Elementargeister, will be more fully articulated in Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift. What I will examine is how the Middle Ages continues to figure in the background of Heine’s work as a motivating factor, even if Heine is no longer exclusively preoccupied with defending the German Middle Ages from the Romantics.

The Introduction to Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen

Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen is divided into two main sections. The first part is an extended introduction, and the second part contains illustrations (with a commentary by Heine) for many of the various women that populate Shakespeare’s plays. The two sections are formally distinct, although the commentaries develop (in an unsystematic way) many of the themes set out in the introduction. Heine begins Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen by

4 This is actually an idea Heine had been developing since the Reisebilder. For overview of the history of the development of Heine’s idea of the poet as historian in his earlier work, see Goetschel, Heine and Critical Theory, 171-2.

172 recounting the story of a “good Christian friend” who could not get past the idea that Jesus was a Jew.5 Heine then relates this story of anti-Semitism to himself by letting his reader know that just as this friend was confused and dismayed by Jesus’ Jewishness, Heine feels similarly about Shakespeare being an Englishman.6 He then goes on to express his deep horror and dislike of the English, all in order to set up how all the more remarkable it was that England could produce someone as world-historically brilliant as Shakespeare. Right from the start, Heine leads his readers towards an understanding of the importance of cultural tension for artistic production. Moreover, this tension between Shakespeare’s greatness and England’s awfulness forces Heine to develop a rationale for how Shakespeare might have come to be, and as we shall see, the core for this rationale is Shakespeare’s own relationship to the Middle Ages, which is both historical and philosophical.

The historical Middle Ages as a rationale for Shakespeare’s greatness comes first. For Heine, Shakespeare’s greatness is the result of the fact that he wrote during the rise of Protestantism and the decline of Catholicism in England:

Es ist ein Glück, daß Shakspear eben noch zur rechten Zeit kam, daß er ein Zeitgenosse Elisabeths und Jakobs war, als freylich der Protestantismus sich bereits in der ungezügelten Denkfreyheit, aber keineswegs in der Lebensart und Gefühlsweise äußerte, und das Königthum, beleuchtet von den letzten Stralen des untergehenden Ritterwesens, noch in aller Glorie der Poesie blühte und glänzte.7

In other words, Shakespeare benefitted from the “fresh air” of reason provided by the Reformation, but still lived in the poetically beneficial shadows of the Catholic Middle Ages:

Ja, der Volksglaube des Mittelalters, der Katholizismus, war erst in der Theorie zerstört; aber er lebte noch mit seinem vollen Zauber im Gemüthe der Menschen, und erhielt sich noch in ihren Sitten, Gebräuchen und Anschauungen. Erst später, Blume nach Blume,

5 DHA 10, 9. 6 DHA 10, 9. For a broader discussion of how Heine approached the role of Jesus’ Jewishness within his writing, see Willi Goetschel, “Heine’s Critical Secularism”, boundary 2 31, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 149-71, and in particular 160-6. 7 DHA 10, 10.

173

gelang es den Puritanern, die Religion der Vergangenheit gründlich zu entwurzeln, und über das ganze Land, wie eine graue Nebeldecke, jenen öden Trübsinn auszubreiten, der seitdem, entgeistet und entkräftet, zu einem lauwarmen, greinenden, dünnschläfrigen Pietismus sich verwässerte.8

This excerpt illustrates Heine’s continued intellectual commitment to the historical Middle Ages as a vital source of poetic power. As opposed to someone like Hans Sachs (who Heine pilloried in De L’Allemagne), Shakespeare somehow benefitted from being a part of this transitional time, perhaps due in part to the fact that where Sachs was alive before and after the Reformation, Shakespeare lived entirely in its shadow. It also suggests something that he had alluded to in De l’Allemagne but never expressed explicitly: that the advent of Protestantism, although good for reason, had potentially negative implications for art.

Shakespeare, like Heine, was able to draw on this medieval spirit, but also the new Protestant order, to create the works of remarkable insight into the human condition. In other words, even though Shakespeare was born after what one might consider the Middle Ages, Heine uses both his own understanding of the relationship between drives and their importance for producing art, as well as his nostalgia for medieval Catholicism to effectively make Shakespeare an honorary medieval poet.

Heine is generalizing across cultures the method of inquiry in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland that he used to explain why the Middle Ages were a time that produced such sublime poetry in Germany. In Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen he implies something similar happened in England. Although Shakespeare was born after the Reformation, the spirit of the past still lived in the country, and it is the tension between the pre-Reformation and post-Reformation that motivates Shakespeare’s art. This is analogous to Heine’s description of the German Middle Ages, where the conflict between pantheism and spiritualism (represented by the medieval Church) produced the tension, and therefore the spark to produce great poetry. What Heine seems to be articulating is the idea that various national cultures have their own particular conditions for creating great art, but that the necessary condition for this art is some

8 DHA 10, 10.

174 manner of tension between competing tendencies. Like the German Middle Ages, the English Middle Ages had a special place in the development of its later poetry.

It might occur to Heine’s readers at this point that there is a difficulty with this line of reasoning, because the cultural histories of England and Germany were quite different, and so it does not entirely obtain that someone like Shakespeare should emerge as a result of the Middle Ages any more than the Romantic poetry of Heine’s own age emerged out of the crucible of the German Middle Ages. However, I believe that what licenses Heine (in his own view) is his distinction between sensualism and spiritualism, because as a general claim about competing forces acting on European society, this distinction is no longer limited to Germany and so functions as a pan- European heuristic. This broader framework is what allows Heine to use Shakespeare as representative of the kind of poet he himself wanted to see emerge in Germany.

Analogously, it is with the specific historical trajectory of Protestantism in England that led to the extinction of poetry in England, according to Heine. With the death of Charles I, and the rise of the Puritans, Shakespeare was effectively erased from England’s cultural memory, only to be rediscovered by a new generation a century later. Heine turns away from the historical reasons for Shakespeare’s value and articulates the philosophical reasons for the erasure (and later recovery) of Shakespeare as being yet another example of the age-old battle between sensualism and spiritualism. On the surface, Shakespeare fell out of favour because the Puritans hated the theatre. However, underneath this superficial reason lurked the real cause:

Diese alte, unversöhnliche Abneigung gegen das Theater ist nichts als eine Seite jener Feindschaft, die seit achtzehn Jahrhunderten zwischen zwey ganz heterogenen Weltanschauungen waltet, und wovon die eine dem dürren Boden Judäas, die andere dem blühenden Griechenland entsprossen ist.9

For Heine, the ultra-Protestant Puritans and their repression of the theatre serve as a cautionary example of the complete triumph of spiritualism over sensualism within another national culture, and with it, the extinction of art itself. The danger that Shakespeare posed to the Puritans was

9 DHA 10, 11. Compare to his definition of German Romanticism in Die Romantische Schule: “Diese Poesie aber war aus dem Christenthume hervorgegangen, sie war eine Passionsblume, die dem Blute Christi entsprossen. [italics mine]” (DHA 8/1, 126.)

175 that the England embodied by Shakespeare represented the “spirit” of the Middle Ages, and by implication, the preservation of the sensual core of the classical age. As a result, the theatre, which Heine equates here explicitly with the Hellene (classical) tendency, had to be abolished, and with it, much of what Shakespeare represented.

Although Heine ties Shakespeare to the classical age and sensualism, he was not arguing that Shakespeare was purely a sensualist. For Heine, Shakespeare’s “classicism” is related to his “completeness” as an author, as someone who miraculously straddled the chasm between sensualism and spiritualism, and between form and content, to produce “complete” poetry.

Heine illustrates this aspect of Shakespeare in his discussion of Shakespeare’s historical plays. He notes that during his travels in England that the English, as a rule, equated Shakespeare’s history with actual history. Far from being a criticism, this was evidence that the great poets make the best historians:

Die Aufgabe Shakspears war nicht bloß die Poesie, sondern auch die Geschichte; er konnte die gegebenen Stoffe nicht willkürlich modeln, er konnte nicht die Ereignisse und Charaktere nach Laune gestalten;...Dennoch in diesen Geschichtsdramen strömt die Poesie reichlicher und gewaltiger und süßer als in den Tragödien jener Dichter, die ihre Fabeln entweder selbst erfinden oder nach Gutdünken umarbeiten, das strengste Ebenmaß der Form erzielen, und in der eigentlichen Kunst, namentlich aber in dem enchaînement des scènes, den armen Shakspear übertreffen.10

This passage illustrates Heine’s belief in Shakespeare’s “completeness.” Shakespeare grew up in the shadow of the great clash of ideas that surrounded the Reformation, but as a result of his unique historical circumstances, Shakespeare was able to make his history plays more poetic than those dramatists who are more aware of dramatic form.

Shakespeare’s greatness therefore is the result of two parallel occurrences. Firstly, his birth in the shadow of the Middle Ages puts him in a position to benefit from the poetic heritage of the Middle Ages. Secondly, his sheer talent allowed him to straddle the great tendencies of his age

10 DHA 10, 14.

176 to create great works. To put a fine point on this idea, and to further the notions he had developed in the German ending of Elementargeister, where Heine argues for the resurgence of a “classical mode” of writing, he argues that Shakespeare is at his core, a classical author:

In dieser Beziehung gleicht er den frühesten Geschichtschreibern, die ebenfalls keinen Unterschied wußten zwischen Poesie und Historie, und nicht bloß eine Nomenklatur des Geschehenen, ein stäubiges Herbarium der Ereignisse, lieferten, sondern die Wahrheit verklärten durch Gesang, und im Gesange nur die Stimme der Wahrheit tönen ließen. 11

Heine again makes a further point that relates to his understanding of history and the past, which is that the modern historian’s quest for objectivity is merely an unwitting ignorance of one’s own cultural conditions:

Die sogenannte Objektivität, wovon heut so viel die Rede, ist nichts als eine trockene Lüge; es ist nicht möglich, die Vergangenheit zu schildern, ohne ihr die Färbung unserer eigenen Gefühle zu verleihen.12

And it is at this moment where Heine makes perhaps his most explicit remark on why the poet historian is a better historian than the academic one:

Jene sogenannte Objektivität, die, mit ihrer Leblosigkeit sich brüstend, auf der Schädelstätte der Thatsachen thront, ist schon deßhalb als unwahr verwerflich, weil zur geschichtlichen Wahrheit nicht bloß die genauen Angaben des Faktums, sondern auch gewisse Mittheilungen über den Eindruck, den jenes Faktum auf seine Zeitgenossen hervorgebracht hat, nothwendig sind. Diese Mittheilungen sind aber die schwierigste Aufgabe; denn es gehört dazu nicht bloß eine gewöhnliche Notizenkunde, sondern auch das Anschauungsvermögen des Dichters, dem, wie Shakspear sagt, »das Wesen und der Körper verschollener Zeiten« sichtbar geworden.13

11 DHA 10, 14. 12 DHA 10, 14. 13 DHA 10, 14.

177

In other words, Shakespeare correctly rendered history because he was not objective. This is not to say he ignored “facts,” rather, in his plays, he presented information in such a way as to convey the impression that a fact produced on people in their own time. Because of this, the formal criticisms against Shakespeare’s histories that they do not adhere to the Aristotelian unities of time and space are irrelevant because, according to Heine, the whole of time and space was Shakespeare’s stage, and as such, complaints about the gaps in time that appear in his works misunderstand the greater poetic unity that Shakespeare was capable of. This is why, for Heine, Shakespeare’s strength is in evoking the reality of moments in the past, as in, for example, the medieval history of England:

Und ihm waren sie sichtbar, nicht bloß die Erscheinungen seiner eigenen Landesgeschichte, sondern auch die, wovon die Annalen des Alterthums uns Kunde hinterlassen haben, wie wir es mit Erstaunen bemerken in den Dramen, wo er das untergegangene Römerthum mit den wahrsten Farben schildert. Wie den Rittergestalten des Mittelalters, hat er auch den Helden der antiken Welt in die Nieren gesehen, und ihnen befohlen, das tiefste Wort ihrer Seele auszusprechen. Und immer wußte er die Wahrheit zur Poesie zu erheben, und sogar die gemüthlosen Römer, das harte nüchterne Volk der Prosa, diese Mischlinge von roher Raubsucht und feinem Advokatensinn, diese kasuistische Soldateske, wußte er poetisch zu verklären.14

In other words, poetry for Shakespeare (and by implication, for Heine) is not about form, but more about the capacity to evoke the spirit of the past that renders the past true and alive for eternity. This is a far more fleshed out analogue of his critique of August von Platen in Die Bäder von Lucca, where Platen’s main problem was that he was so focused on formal perfection that it restricted his ability to write poetry. The greatness of Shakespeare was in his ability to connect the various fragments of represented reality into a poetic whole:

Aber ein Bruchstück der Erscheinungswelt muß dem Dichter immer von außen geboten werden, ehe jener wunderbare Prozeß der Weltergänzung in ihm statt finden kann; dieses Wahrnehmen eines Stücks der Erscheinungswelt geschieht durch die Sinne, und ist

14 DHA 10, 14-5.

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gleichsam das äußere Ereigniß, wovon die innern Offenbarungen bedingt sind, denen wir die Kunstwerke des Dichters verdanken.15

Ironically, and perhaps sensing that his argument in favour of Shakespeare is a kind of special pleading, he goes on to note that one should not look too deeply at the methods of the poet, but rather enjoy the fruits of their labour.

In arguing that Shakespeare’s genius was due in large part to the conflict between his “medievalism” and the emerging supremacy of Protestantism in England, Heine is placing Shakespeare within his own orbit. Shakespeare (like Heine) was a poet who, not having come from the Middle Ages, nevertheless fully understood and appreciated the Middle Ages as an unquenchably enduring source of poetic inspiration. Furthermore, Shakespeare serves as a model of the poet who classicizes his subject matter, rather than the other way around. In other words, Shakespeare serves as a model for precisely the kind of poet who Heine was arguing was needed in 19th century Germany in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland: a poet who classicizes history, and who can classicize the Middle Ages. Just as Heine tried in Elementargeister to use German folk tales to help people better understand the pantheistic reality of German cultural history and then present a modern version of this spirit in his “Tannhäuser” poem, so too does Shakespeare preserve, in perpetuity, the living medieval spirit in his plays and poetry.

I would argue that this feature of Shakespeare’s art is also why Heine devotes part of his introduction to Shakespeare’s reception in Germany. Although he discusses Shakespeare’s reception by the English right up to his own day, given Heine’s low opinion of the English, he asserts that the Germans understand Shakespeare better than the English, and devotes the remainder of his introduction to an overview of German translations, critical reception and performances of Shakespeare.16 As in De L’Allemagne, Heine recognizes that the adoption of Shakespeare into the German canon was inevitable, in large part due to the excellent instincts of Lessing, who advocated in favour of Shakespeare as a model of German drama in opposition to

15 DHA 10, 16. 16 DHA 10, 18.

179 the French, noting that Lessing, Wieland and Herder were early supporters of Shakespeare in Germany (and against Gottsched). 17

This advocacy was taken up by the early Romantics, and in a way that mockingly evokes his youthful sonnet of praise to August Schlegel as a conquering knight (see chapter one), Heine imagines Shakespeare’s importance to German culture by analogizing Shakespeare as the Holy Roman Emperor, with Lessing and Wieland as elector Princes, and then placing August Schlegel as a knight and Tieck as his squire, all of whom ensured that Shakespeare would have a 1000 year reign. The persistent misapprehension of Shakespeare by his contemporaries is largely the result of German Romantic critics attempting to pigeonhole Shakespeare into their spiritualist tendencies.

Indeed, never missing an opportunity to criticize his former mentor, Heine proceeds to devote some space to demonstrating that A.W. Schlegel’s translations of Shakespeare’s works, which were at the time regarded by many as the finest translations, were in fact, not preferable to others. He refers to Schlegel’s love of Shakespeare as “einen Rausch ohne Trunkenheit.”18 The implication is clear: as with his advocacy of the Middle Ages, Schlegel’s advocacy on behalf of Shakespeare failed to fully take into account Shakespeare’s completeness as a poet. Heine argues that this privation evinces itself in Schlegel’s translations of Shakespeare, where Heine admits that although they are metrically the best translations, he prefers the older prose translations of Johann Joachim Eschenburg, because Schlegel’s commitment to metrical consistency led Schlegel to mistranslate Shakespeare’s essence.19

As Heine devotes the last part of his introduction to an overview of various interpreters of Shakespeare on the stage, he again emphasizes that the enduring importance of the English author lies in his ability to reveal “nature” to his audience, and Heine will use the commentaries on Shakespeare’s female characters to further highlight Shakespeare’s classicizing tendencies.

17 DHA 10, 18. 18 DHA 10, 19. 19 DHA 10, 19.

180

The Commentaries of Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen

Unfortunately, as a work of commentaries separated by engravings, Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen suffers from a lack of internal unity, and a number of tantalizing suggestions made by Heine, either in the introduction or in the commentaries themselves, are not followed up on or developed more clearly, which is unfortunate, because the introduction of Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen, does a very good job of adapting many of the ideas on German poetry and history in De L’Allemagne into a broader European context.

Of particular note is his discussion towards the end of his commentary on Queen Margaret from the Henry VI Parts I-III. After comparing Queen Margaret to Chrimhilde in the Nibelungenlied (itself an interesting attempt to bring together the German and English medieval traditions), the commentary transitions into a remarkable discussion about why Heine has wanted to avoid reflections on Shakespeare’s histories from a historical or philosophical perspective. Heine argues that Shakespeare’s histories cannot be fully understood in Heine’s age because of what he terms the “mixture of industrial development and medieval feudalism”:

Das Thema jener Dramen ist noch immer nicht ganz abgehandelt, so lange der Kampf der modernen Industrie-Bedürfnisse mit den Resten des mittelalterlichen Feudalwesens unter allerley Transformazionen fortdauert.20

His evidence for this claim is his sense of wonderment at the fact that many German Shakespeare commentators take the side of the English and not the French in the plays. As Heine notes:

Wahrlich, in jenen Kriegen war weder das Recht, noch die Poesie auf Seiten der Engländer, die eines Theils unter nichtigen Successionsvorwänden die roheste Plünderungslust verbargen, anderen Theils nur im Solde gemeiner Krämerinteressen sich herumschlugen [...]21

20 DHA 10, 80. 21 DHA 10, 81.

181

Heine asks why the German critics mistakenly take the English to be heroes in Shakespeare’s histories when they should in fact be regarded as the villains. He makes a further analogy between medieval English society and his day and contends that English knights, unlike their continental counterparts, have always been capitalists, and therefore never understood chivalry, because they murdered chivalry (that is, the French mounted knights) in the Battle of Crecy in 1346:

Bisher war der Krieg nur ein großes Turnier von ebenbürtigen Reutern; aber bey Crecy wird diese romantische Cavallerie, diese Poesie, schmählig niedergeschossen von der modernen Infanterie, von der Prosa in strengstilisirter Schlachtordnung, ja, hier kommen sogar die Kanonen zum Vorschein. 22

At that battle, the English, who won with the longbow and early cannons, while the French knights were killed, which, Heine argues, led to the decline of the old courtly order. Heine seems to be implying that technology and industry, embodied by the English, are destroying the old order, which was associated with poetry itself. The medieval French were glorious in their defeat because they represented the side of poetry. With this paean to French chivalry, from which the German chivalric tradition (and its literature) owes nearly everything, Heine is, by implication, extolling the intrinsic aesthetic value of the culture of the German Middle Ages.

Throughout the character sketches of Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen there are further hints of Heine’s multifaceted attitude towards the Middle Ages, and its role as something suspended between his perspective on historical events as well as what it represents on a philosophical level with respect to Heine’s spiritualism/sensualism distinction. Towards the end of the work, there are two notable examples. Firstly, there is a characteristically Heinean dream that functions as a meditation on the nature of Shakespeare’s comedies. In the dream, Heine is at a party, where the partygoers are all on separate boats. The partygoers are from all times and places:

22 DHA 10, 81.

182

Das waren Costume aus allen Zeiten und Landen: altgriechische Tuniken, mittelalterliche Rittermäntel, orientalische Turbane, Schäferhüte mit flatternden Bändern, wilde und zahme Thierlarven ... 23

In this milieu one woman calls to him to instruct him on the nature of Shakespeare’s comedies. She is dressed in what Heine describes as a medieval manner, sporting a “buntscheckige gehörnte Schellenkappe.” Heine then suggests that she might be a Greek goddess, the goddess of Caprice, and in a capricious moment, Heine, in one of his characteristic asides, begins to talk about love in Shakespeare, and in particular the ways in which Miranda from The Tempest, Cleopatra and Juliet express love.

Within this medievalized moment of the dream, of particular note are Heine’s comments about Juliet, the titular character of a play that Heine had a longstanding affection for. Just as it is the medieval spirit in Shakespeare after the ascendency of Protestantism that Heine believes is responsible for Shakespeare’s greatness, he notes that Juliet’s unsurpassed love for Romeo displays a romantic-medieval character:

Julias Liebe trägt, wie ihre Zeit und Umgebung, einen mehr romantisch mittelalterlichen, schon der Renaissançe entgegenblühenden Charakter; sie ist farbenglänzend wie der Hof der Scalière, und zugleich stark wie jene edlen Geschlechter der Lombardey, die mit germanischem Blute verjüngt worden, und eben so kräftig liebten, wie sie haßten. Julia repräsentirt die Liebe einer jugendlichen, noch etwas rohen aber unverdorbenen, gesunden Periode. Sie ist ganz durchdrungen von der Sinnenglut und von der Glaubensstärke einer solchen Zeit, und selbst der kalte Moder der Todtengruft kann weder ihr Vertrauen erschüttern, noch ihre Flamme dämpfen.24

In a moment of symbolic doubling, Juliet is enacting the characteristics of Shakespeare’s own time. It is fascinating that Heine unequivocally equates this transitional period, within which both Juliet’s love and Shakespeare’s plays bloomed, as healthy – but in the contexts of her betraying both Medieval and Renaissance characteristics. I believe Heine does this because, in

23 DHA 10, 189. 24 DHA 10, 190.

183 the wake of De L’Allemagne, he has delineated and developed an idea of the Middle Ages that, while complex, can been spoken of as “positive,” by which he means that these cultural tensions were productive.

Despite its incidental trappings, Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen shows how Heine continued to develop his understanding of history and poetry and the role that the Middle Ages served a crucial role in this understanding. For Heine, what made Shakespeare (and Cervantes, for example) great is their capturing of the wholeness of the world.25 This wholeness is brought about in large part through Shakespeare’s ability to harness the tension between Protestantism and Catholicism. What Heine stresses is the centrality of finding a balance between contradictory forces in the development of great art.

Beneath these seeming contradictions, there remains an underlying logic, and it is that underlying logic that allows Heine to continue to defend the Middle Ages (or any history for that matter) from those who misread it. It was of crucial importance for Heine to take on those who lacked this ability to find the right balance between art and culture. Perhaps the most infamous example of how important this fight was for Heine is in the work to be examined next, Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift, a text which takes literary criticism to an uncomfortably personal level. Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift is perhaps Heine’s most controversial and complex work, a work where Heine deploys most forcefully all of the critical tools he had fashioned up to this point to explore what he saw as Börne’s failure to understand the dynamics of history, the implications of which Heine believed would have a great impact on art.

25 Heine argues in his 1837 introduction to Don Quixote that Cervantes’ novel provides a template for how to narrate a lost past. Cervantes, in destroying the genre of chivalric romances with his own chivalric romance, simultaneously created the template for the modern novel. As such, both he and Shakespeare occupy similar roles as inspiration for ways in which modern artists should approach both the past and the function of their art in the future.

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Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift

Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift was, on the surface, Heine’s survey of the German critic and author Ludwig Börne (1786-1837). However, Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift was greeted with such hostility at the time of its publication that it eventually led to a duel between Heine and the banker Solomon Strauss in 1841.26 Nevertheless, over time the book has come to be regarded as one of Heine’s finest works. Thomas Mann declared it Heine’s greatest prose work, in large part due to Heine’s development of contrast between “talent” and “character,” as well as his refined treatment of the spiritualist/sensualist distinction, which he now refers to exclusively in the Börne book as a distinction between the “Nazarene” and the “Hellene.” What I will be examining in this text is how the Middle Ages continues to serve as an important constant within Heine’s Nazarene/Hellene dichotomy in the Börne text.27 If in De L’Allemagne the Heine’s opponents were conservative Romantics from whom he needed to rescue the Middle Ages, Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift is about rescuing the aesthetic potential of the Middle Ages from what he saw as an increasingly anti-art political left.

Heine’s main argument in Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift is straightforward. He contends that Ludwig Börne was a Nazarene. Far from being a direct insult, Börne’s Nazarene nature encapsulated, for Heine, a worldview that endangered art itself. In a similar way that his criticisms of the Romantics and the Swabian school amounted to criticisms of their abilities to produce art that propelled culture forward, his critique of Ludwig Börne centered on the idea that Börne was someone who, despite having an initially progressive outlook, succumbed to being a Nazarene. What makes this criticism much more complicated is that for much of Ludwig Börne:

26 Strauss was the husband of Jeanette Wohl-Strauss, who Heine implied in Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift were in a ménage-a trois with Börne. Strauss and Heine exchanged insults in the press which eventually led to a duel on September 7, 1841. Another duel was to have taken place between Heine and Gabriel Riesser, who himself was a prominent advocate for Jewish emancipation. However this one was stopped, in perhaps the strangest irony, by the intervention of none other than Richard Wagner, who was a close friend of Heine’s at the time. (See Sammons, A Modern Biography, 241-42.) 27 For a discussion on how the Nazarene/Hellene distinction remained a volatile one for Heine, see Willi Goetschel, “Tangled Genealogies: Hellenism, Hebraism, and the Discourse of Modernity” in Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 21, no. 3 (Winter 2014): 181-94, as well as Willi Goetschel, “Hellenes, Nazarenes, and Other Jews: Heine the Fool” in The Discipline of Philosophy and the Invention of Modern Jewish Thought, (New York : Fordham University Press, 2013), 21-38.

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Eine Denkschrift Heine appears to be making this argument from the political right of Börne. That Heine does not himself believe that he is doing this is what makes Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift such a challenging text.

Firstly, it is important to note how the terms “Nazarene” and “Hellene” have evolved over time, because if the spiritualist/sensualist dichotomy obscured the pantheist reality that De L’Allemagne tried to put to the fore, by the time Heine writes Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift that dichotomy had transformed into the distinction between “Nazarenes” and “Hellenes.” In Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen, the Nazarene/Hellene distinction was for all intents and purposes synonymous with spiritualism and sensualism. By the time of the Börne book, this distinction had be sharpened in part because, unlike for example Friedrich Schlegel, it would have been impossible for Heine to argue that Ludwig Börne was some kind of political conservative and therefore simply a representative of spiritualism.28 One of the ways in which Heine transforms his conception of spiritualism into Nazarenism is through how he discusses the Middle Ages in Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift.

In a manner reminiscent of the Lucca books, Börne is not only Heine’s arch-rival, but like Gumpelino, Heine’s wan doppelgänger. In fact, he attributes some of his own older opinions about the Middle Ages to Ludwig Börne, leaving his more recent nuanced and developed understanding of the Middle Ages for himself. By having Börne as someone opposed or was prepared to reject the Middle Ages entirely, Heine is able to articulate his own appreciation of the “true” value of the Middle Ages, namely its art and the value of the forces that created that art. He also creates a space to contrast his own evolving “healthy” views with Börne’s decline. As a result, in a way that reflects the technique he had used in the Lucca books, Heine uses this ventriloquism to reveal his own support for the Middle Ages, something which Börne lacks, because unlike Heine, he has failed to come to terms with the problems of the past, and so, like the Romantics and the Swabians before him, he just wastes away.

28 András Imre Sandor notes that “The term was a result of his experience with Börne. Up to that time the Nazarenes whom Heine met were all religious people from the political right.” See A.I. Sandor, The Exile of Gods: Interpretation of a Theme, a Theory and a Technique in the Work of Heinrich Heine (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), 121, footnote 39.

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What is illuminating about this approach to Ludwig Börne is that, at least on paper, Heine and Börne end up looking not so different. They are both radical intellectuals of Jewish extraction, who had converted to Christianity, and they are both formidable critics and commentators on the progressive side of the political spectrum. Creating such substantial distinctions out of seemingly minor differences is one of the great accomplishments of this Denkschrift, and the Middle Ages will come to play a role in developing these distinctions. In Ludwig Börne, the Middle Ages will serve to highlight the differences between Börne’s “Nazarene” character and Heine’s “Hellene” character, especially in the realm of art.

The first mention of the Middle Ages in Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift occurs in Book I, during a visit by Heine to Börne in Frankfurt. As they are walking around the Jewish Ghetto, Börne says:

»Betrachten Sie diese Gasse,« sprach er seufzend, »und rühmen Sie mir alsdann das Mittelalter! Die Menschen sind todt, die hier gelebt und geweint haben, und können nicht widersprechen, wenn unsere verrückten Poeten und noch verrücktern Historiker, wenn Narren und Schälke von der alten Herrlichkeit ihre Entzückungen drucken lassen; aber wo die todten Menschen schweigen, da sprechen desto lauter die lebendigen Steine.«

In der That, die Häuser jener Straße sahen mich an, als wollten sie mir betrübsame Geschichten erzählen, Geschichten, die man wohl weiß, aber nicht wissen will, oder lieber vergäße, als daß man sie ins Gedächtniß zurückriefe. So erinnere ich mich noch eines giebelhohen Hauses, dessen Kohlenschwärze um so greller hervorstach, da unter den Fenstern eine Reihe kreideweißer Talglichter hingen; der Eingang, zur Hälfte mit rostigen Eisenstangen vergittert, führte in eine dunkle Höhle, wo die Feuchtigkeit von den Wänden herabzurieseln schien, und aus dem Innern tönte ein höchst sonderbarer, näselnder Gesang.29

One sees the subtle way in which Heine develops the contrast between Börne and himself. Börne’s comments about the Middle Ages would not seem out of place in Heine’s earlier work, as Börne (as Heine presents him) is clearly agitated by the ways in which the reality of Jewish

29 DHA 11, 22.

187 life in the Middle Ages has been ignored in favour of a whitewashed version that omits the darker aspects of their oppressed lives. However, when the voice shifts back to Heine, instead of expressing anger, Heine is gripped by a kind of melancholy about remembering a past that one does not want to remember.30

This act of forgetting is emphasized by the fact that Heine claims not to know the song they hear at the end of the passage, leaving Börne to explain that it is a Jewish lament. Again, Heine is here subtly contrasting Börne’s “Jewishness” (read: his Judeo-Christian spiritualist/Nazarene political character) with Heine’s “Hellene” nature. But this idea, of being forced to remember one’s past, and its role in developing stories, is something that Heine seems to want to reserve for himself, with Börne remaining at the more superficial level of the socio-political.

This is emphasized at the end of Book One, where Heine takes leave of Börne. Heine, who is now on his way to Munich, notes that Börne at this moment was happy and peaceable, but that this peace would not last, as he, like Heine, would wind up relocating to Paris. However, Heine asserts that where Börne’s metaphorical ship was unable to withstand the winds of opposition, Heine’s not only withstood them, but, in a clue to the hermeneutic key to the entire book, Heine could not reach out and grasp Börne’s hand to save him:

Ich durfte sie nicht erfassen, ich durfte die kostbare Ladung, die heiligen Schätze, die mir vertraut, nicht dem sicheren Verderben preisgeben ... Ich trug an Bord meines Schiffes die Götter der Zukunft.31

In other words, the precious cargo of Heine’s ship cannot even allow for Börne’s survival. In a seeming act of cruelty, Heine is alluding to the idea that had he allowed Börne on board, the sacred treasures entrusted to him would eventually be destroyed by none other than Börne himself. Heine contends that, as a Nazarene, Börne is on that side of the revolutionary party which seeks to destroy art in the name of progress, and it is Heine’s poetic duty to save this cargo from Nazarenes like Börne.

30 It is interesting to note that the Frankfurt ghetto is the setting for the final chapter of the Rabbi of Bacherach, which Heine likely wrote in and around the time that he composed Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift. 31 DHA 11, 34.

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Heine’s critical mission is emphasized in part two of the book, which purports to be a series of letters by Heine written from Helgoland in 1830.32 The entirety of book two serves to further distance Heine and Börne. Here, Heine portrays himself as more of an aesthete than his earlier work would actually betray:

Ich, der ich mich am liebsten damit beschäftige, Wolkenzüge zu beobachten, metrische Wortzauber zu erklügeln, die Geheimnisse der Elementargeister zu erlauschen und mich in die Wunderwelt alter Mährchen zu versenken ... ich mußte politische Annalen herausgeben, Zeitinteressen vortragen, revoluzionäre Wünsche anzetteln, die Leidenschaften aufstacheln, den armen deutschen Michel beständig an der Nase zupfen, daß er aus seinem gesunden Riesenschlaf erwache ...33

The inclusion of a mention of the species of elementary spirits is noteworthy. Beyond their appearance as a possible clue to the later dating of these letters, their appearance may also serve to backdate Heine’s desire to focus on elementary spirits and folk tales as part of his own cultural project. Heine is alluding to the fact that although he wished to pursue his higher calling, he instead had to become politically active and this ultimately led to a tension between his political views and his poetic calling. What follows in these letters from Helgoland is a subtle articulation of Heine’s ultimate desire, which was to effect a balance between the aesthetic and the political. This lack of balance is staged in these letters as a conflict between Judeo-Christianity and paganism, or, what Heine would now call, Hellenism and Nazarenism.

Perhaps the clearest indication that the Nazarene/Hellene distinction is operating underneath the surface of everything is in Heine’s equation of Shakespeare with the authors of the Bible:

Nur bey einem einzigen Schriftsteller finde ich etwas was an jenen unmittelbaren Styl der Bibel erinnert. Das ist Shakspear. Auch bey ihm tritt das Wort manchmal in jener schauerlichen Nacktheit hervor, die uns erschreckt und erschüttert; in den

32 There is much evidence to indicate that these letters were in fact written at around the same time as the composition of Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift itself, that is to say, 1839-40. For more on the background of these letters, see the introduction to Heinrich Heine and Jeffrey L. Sammons, Ludwig Börne: A Memorial (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006), xxxii. 33 DHA, 11, 35.

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Shakspearschen Werken sehen wir manchmal die leibhaftige Wahrheit ohne Kunstgewand. Aber das geschieht nur in einzelnen Momenten; der Genius der Kunst, vielleicht seine Ohnmacht fühlend, überließ hier der Natur sein Amt auf einige Augenblicke, und behauptet hernach um so eifersüchtiger seine Herrschaft in der plastischen Gestaltung und in der witzigen Verknüpfung des Dramas. Shakspear ist zu gleicher Zeit Jude und Grieche, oder vielmehr beide Elemente, der Spiritualismus und die Kunst, haben sich in ihm versöhnungsvoll durchdrungen, und zu einem höheren Ganzen entfaltet.34

For Heine, Shakespeare is both Jewish and Greek, both spiritualist and artistic, emphasizing Shakespeare’s wholeness, and his status as a timeless artist. With Shakespeare, Heine makes clear the opposition is between the spirit and art itself, which in turn represents a development from his earlier understanding of the spiritualist/sensualist distinction. Nevertheless, the example of Shakespeare reinforces the idea that Heine’s focus is on the balance between these opposing forces, and poses what I believe to be the central cultural and political question of the age for Heine:

Ist vielleicht solche harmonische Vermischung der beiden Elemente die Aufgabe der ganzen europäischen Civilisazion? Wir sind noch sehr weit entfernt von einem solchen Resultate.35

As he notes, Europe remains far away from this ideal, and admits that, even if Goethe has moved too far over to the Greek (Hellene) side, this is still better than the spiritualist Nazarenes because they cannot even write good poetry, which is a sign that German society has, for Heine, shifted too far over in the spiritualist direction.36 These letters serve to deepen and emphasize Heine’s own character as one who, while sensitive to political travails, is ultimately setting himself out on a different path from his contemporaries. This is important because when he meets up with Börne again in book three, this time in Paris in the 1830s, Heine is clearly a very different person from Börne, even if their politics appear on a superficial level rather similar. It is at this point

34 DHA 11, 45. 35 DHA 11, 45. 36 DHA 11, 45.

190 that Heine makes one of his most pronounced and famous remarks about the German Middle Ages.

When Heine encounters Börne in Paris, he notes that Börne is thinner and aristocratic-looking (a term that is only used by Heine pejoratively unless he is discussing Shakespeare). This description evokes a comparison to Heine’s nemesis from Die romantische Schule, A.W. Schlegel, whom he characterized in a similar manner. However, where Schlegel was indeed a proponent of the aristocracy, Börne was a republican. This poses something of a problem for Heine, as these two forms of government do not seem to be compatible. However, note what Heine has Börne argue:

»Ehemals wurde ich immer wüthend über diese Lobredner des Mittelalters. Ich habe mich aber an diesen Gesang gewöhnt und jetzt ärgere ich mich nur wenn die lieben Sänger in eine andere Tonart übergehen und beständig über unser Niederreißen jammern. Wir hätten gar nichts anderes im Sinne als alles niederzureißen. Und wie dumm ist diese Anklage! Man kann ja nicht eher bauen, ehe das alte Gebäude niedergerissen ist und der Niederreißer verdient eben so viel Lob als der Aufbauende, ja noch mehr, da sein Geschäft noch viel wichtiger ... Es ist wahr, viel gläubige Herrlichkeit blühte einst in den alten Mauern, und sie waren späterhin eine fromme Reliquie des Mittelalters, gar poetisch anzuschauen, des Nachts, im Mondschein ... Wem aber, wie meinem armen Vetter, als er mal vorbeyging, einige Steine dieses übriggebliebenen Mittelalters auf den Kopf fielen, (er blutete lange und leidet noch heute an der Wunde!),der verwünscht die Verehrer alter Gebäude und segnet die tapferen Arbeitsleute, die solche gefährliche Ruinen niederreißen ... Ja, sie haben sie niedergerissen, sie haben sie dem Boden gleich gemacht, und jetzt wachsen dort grüne Bäumchen und spielen kleine Kinder, des Mittags, im Sonnenlicht.«

In solchen Reden gab's keine Spur der früheren Harmlosigkeit, und der Humor des Mannes, worin alle gemüthliche Freude erloschen, ward mitunter gallenbitter, blutdürstig und sehr trocken. Das Abspringen von einem Gegenstand zum anderen entstand nichtmehr durch tolle Laune, sondern durch launische Tollheit, und war wohl zunächst

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der buntscheckigen Zeitungslektüre beyzumessen, womit sich Börne damals Tag und Nacht beschäftigte.37

In other words, Heine has Börne say something that Heine ultimately agrees with, but he implies that Börne’s Nazarene nature means that he will take things too far in a particular direction. Börne’s hatred of the Middle Ages is staged as a problem by Heine so that he can (as he already has done in De L’Allemagne) defend what is most valuable about the Middle Ages. If they start off from a place of partial agreement at this stage, we will see how Heine slowly but surely pulls them apart.

Heine ascribes to Börne a kind of madness, where he no longer sees the Hellenistic aspects of the Middle Ages, but only the harmful political institutions, leading Börne to argue in favour of tearing it all down in order to build something entirely new. Heine, on the other hand, implies that holding on to that which is beautiful from the past is a necessity. Where Börne is prepared to give up on the Middle Ages, on art or poetry (which Heine wryly argues Börne does, pointing to the decline in quality of Börne’s work over time), Heine cannot. This divide that separates Heine from Börne is emphasized again in book four, where Heine makes his claim about the virtues of medieval German poetry, and contends that Walther von der Vogelweide, and not Goethe (nor himself) was the greatest German lyric poet.

The context for this remark arises out of Heine’s discussion of the differences between the various liberal factions in Germany. Heine notes that much of the German liberalism currently being celebrated also contained within it figures who, not so long ago, had been of a more nationalistic anti-Semitic streak. It was these so-called “liberals” who held sway in Germany, whereas the more cosmopolitan liberals, such as himself and even Börne, were not only a minority, but as had been borne out of the publication ban, were being either hunted down and/or silenced by the reactionary state apparatus.

This more nationalistic group, which Heine referred to mockingly as “Deutschthümler” even though they were a minority, held power and influence in Germany, and it was for this reason that Heine and Börne appeared to have a common cause, even if, as Heine has persistently

37 DHA, 11, 60-1.

192 argued in this work, they are of fundamentally opposing natures. It is at this point that Heine again affirms that the preservation of the poetic is a politically progressive act worthy of support and defense.

Heine illustrates this profound difference in character between himself and Börne by recounting an argument that he and Börne had in Paris about the different kinds of arrivals. As Heine writes:

»Was thaten Sie – frug er mich einst – am ersten Tag Ihrer Ankunft in Paris? was war ihr erster Gang?« Er erwartete gewiß, daß ich ihm die Place Louis XV oder das Pantheon, die Grabmäler Rousseaus und Voltaires, als meine erste Ausflucht nennen würde, und er machte ein sonderbares Gesicht, als ich ihm ehrlich die Wahrheit gestand, daß ich nemlich gleich bey meiner Ankunft nach der Bibliotheque-royale gegangen und mir vom Aufseher der Manuskripte den Manessischen Codex der Minnesänger hervorholen ließ. Und das ist wahr; seit Jahren gelüstete mich, mit eignen Augen die theuern Blätter zu sehen, die uns unter Anderen die Gedichte Walters von der Vogelweide, des größten deutschen Lyrikers, aufbewahrt haben.38

This claim on Heine’s part is remarkable. Although he mentions the Manesse Codex in Die romantische Schule, nowhere else does he mention Walther von der Vogelweide as the greatest German lyric poet.39 Moreover, Heine, who is purportedly the arch anti-Romantic, proclaims that his first priority upon his arrival in Paris was to see the Manesse Codex, the medieval repository of German lyric poetry. In contrast to Börne, who venerated the French Revolution upon his arrival, Heine, in an act that marks Heine’s own brand of German cultural politics, the aesthetic heart of modern German poetry in Paris (Heine) sought out the aesthetic heart of medieval German poetry. Locating the soul of German poetry in a Paris library alludes to Heine’s own hopes for a German future, one where the political infrastructure of Germany resembles that of modern post-revolutionary France – while at its centre beats the heart of Germany poetry. The hope for a progressive politics allied to an aesthetically compelling poetics is central to Heine’s thought and work right up to the end of his life.

38 DHA 11, 92. 39 DHA 8/1, 194.

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Despite this illustration of that hope in the possibility of poetry, Ludwig Börne ends on a curiously somber note. Book five begins with a quotation taken from the De L’Allemagne, which had been censored in Germany, and which Heine uses as an example of how much worse things have become politically in Germany in the past five years. Heine continues to make his case for Börne’s failings, and how Börne’s obsession with the political at the expense of the aesthetic consumed his ability to write poetry, which in turn, Heine implies, led Börne to turn towards his old spiritualist nemesis, that Roman Catholic church.

For Heine, the Nazarene tendency to turn away from art poses a real danger to German cultural and political life. The intellectual importance of Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift is that it brings to the fore the danger posed by the Nazarenes (as exemplified by Börne, and those who, on the surface, betray progressive tendencies) to the restoration of Germany’s pantheist soul. Heine motivates this claim (and further deepens the differences between himself and Börne) by expanding on a distinction that he had discussed earlier in the Börne book: that of “talent” and “character.”

The genesis of this distinction is straightforward. Heine’s own critics, including Börne, had alleged that Heine lacked “character,” a term that had been ascribed by others to Heine as far back as 1831.40 In Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift Heine turns this criticism on its head by arguing that is the Hellenes’ celebration of “talent,” embodied in his praise of Walther von der Vogelweide and medieval architecture, is intrinsically good, while Börne’s culturally conservative emphasis on “character,” coupled with a purely negative critique of art (that resembles one might now call “virtue signaling”), leads to the suppression of art in favour of correctly perceived political positions:

Was versteht man unter dem Wort »Charakter?«

Charakter hat derjenige, der in den bestimmten Kreisen einer bestimmten Lebensanschauung lebt und waltet, sich gleichsam mit derselben identifizirt, und nie in Widerspruch geräth mit seinem Denken und Fühlen. Bey ganz ausgezeichneten, über ihr

40 The characterization (pun intended) was first used against Heine in the Wolfgang Menzel edited Morgenblatt periodical. See S.S. Prawer, Heine: The Tragic Satirist; a Study of the Later Poetry, 1827-1856 (Cambridge: University Press, 1961), 72.

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Zeitalter hinausragenden Geistern kann daher die Menge nie wissen, ob sie Charakter haben oder nicht, denn die große Menge hat nicht Weitblick genug, um die Kreise zu überschauen, innerhalb derselben sich jene hohen Geister bewegen.41

Turning Börne’s accusation that Heine “lacked character” around, Heine redefines “character” to mean someone who is unable (or unwilling) to live with the contrasts that are necessary for the creation of poetry. This is why, for Heine, writers such as Börne wind up giving up on art, as they can no longer bear these contradictions, and instead seek refuge away from art.

Towards the end of Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift, Heine recounts a dream which weaves in many of the themes Heine has been exploring. Heine writes that his dream took place in a great barren woods, and within these woods were to be found nymph-like women. However, there was something wrong with them:

Es waren schöne, nackte Frauenbilder, gleich den Nymphen, die wir auf den lüsternen Gemälden des Julio Romano sehen und die, in üppiger Jugendblüthe, unter sommergrünem Laubdach, sich anmuthig lagern und erlustigen ... Ach! kein so heiteres Schauspiel bot sich hier meinem Anblick! die Weiber meines Traumes, obgleich noch immer geschmückt mit dem Liebreitz ewiger Jugend, trugen dennoch eine geheime Zerstörniß an Leib und Wesen...42

In a way that reflects some of his earliest poetry, Heine finds himself in a forest setting. In contrast, here the trees are mostly gone, and instead of the Virgin Mary, or Venus, both symbols of feminine health, the classically-inspired women who populate this forest grow sicker. Despite this, Heine nevertheless finds one of them especially noteworthy:

Besonders eine unter diesen Frauen bewegte mein ganzes Herz mit einem fast wollüstigen Mitleid. Es war eine hohe Gestalt, aber noch weit mehr als die Anderen

41 DHA 11, 120. 42 DHA 11, 130-1.

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abgemagert an Armen, Beinen, Busen und Wangen, was jedoch statt abstoßend viel mehr zauberhaft anziehend wirkte.43

Nevertheless, Heine finds this sickliness attractive, an attraction to that which is potentially repellent which harkens back to his definition of the Romantic school its relationship to the Middle Ages and Christianity in Die romantische Schule. He tries to warm the nymph as it becomes increasingly clear that these women represent the enduring and fading presence of the pagan gods within the German lands:

Ich weiß nicht wie es kam, aber ehe ich mich dessen versah, daß ich neben ihr am Feuer, beschäftigt ihre frostzitternden Hände und Füße an meinen brennenden Lippen zu wärmen; auch spielte ich mit ihren schwarzen feuchten Haarflechten, die über das griechisch gradnäsige Gesicht und den rührend kalten, griechisch kargen Busen herabhingen ...44

Heine asks the nymph her age, and she gives him a vague reply that nevertheless indicates that she is ancient. Despite his best efforts, she continues to grow cold and tired and as she falls asleep on his lap, her companions converse in Greek, and speak about heading further into the forest, away from civilization. It is as this moment when a mob is heard:

Da plötzlich, in der Ferne, erhob sich ein Geschrey von rohen Pöbelstimmen ... Sie schrien, ich weiß nicht mehr was? ... Dazwischen kicherte ein katholisches Mettenglöckchen ...

Und meine schönen Waldfrauen wurden sichtbar noch blasser und magerer, bis sie endlich ganz in Nebel zerflossen, und ich selber gähnend erwachte.45

43 DHA 11, 131. 44 DHA 11, 131. 45 DHA 11, 130.

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The ending to Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift serves as a confirmation for the shift in Heine’s artistic and political preoccupations by the end of the 1830s. The medieval/pantheistic tension that he had articulated in De L’Allemagne was in danger of being completely subsumed by the Nazarene tendency that would allow to waste away that which was necessary and good about German culture, in particular the pagan gods who had remained ensconced in the amber of the Middle Ages.

With Ludwig Börne, Heine has done as much as he can in prose to make the case for the necessity of art as a precondition for a progressive politics, while emphasizing that this art must arise out of the cultural tensions of its own age. However, prose would only take Heine so far, and it is not entirely surprising that immediately after the publication of Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift, Heine began to return to writing poetry. However, in contrast to his poetry before De L’Allemagne, Heine returns to poetry in the 1840s having reconceived of the Middle Ages in a way that allows it to serve as the creative contrastive force for modern poetry. In the next chapter I will examine Heine’s mock-epic Atta Troll, and his synthesis of travel narrative and poetry, Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, in order to see how Heine’s renewed role for the Middle Ages continued to play a valuable and complicated role in Heine’s poetry, not only as a setting, but as a symbol for that which is worth preserving about the past, and as a weapon in his relentless struggle for the role of art within modern political discourse.

CHAPTER FIVE – ATTA TROLL AND DEUTSCHLAND: EIN WINTERMÄRCHEN

With Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen Heine returns in earnest to writing poetry. The length and scope of both poems is unique in Heine’s work, and as such they are often treated as works that exist “outside” the rest of his poetry. Both poems are successful at developing poetically much of the philosophical and cultural analysis that Heine had been expressing in prose throughout the 1830s. Although Heine’s 1836 “Tannhäuser” poem (which was examined in chapter three) serves as an ancestor (both formally and for its explicit calling back to the Middle Ages) to these more fully realized poems, in terms of both the mock-epic quality of Atta Troll as well as the chronicling of a journey that is also found in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, both poems take the ideas found in the “Tannhäuser” poem and take them in some fascinating directions.

I will be examining these poems in light of Heine’s contemporaneous thinking around the Middle Ages and its relationship to the emergence of the Nazarene/Hellene distinction that Heine had been developing in his prose writing of the late 1830s (some of which were examined in the previous chapter). I will argue that Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen serve to elucidate and enact Heine’s perspective on the role of the poet within contemporary culture, and the Middle Ages continue to serve as an enduring reference point for Heine’s poetic vision.

If, in the prose texts examined in chapters three and four, Heine employed a particular (if not always consistent) approach to the Middle Ages, I would argue that in these two poems, Heine achieves a poetic sublimation of the tying together of history, culture and politics that he had been working towards in his prose of the 1830s. Without being too heavy-handed, if up to this time Heine’s capacity to write poetry or prose were in a dialectical relationship with each other, and where he shifted away from poetry and towards stylized prose in the 1820s in order to better articulate and theorize his views on culture and aesthetics, he now returns to poetry in order to better articulate concepts which his prose could no longer fully capture.

In light of his prose writings in and around the 1840s, Heine’s return to poetry could, in retrospect, seem inevitable. The return to concentrating on poetry is suggested by his examination of the role of the poet in Shakspeares Mädchen und Frauen, his introduction to Don Quixote, and Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift. Just as these prose texts reflect a change in the

197 198 way in which Heine thought about the German Middle Ages, Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen push that engagement into the poetic realm. Both poems are pervaded by references to Heine’s unique appreciation for the Middle Ages, some of which call back to Heine’s earliest poetry, and also reveal how his nuanced understanding of the Middle Ages can be used to engage with his contemporary political and cultural milieu.

One of the fascinating implications of this is a shift on Heine’s part from seeing the Romantics as opponents, but rather, as we will see in particular with Atta Troll, as a potential aesthetic ally against Heine’s contemporary Nazarene opponents. Heine has moved on from Romanticism, but what makes Atta Troll, in Heine’s own words, “the last free song of Romanticism” is the persistence of these Romantic symbols, including many medievalized tropes, which Heine has imbued with a new cultural and political relevance. Heine is doing more than wallowing in nostalgia; he is poetically enacting his intellectual conceptions about the role the Middle Ages can play within modern art.

Therefore, as complementary poems, Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen reflect Heine’s mature attitude towards the role of art within history and politics. As such, it is important to consider them in tandem with each other – although Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen is the much more commonly read poem now, Atta Troll is very much a companion piece to it. As Jeffrey Sammons notes, “to suppress the one [poem, Atta Troll] at the expense of the other [poem, Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen] is not only to amputate Heine; it evades the effort to understand his own central dilemma.”1 Given that my own contention in this study is that the German Middle Ages is a major constituent of Heine’s dilemma about the role of the artist within society, an examination of both works, especially in light of everything that has been examined in this study, is in order.

1 Sammons, A Modern Biography, 268.

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Background on Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen

Although ultimately published later than Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, Heine began work on Atta Troll prior to it, in the fall of 1841. Perhaps as a result of their unusual size and subject matter, Heine wrote prefaces to both poems, explaining the circumstances of their genesis as well as the delay in their production and publication, which gives us an insight into his professed intentions. However, as is always the case with Heine (or any author for that matter), his stated intentions often serve as an act of misdirection, and should never be taken as the final word in terms of his authorial intentions.

For example, in his introduction to Atta Troll, Heine goes to some lengths to emphasize the apolitical character of the work. There are some strong autobiographical reasons for this emphasis: Atta Troll was written in the shadow of the debacle caused by the publication of Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift, and in his 1846 preface to Atta Troll, he argues that the poem is not to be taken seriously. He writes that at the time of its production, Germany was in the throes of a crackdown on “frivolous” poetry:

Ich habe oben mit besonderer Absicht angedeutet, in welcher Periode der Atta Troll entstanden ist. Damals blühte die sogenannte politische Dichtkunst. Die Opposizion, wie Ruge sagt, verkaufte ihr Leder und ward Poesie. Die Musen bekamen die strenge Weisung, sich hinführo nicht mehr müßig und leichtfertig umherzutreiben, sondern in vaterländischen Dienst zu treten, etwa als Marketenderinnen der Freyheit oder als Wäscherinnen der christlich germanischen Nazionalität.2

As a reaction to this restrictive political milieu, which Heine had written about extensively in Ludwig Borne and Der Schwabenspiegel, Heine conceived of and wrote Atta Troll: “Bey den ewigen Göttern! damals galt es die unveräußerlichen Rechte des Geistes zu vertreten, zumal in der Poesie.”3 He goes on to argue that (in spite of its “apolitical” character) Atta Troll provoked a negative response from those who, like Ludwig Börne, had denigrated his character because he

2 DHA 4, 10. 3 DHA 4, 10.

200 wrote poetry that seemed to have nothing to do with Germany’s political condition. Instead, Heine explains that he wrote it for his own pleasure and as an homage to his youth:

[...] ich schrieb dasselbe zu meiner eignen Lust und Freude, in der grillenhaften Traumweise jener romantischen Schule, wo ich meine angenehmsten Jugendjahre verlebt, und zuletzt den Schulmeister geprügelt habe. In dieser Beziehung ist mein Gedicht vielleicht verwerflich.4

Although I would never begrudge Heine’s admission that he enjoyed writing Atta Troll, as the earlier chapters of this study have shown, Heine’s years as a student of the Romantic school were not nearly as apolitical and free as he here argues, and it is precisely this struggle, between the aesthetic and the political, that Heine was now prepared to confront poetically. We will see how his intellectual spadework over the past decade allows him to successfully balance both aspects in Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, and how Heine’s self-fashioned understanding of the Middle Ages plays an important role in this balancing act.

That Atta Troll in particular provoked a reaction from the very people he had been critiquing serves to illustrate two things: firstly, that there is an explicitly political quality to the poem, reinforcing the notion that the preservation of the poetic requires a political expression even if it ostensibly proclaims the absence of a “politics.” Secondly, it shows that Heine was shifting what constituted the “political” in poetry. This shift not only confused his contemporaries, but continues to confuse readers of Heine today. I would argue both poems reveal that, for Heine, politics is more a matter of engagement with an opponent on an aesthetic level, and less a matter of ideology to be conveyed as a content of the poem. For Heine, bad poetry (and in turn, bad politics) happens when one attempts to set out an explicitly didactic “point” or message within a poem, in much the same way a superficial understanding of the Middle Ages as knights and Catholicism obscures the true value of the era for art.

In Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen Heine practices in poetry what he had articulated in his prose: a vision of the poet as someone who reflects on the contemporary world and its myriad contradictions, and who, through their uniquely aesthetic engagement with history

4 DHA 4, 11.

201 and culture, provides a clearer reading of contemporary culture than any historian or cultural critic (like Heine himself as a prose writer) or any “political” poet could, and who does this by presenting history through poetry in such a way as to communicate that history with an immediacy unavailable to the historian.

Atta Troll

Atta Troll, which was not published in its final version until 1846, was based on Heine’s visit to Cauterets, France in the summer of 1841, and was, as he indicated in the aforementioned preface, based on a vacation he took in the midst of the dispute that arose out of the publication of Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift.5

Atta Troll’s narrative is straightforward, if a bit odd. The titular character, Atta Troll, is a dancing bear who escapes his life of servitude in Cauterets and flees into the mountains, where he is eventually hunted down and shot by Laskaro (who will be discussed later) and the narrator of the poem (who is explicitly presented as being Heine himself). The first two capita set the stage for this story with Atta Troll’s escape from Cauterets, as well as situate the role of the poet- narrator within the narrative of the poem itself, where “Heine” is vacationing with his wife and happens to witness Atta Troll’s escape, and who, after a number of digressions, will eventually accompany the hunter Laskaro on his quest to kill Atta Troll.

In the first two capita, Heine grounds Atta Troll in the real world, where he is, for all intents and purposes, providing a poetic report on his visit to Cauterets and Atta Troll’s escape. However, Heine abandons this reportage early on, as he digresses for the first of many times from the main narrative in Caput Three. As night falls, the narrator enters into the dream world of the summer night and declares that the song of Atta Troll is “pointless,” like life, like love, like God and his creation: Traum der Sommernacht! Phantastisch Zwecklos ist mein Lied. Ja, zwecklos

5 As I mentioned in chapter four, Heine would return to Paris from this vacation to be challenged to a duel.

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Wie die Liebe, wie das Leben, Wie der Schöpfer sammt der Schöpfung!6

These lines have been held as a confirmation of Heine’s desire for Atta Troll to be an apolitical poem (or less charitably, “bordering on nonsense”).7 However, more recent scholarship has established quite clearly that Atta Troll is as preoccupied with politics as its more explicitly “political” companion poem Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen.8 Narratively and thematically, Atta Troll does have a “real” goal: hunting down Atta Troll, whose death will symbolize the triumph of Romantic “talent” over “character”-driven liberalism. I would suggest that this declaration of pointlessness is more than a declaration of the song’s lightness. Given how all- encompassing the pointlessness is (encompassing love, life and God), it resembles an expression of nihilism, and it is here where the poem really begins, at the seam between the waking and dreaming, between fantasy and reality, implying that the narrator’s declaration of pointlessness is not as definitive as it seems.

These fantastical digressions serve an important and useful function for the narrator throughout Atta Troll, because it is here where he enters the poetic realm, and where he recharges aesthetically. This is not to say that there are no fantastical elements during the waking parts of Atta Troll, but just to note that the digressions serve a structural role, in that the narrator needs to continually dip into these liminal spaces in order to endure the hunt for Atta Troll. Even in this “pointless” poem, it is worth taking Heine’s own dictum seriously, that the poets are true historians of our age, and to ask ourselves what might Atta Troll (and later, Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen) have to say about the current cultural conditions that obtain in Europe, or like any work of great art, about how it reflects the cultural conditions of our own age?

6 DHA 4, 17 7 For a scholarly example of Atta Troll as a political retreat, see Benno von Wiese, Signaturen: Zu Heinrich Heine und Seinem Werk (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1976), 144. The quote about “nonsense” is from Sammons, The Elusive Poet, 276. 8 Nigel Reeves, among others, has pointed out the relationship between Atta Troll and Ludwig Börne’s politics, something that will be discussed later. See Nigel Reeves, “‘Eine alte Romanze’: Heinrich Heine and the Roland Saga”, in Heine Jahrbuch 46 (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2007), 162-3.

203

As if to affirm the ostensible “pointlessness” of his poem, the narrator mounts a winged horse and proceeds to allow his mythical steed to bear him wherever it wants to go:

Trage mich wohin du willst! Ueber luftig steilen Bergpfad, Wo Kaskaden angstvoll kreischend Vor des Unsinns Abgrund warnen!

Trage mich durch stille Thäler, Wo die Eichen ernsthaft ragen Und den Wurzelknorrn entrieselt Uralt süßer Sagenquell!9

In Atta Troll Heine constantly weaves the poetic world with the natural world – the legends and sagas stream up from the twisted roots of the oak tree, illustrating the necessity of both as features within the dream/poetic world through which Heine will compose Atta Troll as a sophisticated commentary on his current age. The aesthetic and bodily necessity of this fusion is evinced when the narrator asks for permission to drink from this stream of sagas: by drinking from these ancient stories, the narrator will acquire the all-seeing and all-knowing properties that the poet requires to be able to present a true history of the age:

Laß mich trinken dort und nässen Meine Augen – ach, ich lechze Nach dem lichten Wunderwasser Welches sehend macht und wissend.10

In his communion with the magical water the narrator gains the ability to see everything, including the location of Atta Troll. He “visits” Atta Troll’s lair and discovers that he

9 DHA 4, 18. 10 DHA 4, 18.

204 understands his “Bärensprache.” From this moment forward, the poet’s view of the real world is suffused with the poetic tradition the narrator had just imbibed.

Heine brings the Middle Ages into Atta Troll right on cue at the very beginning of Caput Four, the very moment the narrator has found poetic refreshment. Although “Heine” asks the Pegasus to lead him anywhere, it does not lead him very far, instead taking him to the area of Roland’s Breach, a gap in the Pyrenees said to have been cut by Roland himself. The poet realises that his dream vision has taken him straight to Roncesvalles, the location of the death of Roland, a famous medieval figure who looms large in the German Romantic imaginary, as well as the subject of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (a work Heine explicitly mentions he had been reading while he wrote Atta Troll)11:

Ronceval, du edles Thal! Wenn ich deinen Namen höre, Bebt und duftet mir im Herzen Die verschollne blaue Blume!12

Heine’s association of Roland and the blue flower ties together the medieval and the Romantic, expanding the scope of the association of Roland to the chivalric romances of Arnim and Fouqué by way of Novalis. Heine clearly no longer feels the need to justify this association, as he had in his prose leading up to the writing of Atta Troll, but can be freely expressed and examined within the poetic dreamscape. The medieval stories of knights and their battles can once again co-exist with the Romanticism of Novalis, because Heine no longer worries about his own motivations when it comes to using the Middle Ages as a source of poetic imagery – both he and the Romantics recognized its value. However, at the very heart of this site of medieval and Romantic reconciliation hides someone who would destroy it all:

In dem Thal von Ronceval, Unfern von der Rolandsscharte –

11 Nigel Reeves has a thorough discussion on Heine and his use of the Roland myth in Atta Troll. See Reeves, ‘Eine alte Romanze’, 158-71. 12 DHA 4, 18.

205

So geheißen weil der Held, Um sich einen Weg zu bahnen,

Mit dem guten Schwert Duranda Also todesgrimmig einhieb In die Felswand, daß die Spuren Bis auf heut'gem Tage sichtbar –

Dort in einer düstren Steinschlucht, Die umwachsen von dem Buschwerk Wilder Tannen, tief verborgen, Liegt die Höhle Atta Trolls.13

Instead of the Romantics, who had long been a thorn in Heine’s side, the interloper at the heart of Roncesvalles, and therefore the heart of the medieval Romantic imaginary, is Atta Troll, whose location marks him as a pretender to Charlemagne’s throne.14 What makes Atta Troll a pretender? Numerous attempts have been made over the years to definitively identify as to whom Atta Troll might refer, with Ludwig Börne emerging as a strong candidate as the man in the bear costume. 15 However, as much as Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift used Ludwig Börne as a springboard for a larger conversation about the role of art in politics, Atta Troll (whom Heine literally referred to as a “Tendenzbär”) is better thought of as a cipher for a series of political and cultural tendencies Heine had identified within contemporary culture, tendencies that must be identified and eliminated through the “death” of Atta Troll. As Ritchie Robertson notes:

13 DHA, 4, 19. 14 The idea that Heine’s political focus has shifted away from the Romantics is discussed in Ritchie Robertson’s chapter on Atta Troll in his book on mock epics. See Ritchie Robertson, Mock-epic Poetry from Pope to Heine, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 381-82. 15 See for example, the Barker Fairley’s introduction to Atta Troll in Heinrich Heine, Atta Troll, Ein Sommernachtstraum: Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, edited by Barker Fairley (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).

206

Atta Troll is above all a representative of the modern world. Described in his comic epitaph as a ‘Tendenzbär’ or committed bear, he expresses in his successive speeches a large number of incompatible political commitments. As father of a family, he embodies the ideal of Biedermeier domesticity. He is suitably pious, warning the Germans not to be misled by the radical philosophers Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer into adopting atheism, and convinced that the world is governed by a divine polar bear.16

This is the key to how Heine now engages in political discourse through his poetry in Atta Troll. Heine is less interested in articulating an ideology or didactically arriving at an obvious conclusion, so much as he is interested in political engagement, and creating reactions within the space of his opponents’ political illogic. Heine is comfortable in Atta Troll with taking on the mantle of Romanticism and valourizing Charlemagne and the Middle Ages because he has successfully reconceived of the Middle Ages as bearing a different social and cultural trajectory from the one that had so threatened him in his youth.

In Heine’s eyes, far worse now than the Romantics are people like Ludwig Börne who do not care about the German Middle Ages at all as a representative for poetry, or the Swabian poets who continue to use the German Middle Ages in a sterile way that late Romantics such as Uhland eventually abandoned. By appropriating Romanticism and its medievalizing tendencies in Atta Troll, but with his own progressive twist, Heine reaffirms his commitment to the German past but only if it might provide the foundation for a progressive future. This is perhaps why Heine has Atta Troll, in capita five through ten, declaiming on the rights of man (and animals) in the heart of the land of Roland. The expression of revolutionary political opinions in Roncesvalles is an ironic gesture that, in retrospect to Atta Troll’s fate, hints to the reader that Atta Troll is no hero; rather he is an occupier, and we should be hoping that the hunt for him will succeed.17

16 Robertson, Mock-Epic Poetry, 386. 17 Although Heine explicitly mentions at the end of Atta Troll that he had been reading Orlando Furioso, Nigel Reeves has comprehensively examined Heine’s relationship to the Roland saga, a relationship that he notes begins with a poem published in 1821, and which continues up to Atta Troll. (See Reeves, ‘Eine alte Romanze’, 158). Reeves also persuasively argues that Heine had read both Fouqué and Friedrich Schlegel’s versions of the Roland saga, demonstrating again that much of Heine’s understanding of the European Middle Ages comes from explicitly German Romantic sources.

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Laskaro and Uraka

In Caput Eleven, the poem shifts perspective away from Atta Troll’s political opinions back to the hunt narrative, with “Heine” accompanying the hunter Laskaro on the bear hunt. However, if his description of the region took on a poetic cast during his time observing Atta Troll, the reality of the French and Spanish border is far less hospitable. Rather than the medieval pageantry of Orlando Furioso or the chivalric romances Heine so loved in his youth, the hunters encounter a dilapidated bridge, and an old man who sings about Clara (perhaps a sly reference to his own very early Buch der Lieder poem “Don Ramiro”). When they arrive at a nearby inn, the food is mediocre and the bed full of bedbugs. The spell of the folk waters has been broken, and Heine’s disenchantment will only leave him after another encounter with the embodied folk tales that populate Atta Troll. Crucial factors in the narrator’s re-enchantment (and the victory over Atta Troll) are his companions on the hunt, the hunter Laskaro and his mother Uraka.

Although “Heine” had been accompanying Laskaro for quite some time, he really only begins to make Laskaro a part of the narrative in Caput Twelve. As the narrator disenchants the boring reality that is the “thrill of the hunt”, and complains about all the climbing he has had to do, he mentions some remarkable hearsay about his companion before resuming his material complaints about the hike:

Neben mir schritt der Laskaro, Blaß und lang, wie eine Kerze; Niemals spricht er, niemals lacht er, Er, der todte Sohn der Hexe.

Ja, es heißt, er sey ein Todter, Längstverstorben, doch der Mutter, Der Uraka, Zauberkünste Hielten scheinbar ihn am Leben. –18

18 DHA 4, 39.

208

In light of this study, the idea that Laskaro is the Middle Ages back from the dead, with his mother representing the pantheistic basis upon which German culture is founded seems too obvious to resist. This reading is affirmed when the hunting party of two finally arrives at the hut of Laskaro’s mother Uraka in Caput Seventeen. Its location in the mountains is in stark contrast to Atta Troll’s valley den:

Dort, am schaurig steilsten Abhang, Lugt in's Thal, wie eine Warte, Der Uraka keckes Häuslein; Dorthin folgt ich dem Laskaro.19

Laskaro came to his mother not only to rest before the hunt, but also to converse with her about how to defeat Atta Troll, and it will be her mimicry of Mumma’s (Atta Troll’s partner) call that lures Atta Troll out of his cave and to his death:

Mit der Mutter hielt er Rath, In geheimster Zeichensprache, Wie der Atta Troll gelockt Und getödtet werden könne.20

It is this meeting of opposites, of the cave dwelling Atta Troll with the mountain dwelling Uraka and Laskaro, that forms not only the backbone of Atta Troll’s symbolic world, but also reproduces, albeit in a modern setting, the very conditions that Heine has repeatedly argued are the preconditions for great poetry. Much like the Middle Ages and pantheism, Laskaro and Uraka are well known but poorly understood. Most of what the narrator knows about Uraka comes from hearsay:

Ob die Alte, die Uraka, Wirklich eine ausgezeichnet

19 DHA 4, 50. 20 DHA 4, 50.

209

Große Hexe, wie die Leute In den Pyreneen behaupten,

Will ich nimmermehr entscheiden [...]

[...] Man versichert gar sie habe, Streichelnd mit den dürren Händen, Manches fette Schwein getödtet Und sogar die stärksten Ochsen.

Solcherley Verbrechens wurde Sie zuweilen auch verklagt Bey dem Friedensrichter. Aber Dieser war ein Voltairianer,

Ein modernes, flaches Weltkind, Ohne Tiefsinn, ohne Glauben, Und die Kläger wurden skeptisch, Fast verhöhnend, abgewiesen.21

The official secular history has obscured Uraka’s true nature, but it is also what saved her, as the “Voltairean” judge dismissed her magic out of hand and let her go. As a result, she has been able to ply her trade as a witch out in the open in part because no one in authority believes in her anymore. However, this dismissal of her abilities by a secular authority is precisely what is going to allow the hunt for Atta Troll to succeed:

Offiziell treibt die Uraka Ein Geschäft, das sehr honett; Denn sie handelt mit Bergkräutern Und mit ausgestopften Vögeln [...]

21 DHA 4, 50-1.

210

[...] Diese aber, die Uraka, Kauert neben ihrem Sohne, Dem Laskaro, am Kamine. Kochen Bley und gießen Kugeln.

Gießen jene Schicksalskugel, Die den Atta Troll getödtet. Wie die Flammen hastig zuckten Ueber das Gesicht der Hexe!22

After the Wild Hunt sequence in Atta Troll (a series of capita which I will be discussing immediately after Laskaro and Uraka), the narrator observes Laskaro and Uraka’s final preparations before the final push to kill Atta Troll in Caput Twenty-One, where Uraka administers the nightly salve that sustains Laskaro’s life:

Aus dem Töpfchen nahm Uraka Rothes Fett, bestrich damit Ihres Sohnes Brust und Rippen, Rieb sie hastig, zitternd hastig.

Und derweil sie rieb und salbte, Summte sie ein Wiegenliedchen, Näselnd fein; dazwischen seltsam Knisterten des Heerdes Flammen.

Wie ein Leichnam, gelb und knöchern, Lag der Sohn im Schooß' der Mutter; Todestraurig, weit geöffnet Starren seine bleichen Augen.

22 DHA 4, 51-2.

211

Ist er wirklich ein Verstorb'ner, Dem die Mutterliebe nächtlich Mit der stärksten Hexensalbe Ein verzaubert Leben einreibt? –23

To repeat my rough analogy, sickly Laskaro, who may in fact be dead, represents German Romanticism, while his mother Uraka represents German pantheism. The description of how Laskaro is cradled by his mother strongly suggests the Catholic Pietà here recoded by Heine into a pantheistic setting. What I would like to develop is their relationship to each other, namely that it is Uraka the pantheist who sustains Laskaro the medieval Romantic, and it is through Uraka’s sustenance, her preservation of the old pre-Christian folk wisdom within a Christian context, that both connects her directly to the medieval folk tales that Heine recounted in Elementargeister as well as to the German Romantic tradition. Without this pantheism, the Middle Ages the German Romantics revered has no forward motion, an idea which Heine repeatedly expressed in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, and it is the recovery and exposure of this pantheistic reality that Heine attempted to present in Elementargeister. In the figures of Uraka and Laskaro, these ideas find a poetic realization.

I would argue that their central role in the hunt narrative speaks to the fact that Heine is thematising those aspects of the past that he has argued are necessary for poetic sustenance and inspiration. It is ultimately Uraka and Laskaro who defeat Atta Troll, with Heine the narrator serving as a chronicler of this modern epic history. It allows Heine to practice his politics of engagement – he can critically observe what Laskaro and Uraka are doing, he can question from a safe distance whether or not the stories of their supernatural aspects are true, allowing this intermingling of opposites to create the tension out of which his new poetry can be fashioned, a poetry that finds its fullest voice in Atta Troll in the Wild Hunt.

23 DHA, 4, 66

212

The Wild Hunt

The Wild Hunt is the imaginative centerpiece of Atta Troll, a fantasy pageant that blends history, mythology and satire. Although Heine observes the procession awake, it takes place at midnight, and Heine discovers it after experiencing sensory overload in Uraka’s cabin and seeking some fresh air:

Schwül bedrückt von Schauernissen, Ging ich, freye Luft zu schöpfen, An das Fenster, und ich schaute Dort hinab in's weite Thal.

Was ich sah zu jener Stunde – Zwischen Mitternacht und Eins – Werd' ich treu und hübsch berichten In den folgenden Capiteln.24

It is in the Wild Hunt sequence where Atta Troll achieves something of a synthesis of dream and waking life. The Wild Hunt is an elaborate parade of ghosts and spirits whose provenance dates to the early Middle Ages, and Heine would have likely known about it from both Dobenek’s Des deutschen Mittelalters Volksglauben und Heroensagen and Jacob Grimm’s Deutscher Mythologie, both of which likely derive their accounts from the Canon Episcopi, a 10th century passage of canon law.25 Although Heine very clearly borrows heavily from these sources, the first Wild Hunt caput (which discusses the various figures who populate the hunt) features a number of references that connect directly to the cultural and aesthetic preoccupations I have examined in this study.

In Atta Troll, the Wild Hunt takes place on the eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist (June 23), which both locates it in and around the summer solstice, but also neatly encapsulates the Christian and the pre-Christian: John the Baptist is a herald for Christ, but not himself a

24 DHA 4, 52. 25 DHA 4, 767.

213

Christian. As Heine the narrator watches the parade of spirits, he calls out a number by name, and who he sees has a particular relevance for this study. For example, King Arthur is present, as well as another figure who clearly connects this scene to the Middle Ages:

Und Herr Ogier, der Däne, Trug er nicht den schillernd grünen Ringenpanzer, daß er aussah Wie ein großer Wetterfrosch?26

Although Heine seems to be conflating different historical Ogiers (the green armour implies that Heine is thinking of Ogier of Savoy, a 14th Century nobleman whose brother was known as the Green Count of Savoy), Ogier the Dane was, like Roland, another knight in Charlemagne’s retinue. Both King Arthur’s and Ogier’s explicit presence point to the aspects of cultural history that Heine celebrates in Atta Troll, namely the courtly tradition and the stories of the Middle Ages. As a sign that this medieval and literary cultural history is tied to Heine’s more modern literary inheritance, immediately after seeing Ogier and Arthur, he observes the “Helden des Gedankens,”27 namely Goethe and Shakespeare, connecting the medieval heroes with the great poets:

Auch der Helden des Gedankens Sah ich manchen in dem Zuge. Ich erkannte unsern Wolfgang An dem heitern Glanz der Augen –

Denn verdammt von Hengstenberg Kann er nicht im Grabe ruhen, Und mit heidnischem Gelichter Setzt er fort des Lebens Jagdlust.

26 DHA 4, 54. 27 DHA 4, 54.

214

An des Mundes holdem Lächeln Hab' ich auch erkannt den William, Den die Puritaner gleichfalls Einst verflucht; auch dieser Sünder

Muß das wilde Heer begleiten Nachts auf einem schwarzen Rappen [...]28

However, in this pageant of literary and historical great men, modernity finds itself tethered uneasily to the past in the figure of Franz Horn, a German literary critic and Shakespeare scholar:

An der matten Betermiene, An der frommen weißen Schlafmütz, An der Seelenangst, erkannt' ich Unsern alten Freund Franz Horn!29

Horn comes in for some gentle mockery by Heine (he rides a donkey as a Sancho Panza-like caricature alongside Shakespeare), and his attendance with Shakespeare in the Wild Hunt reminds the reader that in modernity, the mythological co-exists (necessarily, but often awkwardly) with the contemporary. Many of the various figures who have populated much of Heine’s prose over the past decade are imaginatively highlighted in this procession.

After the narrator has described who he has seen of the heroes of the courtly and aesthetic realm leading the procession, Heine turns his attention to the women in the parade, three of whom, it will turn out, are its leaders. Like the men, they represent the mythological and the medieval. Although the poetic is not represented by female poets, which given Heine’s clearly gendered view of the role of women not as poets but as inspiration for poets, should unfortunately not come as a surprise, one might suggest that given Heine’s own poetic preoccupations, the pageant of women represents the spirit of poetry itself, especially given who leads the Wild Hunt:

28 DHA 4, 54. 29 DHA 4, 54.

215

Auch der Damen sah ich viele In dem tollen Geisterzuge, Ganz besonders schöne Nymphen, Schlanke, jugendliche Leiber.

Rittlings saßen sie zu Pferde, Mythologisch splitternackt; Doch die Haare fielen lockigt Lang herab, wie goldne Mäntel [...]

[...] Neben ihnen sah ich ein'ge Zugeknöpfte Ritterfräulein, Schräg auf Damensätteln sitzend, Und den Falken auf der Faust.30

In Caput Nineteen the three female leaders (Diana, Abundia and Herodias) are introduced. All three figures are derived from the medieval Wild Hunt myth but are new to Heine’s symbolic world, and they will preoccupy him for the remainder of his vision:

Aber als der Schönheit Kleeblatt Ragten in des Zuges Mitten Drey Gestalten – Nie vergeß' ich Diese holden Frauenbilder.31

As others have noted, the reference to the three women as a clover implies that they are reflections of the same overarching being, functioning as a pantheist Trinity in contrast to the Christian one.32 Diana, Abundia and Herodias appeared repeatedly together in medieval texts

30 DHA 4, 55-6. 31 DHA 4, 56. 32 Ritchie Robertson mentions this association, which he took in turn from S.S. Prawer, who sees these figures as Heine drawing on mythic archetypes. See Robertson, Mock-Epic Poetry, 400.

216 around witchcraft, often as different figurations of the same woman, but who all have a medieval provenance. As Ritchie Robertson notes:

They are the women Heine read about in the medieval traditions: Diana, the ancient Greek goddess of chastity and the hunt, now possessed by raging nymphomania; Abunde, the Celtic fairy, who looks delightful but is utterly heartless; and most fascinating of all, Herodias, who in the Bible demanded the head of John the Baptist and who appears exotic, Oriental, passionate and ill.33

Heine then goes on to describe each of them in turn. Diana is the Goddess of the Hunt, marble- like in her appearance:

Auch das Antlitz weiß wie Marmor Und wie Marmor kalt. Entsetzlich War die Starrheit und die Blässe Dieser strengen edlen Züge.34

The woman as a cold, marble statue who has unleashed her sexual potential is a symbol Heine has used throughout his poetry. In “Die Weihe” (examined in chapter 1), this connection between the chaste statue of the Virgin Mary is contrasted with its transformation into a beautiful woman who gives the poet narrator the impetus to see the world. In a similar fashion, Diana’s marble coldness barely conceals a sensual fire, although in contrast to the earlier poem, Heine mentions that this fire is often quenched:

Spät zwar, aber desto stärker Ist erwacht in ihr die Wollust, Und es brennt in ihren Augen Wie ein wahrer Höllenbrand.35

33 Robertson, Mock-Epic Poetry, 399. 34 DHA 4, 56. 35 DHA 4, 57.

217

If Diana suggests a Venus-like figure, a Greek goddess, pressed into the service of a Christianized pagan hunt, the second woman leading the hunt, Abunda, fulfills a different role, that of a Celtic fairy, her blue dress signaling perhaps a connection to Romanticism:36

Neben ihr ritt eine Schöne, Deren Züge nicht so griechisch Streng gemessen, doch sie stralten Von des Celtenstammes Anmuth.

Dieses war die Fee Abunde, Die ich leicht erkennen konnte An der Süße ihres Lächelns Und am herzlich tollen Lachen!

Ein Gesicht, gesund und rosig, Wie gemalt von Meister Greuze, Mund in Herzform, stets geöffnet, Und entzückend weiße Zähne.37

However much Heine praises these two women in Atta Troll, he reserves his highest adoration for Herodias, the wife of King Herod and murderer of John the Baptist:

Und das dritte Frauenbild, Das dein Herz so tief bewegte, War es eine Teufelinne Wie die andern zwo Gestalten?

[...] Wirklich eine Fürstinn war sie, War Judäas Königinn,

36 Robertson, Mock-Epic Poetry, 406 37 DHA 4, 57.

218

Des Herodes schönes Weib, Die des Täufers Haupt begehrt hat...

In den Händen trägt sie immer Jene Schüssel mit dem Haupte Des Johannes, und sie küßt es; Ja, sie küßt das Haupt mit Inbrunst.

Denn sie liebte einst Johannem – In der Bibel steht es nicht, Doch im Volke lebt die Sage Von Herodias' blut'ger Liebe –38

Despite her penchant for murder, the narrator loves Herodias most of all, and after his description of the Wild Hunt, and upon waking the next day he pledges his love to her in a courtly way, as a knight, where old Jewish men will think he is mourning the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple when in reality he is (Quixote-like) pledging to sit at her tomb in Jerusalem and weep for her.

This passage, the only one in Atta Troll where Heine specifically evokes the idea of knighthood, appeares after he, Laskaro and Uraka have resumed the hunt, and Heine, tired, sits down next to a tree with a spring running past it.

Endlich müd' und traurig sank ich Nieder auf die weiche Moosbank, Unter jener großen Esche, Wo die kleine Quelle floß,

Die mit wunderlichem Plätschern Also wunderlich bethörte

38 DHA 4, 58-9. For more on Heine’s textual sources for Herodias, see Waldemar Kloss, “Herodias the Wild Huntress in the Legend of the Middle Ages,” Modern Language Notes 23, no. 3 (1908): 82-5.

219

Mein Gemüth, daß die Gedanken Und das Denken mir vergingen.

Es ergriff mich wilde Sehnsucht Wie nach Traum und Tod und Wahnsinn, Und nach jenen Reuterinnen, Die ich sah im Geisterheerzug.39

As in the Caput Three, the narrator finds poetic refreshment next to a place of water, and in his “wilden Sehnsucht” he depicts where the three women flee after the hunt. Here Heine recalls his Elementargeister and the idea that mythological/folkloric figures remain demonized even in a secularized 19th century Europe, forced to seek refuge from those who would destroy their life (and art) giving capacities. While Diana lives in ancient temple ruins, Abunda lives in Avalon, seeking refuge from the Nazarenes:

Auch die schöne Fee Abunde Fürchtet sich vor Nazarenern, Und den Tag hindurch verweilt sie In dem sichern Avalun.

Dieses Eiland liegt verborgen Ferne, in dem stillen Meere Der Romantik, nur erreichbar Auf des Fabelrosses Flügeln.40

This passage is the only one in Atta Troll which specifically mentions Heine’s Hellene/Nazarene distinction. Abunda is an interesting choice here in part because, when one thinks back to De L’Allemagne, Heine would have argued that the representatives of Romanticism were part of the spiritualist tendencies that were destroying Germany’s political culture. Here the representative

39 DHA 4, 61. 40 DHA 4, 62.

220 of Romanticism in the Wild Hunt flees from the Nazarenes who threaten to destroy art in the service of politics, in a way that resonates with the wan nymphs who tremble at the sounds of the church bells that end Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift. Heine’s preoccupation in the 1840s has clearly shifted away from a concern about the Romantics using the Middle Ages to serve a reactionary politics to a concern about an ostensibly progressive politics on a slippery slope rightward, with an additional worry that those “liberal” Nazarenes will take art and poetry with them. With the aforementioned pledge to be a knight in Herodias service, the Wild Hunt capita end.

With the Wild Hunt Heine has achieved a kind of poetic synthesis of all that he values culturally and aesthetically, all in the service of the eventual destruction of Atta Troll. Although much has been made of this section and its rich symbology of desire, what is important for this study is that this trio’s provenance emerges out of the very same medieval crucible that Heine had said would provide renewed nourishment for German art and culture. There is a renewed comfort on Heine’s part with the Middle Ages, but the Middle Ages that Heine celebrates and valorizes in Atta Troll is of a different character from his earlier work. In rescuing the Middle Ages from Romanticism, Heine has shifted the very meaning of the symbols that constitute his Romantic heritage.

This shift serves to explain why Heine’s knightly persona is virtually absent from the text, as is the nightingale, which only appears in a highly self-referential postscript to Atta Troll that functions as a poetic coda to his prologue. Addressed to August Varnhagen von Ense, he admits in the final capita to having read a lot of Ariosto, and to falling back into those old dreams of his youth, back to the forest chapel of “Die Weihe”. Note the use of “fromme” and “Waldkapelle” here, which clearly connects this moment back to his earliest poetry:

Manchmal lachst du gar im Lesen! Doch mitunter mag sich ernsthaft Deine hohe Stirne furchen, Und Erinn'rung überschleicht dich: –

»Klang das nicht wie Jugendträume, Die ich träumte mit Chamisso

221

Und Brentano und Fouqué, In den blauen Mondscheinnächten?

Ist das nicht das fromme Läuten Der verlornen Waldkapelle? Klingelt schalkhaft nicht dazwischen Die bekannte Schellenkappe?41

Despite this evocation of his past, in a way that also recalls Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand, the chorus of nightingales, who sing only after Atta Troll has been defeated, nevertheless find themselves in persistent competition with the bear’s drums:

In die Nachtigallenchöre Bricht herein der Bärenbrummbaß, Dumpf und grollend, dieser wechselt Wieder ab mit Geisterlispeln! [...]

[...] Ja, mein Freund, es sind die Klänge Aus der längst verscholl'nen Traumzeit; Nur daß oft moderne Triller Gaukeln durch den alten Grundton. 42

Atta Troll, this poem that Heine has declared “zwecklos,” ends on a decidedly nostalgic note, an old song suffused with the new, although it is only at the end of Atta Troll where Heine explicitly uses the overt symbols of his earliest poetry, suggesting a certain level of irony in his own description of this poem in this literary context of his time:

Trotz des Uebermuthes wirst du Hie und dort Verzagniß spüren – Deiner wohlerprobten Milde

41 DHA 4, 85. 42 DHA 4, 85.

222

Sey empfohlen dies Gedicht!

Ach, es ist vielleicht das letzte Freye Waldlied der Romantik! In des Tages Brand- und Schlachtlerm Wird es kümmerlich verhallen.43

Having declared Atta Troll perhaps the last free song of Romanticism, instead of invoking the nightingale again, Heine suggests other, decidedly less poetic birds. The ambiguity here, about his own early poetry as well as the state of poetry today is clear:

Andre Zeiten, andre Vögel! Andre Vögel, andre Lieder! Welch ein Schnattern, wie von Gänsen, Die das Capitol gerettet!

Welch ein Zwitschern! Das sind Spatzen, Pfennigslichtchen in den Krallen; Sie gebehrden sich wie Jovis Adler mit dem Donnerkeil!

Welch ein Gurren! Turteltauben, Liebesatt, sie wollen hassen, Und hinführo statt der Venus Nur Bellonas Wagen ziehen!

Welch ein Summsen, welterschütternd! Das sind ja des Völkerfrühlings Kolossale Mayenkäfer, Von Berserkerwuth ergriffen!

43 DHA 4, 86.

223

Andre Zeiten! andre Vögel! Andre Vögel, andre Lieder! Sie gefielen mir vielleicht, Wenn ich andre Ohren hätte!44

This last section seems to betray an agnosticism to his own poetic project. Which songs does the narrator not like? His own? Or perhaps those contemporary poems that encourage war over love, as evinced by his contrast of Venus with Bellona, the Roman goddess of war. Despite the fact that this “free” time of youth has passed, Heine manages to achieve in Atta Troll a remarkable synthesis of his own poetic history with a critique of what he saw as the greatest danger to art of his day: a liberalism that would destroy the possibility of art in the service of “character”.

Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen

If Atta Troll represents the classical/Romantic pastiche that Heine had begun to explore in the first part of his “Tannhäuser” poem, Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen represents that poem’s ending and its early attempt to marry his travelogues with his poetry. In the companion poem to Atta Troll, Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, Heine returns to Germany to settle old scores. Here, in contrast to his more sympathetic portrayal of Romanticism in Atta Troll, he re-enacts his critique of the Romantic movement, in large part by re-examining some of the emerging German nationalist sites that point directly to the Middle Ages, such as the proposed rebuilding of the Cologne Cathedral, and in his dream encounter with Barbarossa, who, like Duke Ogier in Atta Troll, remains asleep in a mountain, in order to come to Germany’s rescue. If Atta Troll is an imaginative homage to Heine’s youth seen lovingly (if critically) through his older eyes and told from the relative distance of the Spanish/French border, Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen is a poetic fictionalization of Heine’s real journey through the heart of the Germany to Hamburg to visit his mother. As a result, it abandons the more freely associative aspects and subtle critique

44 DHA 4, 86-7.

224 of Atta Troll in favour of a politically forceful poetic rendering of one’s of Heine’s most popular prose forms, that of the travel narrative.

From the beginning of the poem, which he wrote between December 1843 and May 1844, Heine sets out to reclaim the history and poetry of the German Middle Ages from the Romantic legacy (as all that remained of Romanticism at this stage are these medievalizing tendencies), and engage this legacy with his own vision of the Middle Ages.45 As such, I will focus on three main sections of Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen: his encounter with the Cologne Cathedral, his dream conversation with Barbarossa and its aftermath, and his encounter with Hammonia, the patron goddess of Hamburg at end of the poem.

In Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, Heine continues to use the German Middle Ages in a way that reasserts his reconceptualized vision of the Middle Ages as a repository of symbolic materials in the service of a pantheistic and progressive Germany. Reading Deutschland: Ein Wintermaerchen in this way allows one to see Heine's complicated relationship with the aesthetic movement of the youth, and how he saw its legacy continue to shape the country of his birth. If in Atta Troll Heine would use a pantheistic German Middle Ages to rescue itself from egalitarianism (and therefore bad art), in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen Heine reasserts his own Romantic provenance to engage with those who continue to fall for the mistaken Romantic conception of the Middle Ages that he has demonstrated fails to live up to the spirit of its potential.

However, instead of recasting the Middle Ages as in a light and fantastical way as he did in Atta Troll, “Heine” (as the narrator of Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen) encounters the material legacy of the Middle Ages during his travels through Germany, or rather, he encounters aspects of the reified romanticized Middle Ages. Perhaps it is best said that Heine is no longer against Romanticism, so much as against romanticizing, that is, the reification of a particular view of the world. What will follow is an exploration of three of the main sites where Heine performs his critique of the romanticizing of the Middle Ages in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen; against

45 The date and time of composition comes from Gerhard Höhn, Heine Handbuch: Zeit-Person-Werk. 3. Auflage (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2004), 115.

225 the romanticizing of the medieval Church in his views on the rebuilding of the Cologne Cathedral; against the romanticizing of medieval history through his encounter with Barbarossa; and finally, and perhaps most importantly for Heine, against the romanticizing of medieval literature in his conversation with Hammonia.

In contrast to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (a reference that is explicit in the title to Atta Troll), Heine begins Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen on the cusp of winter, where the wind (Zephirus) breathes life again into the world, and the wind has stripped the remnants of life from the trees, setting up a self-consciously critical approach to the poem. However, even from the beginning of the poem, Heine makes it clear that Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen will be a much more outwardly confrontational text than Atta Troll. The gloom of the beginning is intensified as Heine reaches the German border, where the force of his exile and the political implications of his return hit him fully:

Und als ich an die Grenze kam, Da fühlt ich ein stärkeres Klopfen In meiner Brust, ich glaube sogar Die Augen begunnen zu tropfen.

Und als ich die deutsche Sprache vernahm, Da ward mir seltsam zu Muthe; Ich meinte nicht anders, als ob das Herz Recht angenehm verblute.46

Here Germany takes on the role of a lost love as Heine’s language reflects many of those old tropes he had used in Buch der Lieder. This sense of deepening gloom is only intensified when he hears a young girl with a harp singing:

Ein kleines Harfenmädchen sang. Sie sang mit wahrem Gefühle

46 DHA 4, 91.

226

Und falscher Stimme, doch ward ich sehr Gerühret von ihrem Spiele.

Sie sang von Liebe und Liebesgram, Aufopfrung und Wiederfinden Dort oben in jener besseren Welt, Wo alle Leiden schwinden.

Sie sang vom irdischen Jammerthal, Von Freuden, die bald zerronnen, Vom Jenseits, wo die Seele schwelgt Verklärt in ew'gen Wonnen.

Sie sang das alte Entsagungslied, Das Eyapopeya vom Himmel, Womit man einlullet, wenn es greint, Das Volk, den großen Lümmel.47

In line with his work evangelizing to the German people from Paris about the dangers of these old songs, the presence of a young girl singing these same songs is a portent of the cultural problems that Heine had been railing against his entire life. Despite his sense of homecoming upon his arrival in Germany, the narrator’s encounter with a young person singing the false dead song of the reactionary Romanticism is meant to give pause. But rather than despairing, the narrator proclaims that Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen is the antidote to this old music, and it is a song, like the song he heard the girl sing, that has a clear political goal, which is the emancipation of humanity and the establishment of heaven on earth:

Ein neues Lied, ein besseres Lied, O Freunde, will ich euch dichten!

47 DHA 4, 91. András Imre Sandor, whose book on Heine discusses Heine as an exile, notes that the “first encounter with the singing girl is a symbolic encounter with German spirit and soul, the German people, and no doubt that it has been singled out to open the long poem for this reason.” See Sandor, The Exile of Gods, 171.

227

Wir wollen hier auf Erden schon Das Himmelreich errichten.48

As a result, the Stimmungsbrechung of this Caput One becomes an inversion of his youthful poems. Here the gloom is dispelled as he sets foot on German soil because Heine’s political and cultural mission is clear, and in what will be a recurring theme throughout the poem, any seeming setback will only strengthen the narrator’s desire to fight for a better Germany:

Seit ich auf deutsche Erde trat Durchströmen mich Zaubersäfte – Der Riese hat wieder die Mutter berührt, Und es wuchsen ihm neu die Kräfte.49

If nature and its connection to German folk mythology led Heine on a dream fantasy in Atta Troll, it is the grounded sense of place and soil of Germany this provides Heine with his poetic inspiration in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen. At this moment he looks forward to his journey, and to the possibility of a new Germany, although he knows that his return will not bring about the kind of transformation he had hoped would have emerged.

The remainder of the opening expands on this theme, of the idea of creating a heaven on earth, a heaven of liberty. However, what is important to note here is that what Heine is depicting poetically in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen is the fact that German society itself has continued to become increasingly romantisch. The critique is no longer at the level of the German Romantic movement; rather, as the girl’s song indicates, it is part of the popular fabric of German society itself, which is what warrants Heine’s expansion of his critique away from the figures of the movement and onto the places whose auras have been infused with this Romantic conception of the Middle Ages, and that now characterize the movement in its current living cultural forms. So now it seems appropriate to examine some of the lyrics of this “neues Lied,” and see how Heine unmasks the medievalization of German popular culture.

48 DHA 4, 92. 49 DHA 4, 93.

228

Charlemagne and the Cologne Cathedral

Another connection between this poem and Atta Troll (and the Middle Ages) is the fact that his journey through Germany begins in Aachen, the imperial residence of Charlemagne, although how Heine uses Charlemagne here is more as a springboard to discuss the Prussian appropriation of medieval symbols:

Zu Aachen, im alten Dome, liegt Carolus Magnus begraben. (Man muß ihn nicht verwechseln mit Carl Mayer, der lebt in Schwaben.) [...]

[...] Nicht übel gefiel mir das neue Costum Der Reuter, das muß ich loben, Besonders die Pikkelhaube, den Helm, Mit der stählernen Spitze nach oben.50

In a resonance with Heine’s distinction between the “true” Middle Ages and the “copy” (discussed in chapter two), Heine directly connects the Prussian soldiers’ helmets to those very authors he had been nostalgically inspired by in Atta Troll:

Das ist so ritterthümlich und mahnt An der Vorzeit holde Romantik, An die Burgfrau Johanna von Montfaucon, An den Freyherrn Fouqué, Uhland, Tieck.

Das mahnt an das Mittelalter so schön, An Edelknechte und Knappen, Die in dem Herzen getragen die Treu

50 DHA 4, 95-6.

229

Und auf dem Hintern ein Wappen.

Das mahnt an Kreuzzug und Turney, An Minne und frommes Dienen, An die ungedruckte Glaubenszeit, Wo noch keine Zeitung erschienen.51

The inclusion of Fouqué, Uhland and Tieck is noteworthy. As we have seen in chapter three, Heine had viewed these authors each in a very different light in Die romantische Schule. Placing them together alongside a reference to August von Kotzebue’s Johanna von Montfaucon (an author on whose work Heine had very little to say), has an effect of smoothing over what, a decade earlier, had been crucial distinctions. This leads one to conclude that Heine is not passing a negative aesthetic judgement on these authors because they are no longer relevant to his more pressing concerns. Instead, in light of his own shift in thinking, Heine is recognizing that the Prussian appropriation of medieval symbols is a material reminder of the origins of their backwards-looking political structure – German Romanticism. As Heine wryly notes, despite the helmet’s medieval inspiration, there remain issues with unthinkingly resuscitating the Middle Ages without the proper material considerations:

Ja, ja, der Helm gefällt mir, er zeugt Vom allerhöchsten Witze! Ein königlicher Einfall wars! Es fehlt nicht die Pointe, die Spitze!

Nur fürcht' ich, wenn ein Gewitter entsteht, Zieht leicht so eine Spitze Herab auf Euer romantisches Haupt Des Himmels modernste Blitze! – –52

51 DHA 4, 96. 52 DHA 4, 96.

230

The implication is not that the German Middle Ages (or German Romanticism) is bad per se, but that an unthought-through nostalgia is a uniformly bad thing. In Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, Heine will constantly juxtapose a positive presentation of the Middle Ages with the problems of its inadequate modern reimplementation. For example, Heine’s (allegedly- drunken) description of Cologne’s old houses and the history they evoke in Caput Four constantly juxtaposes the idea of Cologne as a Catholic city within Protestant Germany, with Protestant Germany emerging as the clear victor:

Ja hier hat einst die Clerisey Ihr frommes Wesen getrieben, Hier haben die Dunkelmänner geherrscht, Die Ulrich von Hutten beschrieben.

Der Cancan des Mittelalters ward hier Getanzt von Nonnen und Mönchen; Hier schrieb Hochstraaten, der Menzel von Cölln, Die giftgen Denunziaziönchen...

Dummheit und Boßheit buhlten hier Gleich Hunden auf freyer Gasse; Die Enkelbrut erkennt man noch heut An ihrem Glaubenshasse.53

This victory is signaled by Heine’s encounter with the (then) unfinished Cologne Cathedral:

Doch siehe! dort im Mondenschein Den kolossalen Gesellen! Er ragt verteufelt schwarz empor, Das ist der Dom von Cöllen.

53 DHA 4, 98.

231

Er sollte des Geistes Bastille sein, Und die listigen Römlinge dachten: In diesem Riesenkerker wird Die deutsche Vernunft verschmachten!

Da kam der Luther, und er hat Sein großes »Halt!« gesprochen - Seit jenem Tage blieb der Bau Des Domes unterbrochen.

Er ward nicht vollendet - und das ist gut. Denn eben die Nichtvollendung Macht ihn zum Denkmal von Deutschlands Kraft Und protestantischer Sendung.

Ihr armen Schelme vom Domverein, Ihr wollt mit schwachen Händen Fortsetzen das unterbrochene Werk, Und die alte Zwingburg vollenden!54

Although history proved Heine incorrect, his larger point about the idea of a church, and in particular, a Catholic church, emerging to become a symbol of German national consciousness, is precisely the wrong kind of understanding of the Middle Ages that Heine has dedicated so much of his writing to combatting. To Heine, what is important is that the Cologne Cathedral remains unfinished, that this medieval project remains unconsecrated and never becomes sacred, not necessarily as a Roman Catholic cathedral, but as a cathedral to the feudal Catholic Romanticism that he had so eloquently opposed. If the Cologne Cathedral is rebuilt, it symbolizes the reification of the feudal nationalistic impulses of the German consciousness, its consecration lending credence to Heine’s concern that the increasing tolerance for Catholicism across Germany symbolizes a cementing of the “refeudalization” of German politics. As if to

54 DHA 4, 98-9.

232 counter this idea of the “bad” Middle Ages, Heine resurrects an idea he had in the French ending to Elementargeister and stages an encounter with Germany’s saviour-king, Barbarossa.

Barbarossa

Not long after the narrator leaves Cologne he arrives at the centerpiece of the poem, the narrator’s encounter with Barbarossa. He sets this up in Caput Fourteen with a recollection of his nurse, who he declares was a true German, as she embodied the pantheistic sensualist spirit and was a repository of folk knowledge. When he was a child, she sang folk songs to him and told him fairy tales about a princess, as well as stories of Barbarossa, who, she assured the young narrator, was not yet dead and was waiting for the right moment to liberate Germany from her oppressors. Her story of Barbarossa as a very strong and powerful king with a mass of soldiers who will rescue Germany like a messiah, and who will finally avenge those “murderers” who killed Germany, here is represented as a blond maiden, reflects Heine’s discussion of Barbarossa in Elementargeister.

However, the reality of Heine’s dream meeting with Barbarossa is less satisfying than his nurse’s story. After repeating his nurse’s tale, he dreams of an encounter with Barbarossa (who happens to be wearing a dustier version of the Prussian military hat mentioned earlier) that takes the bloom off the nostalgic tale of his youth, and stands in contrast to his discussion of Barbarossa in Elementargeister. Rather than pleading for the release of Barbarossa from Kyffhäuser in Elementargeister, the narrator’s dream transports him into Barbarossa’s sanctum. Here he encounters a vaguely modernized Barbarossa, whose main reason for remaining in Kyffhäuser is due to a lack of horses. Despite the narrator’s urging, Barbarossa is in no hurry to leave:

So sprach der Kaiser, ich aber rief: Schlag' los, du alter Geselle, Schlag' los, und hast du nicht Pferde genug, Nimm Esel an ihrer Stelle.

Der Rothbart erwiederte lächelnd: »Es hat Mit dem Schlagen gar keine Eile,

233

Man baute nicht Rom in einem Tag, Gut Ding will haben Weile.

Wer heute nicht kommt, kommt morgen gewiß, Nur langsam wächst die Eiche, Und chi va piano va sano, so heißt Das Sprüchwort im römischen Reiche.«55

For the narrator, the revolutionary moment is now. The reification of a certain kind of attitude towards the Middle Ages has continued unabated since his absence, and so the time for the new order that Barbarossa would provide is immediate. Unfortunately, it seems that even the myth of Barbarossa has succumbed to a certain level of reactionary modernization, and Barbarossa remains just comfortable enough in Kyffhäuser to wait for a “better” time.

After briefly waking up at the start of Caput Sixteen, the narrator falls back asleep to resume his conversation with Barbarossa, where he updates the emperor on recent history as Barbarossa claims not to have heard anything since the Seven Years’ War. Here Heine discusses the French Revolution and in particular the guillotine. Barbarossa is unsurprisingly shocked and angered at the idea of such a contraption, let alone its use on royalty:

Der Kaiser fiel mir in die Red': »Schweig still, von deiner Maschine Will ich nichts wissen, Gott bewahr', Daß ich mich ihrer bediene!

Der König und die Königin! Geschnallt! an einem Brette! Das ist ja gegen allen Respekt Und alle Etikette!56

55 DHA 4, 125-6. 56 DHA 4, 128.

234

In his dream state, the narrator declares that when he thinks about it, that Germans have no need for emperors anymore, and it is here where the dream (and Caput Sixteen) end:

Herr Rothbart – rief ich laut – du bist Ein altes Fabelwesen, Geh', leg' dich schlafen, wir werden uns Auch ohne dich erlösen...

Das Beste wäre du bliebest zu Haus, Hier in dem alten Kiffhäuser – Bedenk' ich die Sache ganz genau, So brauchen wir gar keinen Kaiser.57

Barbarossa’s comments embody Heine’s concerns about the slide toward a reactionary politics – although Heine was a great admirer of Napoleon, the idea that a specifically German medieval king would liberate and unite the Germans now gave Heine pause. This is why the guillotine gets mentioned, as it sets a limit on Barbarossa’s power upon his return. Even Barbarossa cannot escape the progress of modernity, and Barbarossa’s anger reflects Heine’s concern about the dangerous possibility of any revolutionary project based a messianic figure. Barbarossa’s political liberation of Germany in modernity comes at the cost of Barbarossa’s claim to divine right as king to rule absolutely.

Although the dream is quite literally dead, the narrator immediately apologizes for his republican dream, saying that it is only in dreams that a German says how they really feel. As a mea culpa (and to avoid censorship), this passage allows for Heine to remain somewhat ambiguous on the question of what a German revolution might look like, even if it is what he desires. However, Heine goes further, and the narrator apologizes for dismissing Barbarossa out of hand:

Vergieb mir, o Rothbart, das rasche Wort! Ich weiß, du bist viel weiser

57 DHA 4, 128-9.

235

Als ich, ich habe so wenig Geduld – Doch komme du bald, mein Kaiser!58

He amusingly tells Barbarossa that if he does not like the guillotine, that he can bring back older forms of punishment, provided they are used in an egalitarian matter. Even the restoration of the pre-Napoleonic order would work:

Das alte heilge römische Reich, Stell's wieder her, das ganze, Gieb uns den modrigsten Plunder zurück Mit allem Firlifanze.

Das Mittelalter, immerhin, Das wahre, wie es gewesen, Ich will es ertragen – erlöse uns nur Von jenem Zwitterwesen,59

Here Heine is explicit about the “real” Middle Ages being preferable to the now “old” Romantic fetishization of the German Middle Ages, combined with the Prussian police state under which most German currently lived. This line is key to Heine’s reimagined understanding of the Middle Ages. If Germany is to be modern, the Middle Ages must be relegated to the place where it can do good, namely as a source of inspiration for poets and artists, but not as a model for governance, but that even as a model of governance, historical feudalism it would be preferable to the reactionary veneration of feudalism that Heine believes has obtained over Germany.

58 DHA 4, 129. 59 DHA 4, 130

236

Hammonia

Heine’s complicated understanding of the Middle Ages returns one more time in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen in the narrator’s encounter with Hammonia, the patron goddess of Hamburg. He meets her on a street in Hamburg’s red-light district, where she takes him to her room and feeds him. They then engage in a long, sometimes sexually suggestive, conversation. Here Heine updates and improves upon the example of his “Tannhäuser” poem, inserting himself into the action and replacing Venus with a German goddess, and more significantly, the goddess of the city where he emerged committed to the idea of becoming a poet.60

As has been discussed, the “Tannhäuser” poem, which, interestingly, was published alongside Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, his Neue Gedichte of 1844, ends with Tannhäuser telling Venus about his trip through Germany, a trip that ends in Hamburg. He writes,

Zu Hamburg frug ich: warum so sehr Die Straßen stinken täten? Doch Juden und Christen versicherten mir, Das käme von den Fleeten.

Zu Hamburg, in der guten Stadt, Wohnt mancher schlechte Geselle; Und als ich auf die Börse kam, Ich glaubte, ich wär noch in Celle.

Zu Hamburg sah ich Altona, Ist auch eine schöne Gegend; Ein andermal erzähl ich dir, Was mir alldort begegent.61

It is tempting to suggest that in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen Heine, as a modern Tannhäuser, having left the false “Venusberg” of Paris, arrives “home” to Hamburg to the “true”

60 I discuss his time in Hamburg via a letter to Christian Sethe in chapter one. 61 DHA 2, 60.

237

“Venus” of Hammonia. This suggestion is made more tempting by the fact that Hammonia herself, the patron Goddess of Hamburg, emerged in this role only in the 18th Century, displacing the medieval veneration of the Virgin Mary, and so becomes a figure of pagan resurgence in Germany, a reversal of the demonification of the Greek Gods. Hammonia’s connection to the Middle Ages is confirmed by her lineage, as Hammonia tells the narrator that she is Charlemagne’s daughter.

Much like the end of “Tannhäuser,” the capita between the narrator and Hammonia represent a disquisition on the state of Germany. In Caput Twenty-four the narrator, having been invited to her room, finds himself explaining why he would come to Germany at such a dreary time, and admits to a certain amount of homesickness. Here Heine discloses the complex relationship between his youthful poetry, the sickness it can cause, but also the great poet’s mastery over this sickness:

Ich wollte weinen wo ich einst Geweint die bittersten Thränen – Ich glaube Vaterlandsliebe nennt Man dieses thörigte Sehnen.

Ich spreche nicht gern davon; es ist Nur eine Krankheit im Grunde. Verschämten Gemüthes, verberge ich stets Dem Publiko meine Wunde...

O meine Göttinn, du hast mich heut In weicher Stimmung gefunden; Bin etwas krank, doch pfleg' ich mich, Und ich werde bald gesunden.

Ja ich bin krank, und du könntest mir Die Seele sehr erfrischen Durch eine gute Tasse Thee;

238

Du mußt ihn mit Rhum vermischen.62

That Heine has ultimately mastered this “sickness” (even if there is no cure) is demonstrated by the subsequent conversation he has with Hammonia in capita twenty-five and twenty-six, which remains a poetic tour de force. Hammonia begs the narrator to remain in Germany, ironically promoting its virtues while simultaneously confirming its reactionary government, while at the same time pointing to a certain form of liberalism and the danger it represents to art:

Es blühte in der Vergangenheit So manche schöne Erscheinung Des Glaubens und der Gemüthlichkeit; Jetzt herrscht nur Zweifel, Verneinung.

Die praktische äußere Freyheit wird einst Das Ideal vertilgen, Das wir im Busen getragen – es war So rein wie der Traum der Liljen!

Auch unsre schöne Poesie Erlischt, sie ist schon ein wenig Erloschen; mit andren Königen stirbt Auch Freiligraths Mohrenkönig.63

Hammonia articulates a position towards art that Heine had depicted in both Atta Troll and Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift – that both sides of the political divide (the police state as well as a certain kind of liberalism who Heine had made Börne as its avatar) in Germany pose a real danger to freedom and progress, and therefore represent a danger to the potentialities of modern art.

62 DHA 4, 147-8. 63 DHA 4, 150.

239

That the Middle Ages remains bound up in the production of modern art is suggested when Hammonia discusses her origin as the daughter of Charlemagne and a “Schellfischköniginn” in Caput Twenty-six, giving her both noble and humble origins. Making Charlemagne (who, coincidentally, founded Hamburg) her father ties Hammonia into the imaginative space of the Middle Ages via the Roland saga that Heine has evoked contemporaneously in Atta Troll. Beyond this, Charlemagne occupies a structural role within Deutschland; Ein Wintermärchen: the narrator’s journey began in Aachen, Charlemagne’s seat of power, and it is at the very end of the poem where Heine encounters Charlemagne’s other (no less important) seat (his chamber pot), neatly making the Charlemagne’s two “bodies” a structural bookend of the poem:

Siehst du, dort in dem Winkel steht Ein alter Sessel, zerrissen Das Leder der Lehne, von Mottenfraß Zernagt das Polsterkissen.

Doch gehe hin und hebe auf Das Kissen von dem Sessel, Du schaust eine runde Oeffnung dann, Darunter einen Kessel –64

It is worth noting that Heine never refers to the seat directly as a toilet, and, in calling it a cauldron he suggests the possibility this is no ordinary chamber pot:

Das ist ein Zauberkessel worin Die magischen Kräfte brauen, Und steckst du in die Ründung den Kopf, So wirst du die Zukunft schauen –

Die Zukunft Deutschlands erblickst du hier Gleich wogenden Phantasmen,

64 DHA 4, 152.

240

Doch schaudre nicht, wenn aus dem Wust Aufsteigen die Miasmen!65

It is fitting that the toilet of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of Hamburg, contains within it the immanent possibilities of the German peoples. As in the narrator’s other encounters with material legacy of the Middle Ages in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, Charlemagne’s chamber pot is perhaps not what one might expect it to be. However, it is a fascinating allegory for how Heine understands the role of the German Middle Ages at this moment in his life: the chamber pot itself has a noble lineage, but is a now little worse for wear. It sits tucked away in the corner of the room, but is an absolute necessity – a structural feature that “contains” filth in both senses of the verb.66

The chamber pot as a cauldron also suggests a tying together of not only the Middle Ages, but Heine’s own re-evaluation of the Middle Ages as a site for the decaying gods and goddesses, and the magic from which springs his vision of Germany’s future. In this magical cauldron, however, the narrator sees nothing magical, but is instead confronted with exactly what he was expecting, causing him to faint.

Heine, of course, does not even attempt to describe the future he saw in Charlemagne’s toilet, letting the scatological imagery make the connection that he was not entirely optimistic about Germany’s political and emancipatory future. Rather, what is fascinating is the fact that Heine chose to contain this future within the medieval toilet of the first Holy Roman Emperor.

Heine’s overarching concern with the need for a dialogue between poetry and politics, and who actually gets to dictate what history looks like, is a recurring theme in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen. The Middle Ages occupy a structural role in the poem because Heine is clearly concerned that his progressive vision of the Middle Ages has continued to lose ground to the reactionary vision that he had so long opposed. Nevertheless, Heine remains adamant to the very

65 DHA 4, 152. 66 Azade Seyhan, echoing Laura Hofrichter, has recently read this scene as a commentary on the “crass commercialism” of Hamburg and a reflection on Heine’s status as a German exile. Interestingly, she refers to Charlemagne’s chamber pot as an “armchair.” See Azade Seyhan, Heinrich Heine and the World Literary Map: Redressing the Canon (Singapore: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), 110.

241 end that, despite his prediction of a German future that is best experienced hunched over a toilet, the future will remain in the poet’s power to proclaim:

Doch giebt es Höllen aus deren Haft Unmöglich jede Befreyung, Hier hilft kein Beten, ohnmächtig ist hier Des Welterlösers Verzeihung.

Kennst du die Hölle des Dante nicht, Die schrecklichen Terzetten? Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt, Den kann kein Gott mehr retten –

Kein Gott, kein Heiland, erlöst ihn je Aus diesen singenden Flammen! Nimm dich in Acht, daß wir dich nicht Zu solcher Hölle verdammen.67

In both Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, Heine has presented the reader with two very different poetic reimaginings of modernity infused by his own understanding of the potential role of the Middle Ages within modern poetry. If Atta Troll engaged more playfully with the German Romantic tradition in which he was raised, Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen forcefully confronted the material legacy of that tradition and its impact on contemporary German political and cultural attitudes.

In opposition to his adversaries, who he argued wanted German modernity to be nothing more than a superficial pastiche of the worst of the Romantic reception of German Middle Ages combined with a reactionary police state, Heine’s work throughout the 1830s and 40s sought to develop a narrative of the Middle Ages that continued to value it as a cultural touchstone, as well

67 DHA 4, 157.

242 as an imaginative space upon which the right poet could write a new narrative for Germany, in the hopes that this new narrative might steer Germany toward the path of emancipation.

243

CONCLUSION

It seems safe to say at this point that the German Middle Ages were a central, and highly conflicted, part of Heine’s understanding of German culture and his place within that culture throughout his life. Indeed, his interest in the German Middle Ages never really left him. On the 15th of June, 1850, Heine wrote a letter to his mother requesting his sister send him a number of books. Among the requests for books by Charles Dickens and Nicholai Gogol, as well as a historical novel by Ludwig Storch on the life of Sephardic Smyrnan rabbi (and self-proclaimed Jewish messiah) Sabbatai Zevi, were requests for a number of books by German Romantic authors, including novellas by Ludwig Tieck as well as a copy of Achim von Arnim’s 1817 novel Die Kronenwächter:

Sieh' mal zu, liebes Lottchen, ob in der Lesebibliothek nicht die Kronwächter von Arnim (1ter und 2ter Theil) sind, erst vor einigen Jahren herausgekommen.68

Jeffrey Sammons, whose biography on Heine remains unsurpassed as the definitive English- language study of his life, expressed surprise at Heine’s choice, and bewilderment in general at Heine’s lifelong admiration of Arnim, saying,

This late interest in Arnim is very odd; it is hardly what one would expect, and I can think of no explanation for it.69

I hope that I have shown that far from odd, Heine’s complex and long-standing relationship to the Middle Ages provides a rationale for his admiration and his ambivalence towards the Romantic Middle Ages.

Indeed, the path of Heine’s relationship with the German Middle Ages resembles the musical sonata form of the first Viennese School, of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. As an exposition he wove the Middle Ages into his own personal dreamworld in Buch der Lieder. As his political beliefs developed a great tension emerged between the lyrical poet and the German Jewish subject suspicious of the political implications of German Romantic medievalism. This

68 HSA 23, 44. 69 Sammons, A Modern Biography, 340.

244 development culminates in De l’Allemagne, which both fleshes out and then tries to resolve these tensions, leading to a recapitulation of the Middle Ages as a poetic subject in his very late poetry and prose, albeit in a different key.

That this recapitulation was, in good classical form, an affirmation of the “tonic” that was the Middle Ages for Heine, can be seen in how the Middle Ages continues to occupy a central place both his late poetry (Romanzero) and his prose (Die Götter im Exil), where he was supremely confident in his use of the Middle Ages both as a nostalgic shortcut as well as a critical tool. As Willi Goetschel notes in a discussion of the “Hebräische Melodien” section of Romanzero:

An instructive example of this move toward negative dialectics can be found in the way Heine addresses the question of the paradox of time and the issue of the relationship between the contemporary and the non-contemporary. In “Hebräische Melodien”, Heine’s reworking of the concepts of time, history and identity reflects the instance of the non/contemporary as the critical moment for understanding modernity.70

Although this study did not venture past Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, it seems clear that Goetschel’s description of Heine’s mature approach to philosophy and history in Romanzero found its impetus in works such as Atta Troll and Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, works that betray a clear-eyed engagement with the Middle Ages as a motivating cultural concept that required a deft, if not light, touch, and that Heine’s approach to history was greatly influenced by the specific ways in which he came to the German Middle Ages, and how he then responded to it as a cultural artefact.

Ultimately, I hope that this study might help to shed some light on the ways in which Heine’s own version of the Middle Ages found its way back (perhaps unwillingly or unconsciously) into reactionary views and appropriations of the Middle Ages he so vehemently opposed. For example, it is ironic that Richard Wagner, perhaps the single most important (and infamous) artist with respect to the cultural and political relationship between the German Middle Ages and the popular and intellectual culture of his day, wrote both Tannhäuser and Der fliegende Holländer based upon works by Heine. However, beyond Wagner’s obvious debt to Heine,

70 Willi Goetschel, “Nightingales Instead of Owls: Heine’s Joyous Philosophy,” in A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine, ed. Roger Cook (Rochester, NY: Camden House), 151.

245 there are hints that Heine’s vision of the pantheistic legacy of the Middle Ages, a vision that finds its fullest expression in Elementargeister, had an enormous influence on Wagner’s interpretation of the Middle Ages, an influence that has, like so many aspects of Heine’s influence on modernity, gone largely unacknowledged.

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