HEINRICH HEINE “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Harry Heine HDT WHAT? INDEX HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE 1797 December 13, Wednesday: Heinrich Heine was born in Düsseldorf (as Christian Johann Harry Heine). His father was a tradesman who had benefitted during the French occupation by the new prospects this opened for German Jews. His father's business would fail, however, and Harry would be sent to Hamburg, where a rich banker uncle named Salomon would attempt without success to inject him into a commercial trajectory. He would study at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Göttingen but would develop more interest in literature than in law. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Harry Heine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE 1821 December 20, Thursday: Michael Martin, who had robbed Major John Bray in Medford, was hanged at Boston’s and Cambridge’s Lechmere Point. (An accomplice known as “Captain Lightfoot” had been able to escape, and would reside for many years incognito in Brattleboro, Vermont, not dying until 1835.) H. Heine (the “H” at this point still stood for “Harry” rather than “Heinrich”) made his debut as a poet with GEDICHTE VON H. HEINE (Berlin: in der Maurerfchen Buchhandlung, 1822; this included one of his most famous poems “Zwei Grenadiere” which reflected his admiration for Napoléon Bonaparte). Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 20th of 12th M / Our Meeting was a pretty solid one & silent - life seemed rather low in my own particular, but being favor’d with an evidence that favour was not withheld I desire to be thankful. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Harry Heine HDT WHAT? INDEX HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE 1823 Heinrich Heine’s TRAGÖDIEN, NEBST EINEM LYRISCHEN INTERMEZZO. HDT WHAT? INDEX HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE 1825 Overwhelmed by the student enthusiasm for Professor G.W.F. Hegel, the lecturer at the University of Berlin with whom he had been in competition for the past five years, who was lecturing at the same hour – and unwilling to change the hour of his lecture in order to cope with this– Herr Professor Arthur Schopenhauer withdrew from the academy to pursue other cultural interests. Harry Heine graduated from college. His professor in Berlin had been Hegel. Both he and his Professor were admirers of Napoleon Bonaparte. In order to explore the possibility of a government civil service career, he took the steps necessary to convert to Protestantism, steps such as baptism, and changed his name to Heinrich. ANTISEMITISM THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT February 18, Friday: The Mendelssohn family purchased a new mansion in Berlin, at 3 Leipzigerstrasse. This would become a meeting place for the Mendelssohn circle, including Heinrich Heine, Professor G.W.F. Hegel, and Alexander von Humboldt. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Harry Heine HDT WHAT? INDEX HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE 1826 Heinrich Heine’s DIE HARZREISE (THE HARZ JOURNEY). The 2d American edition of Edward Everett’s English translation of Professor Philip Karl Buttmann’s GRIECHISCHE SCHUL-GRAMMATIK, titled GREEK GRAMMAR FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS, FROM THE GERMAN OF PHILIP BUTTMANN (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, and Company), prepared by George Bancroft and George Henry Bode at the Round Hill School in Northampton. Harvard College student Cornelius Conway Felton was at least in part supporting himself during his education by teaching one winter in Bolton and another winter in Concord, and at the Round Hill School in Northampton. During the two years 1827 to 1829 he would have charge of the high school in Livingston County, New York. He must have been an exceedingly disciplined scholar for also, in this his senior year, he was serving as one of the conductors of a student periodical, the Harvard Register. (At the Concord Free Public Library, under Accession # 10443, is Henry Thoreau’s personal copy, presented to the library by Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau in 1874. On the front free endpaper is inscribed “D.H. Thoreau / Cambridge / Mass 1833.”)1 AS STUDIED BY THOREAU 1. During this year Professor Buttmann was issuing his ÜBER DIE ENTSTEHUNG DER STERNBILDER AUF DER GRIECHISCHEN SFÄRE. HDT WHAT? INDEX HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE 1827 Heinrich Heine’s BUCH DER LIEDER, his first comprehensive collection of verse. In this year he visited England, but was put off by that nation’s formality of behavior and by its bourgeois materialism. He engaged in a one-sided infatuation with his cousins Amalie and Therese. The following is from “Du Bist Wie eine Blume,” written for Therese: Du bist wie eine Blume so hold und schön und rein; ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmut schleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Mir ist, als ob ich die Hände aufs Haupt dir legen sollt’, betend, dass Grott dich erhalte so rein und schön und hold. “You’re so lovely as a flower, So pure and fair to see; I look at you, and sadness Comes stealing over me.” DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Harry Heine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE 1829 March 11, Wednesday: Frances Jane Shattuck was born in Concord, 4th child of Daniel Shattuck and Betsey Miles Shattuck. The Reverend Waldo Emerson was ordained as a junior pastor at the 2d Congregational (Unitarian) Church on Hanover Street in Boston.2 (His father had been pastor of the First Unitarian Church in Boston but had died early after suffering from a respiratory problem.) Finally Waldo would be able to move out of his lodgings at Divinity Hall in Cambridge, and in with George Sampson on North Allen Street in Boston (he would later board with Abel Adams on Chardon Street, nearer his church). At 6PM Felix Mendelssohn conducted, from the piano, using for the first time a baton, the first performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in nearly a century. In the alto section of the chorus was Fanny Mendelssohn. This performance, in the Berlin Singakademie, was much more successful than the original. There was a standing-room-only audience, and in attendance were the King of Prussia, Professor G.W.F. Hegel, Gaspare Spontini, Alexander von Humboldt, and Heinrich Heine. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Harry Heine 2. Note that “Unitarian” is a subspecies of “Congregational.” HDT WHAT? INDEX HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE 1831 The study of paradigms of bridge failure by Louis Joseph Vicat, RAPPORT SUR LES PONTS EN FIL DU FER SUR LE RHONE, was necessitated by the collapse of a number of France’s suspension bridges. The French removed one of the massive obelisks of red granite still surviving at Luxor in Egypt (after its temples had been plundered by the Persians in 520BCE), and this would be set up in the Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1836 (what’s the point? — Oh, you know). The phrenologist Dr. George Combe’s OBSERVATIONS ON MENTAL DERANGEMENT. The Phrenological Society of Paris was established. Heinrich Heine went to Paris as a journalist, and there would write newspaper articles about the development of democracy and capitalism in France. Jean-Baptiste Say became Professor of Political Economy at the College de France. A chair of Egyptian antiquities was created there, especially for Jean-François Champollion. HDT WHAT? INDEX HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE 1832 January 22, Sunday: Molly Pitcher, who had distinguished herself in the battle of Monmouth during the Revolutionary War, died. French police arrested leaders of the St. Simonians, an egalitarian religious-political group that numbered among its affiliates many top artists. Ferdinand Hiller and Heinrich Heine witnessed some of the arrests. Among their effects was Mendelssohn’s Piano Quartet in b minor. Although Felix Mendelssohn was present in Paris, he was never himself associated with this group. In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 22 of 1st M 1832 / Silent & hard meeting in the Morning - In the Afternoon Wm Almy was here & preached about the Devil. & it is astonishing to me that some do not believe there is a Devil when his works are so conspicuously seen — It was an Admirable Sermon & I was very thankful we had such a preacher as Wm Almy. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Harry Heine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE 1833 Henry Jacob Bigelow would be David Henry Thoreau’s classmate at Harvard College, until first receiving a “public admonition” and finally being dismissed from the college on April 24, 1837, the Saturday prior to the commencement in that year, for having been in possession of firearms and ammunition in his dormitory room and repeatedly discharging a firearm inside the room (MH-Ar Faculty Records UAIII 5.5.2.IX, 311). Evidently he was able to resume his studies, at Dartmouth College. In 1795 a Conservatoire des Artes et Métiers had been established for France, and in this year that system of trade museums was introduced into Germany (the 1st efforts to accomplish anything of the kind in England would not come until 1837 with the Museum of Economic Geology, in 1848 with the Museum of Economic HDT WHAT? INDEX HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE Botany at Kew, and in 1851 with the Museum of Practical Geology and the School of Mines).