Germany. A Winter's Tale
Encyclopedia
Germany: A Winter's Tale is a satirical verse-epic or narrative by the German-Jewish author Heinrich Heine
.
From the onset of the (Metternich) Restoration in Germany Heine was no longer secure from the state Censor, and in 1831 he migrated to France
as an exile. In 1835 a decree of the German Federal Assembly
banned his writings together with the publications of the Young Germany
literary group.
At the end of 1843 Heine went back to Germany for a few weeks to visit his mother and his publisher Julius Campe in Hamburg
. On the return journey the first draft of Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen took shape. The verse epic appeared in 1844 published by Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg. According to the censorship regulations of the Carlsbad Conference of 1819, manuscripts of more than twenty folios did not fall under the scrutiny of the censor. Therefore Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen was published together with other poems in a volume called ‘New Poems’. Then on the 4 October 1844 the book was banned, and the stock confiscated, in Prussia
. On December 12 1844 King Friedrich Wilhelm IV issued a warrant of arrest against Heine. In the period following the work was repeatedly banned by the censorship authorities. In other parts of Germany it was certainly issued in the form of a separate publication, also published by Hoffmann and Campe, but Heine had to shorten and rewrite it.
Wintermärchen and Winterreise
Heinrich Heine was a master of the natural style of lyrics on the theme of love, like those in the 'Lyrisches Intermezzo' of 1822-1823 in Das Buch der Lieder (1827) which were set by Robert Schumann
in his Dichterliebe
. Many of his poems had been set by Franz Schubert
, not least for the great posthumously-collected series of songs known as the Schwanengesang
. In such works Heine assumed the manner of Wilhelm Müller
, whose son Professor Max Müller
later emphasized the fundamentally musical nature of these poems and the absolute congruity of Schubert's settings of them, which are fully composed duos for voice and piano rather than merely 'accompaniments' to tunes. Yet Heine's work addressed political preoccupations with a barbed and contemporary voice, whereas Müller's melancholy lyricism and nature-scenery explored more private (if equally universal) human experience. Schubert's Heine settings hardly portray the poet-philosopher's full identity.
Schubert was dead by 1828: Heine's choice of the winter journey theme certainly alludes to the Winterreise
, Müller's cycle of poems about lost love, which in Schubert's song-cycle of the same name became an immortal work embodying some more final and tragic statement about the human condition. Winterreise is about the exile of the human heart, and its bitter and gloomy self-reconciliation. Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen transfers the theme to the international European political scene, his exile as a writer from his own homeland (where his heart is), and his Heimatssehnsucht or longing for the homeland. Thus Heine casts his secret and 'illegal thoughts', so that the darts of his satire and humour fly out from the tragic vortex of his own exile. The fact that Heine's poetry was itself so closely identified with Schubert was part of his armoury of 'fire and weapons' mentioned in the closing stanzas: he transformed Müller's lament into a lament for Germany.
In Section III, full of euphoria he sets foot again on German soil, with only ‘shirts, trousers and pocket handkerchiefs’ in his luggage, but in his head ‘a twittering birds’-nest/ of books liable to be confiscated’. In Aachen
Heine first comes in contact again with the Prussian military:
In Section IV on the winter-journey to Cologne
he mocks the anachronistic German society
, that more readily with archaic skills builds Cologne cathedral
, unfinished since the Middle Ages, than addressing itself to the Present Age. That the anachronistic building works came to be discontinued in the course of the Reformation
indicated for the poet a positive advance: the overcoming of traditional ways of thought and the end of spiritual juvenility or adolescence.
In Section V he comes to the Rhine, as ‘the German Rhine’ and ‘Father Rhine’, icon and memorial of German identity. The River-god however shows himself as a sorrowful old man, disgusted with the babble about Germanic identity. He does not long to go back among the French who, according to Heine, now drink beer and read ‘Fischte
’ and Kant
.
Section VI introduces the ‘Liktor’, the poet's demon and ghostly doppelganger, always present, who follows him about carrying a hatchet under his cloak, waiting for a sign to execute the judicial sentence against the Poet. He confronts the shadowy figure, and is told, ‘I am the Deed to your Thought.’
In Section VII the Execution begins in dream. Followed by his ‘silent attendant’ the poet wanders through Cologne. He marks the doorposts with his heart’s blood, and this gives the Liktor the signal for a death-sentence. At last he reaches the Cathedral with the Three Kings Shrine
, and “smashes up the poor skeletons of Superstition.’
In Section VIII he travels further on to Hagen
and Mülheim
, places which bring to mind his former enthusiasm for Napoleon Bonaparte. His transformation of Europe
had called awake in Heine the hope for universal freedom. However: the Emperor is dead. Heine had been an eye-witness in Paris
of his burial in 1840 at Les Invalides
.
Section IX brings culinary reminiscences of ‘homely Sauerkraut
’ seasoned with satirical pointedness: Section X, Greetings to Westphalia
.
In Section XI he travels through the Teutoburg Forest
and fantasizes about it, what might have happened, if Hermann
of the Cherusci
had not vanquished
the Romans
: Roman culture would have permeated the spiritual life of Germany, and in place of the ‘Three Dozen Fathers of the Provinces’ should have been now at least one proper Nero
. The Section is – in disguise – also an attack on the Culture-politics of the ‘Romantic on the Throne,’ Friedrich Wilhelm IV.; then pretty well all the significant individuals in this outfit (for example Raumer, Hengstenberg, Birch-Pfeiffer, Schelling, Maßmann, Cornelius) lived in Berlin
.
Section XII contains the poet's address on the theme: ‘Howling with the wolves,’ as the carriage breaks down in the forest at night, and he responds as the denizens of the forest serenade him. This Heine offers as a metaphoric statement of the critical distance occupied by himself as polemic or satirical poet, and of the sheepskin-costume appropriate for much of what was surrounding him.
Section XIII takes the traveller to Paderborn
. In the morning mist a crucifix
appears. The ‘poor jewish cousin’ had even less good fortune than Heine, since the kindly Censor had at least held back from having him crucified – until now, at any rate…
In Section XIV and Section XV the poet betakes himself in a dream to another memorable place: he visits Friedrich Barbarossa in Kyffhäuser
. Not surprisingly the mythic German Emperor presents himself as a man become imbecile through senility, who is above all proud of the fact that his banner has not yet been eaten by moths. Germany in internal need? Pressing need of business for an available Emperor? Wake up, old man, and take your beard off the table! What does the most ancient hero mean by it?
(*chi va piano va sano, Italian)
Section XVI brings the Emperor to the most recent state of affairs: between the Middle Ages and Modern Times, between Barbarossa and today stands and functions the guillotine
. Emperors have worn out their usefulness, and seen in that light Monarchs are also superfluous. Stay up the mountain, Old Man! Best of all, the nobility, along with that ‘gartered knighthood of gothic madness and modern lie,’ should stay there too with you in Kyffhäuser (Section XVII). Sword or noose would do equally good service for the disposal of these superfluous toadies.
Dealings with the police remain unpleasant in Minden
, followed by the obligatory nightmare and dream of revenge (Section XVIII).
In Section XIX he visits the house where his grandfather was born in Bückeburg
:
From there he went on to a meeting with Ernest Augustus I of Hanover
in that place, who, “accustomed to life in Great Britain
” detains him for a deadly length of time. The section refers above all to the violation of the constitution by Ernst August in the year 1837, who was opposed by the seven Göttingen
professors.
Finally, in Section XX, he is at the limit of his journey: In Hamburg he goes in to visit his mother. She, equally, is in control of her responsibilities:
Section XXI and XXII shows the poet in Hamburg in search of people he knows, and memories, and in Section XXIII he sings the praises of the publisher Campe. Section XXIV describes a meeting with the genius loci of Hamburg, Hammonia
. A solemn promise of the greatest secrecy must be made in Old Testament
fashion, in which he places his hand under the thigh of the Goddess (she blushes slightly – having been drinking rum!). Then the Goddess promises to show her visitor the future Germany. Universal expectation. Then the Censor makes a cut at the critical place. Disappointment. (Section XXV and XXVI)
With Section XXVII the Winter’s Tale ends:
In the final strophes Heine places himself in the tradition of Aristophanes
and Dante
and speaks directly to the King of Prussia:
With a warning to the King, of eternal damnation, the epic closes.
Above all Heine criticized German militarism and reactionary chauvinism
(i.e. nationalism), especially in contrast to the French, whose revolution
he understood as a breaking-off into freedom. He admired Napoleon (uncritically) as the man who achieved the Revolution and made freedom a reality. He did not see himself as an enemy of Germany, but rather as a critic out of love for the Fatherland
:
, into a ridiculous caricature. Immediately after the War a cheap edition of the poem with Heine’s Foreword and an introduction by Wolfgang Goetz was published by the Wedding-Verlag in Berlin in 1946.
Modern times see in Heine’s work – rather, the basis of a wider concern with nationalism and narrow concepts of German identity, against the backdrop of European integration – a weighty political poem in the German language: sovereign in its insight and inventive wit, stark in its images, masterly in its use of language. Heine’s figure-creations (like, for example, the ‘Liktor’) are skilful, and memorably portrayed.
A great deal of the attraction which the verse-epic holds today is grounded in this, that its message is not one-dimensional, but rather brings into expression the many-sided contradictions or contrasts in Heine’s thought. The poet shows himself as a man who loves his homeland and yet can only be a guest and visitor to it. In the same way that Antaeus
needed contact with the Earth, so Heine drew his skill and the fullness of his thought only through intellectual contact with the homeland.
This exemplified the visible breach which the July revolution
of 1830 signifies for intellectual Germany: the fresh breeze of freedom suffocated in the reactionary exertions of the Metternich Restoration, the soon-downtrodden ‘Spring’ of freedom yielded to a new winter of censorship, repression, persecution and exile; the dream of a free and democratic Germany was for a whole century dismissed from the realm of possibility.
Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen is a high-point of political poetry of the period before the March Revolution
of 1848, and in Germany is part of the official educational curriculum. The work taken for years and decades as the anti-German pamphlet of the ‘voluntary Frenchman’ Heine, today is for many people the most moving poem ever written by an emigrant.
Article translated from German Wikipedia, 24 September 2007.
German Editions
Research literature, Commentaries (German)
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
.
From the onset of the (Metternich) Restoration in Germany Heine was no longer secure from the state Censor, and in 1831 he migrated to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
as an exile. In 1835 a decree of the German Federal Assembly
German Confederation
The German Confederation was the loose association of Central European states created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries. It acted as a buffer between the powerful states of Austria and Prussia...
banned his writings together with the publications of the Young Germany
Young Germany
Young Germany was a group of German writers which existed from about 1830 to 1850. It was essentially a youth ideology . Its main proponents were Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg; Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne and Georg Büchner were also considered part of the movement...
literary group.
Original publication
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
. On the return journey the first draft of Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen took shape. The verse epic appeared in 1844 published by Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg. According to the censorship regulations of the Carlsbad Conference of 1819, manuscripts of more than twenty folios did not fall under the scrutiny of the censor. Therefore Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen was published together with other poems in a volume called ‘New Poems’. Then on the 4 October 1844 the book was banned, and the stock confiscated, in Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
. On December 12 1844 King Friedrich Wilhelm IV issued a warrant of arrest against Heine. In the period following the work was repeatedly banned by the censorship authorities. In other parts of Germany it was certainly issued in the form of a separate publication, also published by Hoffmann and Campe, but Heine had to shorten and rewrite it.
Contents
The opening of the poem is the first journey of Heinrich Heine to Germany since his emigration to France in 1831. However it is to be understood that this is an imaginary journey, not the actual journey which Heine made but a literary tour through various provinces of Germany for the purposes of his commentary. The 'I' of the narrative is therefore the instrument of the poet's creative imagination.Wintermärchen and Winterreise
Heinrich Heine was a master of the natural style of lyrics on the theme of love, like those in the 'Lyrisches Intermezzo' of 1822-1823 in Das Buch der Lieder (1827) which were set by Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
in his Dichterliebe
Dichterliebe
Dichterliebe, 'The Poet's Love' , is the best-known song cycle of Robert Schumann . The texts for the 16 songs come from the Lyrisches Intermezzo of Heinrich Heine, composed 1822–1823, published as part of the poet's Das Buch der Lieder. Following the song-cycles of Franz Schubert , those of...
. Many of his poems had been set by Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, not least for the great posthumously-collected series of songs known as the Schwanengesang
Schwanengesang
Schwanengesang is the title of a posthumous collection of songs by Franz Schubert.Unlike the earlier Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, it uses poems by three poets, Ludwig Rellstab , Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl . Schwanengesang has the number D 957 in the Deutsch catalogue...
. In such works Heine assumed the manner of Wilhelm Müller
Wilhelm Müller
Wilhelm Müller was a German lyric poet.-Life:Wilhelm Müller was born at Dessau, the son of a tailor. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native town and at the university of Berlin, where he devoted himself to philological and historical studies...
, whose son Professor Max Müller
Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller , more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...
later emphasized the fundamentally musical nature of these poems and the absolute congruity of Schubert's settings of them, which are fully composed duos for voice and piano rather than merely 'accompaniments' to tunes. Yet Heine's work addressed political preoccupations with a barbed and contemporary voice, whereas Müller's melancholy lyricism and nature-scenery explored more private (if equally universal) human experience. Schubert's Heine settings hardly portray the poet-philosopher's full identity.
Schubert was dead by 1828: Heine's choice of the winter journey theme certainly alludes to the Winterreise
Winterreise
Winterreise is a song cycle for voice and piano by Franz Schubert , a setting of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is the second of Schubert's two great song cycles on Müller's poems, the earlier being Die schöne Müllerin...
, Müller's cycle of poems about lost love, which in Schubert's song-cycle of the same name became an immortal work embodying some more final and tragic statement about the human condition. Winterreise is about the exile of the human heart, and its bitter and gloomy self-reconciliation. Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen transfers the theme to the international European political scene, his exile as a writer from his own homeland (where his heart is), and his Heimatssehnsucht or longing for the homeland. Thus Heine casts his secret and 'illegal thoughts', so that the darts of his satire and humour fly out from the tragic vortex of his own exile. The fact that Heine's poetry was itself so closely identified with Schubert was part of his armoury of 'fire and weapons' mentioned in the closing stanzas: he transformed Müller's lament into a lament for Germany.
In Section III, full of euphoria he sets foot again on German soil, with only ‘shirts, trousers and pocket handkerchiefs’ in his luggage, but in his head ‘a twittering birds’-nest/ of books liable to be confiscated’. In Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
Heine first comes in contact again with the Prussian military:
Still always that wooden pedantic race,
Still always a right angle
In every movement and every face
The frozen conceit.
In Section IV on the winter-journey to Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
he mocks the anachronistic German society
Zentral-Dombauverein zu Köln von 1842
The Zentral-Dombau-Verein zu Köln von 1842 , abbreviated ZDV, is one of the oldest and once largest NGO's and civic associations of Germany, Europe, and indeed the world...
, that more readily with archaic skills builds Cologne cathedral
Cologne Cathedral
Cologne Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church in Cologne, Germany. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne. It is renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture and is a World Heritage Site...
, unfinished since the Middle Ages, than addressing itself to the Present Age. That the anachronistic building works came to be discontinued in the course of the Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
indicated for the poet a positive advance: the overcoming of traditional ways of thought and the end of spiritual juvenility or adolescence.
In Section V he comes to the Rhine, as ‘the German Rhine’ and ‘Father Rhine’, icon and memorial of German identity. The River-god however shows himself as a sorrowful old man, disgusted with the babble about Germanic identity. He does not long to go back among the French who, according to Heine, now drink beer and read ‘Fischte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
’ and Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
.
Section VI introduces the ‘Liktor’, the poet's demon and ghostly doppelganger, always present, who follows him about carrying a hatchet under his cloak, waiting for a sign to execute the judicial sentence against the Poet. He confronts the shadowy figure, and is told, ‘I am the Deed to your Thought.’
In Section VII the Execution begins in dream. Followed by his ‘silent attendant’ the poet wanders through Cologne. He marks the doorposts with his heart’s blood, and this gives the Liktor the signal for a death-sentence. At last he reaches the Cathedral with the Three Kings Shrine
Shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral
The Shrine of the Three Kings is a reliquary said to contain the bones of the Biblical Magi, also known as the Three Kings or the Three Wise Men. The shrine is a large gilded and decorated triple sarcophagus placed above and behind the high altar of Cologne Cathedral...
, and “smashes up the poor skeletons of Superstition.’
In Section VIII he travels further on to Hagen
Hagen
Hagen is the 39th-largest city in Germany, located in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located on the eastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne, Volme and Ennepe meet the river Ruhr...
and Mülheim
Mülheim
Mülheim an der Ruhr, also called "City on the River", is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It is located in the Ruhr Area between Duisburg, Essen, Oberhausen and Ratingen...
, places which bring to mind his former enthusiasm for Napoleon Bonaparte. His transformation of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
had called awake in Heine the hope for universal freedom. However: the Emperor is dead. Heine had been an eye-witness in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
of his burial in 1840 at Les Invalides
Les Invalides
Les Invalides , officially known as L'Hôtel national des Invalides , is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building's...
.
Section IX brings culinary reminiscences of ‘homely Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut , directly translated from German: "sour cabbage", is finely shredded cabbage that has been fermented by various lactic acid bacteria, including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. It has a long shelf-life and a distinctive sour flavor, both of which result from the lactic acid...
’ seasoned with satirical pointedness: Section X, Greetings to Westphalia
Westphalia
Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...
.
In Section XI he travels through the Teutoburg Forest
Teutoburg Forest
The Teutoburg Forest is a range of low, forested mountains in the German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia which used to be believed to be the scene of a decisive battle in AD 9...
and fantasizes about it, what might have happened, if Hermann
Arminius
Arminius , also known as Armin or Hermann was a chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci who defeated a Roman army in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest...
of the Cherusci
Cherusci
The Cherusci were a Germanic tribe that inhabited parts of the northern Rhine valley and the plains and forests of northwestern Germany, in the area between present-day Osnabrück and Hanover, during the 1st century BC and 1st century AD...
had not vanquished
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest took place in 9 CE, when an alliance of Germanic tribes led by Arminius of the Cherusci ambushed and decisively destroyed three Roman legions, along with their auxiliaries, led by Publius Quinctilius Varus.Despite numerous successful campaigns and raids by the...
the Romans
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
: Roman culture would have permeated the spiritual life of Germany, and in place of the ‘Three Dozen Fathers of the Provinces’ should have been now at least one proper Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
. The Section is – in disguise – also an attack on the Culture-politics of the ‘Romantic on the Throne,’ Friedrich Wilhelm IV.; then pretty well all the significant individuals in this outfit (for example Raumer, Hengstenberg, Birch-Pfeiffer, Schelling, Maßmann, Cornelius) lived in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
Section XII contains the poet's address on the theme: ‘Howling with the wolves,’ as the carriage breaks down in the forest at night, and he responds as the denizens of the forest serenade him. This Heine offers as a metaphoric statement of the critical distance occupied by himself as polemic or satirical poet, and of the sheepskin-costume appropriate for much of what was surrounding him.
I am no sheep, I am no dog,
No Councillor, and no shellfish –
I have remained a wolf, my heart
And all my fangs are wolfish.
Section XIII takes the traveller to Paderborn
Paderborn
Paderborn is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the Paderborn district. The name of the city derives from the river Pader, which originates in more than 200 springs near Paderborn Cathedral, where St. Liborius is buried.-History:...
. In the morning mist a crucifix
Crucifix
A crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....
appears. The ‘poor jewish cousin’ had even less good fortune than Heine, since the kindly Censor had at least held back from having him crucified – until now, at any rate…
In Section XIV and Section XV the poet betakes himself in a dream to another memorable place: he visits Friedrich Barbarossa in Kyffhäuser
Kyffhäuser
The Kyffhäuser is a range of hills located on the border of the German state of Thuringia with Saxony-Anhalt. It stands on the southern edge of the Harz. The range has a length of and a width of . It reaches its highest point at the Kulpenberg , situated in Thuringia...
. Not surprisingly the mythic German Emperor presents himself as a man become imbecile through senility, who is above all proud of the fact that his banner has not yet been eaten by moths. Germany in internal need? Pressing need of business for an available Emperor? Wake up, old man, and take your beard off the table! What does the most ancient hero mean by it?
He who comes not today, tomorrow surely comes,
But slowly doth the oak awaken,
And ‘he who goes softly goes well*’, so runs
The proverb in the Roman kingdom.
(*chi va piano va sano, Italian)
Section XVI brings the Emperor to the most recent state of affairs: between the Middle Ages and Modern Times, between Barbarossa and today stands and functions the guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
. Emperors have worn out their usefulness, and seen in that light Monarchs are also superfluous. Stay up the mountain, Old Man! Best of all, the nobility, along with that ‘gartered knighthood of gothic madness and modern lie,’ should stay there too with you in Kyffhäuser (Section XVII). Sword or noose would do equally good service for the disposal of these superfluous toadies.
Dealings with the police remain unpleasant in Minden
Minden
Minden is a town of about 83,000 inhabitants in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The town extends along both sides of the river Weser. It is the capital of the Kreis of Minden-Lübbecke, which is part of the region of Detmold. Minden is the historic political centre of the...
, followed by the obligatory nightmare and dream of revenge (Section XVIII).
In Section XIX he visits the house where his grandfather was born in Bückeburg
Bückeburg
Bückeburg is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, on the border with North Rhine Westphalia. It was once the capital of the tiny principality of Schaumburg-Lippe and is today located in the district of Schaumburg close to the northern slopes of the Weserbergland ridge...
:
At Bückeburg I went up into the town,
To view the old fortress, the Stammburg,
The place where my grandfather was born;
My grandmother came from Hamburg.
From there he went on to a meeting with Ernest Augustus I of Hanover
Ernest Augustus I of Hanover
Ernest Augustus I was King of Hanover from 20 June 1837 until his death. He was the fifth son and eighth child of George III, who reigned in both the United Kingdom and Hanover...
in that place, who, “accustomed to life in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
” detains him for a deadly length of time. The section refers above all to the violation of the constitution by Ernst August in the year 1837, who was opposed by the seven Göttingen
Göttingen
Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...
professors.
Finally, in Section XX, he is at the limit of his journey: In Hamburg he goes in to visit his mother. She, equally, is in control of her responsibilities:
- 1. Are you hungry?
- 2. Have you got a wife?
- 3. Where would you rather live, here with me or in France?
- 4. Do you always talk about politics?
Section XXI and XXII shows the poet in Hamburg in search of people he knows, and memories, and in Section XXIII he sings the praises of the publisher Campe. Section XXIV describes a meeting with the genius loci of Hamburg, Hammonia
Hammonia
-Patron goddess of Hamburg:The figure of Hammonia as patron goddess of Hamburg first appears in art and literature in the 18th century. Up until the Reformation, the city's patroness had been the Virgin Mary....
. A solemn promise of the greatest secrecy must be made in Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
fashion, in which he places his hand under the thigh of the Goddess (she blushes slightly – having been drinking rum!). Then the Goddess promises to show her visitor the future Germany. Universal expectation. Then the Censor makes a cut at the critical place. Disappointment. (Section XXV and XXVI)
With Section XXVII the Winter’s Tale ends:
The Youth soon buds, who understands
The poet’s pride and grandeur
And in his heart he warms himself,
At his soul’s sunny splendour.
In the final strophes Heine places himself in the tradition of Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
and Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
and speaks directly to the King of Prussia:
Then do not harm your living bards,
For they have fire and arms
More frightful than Jove’s thunderbolt:
Through them the Poet forms.
With a warning to the King, of eternal damnation, the epic closes.
A critic for love of the Fatherland
Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen shows Heine’s world of images and his folk-song-like poetic diction in a compact gathering, with cutting, ironic criticisms of the circumstances in his homeland. Heine puts his social vision into contrast with the grim ‘November-picture’ of the reactionary homeland which presented itself to his eyes:
A new song, a better song,
O friends, I speak to thee!
Here upon Earth we shall full soon
A heavenly realm decree.
Joyful we on earth shall be
And we shall starve no more;
The rotten belly shall not feed
On the fruits of industry.
Above all Heine criticized German militarism and reactionary chauvinism
Chauvinism
Chauvinism, in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a belief in national superiority and glory. It is an eponym of a possibly fictional French soldier Nicolas Chauvin who was credited with many superhuman feats in the Napoleonic wars.By extension it has come...
(i.e. nationalism), especially in contrast to the French, whose revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
he understood as a breaking-off into freedom. He admired Napoleon (uncritically) as the man who achieved the Revolution and made freedom a reality. He did not see himself as an enemy of Germany, but rather as a critic out of love for the Fatherland
Fatherland
Fatherland is the nation of one's "fathers", "forefathers" or "patriarchs". It can be viewed as a nationalist concept, insofar as it relates to nations...
:
(from the Foreword).
Plant the black, red, gold banner at the summit of the German idea, make it the standard of free mankind, and I will shed my dear heart’s blood for it. Rest assured, I love the Fatherland just as much as you do.
The ‘Winter’s Tale’ today
Heine’s verse-epic was much debated in Germany right down to our own times. Above all in the century to which it belonged, the work was labelled as the ‘shameful writing’ of a homeless or country-less man, a ‘betrayer of the Fatherland’, a detractor and a slanderer. This way of looking at Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen was carried, especially in the period of NazismNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, into a ridiculous caricature. Immediately after the War a cheap edition of the poem with Heine’s Foreword and an introduction by Wolfgang Goetz was published by the Wedding-Verlag in Berlin in 1946.
Modern times see in Heine’s work – rather, the basis of a wider concern with nationalism and narrow concepts of German identity, against the backdrop of European integration – a weighty political poem in the German language: sovereign in its insight and inventive wit, stark in its images, masterly in its use of language. Heine’s figure-creations (like, for example, the ‘Liktor’) are skilful, and memorably portrayed.
A great deal of the attraction which the verse-epic holds today is grounded in this, that its message is not one-dimensional, but rather brings into expression the many-sided contradictions or contrasts in Heine’s thought. The poet shows himself as a man who loves his homeland and yet can only be a guest and visitor to it. In the same way that Antaeus
Antaeus
Antaeus in Greek and Berber mythology was a half-giant, the son of Poseidon and Gaia, whose wife was Tinjis. Antaeus had a daughter named Alceis or Barce.-Mythology:...
needed contact with the Earth, so Heine drew his skill and the fullness of his thought only through intellectual contact with the homeland.
This exemplified the visible breach which the July revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
of 1830 signifies for intellectual Germany: the fresh breeze of freedom suffocated in the reactionary exertions of the Metternich Restoration, the soon-downtrodden ‘Spring’ of freedom yielded to a new winter of censorship, repression, persecution and exile; the dream of a free and democratic Germany was for a whole century dismissed from the realm of possibility.
Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen is a high-point of political poetry of the period before the March Revolution
Revolutions of 1848 in the German states
The Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, also called the March Revolution – part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many countries of Europe – were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire...
of 1848, and in Germany is part of the official educational curriculum. The work taken for years and decades as the anti-German pamphlet of the ‘voluntary Frenchman’ Heine, today is for many people the most moving poem ever written by an emigrant.
Article translated from German Wikipedia, 24 September 2007.
Sources
Translation into English- Deutschland: A Not So Sentimental Journey by Heinrich Heine. Translated (into English) with an Introduction and Notes by T. J. Reed (Angel Books, London 1986). ISBN 0-946162-58-1
German Editions
- Heinrich Heine. Historico-critical complete edition of the Works. Edited by Manfred Windfuhr. Vol. 4: Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum / Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. Revised by Winfried Woesler. (Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 1985).
- H. H. Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. Edited by Joseph Kiermeier-Debre. (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1997.) (Bibliothek der Erstausgaben.) ISBN 3-423-02632-4
- H. H. Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. Edited by Werner Bellmann. Revised Edition. (Reclam, Stuttgart 2001.) ISBN 3-15-002253-3
- H. H. Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. Edited by Werner Bellmann. Illustrations by Hans Traxler.(Reclam, Stuttgart 2005.) ISBN 3-15-010589-7 (Paperback: Reclam, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-15-020236-4)
Research literature, Commentaries (German)
- Werner Bellmann: Heinrich Heine. Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. Illustrations and Documents. Revised Edition. (Reclam, Stuttgart 2005.) ISBN 3-15-008150-5
- Karlheinz Fingerhut: Heinrich Heine: Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. (Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1992). (Grundlagen und Gedanken zum Verständnis erzählender Literatur) ISBN 3-425-06167-4
- Jost Hermand: Heines Wintermärchen – On the subject of the 'deutsche Misere'. In: Diskussion Deutsch 8 (1977) Heft 35. p 234-249.
- Joseph A. Kruse: Ein neues Lied vom Glück? (A new song of happiness?) Heinrich Heines Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. In: J. A. K.: Heine-Zeit. (Stuttgart/München 1997) p 238-255.
- Renate Stauf: Heinrich Heine. Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. In: Renate Stauf/Cord Berghahn (Editors): Weltliteratur II. Eine Braunschweiger Vorlesung. (Bielefeld 2005). p 269-284.
- Jürgen Walter: Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. In: Heinrich Heine. Epoche - Werk - Wirkung. Edited by Jürgen Brummack. (Beck, München 1980). p 238-254.
External links
- German text at German Wikisource http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Deutschland._Ein_Winterm%C3%A4rchen
- German text at Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6079