HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
lish co-religionists, who gladly included him in their
ranks as one of their most talented kinsmen. The
First World War and its aftermath brought violent
anti-Jewish agitation to the fore throughout the
European continent and the waves of race-hatred
did not always halt at the British shore, although
their force was pretty well spent before they lapped
the English coast. Heine was then subjected to attacks
because of his Jewishness, but these attacks
were less virulent than on the Continent and they
came to a sudden end with the outbreak of the
Second World War.
The earliest mention of Heine's Jewish roots
occurred in the Quarterly Review of December,
1835. This was the year in which the Stuttgart
pubhcist Wolfgang Menzel attacked Heine as the
diabohcal leader of "Young Germany" or "Young
Palestine." It was the year in which the German
Federal Diet decreed a ban upon all past, present,
and future works of the Parisian exile. The English
journal followed the lead of the conservative
German organs. Heine's political predilections and
his blasphemous audacities were traced back to his
origin. His mother was idealized as a Prussian lady
of good family but his father was stigmatized as a
Jew who threw off Judaism without adopting any
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