HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
ments was Jewish hatred of Christianity. In language
presaging the Nazi diatribes of the next two
decades. Count de Soissons concludes: "Heine had
a prophetic vision of the present storm in Russia,
during w hich waves of destruction would rush
threateningly towards the West, on the furious billows
of which would swim the poet's compatriots,
not as paltry herrings but as the companions of
w hales, carrying with them the watchwords of annihilation
and death against the old order. . . .
Yes, Heine's wish is fulfilled; for in Russia Christian
blood is being spilt in abundance, and the followers
of Trotzky are carrying to unforeseen but
not illogical conclusions the principles of the Jewish
revolutionary writers — Spinoza, Heine, Herzen,
Marx, and Lassalle." ^^
The essay of Count de Soissons brought an immediate
reply in the following issue of the Quarterly
Review, that of April, 1920. The reply was a
defense not of Heine but of the Jews. The Count,
it was held, had been mislead into assuming that the
Jews were a distinct ethnic group with well-defined
national characteristics. This error probably resulted
from the misplaced activities of a minority
group in Jewish life, the Zionists, who mistakenly
saw in the Jews more than merely a religion. The
[124]