HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
In contrast to the Communist stress on Heine's
radicalism, English and American writers tended
to go to the other extreme and to call attention
to his fundamental conservatism. Typical of these
post-War voices were the American, Clement Vollmer
in 1946, and the Englishman, F. McEachran
in 1947.
Vollmer entitled his essay in the South Atlantic
Quarterly: Heine's Conservatism. Unable to deny
the presence of some radical ideas in Heine's thinking,
Vollmer nevertheless maintained that the poet's
thought-life as a whole was restrained by certain
basic conservative attitudes which inspired him to
warn his era against a too-rapid swing to the left.
Heine's record showed him to be only slightly left
of center. He was not a racial fanatic like some of
his Romantic contemporaries but he worshipped
the older traditional Germanic culture as fervently
as did the most ardent pan-Germanist of his day.
His aesthetic sensitiveness was disturbed by the
constant tendency of liberahsm to degenerate to
the most fantastic radicahsm and to uncultivated
animalism. He objected vigorously to any form of
imposed equality among human beings, to any compulsory
system that would macadamize life.
Vollmer, who was professor at Duke University
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