HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
planation in the fact that his conservative soul was
chiefly interested in preserving what was sound
and worthy in the past rather than in surrendering
the civihzation of his day to the experimentation
of over-enthusiastic reformers." ^
McEachran, writing in the Contemporary Review
in 1947, did not go as far as Vollmer in clothing
Heine with respectability and conservatism. He
even conceded Heine's lack of respectability but
he re-interpreted this phrase to mean freedom from
prejudices. Heine, it was true, had little use for the
established governments of his day, but he also had
just as little use for the ideologists who wanted to
set up a new government and build the ideal state.
Heine did indeed collaborate temporarily with Karl
Marx but this collaboration gave him his insight
into the perils of Communism and led him to champion
the free human spirit. He was a fighter for
liberty but not for equality: "No one can read him
and remain totalitarian for very long. We may not
agree with his trenchant division into Nazarenes
and Hellenes, but few of us today would not wish
to assert the human individual where possible. The
Nazarene fog of Heine's day has largely gone, but
another has come in its place of a more political
kind and of that we may beware." ^
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