READING HEINRICH HEINE

102 Reading Heinrich Heine
of the prince of the Cherusces and his allies. The Arminius legend then
returns in Heine’s witty discussion of patriotism among German students
compared with their Polish contemporaries:
You can see at once from their faces that no timid soul is lurking beneath their
jerkins. Many of these Sarmatians could set an example of charm and noble
behaviour to the sons of Hermann and [his wife] Thusnelda. (B 2, 15)
(Sarmatia, a lyrical term for Poland, was the ancient name for a region
reaching from the Vistula and Danube to the Volga and the Caucasus;
its nomadic inhabitants were famous for their banditry.) In Kleist’s play,
of course, Hermann’s noble behaviour is seriously compromised by his
strategy of black propaganda against the Romans; and Thusnelda comes
off no better in the scene where she feeds a corrupt Roman legate to a
wild bear! In this sense patriotism and by implication the beliefs of the
ancient Saxons have little in common with a modern conception of the
state. However, the reference to Prussian military pride provides a measure
by which the current state of Berlin can be gauged:
Let us pause here for a moment and consider the great statue of the Great Elector.
He is proudly seated on horseback, and slaves in fetters surround the plinth. It is
a splendid bronze, and without doubt Berlin’s greatest work of art. And it can be
seen entirely free of charge because it stands in the middle of a bridge. (B 2, 10)
One element in this complicated piece of irony is the fact that the sculpture
on the bridge can be seen for nothing. This remnant of a supposedly glorious
past is not yet subject to the rule of money that dominates Heine’s Berlin
experiences. Berlin has achieved a certain degree of modernity, because it has
very little history at all. Heine cites Madame de Staël in order to emphasize
the historical dimension that the modern city lacks: ‘Berlin, cette ville toute
moderne, quelque belle qu’elle soit, ne fait pas une impression assez sérieuse;
on n’y aperçoit point l’empreinte de l’histoire du pays . . .’ (B 2, 19). 18
Berlin’s relationship to the past, in its transition from a quasi-feudal order
to modernity, is similarly stressed in another way in the first letter. Heine
reaches the great thoroughfare of Unter den Linden and recalls there a
cultural past:
I shiver when I think that Lessing may have stood on this spot. The favourite
stroll of so many great men who lived in Berlin ran under the trees. ‘Der große
Fritz’ walked here, this path was walked by – Him! But isn’t the present splendid
also? (B 2, 15)
As historical figures, Lessing and Frederick the Great go hand in hand,
but the anonymous third man is ambiguous. The pronoun might simply