HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Bard of Democracy
good laugh, got them both, and was astounded to
learn that the benefactor was a serious poet, admitted
as such by the gravest critics." ^'^
During the First World War, which many Englishmen
viewed as a conflict of opposing ideologies,
Heine did not suffer appreciably from the hostile
propaganda directed at all persons and things German.
There is no evidence that his popularity diminished
to any extent. The ultrapatriotic literary
scholar Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, in 1915, that German
authors had always been absurdly overvalued
in England — "even Goethe was a pensive old uncle"—
but an exception must be made in behalf
of Heine. He alone well merited his unique position
and high rank.^^
The Quarterly Review of December, 1914, in an
article on "The German Spirit," discussed the War
as an irreconcilable conflict between two ideals of
life. Liberty, democracy, and the moral law were
ranged in battle order against physical force, militarism,
and the claims for universal domination.
Heine, though a German, foresaw this conflict and
wamed against the berserker rage that would break
out in Germany, when once the taming force of
Christianity lost its hold there. The twentieth century
witnessed the fulfillment of Heine's prophecy
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