HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
where the nightingales sing and the air is fragrant
with the scent of flowers." ^^
The year 1940 saw not the fulfillment of this
wish but rather the crushing of France by armed
warriors from across the Rhine. The English,
watching in horror the collapse of their strongest
ally of that year, recalled Heine's propheric warnings
of more than a century earher. The New
Statesman and Nation of June 22, 1940, reprinted,
under the title "Heine's Warning to France," excerpts
from his Religion and Philosophy in Germany
— excerpts which had been deleted by the
Pmssian censor from the first German edition of
1835 and which had then appeared only in the
French edition. James Thomson had printed these
very excerpts during the Franco-Prussian War of
1870 under the heading: How Heine Forewarned
France. The editor in 1940 noted that Heine's
works were again banned in Germany. All the
more reason for the English to remember them!
In these excerpts, Heine warned of the German
thunderbolt that would surely come one day and
that would crash as never before in the world's
history. His statement that at this commotion the
eagles would drop dead from the skies was underlined
by the English journal, since it sounded like
[160]