HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Citizen of the World
in North Carolina, transformed Heine into a respectable
Southern gentleman who beheved that
all sectors of the population, black and white, Jew
and Christian, plebeian and aristocrat, should receive
equal treatment before the law but who envisaged
the destruction of all beautiful values on
this globe if a compulsory system of social and
cultural equality were introduced. Since only Socialists
and Communists advocated the levelhng of
social classes, Heine, the conservative thinker, attacked
these groups as the very dregs of human
society, as wandering rodents, as scourges of our
modern civilization, as blood-brothers of the atheists
whom he despised: "Heine knew what it meant
to suffer, to be enslaved and thwarted by the racial,
religious, and social prejudices of others. And yet,
in spite of their suffering, he did not believe that
these proletarian masses could be relied upon to
govern themselves justly and successfully. His 'liberalism'
was far too conservative to advocate any
high degree of self-government for them. He questioned
their sound judgment, their good taste, their
self-control, particularly in great pohtical crises.
. . . Liberals, who would properly understand his
influence upon his century and his failure to aid
their cause in any practical manner will find the ex-
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