HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
vantage-point at the University of Southern California
in Los Angeles, Marcuse surveyed the storm
that had raged about Heine in the heart of Europe
and noted that one could trace the genealogy of
German decay by tracing the increasing antagonism
of Germans towards Heine from Count von Platen
to Richard Wagner, from Wagner to Heinrich von
Treitschke, from Treitschke to Adolf Bartels, and
from Bartels to Julius Streicher. Marcuse held that
anti-humanistic and anti-European Germany had
always associated the name of Heine with everything
that was opposed to national selfishness. In
our day, however, after the defeat of the Third
Reich, Heine had emerged more alive, more meaningful,
and more contemporary than the majority
of those who now write and orate as functionaries
of weU-established parties. According to Marcuse,
Heine opposed wars and revolutions and clung to
the credo that mankind was destined for happiness
and not for battling and killing.
It is thus obvious, if we would judge from the
most recent editions of Heine's works in the original
tongue and in translation and from the unending
flow of scholarly studies and critical appraisals,
that the poet is still felt as a living force in England
and America, in France and in Russia, and
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