The Bebelplatz (formerly and colloquially the Opernplatz ) is a public square in the central Mitte district of Berlin , the capital of Germany . Following World War II , the square was renamed after August Bebel , a founder of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the 19th century.
73-717: The square is located on the south side of the Unter den Linden boulevard, a major east-west thoroughfare that runs through Berlin's city center . It consists of a green area to the east and an open area to the west of the State Opera building, which it surrounds (hence its prewar name). It is bounded to the east by the Prinzessinnenpalais , to the west by the Alte Bibliothek and the Old Palace , and to
146-700: A German accent. He also acquired a lifelong love for Rhenish folklore. In 1814 Heine went to a business school in Düsseldorf where he learned to read English, the commercial language of the time. The most successful member of the Heine family was his uncle Salomon Heine , a millionaire banker in Hamburg . In 1816 Heine moved to Hamburg to become an apprentice at Heckscher & Co, his uncle's bank, but displayed little aptitude for business. He learned to hate Hamburg, with its commercial ethos, but it would become one of
219-511: A break and set off on a trip through the Harz mountains. On his return he started writing an account of it, Die Harzreise . On 28 June 1825 Heine was baptized as an Evangelical Lutheran Christian in Heiligenstadt . The Prussian government had been gradually restoring discrimination against Jews. In 1822 it introduced a law excluding Jews from academic posts and Heine had ambitions for
292-465: A censored press. The opponents of the conservatives, the liberals, wanted to replace absolutism with representative, constitutional government, equality before the law and a free press. At the University of Bonn , liberal students were at war with the conservative authorities. Heine was a radical liberal and one of the first things he did after his arrival was to take part in a parade which violated
365-571: A city expansion founded in 1691. Eastward the boulevard crosses the Spree river, slightly kinked due to the oblique position of the long side of the palace compared to the boulevard, at the Lustgarten with Berlin Cathedral , and continues as Karl-Liebknecht-Straße , itself continued as Prenzlauer Allee , to the northern outskirts. The western, dead straight continuation behind Brandenburg Gate
438-505: A cultural richness unavailable in the smaller cities of Germany. He made many famous acquaintances (the closest were Gérard de Nerval and Hector Berlioz ) but he always remained something of an outsider. He had little interest in French literature and wrote everything in German, subsequently translating it into French with the help of a collaborator. In Paris, Heine earned money working as
511-548: A distance. His publisher was able to find some ways of getting around the censors and he was still free to publish in France. Heine's relationship with his fellow dissident Ludwig Börne was troubled. Since Börne did not attack religion or traditional morality like Heine, the German authorities hounded him less, although they still banned his books as soon as they appeared. Börne was the idol of German immigrant workers in Paris. He
584-490: A flesh wound in the hip. Before fighting, he decided to safeguard Mathilde's future in the event of his death by marrying her. Heine continued to write reports for Cotta's Allgemeine Zeitung , and, when Cotta died, for his son and successor. One event which really galvanised him was the 1840 Damascus Affair in which Jews in Damascus had been subject to blood libel and accused of murdering an old Catholic monk. This led to
657-692: A leading salon. Another friend was the satirist Karl Immermann , who had praised Heine's first verse collection, Gedichte , when it appeared in December 1821. During his time in Berlin Heine also joined the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden , a society which attempted to achieve a balance between the Jewish faith and modernity. Since Heine was not very religious in outlook he soon lost interest, but he also began to investigate Jewish history . He
730-502: A more explosive force than the French Revolution. Heine had had few serious love affairs, but in late 1834 he made the acquaintance of a 19-year-old Paris shopgirl, Crescence Eugénie Mirat, whom he nicknamed "Mathilde". Heine reluctantly began a relationship with her. She was illiterate, knew no German, and had no interest in cultural or intellectual matters. Nevertheless, she moved in with Heine in 1836 and lived with him for
803-453: A much larger Forum Fridericianum , but his distant cousin, Frederick William, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt , refused to sell his palace, the predecessor of today's Old Palace , for the purpose of demolition. So the king felt compelled to take this house, which was in the middle of his plans, into consideration and to scale these down significantly. In return, however, he forced his cousin to give up his garden and some outbuildings, whereupon
SECTION 10
#1732765851525876-425: A new social order in which meritocracy would replace hereditary distinctions in rank and wealth. There would also be female emancipation and an important role for artists and scientists. Heine frequented some Saint-Simonian meetings after his arrival in Paris but within a few years his enthusiasm for the ideology – and other forms of utopianism – had waned. Heine soon became a celebrity in France. Paris offered him
949-414: A new style of German travel-writing, mixing Romantic descriptions of nature with satire. Heine's Buch der Lieder [ de ] followed in 1827. This was a collection of already published poems. No one expected it to become one of the most popular books of German verse ever published, and sales were slow to start with, picking up when composers began setting Heine's poems as Lieder . For example,
1022-640: A novel, Wally die Zweiflerin ("Wally the Sceptic"), which contained criticism of the institution of marriage and some mildly erotic passages. In November of that year, the German Diet consequently banned publication of works by the Young Germans in Germany and – on Metternich's insistence – Heine's name was added to their number. Heine, however, continued to comment on German politics and society from
1095-600: A physician in Saint Petersburg . Heine was a third cousin once removed of philosopher and economist Karl Marx , also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland , with whom he became a frequent correspondent in later life. Düsseldorf at the time was a town with a population of around 16,000. The French Revolution and subsequent Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars involving Germany complicated Düsseldorf's political history during Heine's childhood. It had been
1168-767: A secret word, A garland of cypress for token. I wake; it is gone; the dream is blurred, And forgotten the word that was spoken. (Poetic translation by Hal Draper ) Starting from the mid-1820s, Heine distanced himself from Romanticism by adding irony, sarcasm, and satire into his poetry, and making fun of the sentimental-romantic awe of nature and of figures of speech in contemporary poetry and literature. An example are these lines: Das Fräulein stand am Meere Und seufzte lang und bang. Es rührte sie so sehre der Sonnenuntergang. Mein Fräulein! Sein sie munter, Das ist ein altes Stück; Hier vorne geht sie unter Und kehrt von hinten zurück. A mistress stood by
1241-484: A sympathetic critic for his early verses. Heine began to acquire a reputation as a poet at Bonn. He also wrote two tragedies, Almansor and William Ratcliff , but they had little success in the theatre. After a year at Bonn, Heine left to continue his law studies at the University of Göttingen . Heine hated the town. It was part of Hanover , then also rulers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
1314-402: A university career. As Heine said in self-justification, his conversion was "the ticket of admission into European culture". In any event, Heine's conversion, which was reluctant, never brought him any benefits in his career. A quarter of a century later, he declared: "I make no secret of my Judaism, to which I have not returned, because I never left it." Heine now had to search for a job. He
1387-688: A wave of anti-Semitic persecution. The French government, aiming at imperialism in the Middle East and not wanting to offend the Catholic party, had failed to condemn the outrage. In contrast, the Austrian consul in Damascus had assiduously exposed the blood libel as a fraud. For Heine, this was a reversal of values: reactionary Austria standing up for the Jews while France temporised. Heine responded by dusting off and publishing his unfinished novel about
1460-515: Is engraved on a plaque inset in the square: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." (in English: "That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people"). Students at Humboldt University hold a book sale in the square every year to mark the anniversary. In 2006, an exhibition of " United Buddy Bears " was held in
1533-568: Is the Straße des 17. Juni (formerly Charlottenburger Chaussee ), which in turn is extended to the west by the straight sequence of Bismarckstrasse and Kaiserdamm , an axis, widened in 1904, that runs from Berlin Palace more than 10 kilometers across the city to the western outskirts where, slightly elevated, one can survey the length of the axis. The extension of the Linden alley to this gigantic axis
SECTION 20
#17327658515251606-677: Is visible until today as there are no linden trees on this stretch up to the Berlin Palace on the Spree river island itself. The avenue of trees in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate begins where it once began outside the fortifications. The square, then called Platz am Opernhaus (i.e. square at the opera house), was laid out between 1741 and 1743 under the rule of King Frederick II of Prussia . Frederick "the Great" had planned
1679-517: The Berlin Palace to the Brandenburg Gate , it is named after the linden trees (known as lime in the UK and Ireland and basswood in North America, not related to citrus lime) that line the grassed pedestrian mall on the median and the two broad carriageways . The avenue links numerous Berlin sights , landmarks and rivers for sightseeing. Unter den Linden runs east–west from the Berlin Palace ,
1752-547: The Carlsbad Decrees , a series of measures introduced by Metternich to suppress liberal political activity. Heine was more interested in studying history and literature than law. The university had engaged the famous literary critic and thinker August Wilhelm Schlegel as a lecturer and Heine heard him talk about the Nibelungenlied and Romanticism . Though he would later mock Schlegel, Heine found in him
1825-751: The Crown Prince's Palace (the former palace of the Hohenzollern crown princes), at No. 3, opposite the Neue Wache war memorial, No. 4, Karl Friedrich Schinkel ’s masterpiece built in 1817. Further along, on Bebelplatz , the Berlin State Opera , No. 7, colloquially called Lindenoper , St. Hedwig's Cathedral and the Altes Palais , No. 9, ( Old Palace, Berlin ) a favourite Neoclassical residence of Emperor Wilhelm I ; next, on
1898-657: The Royal Library was built, which is directly adjacent to the back of the margravial house. The Opernplatz (today Bebelplatz), which was a bit cramped as a result, has survived almost unchanged: State Opera , St. Hedwig's Cathedral , the Old Library Building and the Palace of Prince Henry , the king's brother, today the main building of Humboldt University , giving the square an almost complete surround of 18th-century buildings. On 12 August 1910, it
1971-613: The 19th century, as Berlin grew and expanded to the west, Unter den Linden became the most renowned and grandest street in Berlin. In 1851 the famous equestrian statue of Frederick the Great , designed by Christian Daniel Rauch , was erected on the central strip. Johann Strauss III wrote the waltz " Unter den Linden " in 1900. In the course of the building of the Nord-Süd-Tunnel for the Berlin S-Bahn in 1934–35, most of
2044-611: The French correspondent for one of Cotta's newspapers, the Allgemeine Zeitung . The first event he covered was the Salon of 1831. His articles were eventually collected in a volume entitled Französische Zustände ("Conditions in France"). Heine saw himself as a mediator between Germany and France. If the two countries understood one another there would be progress. To further this aim he published De l'Allemagne ("On Germany") in French (begun 1833). In its later German version,
2117-647: The French for introducing the Napoleonic Code and trial by jury. He glossed over the negative aspects of French rule in Berg: heavy taxation, conscription, and economic depression brought about by the Continental Blockade , which may have contributed to his father's bankruptcy. Heine greatly admired Napoleon as the promoter of revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality and loathed the political atmosphere in Germany after Napoleon's defeat, marked by
2190-584: The Sanskritist Franz Bopp and the Homer critic F. A. Wolf , who inspired Heine's lifelong love of Aristophanes . Most important was the philosopher Hegel , whose influence on Heine is hard to gauge. He probably gave Heine and other young students the idea that history had a meaning which could be seen as progressive. Heine also made valuable acquaintances in Berlin, notably the liberal Karl August Varnhagen and his Jewish wife Rahel , who held
2263-424: The attendees of the opera to be erected under the square and around the subsurface memorial. 52°31′00″N 13°23′38″E / 52.51667°N 13.39389°E / 52.51667; 13.39389 Unter den Linden Unter den Linden ( German: [ˈʊntɐ deːn ˈlɪndn̩] , "under the linden trees") is a boulevard in the central Mitte district of Berlin , Germany. Running from
Bebelplatz - Misplaced Pages Continue
2336-578: The book is divided into two: Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland ("On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany") and Die romantische Schule ("The Romantic School"). Heine was deliberately attacking Madame de Staël 's book De l'Allemagne (1813) which he viewed as reactionary, Romantic and obscurantist. He felt de Staël had portrayed a Germany of "poets and thinkers", dreamy, religious, introverted and cut off from
2409-430: The book was published in 1840 it was universally disliked by the radicals and served to alienate Heine from his public. Even his enemies admitted that Börne was a man of integrity, so Heine's ad hominem attacks on him were viewed as being in poor taste. Heine had made personal attacks on Börne's closest friend Jeanette Wohl , so Jeannette's husband challenged Heine to a duel. It was the last Heine ever fought – he received
2482-702: The capital of the Duchy of Jülich-Berg , but was under French occupation at the time of his birth. It then passed to the Elector of Bavaria before being ceded to Napoleon in 1806, who turned it into the capital of the Grand Duchy of Berg , one of three French states he established in Germany. It was first ruled by Joachim Murat , then by Napoleon himself. Upon Napoleon's downfall in 1815 it became part of Prussia . Thus Heine's formative years were spent under French influence. The adult Heine would always be devoted to
2555-416: The conservative policies of Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich , who attempted to reverse the effects of the French Revolution. Heine's parents were not particularly devout. They sent him as a young child to a Jewish school where he learned a smattering of Hebrew , but thereafter he attended Catholic schools. Here he learned French, which became his second language – although he always spoke it with
2628-426: The cross-road will be buried He who killed himself; There grows a blue flower, Suicide’s flower. I stood at the cross-road and sighed The night was cold and mute. By the light of the moon moved slowly Suicide’s flower. Heine became increasingly critical of despotism and reactionary chauvinism in Germany, of nobility and clerics but also what he viewed as “narrow mindedness” of ordinary people and of
2701-580: The former main residence of the royal House of Hohenzollern , reconstructed (after the demolition of the communist Palace of the Republic ) on its old site opposite the Lustgarten park, to Pariser Platz and Brandenburg Gate . Major north–south streets crossing Unter den Linden are Friedrichstraße and Wilhelmstrasse , both meeting at Mehringplatz and running across the Friedrichstadt ,
2774-630: The infamous Nazi book burning ceremonies held in the evening of 10 May 1933 in many German university cities. The book burnings were initiated and hosted by the nationalist German Student Association , thus stealing a march on the National Socialist German Students' League . The assembly of the books had started on the sixth, when students dragged the contents of the Institute for the Science of Sexuality library into
2847-472: The last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris. Heine was born on 13 December 1797, in Düsseldorf , in what was then the Duchy of Berg , into a Jewish family. He was called "Harry" in childhood but became known as "Heinrich" after his conversion to Lutheran Christianity in 1825. Despite his conversion, Heine was never a devout Lutheran Christian. Heine's father, Samson Heine (1764–1828),
2920-459: The linden trees were cut down and during the last days of World War II the remaining trees were destroyed or cut down for firewood. The present-day linden were replanted in the 1950s. As the location of the pre-1914 German Foreign Ministry building, "the Under den Linden" was sometimes used as a shorthand for the German government when talking of German foreign policy. Since 1937, the numbering of
2993-637: The news that his cousin Amalie had become engaged. When Heine challenged another student, Wiebel, to a duel, the first of ten known incidents throughout his life, the authorities stepped in and he was suspended from the university for six months. His uncle then decided to send him to the University of Berlin . Heine arrived in Berlin in March 1821. It was the biggest, most cosmopolitan city he had ever visited, with its population of about 200,000. The university gave Heine access to notable cultural figures as lecturers:
Bebelplatz - Misplaced Pages Continue
3066-667: The newspaper congenial, and instead tried to obtain a professorship at Munich University, with no success. After a few months he took a trip to northern Italy, visiting Lucca , Florence and Venice, but was forced to return when he received news that his father had died. This Italian journey resulted in a series of new works: Die Reise von München nach Genua ( Journey from Munich to Genoa ), Die Bäder von Lucca ( The Baths of Lucca ) and Die Stadt Lucca ( The Town of Lucca ). Die Bäder von Lucca embroiled Heine in controversy. The aristocratic poet August von Platen had been annoyed by some epigrams by Immermann which Heine had included in
3139-736: The north side lies the main building of the Humboldt University , No. 6, and House I of the Berlin State Library , No. 8. At the western end are the Russian Embassy (former Soviet Embassy, Nos. 63-65, the Hungarian Embassy, No. 76, standing at the junction with Wilhelmstrasse, and finally the Hotel Adlon , No. 77, at the corner of Pariser Platz, which has been completely rebuilt on the site of
3212-425: The palace on the Spree river island itself. Bebelplatz itself was planned by Frederick the Great as a much larger Forum Fridericianum , albeit on a smaller scale actually realized with his State Opera , St. Hedwig's Cathedral , the Old Library Building and the Palace of Prince Henry , today the main building of Humboldt University , giving the square an almost complete surround of 18th-century buildings. By
3285-902: The poem "Allnächtlich im Traume" was set to music by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn . It contains the ironic disillusionment typical of Heine: Allnächtlich im Traume seh ich dich, Und sehe dich freundlich grüßen, Und laut aufweinend stürz ich mich Zu deinen süßen Füßen. Du siehst mich an wehmütiglich, Und schüttelst das blonde Köpfchen; Aus deinen Augen schleichen sich Die Perlentränentröpfchen. Du sagst mir heimlich ein leises Wort, Und gibst mir den Strauß von Zypressen. Ich wache auf, und der Strauß ist fort, Und das Wort hab ich vergessen. Nightly I see you in dreams – you speak, With kindliness sincerest, I throw myself, weeping aloud and weak At your sweet feet, my dearest. You look at me with wistful woe, And shake your golden curls; And stealing from your eyes there flow The teardrops like to pearls. You breathe in my ear
3358-474: The poles of his life alongside Paris. When he was 18 Heine almost certainly had an unrequited love for his cousin Amalie, Salomon's daughter. Whether he then transferred his affections, equally unsuccessfully to her sister Therese is unknown. This period in Heine's life is not clear but it seems that his father's business deteriorated, making Samson Heine effectively the ward of his brother Salomon. Salomon realised that his nephew had no talent for trade, and it
3431-469: The power Heine blamed for bringing Napoleon down. Here the poet experienced an aristocratic snobbery absent elsewhere. He hated law as the Historical School of law he had to study was used to bolster the reactionary form of government he opposed. Other events conspired to make Heine loathe this period of his life: he was expelled from a student fraternity due to anti-Semitism , and he heard
3504-686: The pre-war hotel. Well-known statues of Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt in front of the university as well as of the Prussian generals Scharnhorst and Bülow , also adorn the street. A street sign carrying the name Unter den Linden dating from before the 1930s was taken away by British forces and can now be seen at the Imperial War Museum , London. Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine ( / ˈ h aɪ n ə / ; German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈhaɪnə] ; born Harry Heine ; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856)
3577-632: The properties on the street has started at the Schlossbrücke (Palace Bridge), which connects Unter den Linden with the Lustgarten and Museum Island . The reconstructed Alte Kommandantur is at No. 1, standing opposite the Zeughaus arsenal, the oldest building on Unter den Linden, built between 1695 and 1706, now the seat of the Deutsches Historisches Museum , No. 2. Buildings along the street include (from east to west)
3650-510: The publication of this work. In London he cashed a cheque from his uncle for £ 200 (equal to £21,870 today), much to Salomon's chagrin. Heine was unimpressed by the English: he found them commercial and prosaic, and still blamed them for the defeat of Napoleon. On his return to Germany, Cotta , the liberal publisher of Goethe and Schiller , offered Heine a job co-editing a magazine, Politische Annalen , in Munich . Heine did not find work on
3723-597: The remainder of his life. His move was prompted by the July Revolution of 1830 that had made Louis-Philippe the "Citizen King" of the French. Heine shared liberal enthusiasm for the revolution, which he felt had the potential to overturn the conservative political order in Europe. Heine was also attracted by the prospect of freedom from German censorship and was interested in the new French utopian political doctrine of Saint-Simonianism . Saint-Simonianism preached
SECTION 50
#17327658515253796-423: The rest of his life. Their stormy relationship has been compared to a marriage. Campe was a liberal who published as many dissident authors as he could. He had developed various techniques for evading the authorities. The laws of the time stated that any book under 320 pages had to be submitted to censorship. The authorities thought long books would cause little trouble as they were unpopular. One way around censorship
3869-437: The rest of his life. They were married in 1841. Heine and his fellow radical exile in Paris, Ludwig Börne , had become the role models for a younger generation of writers who were given the name " Young Germany ". They included Karl Gutzkow , Heinrich Laube , Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg . They were liberal, but not actively political. Nevertheless, they still fell foul of the authorities. In 1835, Gutzkow published
3942-533: The revolutionary currents of the modern world. Heine thought that such an image suited the oppressive German authorities. He also had an Enlightenment view of the past, seeing it as mired in superstition and atrocities. "Religion and Philosophy in Germany" describes the replacement of traditional "spiritualist" religion by a pantheism that pays attention to human material needs. According to Heine, pantheism had been repressed by Christianity and had survived in German folklore. He predicted that German thought would prove
4015-486: The rising German form of nationalism , especially in contrast to the French and the revolution . Nevertheless, he made a point of stressing his love for his Fatherland : Plant the black, red, gold banner at the summit of the German idea, make it the standard of free mankind, and I will shed my dear heart's blood for it. Rest assured, I love the Fatherland just as much as you do. The first volume of travel writings
4088-701: The sea sighing long and anxiously. She was so deeply stirred By the setting sun My Fräulein!, be gay, This is an old play; ahead of you it sets And from behind it returns. The blue flower of Novalis , "symbol for the Romantic movement ", also received withering treatment from Heine during this period, as illustrated by the following quatrains from Lyrisches Intermezzo : Am Kreuzweg wird begraben Wer selber brachte sich um; dort wächst eine blaue Blume, Die Armesünderblum'. Am Kreuzweg stand ich und seufzte; Die Nacht war kalt und stumm. Im Mondschein bewegte sich langsam Die Armesünderblum'. At
4161-520: The second volume of Reisebilder . He counter-attacked by writing a play, Der romantische Ödipus , which included anti-Semitic jibes about Heine. Heine was stung and responded by mocking Platen's homosexuality in Die Bäder von Lucca . This back-and-forth ad hominem literary polemic has become known as the Platen affair [ de ] . Heine left Germany for France in 1831, settling in Paris for
4234-412: The southeast by St. Hedwig's Cathedral , the first Catholic church built in Prussia after the Reformation . Parts of the fortification of Berlin built in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War (the baroque Berlin Fortress ) were later integrated into the boulevard Unter den Linden when the fortifications had become useless through the advance of artillery pieces. The site of the fortifications
4307-436: The square, for the third time in Berlin. The exhibition consisted of more than 180 bear sculptures, each 2 meters (6 ft 7 in) in height and designed by a different artist. Due to its difficult past the use of Bebelplatz remains disputed, recently sparked off by a wintry skating rink and a party tent of the Berlin fashion week . In 2012 several protests were caused by the announced plan of an underground carpark serving
4380-506: The square. At the Student Association's invitation Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels held an inflammatory speech prior to the burning. Besides other spectators, it was attended by members of the Nazi Students' League, the SA ("brownshirts"), SS and Hitler Youth groups. They burned around 20,000 books, including works by Heinrich Mann , Erich Maria Remarque , Heinrich Heine , Karl Marx , Albert Einstein and many other authors. Erich Kästner , whose books were also among those burned,
4453-517: Was a German poet, writer and literary critic . He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry , which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert . Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities —which, however, only added to his fame. He spent
SECTION 60
#17327658515254526-404: Was a republican, while Heine was not. Heine regarded Börne, with his admiration for Robespierre , as a puritanical neo-Jacobin and remained aloof from him in Paris, which upset Börne, who began to criticise him, mostly semi-privately. In February 1837, Börne died. When Heine heard that Gutzkow was writing a biography of Börne, he began work on his own, severely critical "memorial" of the man. When
4599-409: Was a textile merchant. His mother Peira (known as "Betty"), née van Geldern (1771–1859), was the daughter of a physician. Heinrich was the eldest of four children. He had a sister, Charlotte (later Charlotte Embden [ de ] ), and two brothers, Gustav , later Baron Heine-Geldern and publisher of the Viennese newspaper Fremden-Blatt [ de ] , and Maximilian , who became
4672-415: Was closed. Campe was reluctant to publish uncensored books as he had bad experiences with print runs being confiscated. Heine resisted all censorship; this issue became a bone of contention between the two. However, the relationship between author and publisher started well: Campe published the first volume of Reisebilder ("Travel Pictures") in May 1826. This volume included Die Harzreise , which marked
4745-467: Was decided that Heine should enter law. So, in 1819, Heine went to the University of Bonn , then in Prussia. Political life in Germany was divided between conservatives and liberals. The conservatives, who were in power, wanted to restore things to the way they were before the French Revolution . They were against German unification because they felt a united Germany might fall victim to revolutionary ideas. Most German states were absolutist monarchies with
4818-408: Was inspired by the Boulevards of Paris . The Kurfürstendamm , the magnificent shopping mile in the historically elegant west of Berlin, was similarly inspired. Unter den Linden, which sits at the heart of the historic section of Berlin, developed from a bridle path laid out by Elector John George of Brandenburg in the 16th century to reach his hunting grounds in the Tiergarten from his palace. It
4891-567: Was only really suited to writing but it was extremely difficult to be a professional writer in Germany. The market for literary works was small and it was only possible to make a living by writing virtually non-stop. Heine was incapable of doing this so he never had enough money to cover his expenses. Before finding work, Heine visited the North Sea resort of Norderney which inspired the free verse poems of his cycle Die Nordsee . In Hamburg one evening in January 1826 Heine met Julius Campe [ de ] , who would be his chief publisher for
4964-436: Was particularly drawn to the Spanish Jews of the Middle Ages . In 1824 Heine began a historical novel, Der Rabbi von Bacherach , which he never finished. In May 1823 Heine left Berlin for good and joined his family at their new home in Lüneburg . Here he began to write the poems of the cycle Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming"). He returned to Göttingen where he was again bored by the law. In September 1824 he decided to take
5037-429: Was present at the scene and described it with bitter irony in his diary. The Empty Library , a Memorial in memory of the burning of books by Micha Ullman consisting of a glass plate set into the cobblestones, gives a view of a group of empty bookcases large enough to hold all 20,000 burned books; its purpose is to commemorate the book burning. Furthermore, a line of Heinrich Heine from his play, Almansor (1821),
5110-402: Was renamed for Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria ( Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Platz ) on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The buildings surrounding the square were subsequently largely destroyed in World War II by air raids and the Battle of Berlin . The ensemble was restored in the 1950s, and the square was renamed on 31 August 1947 as Bebelplatz. The Bebelplatz is known as the site of one of
5183-492: Was replaced by a boulevard of linden trees when the Electress Dorothea Sophie planned a new suburb in 1674, named after her Dorotheenstadt . She is said to have planted the first linden tree in 1680. Parts of the fortification of Berlin built in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War (the baroque Berlin Fortress ) were later integrated into the boulevard, around the historic Opernplatz , the present-day Bebelplatz , visible until today as there are no trees on this stretch up to
5256-1358: Was such a success that Campe pressed Heine for another. Reisebilder II appeared in April 1827. It contains the second cycle of North Sea poems, a prose essay on the North Sea as well as a new work, Ideen: Das Buch Le Grand , which contains the following satire on German censorship: The German Censors —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— idiots —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— Heine went to England to avoid what he predicted would be controversy over
5329-495: Was to publish dissident works in large print to increase the number of pages beyond 320. The censorship in Hamburg was relatively lax but Campe had to worry about Prussia, the largest German state and largest market for books. It was estimated that one-third of the German readership was Prussian. Initially, any book which had passed the censor in a German state was able to be sold in any of the other states, but in 1834 this loophole
#524475