History 332:  German History

Heinrich Heine  

[Note:  All citations adapted from: Heinrich Heine, Self-Portrait and Other Prose Writings, Translated and edited by Frederic Ewen (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1948)].  

Lyrics:  

            From my tears

            Flowers will one day bloom

            My sighs, one day,

            Will become a nightingale choir.

 

***********************************

 

            An evergreen stands alone

            In the north, on a frozen height

            The evergreen sleeps beneath its white blanket

            And dreams of a palm tree

            Off somewhere in the faraway East

            Alone, and silent,

            Weeping on the burning desert sands.  

On Freedom:  

            It’s too bad when a nation has a revolution.  It’s worse when it doesn’t have one.  

***************************************  

            Wherever they burn books, sooner or later they’ll burn people.  

********************************************              

What is the great task of our day?   Freedom.  Achieving freedom.  Not simply freedom for the Irish, or the Greeks, or Europe’s Jews, or enslaved Africans in the West Indies, or other oppressed people, no, what I mean is freedom for every person, everywhere.  I am a European, so I look to Europe first.  Europeans, today, are coming of age, their adults, they no longer need their lives made for them by an aristocratic elite, they’re no longer tied to the apron-strings of the privileged classes. 

Oh yes, there are brilliant minds hard at work trying to prove that “some” are, well, just “inferior to others – the lower orders, you know, not well educated, dull-witted, crime-ridden, poor people in general (poor, of course, because they’re not as smart, not as virtuous as “we” are) – yes, some are just born to be beasts of burden for a few thousand privilege “aristocrats.”  Yet I agree with Voltaire, I won’t believe that the many are to be beasts of burden for the few until its proven that the former are born with saddles on their backs and the latter are born with spurs on their feet.

Every generation has its own task, and when it’s accomplished, humanity takes another step forward.

Inequality was the very bedrock of European society, and centuries ago, in the Middle Ages, maybe it was necessary, maybe a privileged few had to rule an oppressed many in order for humanity to progress. 

Not today.  Today, inequality is an obstacle to progress; it is an insult to civilized minds.  The French, or course, are the most sensitive about “egalité,” and in their great revolution then not only abolished all hereditary ranks, but they gentle snipped off the heads of those who insisted on defending rank, and privilege, and hierarchy.

I say – hurray for the French!  They’ve provided two of humanity’s greatest needs: great food, and social equality.  The next time you go to a banquet, and the next time you’re treated equally with respect and dignity, enjoy the food, and raise a cheer to the French!  And one day we will have a grand feast, where all persons are treated equally with respect and dignity, and where we’ll all eat and drink to the full.  By that day, we’ll have other tasks, and other enemies.  Maybe by then we’ll be fighting death itself – that great equalizer, whose equality is not so shocking as the system of inequality so loved by Europe’s pampered aristocrats.

And if you’re reading this some day far off into my future, please don’t laugh.  Every generation believes its battles are the most important that the world has ever seen.  Sometimes they are.  Our fight is the fight for freedom.  Freedom is our religion – and a richer and more powerful religion than most of what goes on in churches nowadays.  Our holy war is a war for freedom – though we know, that once freedom is won, our grandchildren will simply inherit their freedom and wonder why we were so upset about it; they will smile at our battles the way we smile at our ancestors’ struggles against their monsters, dragons, and giants.  

******************************  

On Germany and the Germans:  

Yes, I’m married – to Frau Germania!  She’s a big blonde girl.  Likes to dress in bear skins. She’s a brute, it’s true.  And the marriage has been pretty rough.  But no, we’ve never divorced.  I’ve not lost a single ounce of my “German-ness.”  I haven’t lost a single bell from my German court jester’s cap.  

********************************

One of the great missions I’ve had in life has been to work for peace and understanding between Germany and France.  Again and again, I’ve struggled to disrupt the plots of those enemies of democracy who try to stir up national prejudices as a trick to kill democracy.  

*******************************************

I’m worried about all the writers who write about “getting close to nature,” “being one with nature,” and so on.  I like cities.  I’m afraid of nature.  I’m afraid that all these self-proclaimed “nature lovers” will stir up the primitive forces of nature, those primitive and dangerous forces in every person’s heart.  I’m afraid they’ll stir up the old Germanic gods, the old demonic energies of German pantheism.  I’m afraid with all their talk of “passion” and “thinking with your heart” they’ll conjure up that old German fascination with violence and war.

Christianity has bottled up down that German fascination with violence, but Christianity couldn’t destroy it. And if the magic of the cross were ever shattered, I’m afraid that some sort of ancient frenzy would explode, the ancient bloodlust of the ancient Germans.

And I’m terrified that the cross really is losing its power.  One day, it will fall to pieces.  And on that day, the old stone gods will stir themselves and rise from forgotten ruins, they will rub a thousand years of dust from their eyes, and the mad god Thor will jump up with a terrible scream and with his war hammer smash to bits all the gothic cathedrals.  

********************************  

Germans are like slaves who obey the slightest wink or nod of their masters.  Nope, whips and chains aren’t needed to force Germans to obey.  With Germans, slavery is built-in.  And this spiritual slavery is even more wakeful than physical slavery.  This is why Germans must be liberated from inside out; mere external liberation won’t free them at all.  

*******************************  

A German marriage isn’t really a marriage.  A German husband doesn’t get a wife; he gets a maid – and stays, in his heart of heart, a bachelor his whole life long.  So he’s the master then?  No, most of the time he turns into the servant of the maid.  And that’s a German marriage.  

*********************************  

German history is a history of hunting – hunting down freedom.  German aristocrats – those great defenders of Hierarchy and Tradition and Inherited Privilege spend their days hunting down freedom, their hounds run freedom to the ground and tear it to pieces.  In Berlin today, the great aristocrats are fattening their hounds for another chase; I can hear they howling.  

*********************************  

[In 1830, after weeks of violent protests, in the so-called “Revolution of 1830,” the French drove one king from power and replaced him with another, Louis Philippe, who vowed to respect democracy].   

What a week it’s been in Paris!

The fire of freedom raged so high that sparks even flew over into Germany!  A few German thrones actually caught on fire!  But of course, all the good German watchmen, defending their kings, rushed out with their fire buckets and quickly doused the fires of freedom.

            And new chains are being forged.  And I can even see, off to the east, even thicker prison walls rising up over the Germans.

            Oh, you poor prisoners!  Don’t give up! Oh, how I wish I were a catapult, how I wish my words were sparks of fire that I could fire into your prison!

            In my heart, I feel ice melting.  I feel a sorrow coming on.  Can it be true; can it be that, despite everything, I really do love Germans?

            Maybe I’m just getting sick.

            My hands tremble, my eyes burn.  “You’re a writer,” people say, “you’re supposed to be cool, and calm, and objective!”  Didn’t somebody great, Goethe or somebody, say that?  “You’re not supposed to really care about anything,” they say.  Isn’t that how Goethe lived to eighty and got rich – by always staying in control, but, all in all, not really caring that much?

            Let me tell you a story.

            It’s about Emperor Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, from way back in the 1500s. I’ll admit that I might have the details all wrong, but who cares so long as I get the meaning right?  When I remember this story, it makes my ears ring; it makes my eyes fill with tears.  Maybe I am getting sick.

            Anyway:  Once upon a time, the Emperor was captured in battle.  He was thrown in prison.  I think it was in southern Switzerland, in the Tyrol.  He was all alone, frightened, miserable, abandoned by anyone.  Look at the old Holbein portraits of him – pale, his lower lip sticking out – yes, that’s him!  In a dungeon somewhere.

Screeech! The cell door suddenly swings open!  A man steps in.  He’s wrapped mysteriously in a cloak.

He dramatically sweeps off his cloak – and its … Kunz von der Rosen! 

The court jester!

But wait – the Emperor burst into tears of joy.  For it was the court jester, the court fool, who had always given the Emperor the very best advice!

Oh Germany!  I am your court jester, your court fool!  I tell you jokes, I make you laugh, I burst into your jail! 

Look, I’ve smuggled in your crown and scepter!  You don’t have to be a prisoner!  You’re really the Emperor!

And if I can single-handedly rescue you, at least I’ll stay with you, I’ll love you and comfort you. 

Oh German people – you really are the Emperor, you really are the Sovereign, you and you alone should rule your lives, you should not be ruled by some King, some band of aristocrats, some collection of bureaucrats or soldiers!  Though you’re a prisoner now, you’re the secret Emperor!  And I’m your court jester!

“But fool,” you say, “you’re wrong … I’m simply a poor prisoner in this awful prison, I’m no Emperor.”

“But your majesty,” I say, “its this poisonous air that makes you despair.  Once you’ll be free and they you’ll see!”

“But fool – what’s all noise, that chopping and sawing and digging?”

“That’s Freedom!  Others are tearing down this prison even now!”

“And then I’ll be Emperor?”

“Yes, at last, you be free (and probably as ungrateful as every other Emperor!).”

“And fool, when I’m free, when I assume my great power, how shall I reward you?”

“Well, when you’re finally free and powerful – just remember – don’t have me killed.”  

*********************************  

Will Germany ever really be free?  Will Germany – with all its kings and aristocrats with is armies and bureaucrats and established church, will Germany, with its love of Authority, and Obedience, and “do-what-you’re told!” – will Germany every be free?  Will there ever be a German republic, in which free people freely rule themselves?

Not in my lifetime.  Or yours.

But one day, I’m absolutely sure of it, long after you and I are in our graves, one day Germans will finally fight for, and finally win, their republic.

For you see, a “republic” is not a thing but an idea.  And Germans always insist that they admire ideas.  One day, they will admire this idea too.  

****************************  

Who runs Germany?  A tiny clique.  A handful of the rich and powerful.  Their wealth and privilege and power is inherited – the very laws we have guarantee them a whole host of special privileges.  Who pays taxes?  We do, not them.  But who has automatic access to the most powerful positions in the land?  They do, not us.  And if we even dare to say that we’d like a voice in all this, that we’d like to speak too, that we want burdens shared more equally, rights shared more broadly – they respond with guns and bayonets and prisons and hangings. 

The nobility has to go.  The whole idea having an entrenched, privileged class, has to go.  We cannot have two Germanys – one of privilege and wealth and power and the other of poverty and powerlessness.  The nobility has to go.

What about the kings?  The whole system of hereditary monarchy is set up to defend the system of hereditary aristocratic privilege.  But I suppose it might be possible to keep a monarchy within a democracy.

Once we belonged to kings – one day they will belong to us.

And on that day, we will educate them, not the aristocrats.  We will teach kings to believe in human rights, in liberty, and in equality.  Kings who believe these things can stay.

But the nobility – that separate elite of power and privilege – the nobility has to go.   

******************************  

Jewish Germans and Christian Germans.  

True, if you’re a German who’s also Jewish you have a double set of burdens.  You’re excluded form this, forbidden from that.  You have less voice than the voiceless.  But listen: no one can be liberated alone.  The liberation of Christians will mean the liberation of Jews, just as the liberation of the Jews will be part of the liberation of Christians.  Freedom for some but slavery for others is the very definition of tyranny.  Our dream is freedom for all.  Therefore Jewish Germans and Christian Germans have the same cause; and as for Jews, they are due freedom not simply as Jews but as Germans and as human beings.  

*********************************  

On his epitaph:  

I really don’t want any wreaths placed on my grave. 

I’ve loved poetry, it’s true, but to me it’s been an enjoyment, a toy. Or maybe, better put, poetry has been to me a kind of sacred song. 

But I’ve never thought much about my being a poet; it’s just what I do.  Whether people like my lyrics or not, really doesn’t matter to me.

So no, please, no Poet’s Wreath on my grave.

Maybe, though, you should put a sword on my grave.

For this really has mattered to me: I’ve always tried to be a brave soldier in the struggle for human freedom.