The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI | Page 2

in general had little reason, except for high taxes and the hardships incident to conscription in the French armies, to complain of the foreign dominion. Their trade flourished, they were given better laws, and the machinery of justice was made much less cumbersome than it had been before. But especially the Jews hailed the French as deliverers; for now for the first time they were relieved of political disabilities and were placed upon a footing of equality with the gentile population. To Jew and gentile alike the military achievements of the French were a source of satisfaction and admiration; and when the Emperor of the French himself came to town, as Heine saw him do in 1810, we can easily understand how the enthusiasm of the boy surrounded the person of Napoleon, and the idea that he was supposed to represent, with a glamor that never lost its fascination for the man. To Heine, Napoleon was the incarnation of the French Revolution, the glorious new-comer who took by storm the intrenched strongholds of hereditary privilege, the dauntless leader in whose army every common soldier carried a field marshal's baton in his knapsack. If later we find Heine mercilessly assailing the repressive and reactionary aristocracy of Germany, we shall not lightly accuse him of lack of patriotism. He could not be expected to hold dear institutions of which he felt only the burden, without a share in the sentiment which gives stability even to institutions that have outlived their usefulness. Nor shall we call him a traitor for loving the French, a people to whom his people owed so much, and to whom he was spiritually akin.
French influences, almost as early as Hebrew or German, were among the formative forces brought to bear upon the quick-witted but not precocious boy. Heine's parents were orthodox, but by no means bigoted Jews. We read with amazement that one of the plans of the mother, ambitious for her firstborn, was to make of him a Roman Catholic priest. The boy's father, Samson Heine, was a rather unsuccessful member of a family which in other representatives--particularly Samson's brother Salomon in Hamburg--attained to wealth and prominence in the world of finance.
[Illustration: W. KRAUSKOPF HEINRICH HEINE After a Drawing in the Possession of Mr. Carl Meinert in Dessau]
Samson Heine seems to have been too easy-going, self-indulgent, and ostentatious, to have made the most of the talents that he unquestionably had. Among his foibles was a certain fondness for the pageantry of war, and he was in all his glory as an officer of the local militia. To his son Gustav he transmitted real military capacity, which led to a distinguished career and a patent of nobility in the Austrian service. Harry Heine inherited his father's more amiable but less strenuous qualities. Inquisitive and alert, he was rather impulsive than determined, and his practical mother had her trials in directing him toward preparation for a life work, the particular field of which neither she nor he could readily choose. Peira, or Betty, Heine was a stronger character than her husband; and in her family, several members of which had taken high rank as physicians, there had prevailed a higher degree of intellectual culture than the Heines had attained to. She not only managed the household with prudence and energy, but also took the chief care of the education of the children. To both parents Harry Heine paid the homage of true filial affection; and of the happiness of the home life, The Book Le Grand and a number of poems bear unmistakable witness. The poem "My child, we were two children" gives a true account of Harry and his sister Charlotte at play.
In D��sseldorf, Heine's formal education culminated in attendance in the upper classes of a Lyceum, organized upon the model of a French Lyc��e and with a corps of teachers recruited chiefly from the ranks of the Roman Catholic clergy. The spirit of the institution was rationalistic and the discipline wholesome. Here Heine made solid acquisitions in history, literature, and the elements of philosophy. Outside of school, he was an eager spectator, not merely of stirring events in the world of politics, but also of many a picturesque manifestation of popular life--a spectator often rather than a participant; for as a Jew he stood beyond the pale of both the German and the Roman Catholic traditions that gave and give to the cities of the Rhineland their characteristic na?ve gaiety and harmless superstition. Such a poem as The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar would be amazing as coming from an unbeliever, did we not see in it evidence of the poet's capacity for perfect sympathetic adoption of the spirit of his early environment. The same is true of many another poetic expression of simple faith, whether in Christianity or