Heine and Marx

NotesKarl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt, 1927), II, 330.Gesamtausgabe, II, 96.Gesamtausgabe, I, Erster Halbband, 572.October, 1841. Gesamtamgabe I, Zweiter Halbband, 261.Gerhard Herrmann Mostar presents this situation in a historical novel, Der schwarze Ritter (Karlsruhe: Volk und Zeit, 1946).Walter Wadepuhl, "Heines Geburtsjahr," PMLA, LXI (1946), 138. See also Friedrich Hirth, Heinrich Heine: Bausteine zu einer Biographie (Mainz, 1950).Hirth.Walter Victor, Marx und Heine: Tatsache und Spekulation in der Darstellung ihrer Beziehungen (Berlin-Ost: Henschel, 1952).Die "Zeitgedichte": "Der Kaiser von China.," "Kirchenrat," "Prometheus," "Zur Beruhigung," "Anden Nachtwächter," "Verkehrte Welt," "Doktrin," "Erleuchtung," "Wartet nur," besides "Die schlesischen Weber" and Deutschland, ein Wintermäirchen..Paris, February 1, 1845.Paris, February 1, 1845. Victor, always striving to read more into the meager correspondence between Marx and Heine than is really there, says in an exaggerated statement that he considers the "introduction of their wives into the final salutation of the letter" to be symbolic.Gesamtausgabe, II, 331: "Heines Buch über Börne ist das Nichtswürdigste, was jemals in deutscher Sprache geschrieben wurde." In Thomas Mann's collection Rede und Antwort (Berlin, 1922) one page is inscribed " Note on Heine," and it begins: "Of his works I have for a long time loved the book on Börne best." But this page evaluates only the representation of the Helgoland days and the Nietzsche-anticipating "Psychologie des Nazarenertyps." The title theme of the book, the polemic against Börne, is not mentioned by Thomas Mann.Ludwig Marcuse, Revolutionär und Patriot: Das Leben Ludwig Börnes (Leipzig, 1929).Sozialistische Lyrik in Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, IV, 215.Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Über Kunst und Literatur, ed. Michael Lifschitz (Berlin, 1950).January 1, 1855.Gesamtauagabe, II, 348."servil wie Heine." Gesamtausgabe, II, 72.October 5, 1844. Gesamtausgabe, IV, 341.The use of the word "Schweinigel" for Heine goes back to the time when Engels wrote (July 30, 1839): "Für Heines Glück will ich Dir nicht einstehen, überhaupt ist der Kerl seit längerer Zeit ein Schweinigel." Gesamtauagabe, II, 535.December 21, 1866.Paris, September 16, 1846.Paris, January 14, 1848.Richard Reinhardt, emigrant in Paris and member of the Communist Bund, was finally dismissed by Heine. On May 30, 1855, he wrote about him in a letter to Campe: "Although he represents my interests very warmly, materially as weil as morally, he lacks that tolerance of mind which I possess to such a high degree." Later on Reinhardt circulated the rumor that Mathilde bad deceived Heine. Karl Marx's letter to Friedrich Engels (Sept. 22, 1856) refers to this: "His corpse was still on his deathbed—on the day of the funeral—when the maquereau of the angelically mild Mathilde stood at the door and actually escorted her away." If Mehring assaults Börne on account of his "Klatschkrieg"—what is this letter of Marx's to be called?.Sept. 21, 1844. Hirth, who is of the opinion that Heine "went through thick and thin for his communist friends," gives the following reason: that Heine must have feit like one of the "dispossessed ... because he really had been cut out of the will of his uncle Salomon." This superficial psychology is wrecked on one fact. Salomon Heine did not die until December 23, 1844, at a time when "a number of poems," which "were undeniably filled with communistic thought processes," had already been written.Heinrich Heines Sämtliche Werke, ed. Ernst Elster, kritisch durchgesehene und erläuterte Ausgabe, VI, 531. Concerning a source of the Geständnisse..Heinrich Heine, Mein wertvollstes Vermächtnis: Religion, Leben, Dichtung, ed. Felix Stoessinger (Zürich, 1950).January 3, 1846.Arnold Ruge, Aus früherer Zeit (Berlin, 1866).For example, "Der Kaiser von China.." The poem "Schloßlegende" was still prohibited from appearing in its original text during the reigns of Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II. Instead of "Zu Berlin im alten Schlosse ..." it now read "Zu Turin im alten Schlosse..."He met Marx at the end of December, 1843. In January, 1844, he wrote Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen ..Gesamtausgabe, III, 5–23. Critical glosses on the article "Der König von Preußen und die Sozialreform: Von einem Preußen."Hirth does not give a single argument for his assertion that "the judgment of the Silesian Weavers' revolt must unquestionably go back to the concepts which Marx set forth to Heine." On this point Stoessinger, in his outstanding anthology, is also inclined to confuse Heine with Marx. "Heine's concept is closer to Marx" than to Ruge, who had denied that the revolt had any "general character." But with Heine the "general character" refers to Germany-not to the social system.lt was worn on the Prussian uniform until 1918. See Stoessinger, p. 599.Hirth insists without the slightest evidence that Heine, in the "Zeitgedichte" of the year 1844, had expressed ideas "which did not fully correspond to his poetic convictions. He was unmist akably afraid he would not appear radical enough to Marx and his friends." See p. 125.Heine, Briefe uber Deutschland (Fragment von 1844), Sllmtliche Werke, ed. Elster, VI, 531 ff.December 24, 1822.Heine, "On a trip from Munich to Genoa.".Lutetia, December 11, 1841.Letter to Laube, July 10, 1833.Lutetia, December 11, 1841. "Strict equality! Any dunce is empowered to atta.in the highest state offices; and the lion, on the other hand, is to go trotting along with his sack to the mill" (Atta Troll)..Lutetia, January 6, 1841.The original text is French.Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (1888).Address to the Moscow Academy of Sciences, 1931.Eleanor Marx, born 1856, twelve years after Marx and Heine bad first met, also wrote in her memoirs concerning the year 1844. Except for the meager correspondence between Heine and Marx and the few documented references, this report is the only source of information concerning the ten months Heine and Marx were near each other (with the exception, of course, of the period from July 23 to October 3 when Heine was absent from Paris on his trip to Germany) . This single, questionable source was to become the origin of many extravagant phantasies.The idyll portrayed by Frau Eleanor Marx-Aveling was officially sanctioned by the party when it was used in a commentary accompanying the first printing of Heine's only letter to Marx. The letter and commentary appeared in the Neue Zeit, the theoretical periodical of the German Social Democrats (1896, Jahrgang XIV, Band I, Verlag J . H. W. Dietz). The editor was Karl Kautsky; the author of the unsigned commentary was probably Franz Mehring, a member of the editorial staff.The commentary reproduces Frau Marx-Aveling's romantic and fictitiouslyinclined recital as follows : "There was a time when Heine called on the Marxes day in and day out, in order to read his verse to them and to hear the judgment of the two young people. Heine and Marx would read together a little poem of eight lines innumerable times, constantly discussing one word or another, working and filing for a long while, until everything was smooth and every trace of the work and the file had been eliminated." "But," this little poetic sketch continues, "not always did Heine come seeking help; now and then he brought help. One occasion was especially weil remembered in the Marx household. Little Jenny Marx, an infant of several months, was once taken ill with such a violent attack of cramps that her life was endangered. Marx, his wife, and their faithful assistant, Helene Demuth, were standing around the child, helpless and despairing . Heine came in, looked at the child, and said, 'She must be put in a bath.' He prepared the bath himself, placed the child in it, and, as Marx said, saved Jenny's life.From such lachrymose legends, which became part of the official party history, fantastic conclusions were drawn. The most recent "historian," Victor, who even before his East Zone epoch was devoted to and interested in Heine, claims (uncritically evaluating a historical novel as a historical document) that Heine in his relationship to Marx "was occasionally far more the 'taker' (der Nehmende), not only ideologically but even stylistically.'' Any disagreeable facts (for example, passages from the "Preface" to Lutetia), are sidestepped by Victor with the words : "Marx and Engels allowed considerably more extenuating circumstances in the case of Heine; who are we tobe stricter and more self-righteous than they?" Other unpleasant facts (for example Engels' early judgments for Börne and against Heine) are either suppressed or for the most part relegated to the appendix of the text; in the text, on the other hand, there is the more than euphemistic assertion that Engels "was more vigorously interested in Heine before 1843 than was Marx;" this vigorousness was, to put it plainly, contempt . Victor follows tradition and transforms the Heine legend into a historical truth after the method "Reim Dir oder ich freß Dir." "Even in the Index of names of Kapital Heine appears only in a minor connection. The total number of times that Heine is mentioned in Marx's work is very small."Victor even goes so far as to claim that "it is the good relationship of Heine to Karl Marx and his world which caused Heine's relationship to bourgeois Germany up to 1945 to be so bad." This is completely untrue! Bourgeois Germany knew nothing about this at all. With the exceptions of the book Heinrich Heine by Wendel (Berlin: Dietz, 1926) and my book Heinrich Heine: Ein Leben zwischen Gestern und Morgen (Berlin, 1932; New York, 1934; Zweite erweiterte Ausgabe, Hamburg, 1950), the political problematic of Heine, so far as I know, has not been presented.Victor corrects the historical source. He comments that the sentence, "lt does not appear, however, as if socialism were the bond between Marx and Heine," "should probably read 'the only bond .' ".He speaks here not merely of "the good Ruge, but also of my much more obdurate friend Marx.".Geständnisse..Jakob Burckhardt expressed a similar anxiety about the same time. He already saw further than Heine and predicted the caesars of the people (Volks-Caesaren).This ambivalence becomes clearest in the "Preface" to Lutetia (1855; Heine died in 1856). Heine confesses that the logic of communism produces "a fascination" upon his soul, "from which I cannot withdraw.'' He prophesies, "in fear and horror," that "the future belongs to the communists" (the immediate fut ure, as he says elsewhere). He himself sets forth the psychology of his sympathy for the communists in the sentence: "Out of hatred for the partisans of nationalism I could have given my love to the communists.'' Could have! This means—he could go so far, since he hated nationalism. This means—he would be tempted to use Beelzebub to drive out the devil. These passages make his political problematic extraordinarily clear—it consists of the greatest actuality and is today propagandistically useless.Atta Troll, Part X.Treitschke.Lutetia, September 17, 1842

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