Heinrich Heine - German Poet - 12/13/13 08:14 AM
On This Day: December 13, 1797. Heinrich Heine, one of the most significant of 19th century German poets, born in Dusseldorf, Rhineland.
Much of his early lyric poetry was set to music as Lieder, art songs, by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert, but he was a liberal who stood against the political stance of those in power - politicians, clerics and the nobility - as well as the closed minds of much of the population. This also involved the rise of nationalism in Germanic regions.
His later works were banned and he left for Paris were he lived for 25 years, dying there February 17, 1856.
After almost one hundred years his were amongst the thousands of books burned by the Nazi's in 1933.
A translation of one of his poems for this time of year:
Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kahler Hoeh.
Ihn schlefert; mit weisser Decke
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.
Er traeumt von einer Palme,
Die, fern im Morgenland,
Einsam und schweigend trauert
Auf brennender Felsenwand.
There stands a lonely pine-tree
In the north, on a barren height;
He sleeps while the ice and snow flakes
Swathe him in folds of white.
He dreams of a palm-tree
Far in the sunrise-land,
Who lonely and silent weeps
On her burning bank of sand.
In German of course it actually rhymes.
