Heine kept writing from his 'mattress-grave'

Person: Heinrich Heine
Lived: 1797–1856
Field: Poetry & prose
From: German

The story

By the late 1840s Heinrich Heine had lived in Paris for more than fifteen years and was one of the best-known writers in Europe. Around 1847 his health began to fail, and in May 1848 he suddenly became paralysed and was confined to bed. He called it his "mattress-grave" and did not leave it until his death eight years later. He also had trouble with his eyes. Doctors and biographers suggested various diseases, but analysis of his hair in 1997 indicated that he had suffered from chronic lead poisoning.

Wikipedia records that he bore his sufferings stoically and won much public sympathy. His illness kept him from following the revolutions of 1848 closely, but it did not stop him writing. In 1848 he also returned to a belief in God, though he remained sceptical of organised religion.

In September 1851 Campe published Romanzero, his third great collection of poems. It is divided into three books: Historien (Histories), Lamentationen (Lamentations) and Hebräische Melodien (Hebrew Melodies). The Jewish Encyclopedia notes that in these years his thoughts often turned to the faith of his youth and the finer sides of Judaism and the Jewish people, and that Romanzero contains perhaps the most striking picture of the medieval Hebrew poet Judah Halevi, as well as "Prinzessin Sabbath", a tribute to the Jewish Sabbath at home.

He kept working on the poems collected as Gedichte 1853 und 1854, on the autobiographical Geständnisse (Confessions), on the essay The Gods in Exile, and on the journalism gathered in Lutezia, all published in 1854 in three volumes of miscellaneous writings. His unfinished memoirs appeared after his death. The Jewish Encyclopedia says that through excruciating pain he showed a heroic patience.

He died in Paris on 17 February 1856 and was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery, beneath a tombstone by the Danish sculptor Louis Hasselriis on which his poem "Wo?" (Where?) is engraved. Romanzero, written in the hardest years of his life, remains one of his three great collections of verse, alongside the Book of Songs and New Poems.

Why it matters

Heine's determination to keep creating through years of paralysis gave literature some of its most moving late poems and has inspired readers facing their own hardships.

About Heinrich Heine

Düsseldorf-born Jewish poet of the Lorelei and the Book of Songs, a sharp-tongued satirist and Paris exile whose lyrics became some of the best-loved songs in German.

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Heinrich Heine

1797–1856 · Poetry & prose

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