Heine wrote 'The Silesian Weavers' in support of workers

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

The story

When Frederick William IV came to the Prussian throne in 1840, censorship was briefly relaxed and a wave of political poets became popular in Germany. Heinrich Heine, living in exile in Paris, thought most of them were poor poets, but his own verse of the 1840s became more political too. He attacked the kings of Bavaria and Prussia, the political torpor of Germany and what he saw as the greed and cruelty of the ruling class.

In 1844 weavers in Peterswaldau, in Silesia, rose up against exploitation and falling wages, grievances that had grown with industrialisation. The revolt made the public across Germany aware of what became known as the social question. Heine responded with a poem first published as "Die armen Weber" (The Poor Weavers) on 10 July 1844 in Vorwärts!, the Paris journal associated with his distant relative Karl Marx, who had arrived in Paris in 1843 and admired Heine's work. It was also printed as a leaflet in 50,000 copies and distributed in the areas of the uprising.

In the poem the weavers sit at their looms weaving a burial shroud for Germany, with a threefold curse: on God, on the King and on the Fatherland, the three powers to which Prussian soldiers swore loyalty. Each verse ends with the refrain "Wir weben, wir weben!" (We are weaving, we are weaving!). Wikipedia describes it as the most popular of Heine's political poems, and Friedrich Engels was the first to translate it into English.

The authorities took it seriously. Prussia's royal supreme court banned the poem for its rebellious tone, and in 1846 a man who recited it in Berlin was sent to prison. Under its later title, "Die schlesischen Weber", it became the best-known literary response to the weavers' revolt.

In the same year Heine published Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen (Germany: A Winter's Tale), a satirical account of his journey home in late 1843, in his collection Neue Gedichte (New Poems). His radical views led to many of his works being banned, which only increased his fame. The weavers' poem has since been set to music by many folk and punk bands, and it remains one of the best-known German protest poems.

Why it matters

Heine lent his poetic voice to impoverished workers, helping to bring their suffering to the attention of a wide public.

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.

Read the full profile

Heinrich Heine

1797–1856 · Poetry & prose

View profile →