Christian Johann Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), born into a Jewish family in Düsseldorf, combined the crystalline, yearning melody of German Romantic folk song with biting political irony and revolutionary wit. His 1827 collection Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs), containing immortal lyrics like Die Lorelei and Du bist wie eine Blume, became the most frequently set poetry in musical history, inspiring lieder by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Felix Mendelssohn.

Hounded by Prussian state censorship for his radical democratic views, Heine went into permanent exile in Paris in 1831, befriending Karl Marx, Honoré de Balzac, and George Sand. In his 1821 tragedy Almansor, he uttered his horrifyingly prophetic axiom: 'Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn human beings.' Paralyzed by spinal tuberculosis during his final eight years, he dictated searing late masterpieces from his Parisian 'mattress-grave' (*Matratzengruft*).