Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, the son of middle-class Jewish parents, was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1797.
Heinrich was destined to gain fame as a poet and essayist, but his route to greatness was circuitous.
When he was a young man, his ambitious mother sent him to Frankfurt and Hamburg to learn banking and business.
The dreamy Heinrich proved wholly unsuited to such pursuits. He instead began to study law, attending universities in Göttingen, Bonn and Berlin. Gradually, an academic career became his ambition.
At the time, Jews were subject to severe restrictions in Germany. They were forbidden to enter certain professions, including university academics.
So in 1831, after earning his law degree, Heinrich thumbed his nose at Germany and left it behind forever. He moved to Paris, the pinnacle of European culture, art, and society.
On arrival in Paris, Heinrich began a successful writing career — law degree be damned — focusing on critiques as an expatriate of German politics and society. German authorities banned his work, but Heinrich continued commenting steadily and mercilessly.
His essays appeared regularly in French periodicals, and they expanded to cover many subjects, including music, French politics, literature, and the arts. Heinrich wrote with authority and panache, and as the years passed, he became prosperous and content.
In the late 1840s, Heinrich was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis. In time, he became incapacitated by paralysis and spent the last eight years of his life on what he called his “mattress grave.”
Near the end, it was necessary for him to prop an eyelid open with one hand while writing with the other. Eventually, he had to dictate his work.
To the last, Heinrich was faithfully cared for by his wife, the former Eugenie Mirat, whom he called Mathilde. She was a simple, uneducated clerk he had met at a Paris boot shop and married in 1841.
Their marriage of 15 years was often described as rancorous. Mathilde was said to be both dim-witted and vain — an especially disagreeable combination — and Heinrich’s affection for her was mercurial.
In spite of their unstable relationship, Heinrich’s decline seemed to bond them together. Both knew that he had little time left.
Shortly before he died, Heinrich prepared his last will and testament, which left his entire estate to Mathilde. But there was one condition: she was required to remarry.
Why the stipulation that Mathilde find a new husband?
“Because then,” he told friends, “At least one man will regret my death.”
Heinrich died in 1856 and was buried in his beloved Paris. Mathilde remarried, inherited the estate, and lived comfortably until her death in 1883.
Whether her second husband regretted Heinrich’s death is not a matter of record.
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