Page 193 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg

that it is an almost verbatim rendering of the poem of a German
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count (Loeben). How Heine imagined to himself German life
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and spirit one sees from his poem "Deutschland", one who wishes
to know how it was at that time still possible for a Frenchman to
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become a German may read Chamisso:
You, my dear German homeland, have
Given me the reason why I fought and much more.

I have nothing to ask of you, nothing to complain,
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Only to thank you from a pious heart.
I cannot present in detail all the transformations that Heine's
mind underwent in the processing of European thought: sometimes
he presents himself as a Protestant, then as an atheist, rails in the
meanest way against all minds that think differently and finally gives
up European philosophy as something essentially alien and
incomprehensible in order to consciously return to Judaism. In spite
of all apparent world-citizenship, character was stronger than all
the influence and power of European ideas of culture.
On his death-bed Heine said: "I do not need to return to
Judaism since I have never abandoned it". And about the Jews he
passes judgement as any rabbi would: "Moses took a poor shepherd
tribe and created out of it a great, eternal, holy people, a people of
God, that could serve to all other peoples as a model, indeed to all
mankind as a prototype: he created Israel!". And further: "One
thought that one knew the Jew when one saw his beard but more
did not come to light and, as in the Middle Ages, so also in the
[Otto Heinrich, Count Loeben (1 786- 1 825) was a Romantic writer whose poem
4.4
"Der Lureleyfels", which serves as the introduction to his prose work "Loreley:
Eine Sage vom Rhein" (1 821 ), was perhaps the source of Heine's "Lorelei" (1 822).]
4.5
Heine's "Deutschland: Ein Wintermarchen" was a verse epic recounting an
imagined journey through Germany that was published in 1 844. It was banned by
the German authorities the same year.
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[Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838) was a French aristocrat whose family
fled to Germany after the French Revolution. He achieved fame both as a poet and
as a botanist]
""Berlin, 1831. [This poem is entitled "Berlin, im Jahr 1831".]

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