Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
Letter signed ('Heinrich Heine') to Joseph Lehmann, Paris, 5 October 1854
In German. Four pages, 243 x 188mm, bifolium. Provenance: By descent from the recipient – Christie's London, 2 June 1999, lot 151.

A lively, opium-influenced letter from Heine's last years, including revealing comments on his attitude to his Jewish heritage. After warning Lehmann about the miscarrying of a packet he had sent, Heine muses at length on the paucity of his contacts with fellow-Germans – chiefly on account of his health, but also from the opposition of his wife, who has driven most Germans out of the those, and in some cases literally kicked them out ('Meine Frau hat die meisten Deutschen von meinem Hause verscheucht, manchen sogar im wahren Sinn des Wortes hinausgeschmissen'), although in any case, he remarks, some are dead and others locked up in madhouses or prisons. He beseeches Lehmann to write to him. One of his articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes has been causing a furore. In letting Lehmann know about his new choice of publishers, Michel Levy frères, over an ex-'Bonnetier' – 'd.h. baumwollener Nachtmtüzenfabrikant', Heine explains that it was firstly because they were Jewish; he should be the last man to be influenced by the old prejudice against Jews – '[sie werden] uns weniger bervortheilen als ihre christlichen Collegen'. In Jews he particular admires their 'Civilisazion des Herzens': the cultural centrality of Jews springs from their superabundance of feeling, which only needs to be supplemented with learning: 'Ich glaube, sie konnten deshalb auch so schnell theilnehmen an der europäischen Cultur, weil sie eben in Betreff des Gefühls nichts zu erlernen hatten und nur das Wissen sich anzueignen brauchten'. He jokes about Campe's dilatoriness – a commission sent via him would not arrive before the Messiah, 'if, according to the old tradition, he comes on a donkey rather than taking the railway' ('wenn er, der alten Tradizion nach, auf einem Esel kommt und nicht die Eisenbahn benutzen will'). The letter closes with a complaint that opium has made him scarcely conscious of what he is saying ('Ich weiß kaum, was ich diktire, so schläfrig macht mich nemlich der Uebergenuß des Opiums').

Joseph Lehmann (1801-1873) was a friend of Heine's from his Berlin years, part of a group of Jewish intellectuals associated with the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden. Lehmann was editor of the literary review 'Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes', and memorialised his friendship with Heine in an 1868 article, 'H. Heine in Berlin in den Jahren 1821-23'. Heine was paralysed for the last eight years of his life and confined to what he called his 'Matrazengruft' (mattress-grave). Published in the Briefe 1850-1856, ed. Fritz Eisner, no. 1587.