One of the most famous quotes in history comes from Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), a German poet, essayist, and critic, widely regarded as one of the most significant literary figures of the 19th century.
Born in Düsseldorf on December 13, 1797, Heine grew up in a Jewish family but converted to Christianity as a young man. In 1831, Heine moved to Paris, where he became a cultural force in Germany and France. His later years were marked by illness, during which he produced some of his most introspective and poignant works, including Romanzero (1851).
Heine is one of those brilliant and deeply-interesting historical figures whom I probably would have known nothing about if not for the (aforementioned) famous quote he uttered in his 1821 play Almansor, in which he warns against book burning: Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."
The English translation?
“That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well."
Many Americans are likely familiar with the quote, which seemed to prophesy the Nazis, who burned untold numbers of books as a prelude to Hitler’s Final Solution, which saw some 6 million European Jews exterminated.
But what I find most striking is a different observation from Heine, who warned what would happen if the influence of Christianity ever waned in Germany.
“Christianity – and that is its greatest merit – has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. ... Do not smile at my advice – the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.”
Heine wrote these words in The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, a work published in 1834—99 years before Hitler’s rise to power.
It is no small irony that following Hitler’s ascension in 1933, Heine’s words were among those to crackle in the flames at at Nazi book barbeques, alongside books written by luminaries such as Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann, as well as “un-German” authors like H.G. Wells, Hellen Keller, and Jack London.
Nor was it a surprise. Hitler’s disdain for Christian thinkers was well known in Nazi circles, as was his distaste for Christianity, which he mocked for its “meekness and flabbiness.”
“It has been our misfortune to have the wrong religion,” Hitler once complained. “Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good. The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity.”
(Author’s note: I’ll flesh out Hitler’s views on Christianity in a future post.)
Nice piece. On target.
7 Million Ukrainians died in the Communist Holodomor. I think that’s significant. It must receive as much attention as any other genocide, lest we’re labeled as “ethnists or supremacists”.