Heine’s Jewish Allegiance: Theorizations of the Jew in the Writings of Heinrich Heine

Abstract

This paper explores how the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine expressed his Jewish allegiances throughout his theoretical writings. Heine challenged the intelligentsia of nineteenthcentury Germany for disparaging the Jews under the influence of Hegelian philosophy. In On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Heine contested notions of Jewish obsolescence by elucidating the importance of Moses Mendelssohn and Benedict Spinoza to German thought. In Shylock (Jessica), Heine conceptualized the Jews as bearers of freedom, who had been undeservedly hated for their wealth. In Confessions, Heine interpreted the Jews as the people responsible for monotheism, morality, and Scripture, and hoped that a nondogmatic form of Judaism would become the religion of the future. This paper contends that despite his marginal status in the academic study of religion, Heine should be taken seriously as a thinker who vocalized a much-needed diatribe against the Christian West for mistreating the Jews over innumerable centuries.