ty in science, philosophy, poetry,
painting, and other fine arts stood in no immediate relation to
national exigencies. There was indeed plenty of agitation in the
circles of the _Burschenschaft_, and there were sporadic efforts to
obtain from reluctant princes the constitutions promised as a reward
for the rising against Napoleon; but as a whole the people of the
various states seemed passive, and whatever was accomplished was the
work of individuals, with or without royal patronage, and, in the
main, in continuation of romantic tendencies. But with the Revolution
of July, 1830, the political situation in Germany became somewhat more
acute, demands for emancipation took more tangible form, and the
so-called "Young Germans "--Wienbarg, Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt, Boerne,
and others-endeavored in essays, novels, plays, and pamphlets to stir
up public interest in questions of political, social, and religious
reform.
Many passages in Heine's _Pictures of Travel_ breathe the spirit of
the Young German propaganda--the celebrated confession of faith, for
example, in the _Journey to the Hartz_, in which he declares himself a
knight of the holy spirit of iconoclastic democracy. In Paris he
actively enlisted in the cause, and for about fifteen years continued,
as a journalist, the kind of expository and polemic writing that he
had developed in the later volumes of the _Pictures of Travel_.
Regarding himself, like many an expatriate, as a mediator between the
country of his birth and the country of his adoption, he wrote for
German papers accounts of events in the political and artistic world
of France, and for French periodicals more ambitious essays on the
history of religion, philosophy, and recent literature in Germany.
Most of the works of this time were published in both French and
German, and Heine arranged also for the appearance of the _Pictures of
Travel_ and the _Book of Songs_ in French translations. To all intents
and purposes he became a Frenchman; from 1836 or 1837 until 1848 he
was the recipient of an annual pension of 4,800 francs from the French
government; he has even been suspected of having become a French
citizen. But he in no sense curbed his tongue when speaking of French
affairs, nor was he free from longing to be once more in his native
land.
In Germany, however, he was commonly regarded as a traitor; and at the
same time the Young Germans, with the more influential of whom he soon
quarreled, looked upon
|