Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine was a German poet, essayist and critic, among the most widely read German-language authors of the nineteenth century. Born in Düsseldorf and trained in law, he turned to letters, achieving fame with the Buch der Lieder (1827), lyric verse later set to music by Schubert, Schumann and others. His travel sketches (Reisebilder) and prose combined Romantic feeling with satire and political engagement. From 1831 he lived largely in Paris, corresponding across French and German intellectual life. His later years were spent bedridden with a wasting illness he called his "mattress-grave," during which he continued to write. He died in Paris in 1856.