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T H E G E R M A N I C R E V IE W

Heine in the Bronx

PAUL REITTER

Be t w e e n t h e Griinderzeit w a v e o f B i s m a r c k m o n u m e n t s a n d t h eKriegerdenkmal debates that arose during World War I , there were the Heine

m onu m ent con t rovers ies . Tho se cont rovers ies , tha t i s , the debates over w hether

Germany should p lay permanent hos t to a Heinr ich Heine monument , inv i te in

quiry for a number of reasons. Their cul tural importance in late Wilhelmine Ger

many was enormous : luminar ies such as Max Liebermann, Al f red Kerr , Hugo

von Hofmanns tha l , Heinr ich Mann, Franz Mehr ing , Heinr ich von Tre i t schke , and

Empress El isabeth of Austr ia , to name just a few, part icipated in them vigorous

ly . More important ly , the controvers ies prompted profound and, indeed, seminal

ref lect ions on the process of publ ic memorial izat ion, both in late WilhelmineGermany and in genera l . When , fo r example , the incendiary an t i -Semi t ic " l i t e r

ary cr i t i c" Adol f Bar te l s c la imed tha t a Heine m onu m ent would be acce ptab le in

Germany only i f i t bore an inscript ion marking Heine as a Jewish, rather than a

German, cu l tu ra l phenomenon, the Viennese essay i s t Kar l Kraus responded by

art iculat ing the connect ion between the pol i t ics of memory and ident i ty pol i t ics

with scatalogical force, and in ways that ant icipated contemporary discussions of

Holocaus t memoria l s . The Heine monument con t rovers ies l ed to fu r ther in

s tance s of theoret ical pres cien ce as wel l , or so I wi l l argue. Yet they have re

mained hidden in the shadow cast by the massive his torical frame that surrounds

them: again , the Bismarck monuments tha t immedia te ly predate them and the

Kriegerdenkmal debates that fol lowed them.

I.

Heine monument con t rovers ies a re no t par t i cu lar to the l a te Wi lhelmine era .

They cont inued on in Germany, s t retching through the postwar era to the pro

t racted, and ul t imately successful , campaign in early 1970s to name the Univer

s i ty of Di isseldorf "Heinrich Heine Univers i tat ." Here, however, the phrase "theHeine monument con t rovers ies" refers exclus ive ly to the b i t t e r ly con ten t ious

fight over Germany's f i rs t Heine monument or , in other words, i t refers to the ur-

Heine monument con t rovers ies . These cont rovers ies began in the l a te 1880s and

concluded wi th the unvei l ing of the Frankfur t Heine monument in 1913 .

327

Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved.

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3 2 8 REITTER

If Frankfurt , the s i te of the f i rs t Heine monument in Germany, is where the

controvers ies found their f inal resolut ion, Dusseldorf is their point of departure.

In 1887, wi th the centenary of Heine 's bi r th looming on the horizon, several

prom inent den izens of He ine ' s hom e c ity cam e together to fo rm a "com mit tee forthe erec t ion of a Heine monument ." The commit tee prompt ly encountered bo th

success and res i s tance . Empress El i sabeth of Aus t r i a s igned on as a member a l

mos t imm edia te ly and offered to dona te 50 ,000 mark s , p rov ided the com m iss ion

for the memorial go to Ernst Herter , a wel l -known publ ic works sculptor . On the

other hand, an array of fulminat ing nat ional is t and ant i -Semit ic demagogues

was ted no t ime in chal leng ing the com m it tee ' s des igns . Wri t ing in the p res t ig ious

j ou rna l Die Kunstwart in early 1888, Franz Sandvoss excoriated Heine as an un

patr iot ic Jew who, far from deserving a monument , deserved to be regarded with

con t em pt . Con rad A l be r ti coun t e red w i t h a m ea s u red de fens e o f H e i ne ' s"Denkmalwi i rd igkei t . " And thus the Heine monument con t rovers ies were born .

Interest ingly, Die Kunstwarfs readiness to publ ish vulgar invect ives against

Heine and h i s p rospect ive monument enraged tha t g rea t c r i t i c o f monumenta l -

i za tion , Fr iedr ich Nie tzsch e . Ci t ing , amo ng o ther th ings , the jou rna l ' s be t rayal o r

"Pre i sgabe" of Heine , Nie tzsche canceled h i s subscr ip t ion to Die Kunstwart in

spr ing 1888 . '

But the mo st fateful oppo si t ion to the Du sseldo rf m onu m ent cam e from a thor

o u g h l y l o w b r o w p e r i o d i c a l , G e o r g S c h o n e r e r ' s n e w s p a p e r Unverfalschte

deutsche Worte. The ant i -Semit ic at tacks that Schonerer launched from i ts pagesseemed to land direct ly in the Hofburg. For soon after he began to mobi l ize his

verbal violence against the monument , El isabeth pul led out of the Dusseldorf

project, with her 50,000 marks and invaluable legit imating effect in tow. She left

behind only a vague reference to Heine 's caust ic t reatment of the Wit t lesbachs

and Ho henzo l lerns to jus ti fy her m ove.

El isabeth 's abrupt abdicat ion threw the Dusseldorf commit tee for the erect ion

of a Heine monument into a terminal disarray. However, Sissy, as the empress

was cal led, did ma nag e to guide to com plet io n w hat might wel l be rega rded as

the world 's f i rs t major Heine monument . After abandoning Herter and Diissel -dorf, she commiss ioned the Danish scu lp tor Louis Hasse l r i i s to por t ray Heine as

kind of Lazarus f igure for her palace on Corfu. Hasselr i is ' s sculpture was t r i

um phan t ly un vei led in 1 891 , but i t rem ained on Corfu for only a relat ively sho rt

t i m e . When Wilhelm II bought the Corfu property in 1910 (El isabeth was assas

s inated in 1898), he got r id of Hasselr i is ' s Heine quickly and unceremoniously.

For years the monument ' s whereabouts were unknown. Recent ly , however , i t was

discovered s tanding di lapidated and defaced in a remote corner of Toulon, in the

south of France .

To come back to Dusseldorf , the commit tee for the erect ion of a Heine monument had remained sanguine even after El isabeth 's departure, and despi te in

creasingly voluble opposi t ion. I t set about rais ing new funds. And, reject ing the

des ign Her ter had developed accord ing to the empress ' s wishes , the commit tee

ca l led for a monu m ent tha t wou ld no t ac tua l ly represen t Hein e . The com mit tee


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H E I NE I N T H E B RO NX 3 2 9

was not seeking to avoid graven images of Heine out of respect for the Old Tes

tament prohibi t ion against graven images. The hope here was that the prospect of

a He ine-les s Heine m on um ent w ould moll i fy the opp osi t ion. I t d id not .

In Janu ary 1893, short ly after it had appro ved H erte r ' s mod el for what ha dnow becom e a "Lo re l e i Foun t a i n " He i ne m em or i a l , t he com m i t t ee was pe rem p

tori ly forced to abandon i ts project . A special commission of the mayor 's off ice

had decreed that Di isseldorf could not house a Heine monument for reasons of

decorum. What real ly happened was that the ci ty counci l buckled under the pres

sure of anti-Semitic agitation. Hinting obliquely at this sad fact in i ts curiously

formula ted of f i c ia l explanat ion , the mayor ' s commiss ion decreed , "Under the

present condi t ions the effect of a Heine monument would be inappropriate." [Die

Erwi rkung e ines Heine-Denkmals ware n ich t angezeig t . )

Mainz ' s mayor Georg Oechsner , a l ibera l ' 48er and pass ionate Heine af i cionado, had been wai t ing in the wings, and when the Diisseldorf campaign col

lapsed, he s tepped in wi th alacri ty , offer ing Mainz as an adopt ive home for Hert

er ' s orphaned "Lorelei Fountain." As soon as word of his plan got out , the horn

of protes t sounded again, even louder than before. Die Kreuzzeitung cla imed tha t

a Heine monument in Mainz would be a victory for "Welt judentum," whi le ex

t remist organizat ions threatened the ci ty wi th violent reprisals should i t carry out

i ts plan to m em orial ize H eine . Th e pro-m on um en t faction see m ed at f irst to enjoy

the upper hand , as Maximi l i an Harden and o ther wel l -known cr i t i cs came to

Heine ' s defense . But the Heine monument movement again proved unable to recover from the loss of a cha rism at ic leader . For when O ech sne r develop ed a de

bi l i tat ing i l lness in the spring of 1894, his cause went down with him. This

process of capi tulat ion was in fact so rapid that by autumn the Mainz campaign

and i ts pro m ising s tar t were things of the past . On 23 Oc tobe r 1894 the ci ty co un

ci l voted to turn Herter ' s Lorelei Fountain away.

Meanwhi le , the Ar ion Vere in , a German chora l g roup in New York , had been

fol lowing the controvers ies in the German American press and playing with the

possibi l i ty of intervening. The Arion Verein contacted Herter in 1895, informing

him that they were prepared to sponsor the complet ion of the fountain. WhenHerter enthusias t ical ly accepted their offer , a "New York Heine monument com

mi t tee" was has t i ly assembled to dea l wi th New York ' s Munic ipa l Ar t s Commis

s ion. This task proved diff icul t . At f i rs t the commission rejected the monument

commit tee ' s p lans ou t r igh t , apparen t ly on bo th aes the t i c and e thn ic g rounds . The

commission thought that the sensuousness of the Lorelei Fountain might inci te

sai lors to prurient behavior; several as tute observers , among them Wil l iam Stein-

way, scion of the famous family of piano makers , fel t that the commission 's

reserva t ions were a l so mot iva ted by an t i -Semi t i sm. These problems were some

how worked out , and the ci ty agreed to accept the monument . But the haggl ingdid no t end . Aiming h igh , the monument commit tee wanted the Lore le i Founta in

to s tand at the entrance to Central Park, on Fif th Avenue. The Arts Commission

balked . The commit tee ' s nex t cho ice was the Munic ipa l Cour t Plaza in the

Bronx . This p roposa l was a l so ve toed . Eventual ly and acr imonious ly , commit tee


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3 3 0 REITTER

and commiss ion se t t l ed on a l ess -prominent Bronx home for the monument :

Franz Sigel park, now Joyce Kilmer park, at 161st Street and Grand Concourse.

Th e mo num ent com m it tee had to modi fy i ts t ime f rame as wel l . It had p lanned

to unvei l the monument in 1897 , to commemorate the cen tenary of Heine ' s b i r th .But Hcrtcr wasn ' t able to f inish the Lorelei Fountain in t ime. Final ly , on 8 July

1899 , Heine in the Bronx was unvei led.

New York turned out to be no safe harbor for the Lorelei Fountain. The Chris

t ian Temperance Union rai led against i t , condemning the f igure of Lorelei as a

porn ogra phic sp ectac le. An d in 1900 i t was vanda l ized; som eon e deca pi tated the

"Personif icat ion of Poetry" that adorned the fountain 's base, perpetrat ing just the

kind of iconoclast ic act that Heine had so often lamented. The ci ty responded by

ass ign ing an around- the-c lock po l ice guard to the monument . Such ex t ravagant

protect ion, of course, could not las t . By 1975, to make a rather large chronological leap forward, the fountain 's s tate of disrepair had become so acute that All

Around the Town cal led i t "a pathet ic s ight" and claimed that "no monument in

the ci ty is in worse condi t ion." Happi ly , the monument 's s i tuat ion is no longer

quite so dire. For several years now, i t has been scrubbed clean of graffi t i every

summer by Hermann Klaas , a dent is t f rom Diisseldorf who vacat ions in the

Hamptons . And la rge-sca le renovaat ionsmay be in the of f ing .

The year 1899, then, marked the end of the f i rs t major Heine monument con

t roversy. Let me now try to adumbrate the contours of the subsequent Frankfurt

am Main cont roversy (1910-1913) . Debate had cont inued af ter the Mainz debacle , even w ithou t a co ncr ete si te to be con teste d. In fact , as I will argu e in m ore

detai l later , the expuls ion of Herter ' s Lorelei Fountain prompted some of the

mo s t in teres t ing cont r ibu t ions to the controversy , such as Alex ande r M oszko ws-

ki ' s unpubl ished sat i r ical drama Die Enthiillung des Heine-De nkmals (1902) .

M oreo ver, 1906, the f if tieth annive rsary of H ein e 's death, was, unsurp ris ingly, a

year of part icularly intense discussion. The l iberal cul tural cr i t ic Alfred Kerr ad

mo nished G erm any to erec t some k ind of m em oria l ; Adol f Bar te l s inveighed

aga inst the very idea of such a proje ct in his ran co rou s and tell ingly enti t led b oo k

Heinrich Heine, auch ein Denkm al. And displaying his characteris t ic egal i tar ian-ism, Karl Kraus condemned both the pro- and ant i -monument fact ions in his

es s ay "Um Hei ne . "

Yet , formal ly speaking, a new controversy did not begin unt i l 1910, when

"D ie freie l i terar ische Ge sel lschaft F rank furts" form ed a new "com m it tee for the

erec t ion of a He ine monu m ent ." The Frankfurt con t roversy w as m arked by em

inence and vehemence. Max Kl inger , Max Liebermann, Harden , Kerr , Er ich

Ha eckel , Gerhard Ha uptm ann , and Hu go von Hofm anns tha l l ent the i r p res t ige to

the monument cause . Bar te l s and Ferd inand Werner , l eader o f "Der Bund Frank

furter Ant isemiten" pul led out al l the rhetorical s tops in organizing an ant i -monu m e n t m o v e m e n t .

Bartels ' s vi t r iol notwithstanding, the surging ant i -Semit ism of the 1890s abat

ed significantly in the years before World War I, and the success of the Frankfurt

campaign never real ly seemed to be in doubt . I t was wel l run from the s tar t by


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H E I NE I N T H E B RO NX 331

Paul Fu lda, hea d of D ie freie l i terar ische Gesel lschaft Fran kfurts , and supp orted

resolutely and with impressive equanimity by Frankfurt ' s mayor Georg Voigt . In

fact , under these relat ively propi t ious ci rcumstances the debate turned inward.

How to depic t Heine became a press ing and ho t ly con tes ted i s sue among themonument ' s suppor ters , much more so than had been the case in Di i s se ldorf and

Mainz. Should Heine be represented as a pol i t ical act ivis t or as a s inger of beau

t i ful songs? Should the romant ic Heine, the "popular" Heine, the Heine of Buch

der Lieder be memoria l i zed , o r ra ther , should Frankfur t commemorate the po l i t

ical and controvers ial Heine as the Heine? This was the crucial quest ion. Georg

Ko l be ' s Tanzendes Paar was chosen as some th ing of a com prom ise so lu t ion .

An d, indeed , wi th a few voluble excep t ions , Tanzendes Paar was genera l ly ap

plauded by fr iends of the monument project when i t was unvei led in the Fried-

burger Anlage on 12 December 1913 .Kolbe hiffeelf seemed more interes ted in a monument to his own avant-

gardis te sensibi l i t ies than in memorial izing a part icular s ide of Heine. For the

monument he created deviates s ignif icant ly from the plan that won the compet i

t ion, veering off rather sharply in the direct ion of high modernism. Hence, per

haps, i t s success: wi th i ts rough-hewn, ethereal pair of dancers , Kolbe 's sculpture

is abst ract enough to al low almost any Heine fan to f ind "their Heine" in i t .

Also no tewor thy here i s Pau l Schmidt ' s response to the monument . Schmidt ,

an early art historian, offered a kind of expert approbation, publicly praising

Kolbe 's work in the technical terms of modern ar t his torical discourse. This wasnot an unprecedented move. Franz Wickoff and Alois Riegl had invoked their spe

cial authority as experts in 1900, during the Klimt univers i ty pa int ing de bates .

When Kl imt ' s pa in t ing Philosophic was condemned as ug ly by the ph i losophy

facul ty at the Univers i ty of Vienna, Wickoff and Riegl came to his defense, claim

ing that visual representat ions of phi losophy fel l under the purview of ar t his tori

a ns , not phi losophers , and that they, as ar t his torians , were best qual i f ied to judge

Klim t 's wo rk. St i l l, Sch m idt ' s gestu re is one of the earl ies t of i ts kind in G erm any,

and as ar t his torians have s ince become central players in monument projects , i t

invests the Frankfurt controv ersy with a dis t inct ively mod ern character .The monument tha t Schmidt championed remains in tac t . Tanzendes Paar w as

toppled in 1933 by the Nazis, as Kolbe went to work for the party and began to

create some of the most interes t ing ar t produced under the Nazi regime. But the

body of Tanzendes Paar survived the war, as did Kolbe. And so in 1947 Kolbe

himself was able to provide the monument wi th a new port rai t -rel ief of Heine. The

monument has remained on i ts pedestal ever s ince, al though i t was qui te l i teral ly

defaced in 1964 when someone poured plas ter over the port rai t -rel ief . The monu

ment also lost i t s or iginal inscript ion: "dem Dichter Heine." Whether the plaque

which carr ied the inscript ion s imply broke off and wasn ' t replaced or was removed for symbol ic reasons—namely , to show tha t pos twar Germany wanted to

m em orial ize not jus t " the poet H ein e" but rather the pol it ical act ivis t and essayis t

as wel l—remains an open ques t ion . Accounts o f the monument ' s second unvei l

ing in Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung do not provide us wi th an answer.


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II .

I s tated above that the Heine m onu m ent controv ers ies invite inquiry. N ietzsch e's

respon se, the em pre ss 's com pensa tory m onu m ent and i ts expuls ion from Corfu,the rude recept ion of the Lorelei Fountain in New York, the debate over which

Heine should be memorial ized, Kolbe 's modernis t agenda as wel l as his s t range

postwar, post-Nazi resurrect ion of Heine, and Schmidt ' s proto-modern involve

m ent open up ma ny potent ial ly rew arding ave nues of analysis . An d yet again, the

li t t le scholarship that exists on the controversies hardly reilects this plenitude of

interpret ive possibi l i ty . For the Heine monument controvers ies between 1888 and

1913 have been read almost exclusively as poignant examples of ant i -Semit ism's

massive incurs ion into the publ ic sphere in late Wilhelmine Germany.

This approach is , of course, legi t imate, as i t seeks to unders tand the controvers ies in terms of a factor that shaped them: ant i -Semit ism. At the same t ime,

narrowly focusing on the issue of ant i -Semit ism has had certain problemat ic con

comitants . Not only have many areas gone unexplored, but a faul ty , or at the very

least quest ionable, narrat ive of the controvers ies has emerged as the s tandard ac

count . The s tandard account views the effect of the Dusseldorf-Mainz controver

sies as follows: precisely the failure of the first attempts to erect a Heine monu

me nt in Germ any drove the Frankfur t cam paign to i ts v ic to r ious c onclus ion .

Only af ter 1894, only in response to the ignominy of an exi led monument , did

the pro-monument cul tural el i te shake off their torpor and hi t the s t reets . Thisread ing i s Die t r i ch Schuber t ' s .

2

Schubert , i t should be noted, has done more than

anyone else to bring at tent ion to the Heine monument controvers ies . My project

has in fact profi ted enormously from his research.3

But again, Schubert fails ef

fectively to sift through the rich material he has mined. His premise is that the

causa l connect ion b etwe en the Di i s se ldorf -Mainz cont rovers ies and the Frankfur t

monument con t roversy i s s t ra igh t forward ; the Dusse ldorf and Mainz debacles

contr ibuted to the Frankfurt t r iumph and did not do much else, certainly nothing

worth examining thoroughly. But is that real ly the case? Did the exi led Lorelei

Fountain funct ion s imply as an emblem of German ant i -Semit ism that could andshould be redressed through the erect ion of a Heine monument in Frankfurt? Was

the effect , the s ignif icance, of the Lorelei Fountain among Heine supporters re

al ly so univocal? Did this "Heine in the Bronx" do more than motivate them to

fight for the Frankfurt m on um en t?

I argue that i t indeed did. To be sure, the very idea that New York had a Heine

m onum en t be fo re Germ any engendered m uch i nd i gna t i on am ong t he p ro -m onu

ment fact ion in Germany, as wel l as among enemies of ant i -Semit ism looking for

a cause to seize on. And this indignat ion, no doubt , faci l i tated the Frankfurt suc

c e ss . Yet when we look closely at responses to and representat ions of the Diisseldorf-Mainz controvers ies and the Lorelei Fountain between 1895 to 1910, we

see that far from being straightforward, they are in fact quite multivalent. We see

that Heine in the Bronx may wel l have pul led some Heine supporters away from

the Frankfurt campaign, even as i t suppl ied the project wi th an al l - important


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H E I NE IN T H E B RO NX 3 3 3

point of argument . We see that the uncanny aff ini t ies between Herter ' s exi led

monument and the exi led poet i t was to memorial ize lent the ensuing Heine mon

um ent controv ersy a kind of farcical aspe ct for a nu m ber of intel lectuals sym pa

thet ic to Heine . An d, indeed , the exi led H eine m onu m ent w as, as noted earl ier,widely satirized. The satire here is not mean-spiri ted; in most cases i t did not ex

press the "Schadenfreude" of ant i -Semites . For those doing the sat i r izing tended

to be sympathet ic to Heine. But nei ther , in many cases , does this sat i re bring out

the monument 's absurd fate, the s t range abject ion i t was made to suffer in order

to f i re up the pro-monument t roops. If anything, sat i r is ts of the monument con

t rovers ies t renchant ly poke fun at the whole process of monumental izat ion, at

t imes del ivering incis ive caveats as to i t s dangers .

For example, two cartoons from the late 1890s confront us wi th a crude sketch

of the Lorelei Fountain, encircled and being pul led from i ts pedestal by a careful ly drawn catalogue of Heine-haters : nat ional is ts , ant i -Semites , and other un-

savories , whi le tuxedo-wearing, Semit ic- looking supporters t ry in vain to defend

their cul tural icon.4

What the monument is supposed to represent has been effec

t ively ecl ipsed by the controversy around i t , as in both cases the monument i t sel f

is schematical ly drawn and blurred to the point of being barely recognizable,

whereas the tumult i s mapped out for us in sharp detai l . Here, then, the process

of m em orial izat ion has para doxic al ly effaced i ts referent .

Also s t r iking is the image of the Lorelei Fountain surrounded by Heine 's ene

m i es . For the sense of concentrated animosi ty i t evokes gets at the s t rategic advantages Heine 's cr i t ics derived from such at tempts to block monumental izat ion.

The monument funct ions as a local ized, s tat ionary target that can be smeared

much more readi ly than can a large and complex oeuvre. Karl Kraus expressed

this idea with scatological pi thiness when he r idiculed "the Germanic endurance

with w hich B artels rel ieves himself at Hein e 's grave." The local izat ion that at

tends monumental izat ion fosters frontal assaul ts on an author 's memory. I t a l

lows for a dismembering. An d that is jus t w hat is hap pen ing in the other ima ge

in question. Severed from its pedestal , the Lorelei Fountain is about to crash to

and presumably shat ter on the ground. Responding to "Heine in the Bronx," the

cartoons arr ive at an awareness of the potent ial for violence, violence to memo

ry, that i s int r ins ic to processes of publ ic memorial izat ion.

The melancholy appropr ia teness o f a miss ing monument as a memoria l fo r an

exi led author el ici ted cr i t ical ref lect ion on the tenabi l i ty of memorial izing by

construct ing f ixed representat ions on f ixed s i tes from Heine supporters working

in other discourses as wel l . Indeed, we might even say that something l ike the

th ink ing beh ind Jochen Gerz ' s Holocaus t "counter -monument" in Hamburg , a

monument tha t managed to s tage i t s own d i sappearance to memoria l i ze a miss

ing people, begins to emerge, as the famil iar Nietzschean cri t icism that Wil-

helm ine mo num ents oss i fy m em ory is pushe d forward, toward a new level of so

phis t icat ion. ' ' "Urn Heine," Karl Kraus 's most extensive response to the early

Heine monument con t rovers ies exempl i f i es th i s phenomenon.6

Kraus themat ized

the dangers monuments pose to memory even beyond oss i f i ca t ion and mis repre-


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sentat ion. In "Um Heine," Kraus 's i ronic formulat ion of this point reads: " the bad

repu tat ion of a poe t cann ot be dam age d as easily as a sculpture." F urthe rm ore,

Kraus ra i sed impor tan t ques t ions about the l imi t s o f monuments debates . When

do they cease to be salutary instances of a publ ic coming together to mediate i t smemory and i t s aes the t i c va lues? Can monumenta l i za t ion be l eg i t imate where

the debate "um Heine" i s charac ter ized by deformed communica t ion?

Signif icant ly enough, Kraus begins his piece by al luding to that other Heine

monument in ex i le , Haase l r i i s ' s Heine-Lazarus in Corfu . Kraus i s reac t ing here

to the wri ter and cri t ic Oskar Blumenthal , who had apparent ly made a pi lgrim

age to the monument and had spoken of "dreaming" before i t in "contempla t ive

seclusion." Thoroughly repulsed by this "vapid sent imental ism," Kraus wri tes

that "one can bring forth enthusiasm for Heine only af ter one has overcome the

image of Blumenthal on Corfu." At the same t ime, according to Kraus, one canraise object ions against Heine only af ter one has insul ted the "Urteutons" who

would deny tha t he i s wor thy of a monument .7

Kraus himself, then, thought that

Heine deserved a monument , at leas t in principle. Here we see and should note

that in 1906 Kraus was s t i l l a long way from the annihi lat ingly ant i -Heine s tance

he would assume in 1910, in Heine und die Folgen [Heine and the Conse

quences]. Again , the Ur teu tons are wrong . Heine i s wor thy of a monument . And

yet , Kraus came down square ly agains t monumenta l i z ing Heine in Germany.

Kraus 's central claim, in fact , i s that Germany is not worthy of a Heine monu

ment , "nicht denkmalswiirdig." Polarized to the point of fatuousness , the debate"um Heine" has proved in imica l to any hones t reckoning wi th Heine ' s memory .

Here memorial izat ion has turned in on i tsel f and should be disbanded. Kraus

asked: If monumental izat ion impl ies off icial recogni t ion, i s i t legi t imate or hon

est to force through monumental izat ion where off icial recogni t ion is patent ly

missing? Since Heine 's great s t rength is a "Jewish cynicism" toward which Ger

man cul ture harbors deep-seated ant ipathies , to do so, for Kraus, would be to

broadcast a dis ingenuous message about both Germany's relat ion to Jewish cyn

icism and about Heine 's cynicism itself. A cul tural ly acceptable Heine could only

be a whi tewashed Heine, a Heine made into a vehicle for off icial recogni t ion ofthe ideal ized German-Jewish symbiosis that Heine 's ass imilat ionis t supporters

had real ly been cha m pion ing al l along . Ac cord ing to Kraus, Heine the " Jewish

cynic" would have been quick to lampoon such parvenu behavior . And, in fact ,

the ass imilat ionis t Heine suppl icants who t ravel from Vienna to Heine 's tomb in

Paris to lay down wreaths are greeted, in Kraus's essay, by three handfuls of dirt

that come f lying from the grave.8

The German-Jewish intel lectuals who ident i fy

closely with Heine turn out to be not so different from Bartels. For they molest

Heine where he is most vulnerable—at a f ixed s i te designated for commemora

tion—even if they do so with fragrant flowers rather than bodily fluids. Moreover,these German-Jewish Heine sympathizers are, again l ike Bartels , no fr iends of

German-Jewish cul ture. They are wi l l ing to s l ice away Heine 's Jewish cynicism

to make him palatable to German cul ture. On such terms, at the price of eviscer

ation, integra tion into a hos ti le cultu re can only be a painfully h ollow integration .


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H E I NE I N T H E B RO NX 3 3 5

And so when we s tand in front of an exi led Heine monument , we should not

do as Blumenthal does ; we shouldn ' t d ream of erec t ing a Heine monument in

Germany. Rather , we should ask ourselves , Is Germany, a nat ion that exi les Heine

monuments , wor thy of a Heine monument? Ques t ion ing the k ind of recogni t ionWilhelmine monuments confer , Kraus tu rned the monument debate on i t s head .

III.

Kraus ' s a rgument i s o f course problemat ic . His c la im about Heine ' s "Jewish

cynicism" is crude and essent ial is t , even i f i t valorizes Jewish cynicism as a l i t

erary vir tue . In fact, I certainly do not me an to imp ly that I subscribe to the v iew s

I have extracted from "Urn Heine." My content ion, rather , i s that notwithstand

ing their problems, the ins ights forged by Kraus and a few other cr i t ics (e.g . ,Franz Mehring) in response to the Dtisseldorf and Mainz controvers ies added

seminal nuances to the wel l -known Nie tzschean cr i t i c i sms of Wi lhelmine monu

ments and monumenta l cu l tu re . To recapi tu la te , Kraus ' s inc i s ive d i scuss ion of

the dangers that at tend publ ic memorial izat ion, beyond a s imple oss i f icat ion of

memory, as wel l as his cr i t ical remarks on the l imits of monument debates and

their t roubl ing embeddedness in the pol i t ics of cul tural recogni t ion, lent new

depth and bi te to blanket indictments of monuments . For, again, in his analysis

of the way in which the push for a Heine monument funct ioned as a s t rategy of

ass imilat ion and legi t imat ion, Kraus ident i f ied and examined the l inks betweenident i ty pol i t ics and the pol i t ics of memorial izat ion at a t ime when they were sel

dom subjected to cr i t ical ref lect ion. And, indeed, Kraus 's admonit ion to let the

exi led "Heine in the Bronx" monument s tand as the absent , and therefore most

appropriate, permanent memorial to an exi led author and to a fut i le debate over

how tha t au thor should be memoria l i zed resonates powerfu l ly wi th cu t t ing-edge

responses to the presen t con t roversy over the Holocaus t m em oria l in Be r l in .9

B e

cause Kraus ' s penet ra t ing cr i t ique of memoria l i za t ion and monuments emerged

out of the Heine monument controvers ies , i t can and should be read as a s ignif i

cant moment in the his tory of the controvers ies . Above al l , the recovery of thistheoretically rich level of significance has been at stake in my attempt to chal

lenge the s tandard narrat ive of the Heine monument controvers ies . This s tandard

account , as ment ioned above, narrowly focuses on act ivis t responses to the

Mainz and Diisseldorf fai lures . In doing so, i t loses s ight of more subt le and so

phis t icated ones , l ike Kraus 's , responses , that we might do wel l to contemplate

as we memoria l i ze Heine on the two-hundred th anniversary of h i s b i r th .1

"

University of California, Berkeley

N O T E S

1. Nietzsche, the sharp critic of monuments, was not the only improbable Heine monument sup

porter. Oddly enough, the young Adolf Hitler apparently advocated the erection of a Heine monu

ment in Germany. According to Reinhold Hanisch, who knew Hitler during the latter part of Hitler's


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336 REITTER

stay in Vienna, Hitler claimed in political discussions that Heine was a great artist, and that Heine's

poetic accom plishm ents shou ld be mem orial ized with a monum ent. Cf. Brigitte Ham ann, Miller's Vi

enna: A Dictator's Appenticeship, trans. Thomas Thornton (New York: Oxford UP, 1999), 166.

2. Dietrich Schubert, "Der 'Kampt' um das erste Heine-Denkmal: Diisseldorf 1887-1893 - Mainz

1893/94 - New York 1899," Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch 51 (1990): 241-272; and Dietrich Schubert,"Fruhlingslied?," Heine-Jahrbuch 3 4 (1 9 9 5 ) : 1 1 8 -1 4 5 .

3. The inform ation pr esented here re sts, for the most part, on Schu bert's findings I have, in effect,

recapitulated the narrative of the Heine monument controversies that he provides in his very valuable

and scrupulously researched articles. "Der 'Ka m pf um das erste Hein e-De nkm al" addresses the Diis

seldorf and Mainz controversies and the unveiling of the New York monument, as well its reception

in New York and the reaction to it in Germany. "Fruhlingslied?" focuses on the Frankfurt Heine mon

ument controversy . 1 learned about Hermann K laas from Jeffrey L. Sam m on s, wh os e erudition and

encouragement have helped me greatly.

4. The se cartoons w ere published anon ym ously in the satirical journals Vim an d Der wahre Jacob

They ate reprinted in Schubert, "Der 'Kampf' um das erste Heine-Denkmal."

5. For a com prehen sive discussion o f the "counter-monument phenom enon, see James E. Young's

pathbreaking study The Texture of Mem ory: Holocaust Mem orials and Meaning (Ne w Haven: YaleUP, 1993) 27^48.

6. Cf. Die Fackel 199 (April 1906): 7 -2 1 . "Um Heine," again, can be rendered as "Around Heine."

What gets lost in translation is the sense of instrumentalization evoked by the German. For the prepo

sition "um," in addition to me aning around, is also used to form "in order to" clau ses. He nce Kraus's

elliptical title carries the suggestion that Heine has become the object of an "in order to" situation

where the verb, the action, is too contradictory to be described by a single word. The idea here is that

Heine is not being discussed properly, as the subject of memoriaiization. Rather, he has been reduced

to the status of instrumentalized object and is being maneuvered and manipulated to serve various

cultural and political agendas.

7. "Ur teutons" is Kraus's derisive ly hyper bolic term (hyper bolic b eca use both "ur" and "teuton"

connote primordiality) for nationalistic, anti-Semitic Heine haters of Bartels's ilk.

8. Kraus is inverting the Jew ish burial ritual accord ing to whic h each ma le adult throws three hand-

fuls of dirt onto the coffin as it is lowered into the grave, a move which not only marks the Heine sup

porters in question as Jewish but evocatively points to the convolutedness of their relation to Judaism.

9. For exa m ple, in a recent op-ed p iece in the New York Tunes 28 April 1999, Stephen Greenblatt

suggested that the site designated for a Holocaust memorial should be left barren, with the exception

of a small plaque. The striking desolation of an untended lot in the middle of a prosperous city dis

trict would be the most effective memorial to the historical desolation caused by the Holocaust, and

to a failed (but in this case earnest) discussion about how such desolation should be represented.

10. 13 December 1797 is now generally accepted as the date of Heine's birth. However, some evi

dence suggests that he was born in 1798 or 1799. The problem is that Heine was inconsistent on the

del icate topic of his age. See Jeffrey L. Sammons, Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography (Princeton:

Princeton UP, 1979) 11-14.

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