Heinrich Heine

As I already "warned" you, there are some more tombs of famous people at the Montmartre graveyard. Here is one more: Heinrich Heine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Heine).

Heinrich, who is one of the greatest German poets, was born in Düssledorf (where I have spent a large part of my last working time the last five years) in 1797, moved to Paris in 1831, where he died in 1856.



On his tomb, you can read:

Wo wird einst der Wandermüden
letzte Ruhestand sein?
Unter Palmen in dem Süden?
Unter Linden and dem Rhein?
Werd ich wo in einer Wüste
eingeschärrt von Fremder Hand
oder ruh ich an der Küste
eines Meeres in dem Sand?
Immerhin! Mich wird umgeben
Gottes Himmel dort wie hier,
und als Totenlampen schweben
nachts die Sternen über mir

In nicer wording this means more or less that he did not care where he would be buried. He will anyhow be surrounded by the sky and the stars.

Among his most famous poems, you can mention "Lorelei" (Ich weiss nich, was soll es bedueten...) which strongly contributed to make the tale about this young maiden so popular. Like "Lorelei", many of his poems have been set to music, including by Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Strauss, Wagner...

Heinrich, jewish, had a rather chaotic life being a good consumer of wines, women... meeting Karl Marx and sharing his opinions. His works were often partly banned in Germany. His books were again burnt on the Opernplatz in Berlin in 1933. To commerate this event, one of his lines is now engraved on this site (Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen = Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too).