The decision by the University of Duesseldorf not to rename the institution after the poet Heinrich Heine has triggered a public discussion throughout West Germany. Last week the university’s Council voted 44-41 to reject proposals to rename the university as a way of honoring the German poet of Jewish origin, thus ending, for the time being, an 18-year-old debate on the issue.
One of the leading literary critics in West Germany, Marchel Reich-Ranicke of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote that the University of Duesseldorf did not deserve the name of the Rhine city’s most famous son. The Frankfurter Rundschau, in an editorial, alluded to Heine’s Jewish identity as a probable reason for the university’s decision.
The conservative Die Welf said the decision was taken despite major pressures from outside the university to rename the institution, and defended the decision as consistent with Heine’s own non-conformist attitudes. In Duesseldorf, a public protest was organized by supporters of re-naming the university. A local poet wrote a poem in Heine’s style to deplore the decision.
West German commentators are concerned that the university’s decision will expose the Federal Republic to criticism from abroad. Die Welt predicted that when the university is attacked within Germany itself, the rest of the world is likely to follow suit.
HEINE WAS NEVER FULLY ACCEPTED
Although Heine sought to dissociate himself from his Jewish identity, he was never fully accepted by the German literary and political establishment. He incurred their wrath because he identified himself with political movements which tried to liberalize the political order and to remove privileges and abuse. Despite the fact that he embraced Christianity at the age of 28, Heine continued to profess his kinship with Judaism.
In 1897, when a memorial to him was sculptured and offered to his native city of Duesseldorf, the German government refused permission to place it there, and it was finally set up in the New York City borough of The Bronx. Heine died at the age of 59 in Paris. In 1941, it was reported that the Nazi invaders of Paris desecrated and demolished Heine’s grave.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
