A group of professors at Dusseldorf University believe that “old time anti-Semitism” is behind opposition to their proposal that the university be re-named in honor of Heinrich Heine, the 19th century German-Jewish poet whose work was suppressed by the Nazis. They are supported by a citizens committee which has 1,500 members in Germany, other European countries, the United States and Canada.
Heine was born in Dusseldorf, but there is no monument to him there or in any other German city. Prof. Alwin Diemer, director of Dusseldorf University and a majority of the senate who oppose renaming the institution, called the proposal “charlatanry” and an example of “personality cult.” But Otto Schonfeldt, a leader of the citizens committee, said, “what has been neglected during the Nazi rule has still not been rectified. We have not overcome old-time prejudices. It is incredible that Germany let alone his (Heine’s) home town–does not honor one of its best known poets.”
Heine’s work includes essays on political, philosophical and historical subjects which influenced the development of German democracy. For that reason, and because he was Jewish, the Nazis banned his writings and sought to obliterate his memory. The only monument to him, one that once stood in Hamburg, was dismantled and sold to the French city of Toulon. A fountain of the Lorelei, named for Heine’s most famous poem, and designed for Dusseldorf, now stands in New York. But the Nazis could not do away with the famed Lorelei song. It appeared in their own songbooks with the notation, “poet unknown.”
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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.
