Heinrich Heine: The Baptized Genius Who Could Never Give Up on Jewishness or the Jews

In 1825, Heinrich Heine—then a twenty-eight-year-old German Jew—obtained his baptismal certificate, convinced that what he would later call “the admission ticket to European civilization” was a prerequisite to any future ambitions. But even as a Protestant he never found his hoped-for success in law or government, instead becoming one of the greatest poets of his day. Perhaps in keeping with his famously guarded attitude toward so many things, he also maintained an ambivalence toward his Jewish origins. In an essay on the poet, Joseph Epstein writes: