Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen
Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen; Germany: A Winter’s Tale (1844)
Heine’s masterpiece in 27 sections or ‘Caputs’ is based loosely on a brief visit to Germany which Heine made in the winter of 1843-1844. Heine had been living in exile in Paris since 1831. The poem expresses the political ferment of the ‘Vormärz’ period leading up to the German Revolution of March 1848.
The poem is also a political manifesto calling for ‘Zuckererbsen für jedermann’ [sugar-snap peas for everyone].
Christoph Schmitz-Scholemann (see web link below) calls Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen ‘[eines] der lebendigsten Gedichtbücher deutscher Sprache.’ [one of the liveliest poetry books in the German language].
English Translations
Heinrich Heine, Deutschland: A Winter’s Tale, bilingual edition, trans. and ed. by T.J. Reed (London: Angel, 1997)
Heinrich Heine, Germany: A Winter’s Tale, trans. by John Goodby (Middlesborough: Smokestack, 2005)
Further Reading
Richard W. Hannah, ‘The Broken Heart and the Accusing Flame: The Tension of Imagery and the Ambivalence of Political Commitment in Heine’s Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen’, Colloquia Germanica 14 (1981), 289-312
David Pugh, ‘Heine’s Aristophanes Complex and the Ambivalence of Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen’, Modern Language Review 99:3 (2004), 665-80
T.J. Reed, ‘Heinrich Heine, “Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen”’, in Landmarks in German Poetry, ed. by Peter Hutchinson (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 135-50
Ernest Schonfield, ‘Satire and Laughter in Heine’s Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen’, Oxford German Studies 41:2 (2012), 181-96
Web Link in English
http://smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=29
English translation of Caput I by John Goodby (2005)
Web Link in German
Christoph Schmitz-Scholemann / Deutschlandfunk. A radio broadcast on the 175th anniversary of the book in 2019
