SOURCE: Höhn, Gerhard. “Eternal Return or Indiscernible Progress? Heine's Conception of History after 1848.” In A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine, edited by Roger F. Cook, pp. 169-200. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2002.

In the following essay, Höhn traces Heine's changed worldview following the events of 1848 in Europe.

“Werden die Angelegenheiten dieser Welt wirklich gelenkt von einem vernünftigen Gedanken, von der denkenden Vernunft? Oder regiert sie nur ein lachender Gamin, der Gott-Zufall?”¹

(B 5: 214)

Heine posed this question in March of 1848 after witnessing a victorious revolution in Paris. For a good one and a half decades he had predicted that what had begun in 1789 and continued in 1830 would soon be brought to a close. All the more paradoxical then, that such a question should haunt one who had never tired of ascertaining the reasonable course of the “affairs of this world,” of interpreting the omens...