SOURCE: Sammons, Jeffrey L. “In the Freedom Stall Where the Boors Live Equally: Heine in America.” In The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception, edited by Wolfgang Elfe, James Hardin, and Gunther Holst, pp. 41-68. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Sammons presents an overview of Heine's reception by American writers and critics.

The topic of Heine in America, like, I assume, several others to be discussed at this conference, is a matter of three distinguishable if overlapping constituencies: immigrants and their descendants whose mother tongue is German; educated Americans whose mother tongue is English but who are well acquainted with German language and literature; and Americans deprived of these benefits for whom German writers must be mediated in English. Of these three constituencies, the first may well have been the largest, but it is also the least researched. A...