Editing Heinrich Heine (section)

=== Heine in Nazi Germany ===
Heine's writings were abhorred by the Nazis and one of their political mouthpieces, the ''[[Völkischer Beobachter]]'', made noteworthy efforts to attack him. Within the pantheon of the "Jewish cultural intelligentsia" chosen for anti-Semitic demonization, perhaps nobody was the recipient of more National Socialist vitriol than Heinrich Heine.{{sfn|Dennis|2012|pp=110–123}} When a memorial to Heine was completed in 1926, the paper lamented that Hamburg had erected a "Jewish Monument to Heine and Damascus...one in which ''[[Glossary of Nazi Germany#Alljuda|Alljuda]]'' ruled!".<ref>"Ein Heinrich Heine-Denkmal in Hamburg", ''[[Völkischer Beobachter]]'', October 1926; as found in ''Heinrich Heine im Dritten Reich und im Exil'' by [[Hartmut Steinecke]] (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2008), pp. 10-12.</ref> 

Editors for the ''Völkischer Beobachter'' referred to Heine's writing as [[Degenerate art|degenerate]] on multiple occasions, as did [[Alfred Rosenberg]].<ref>[[Alfred Rosenberg]], ''[[The Myth of the 20th Century]]''. ([https://archive.org/details/TheMythOfTheTwentiethCentury_400 Text])</ref> Correspondingly, as part of the effort to dismiss and hide Jewish contribution to German art and culture, all Heine monuments were removed or destroyed during [[Nazi Germany]] and Heine's books were suppressed and, from 1940 on, banned.<ref name="joest08">{{cite journal |author=Erhard Jöst |author-link=:de:Erhard Jöst |date=December 2008 |title=Eine spannungsgeladene Wirkungsgeschichte |url=https://literaturkritik.de/id/12520 |journal=Literaturkritik |pages=520 |quote=Schließlich wurde als Ziel der NS-Kulturpolitik ausgegeben, den Dichter totzuschweigen. Dabei waren Heines Werke anfangs von dem generellen Verbot nicht betroffen, erst ab dem April 1940 fielen sie ebenfalls unter die pauschale Indizierung jüdischen Schrifttums. |trans-quote=Ultimately, it was formulated as the goal of National Socialist cultural policy to silence the poet. However, his works were initially not covered by a general ban, only in April 1940 did they fall under the blanket indexing of Jewish literature. |number=12 |lang=de}}</ref>

The popularity of many songs to Heine's lyrics represented a problem for the policy of silencing and proposals such as bans or rewriting the lyrics were discussed.<ref name="joest08" /> However, in contrast to an often-made claim,<ref>First in 1935 by [[Walter A. Berendsohn]] (''Der lebendige Heine im germanischen Norden'') and often repeated, e.g., in {{cite journal|journal=Jewish Social Studies|first=Hannah|last=Arendt|author-link=Hannah Arendt|title=The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition|volume=6|issue=2|year=1944|page=103|quote=Though they dub its author 'unknown', the Nazis cannot eliminate the Lorelei from the repertoire of German song.}}</ref> there is no evidence that poems such as "{{ill|Die Lorelei (song)|de|Die Lore-Ley|lt=Die Lorelei}}" were included in anthologies as written by an "unknown author".<ref>{{cite book |author=Anja Oesterheld |chapter='Verfasser unbekannt'? Der Mythos der Anonymität und Heinrich Heines Loreley |editor=Stephan Pabst |title=Anonymität und Autorschaft. Zur Literatur und Rechtsgeschichte der Namenlosigkeit |publisher=de Gruyter |location=Berlin |date=2011 |pages=325–358 |lang=de}}</ref>