Chapman billy wrote in message m...
In article ,
Mark Houlsby says:
I have read nothing of the connection between Heine and Thiers.
You write that the latter arranged a pension for the former.

Here's a quote from "Heine" by Francois Feijto (trans. Mervyn Savill;
published 1946 by Allan Wingate).

"His financial resources dried up just at the time when he was abandoning his
bachelor existence. In addition to the money which his French publications
brought in, his only income was the allowance of four thousand francs from
his uncle Saloman. Under these circumstance, Princess Belgiojoso, to whom
Heine confided all his worries, interceded through Mignet with Thiers, who
appreciated Heine's works, to subsidise him out of the secret funds for
Foreign Affairs." (page 196)

"Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history."
--George Eliot (Daniel Deronda)

Dear Mr. Houlsby and Mr. Spivack,

Here are some relevant excerpts from "Heinrich Heine: a Modern Biography"
by Jeffrey Sammons (1979: Princeton University Press), which might be at
some variance with what was cited earlier in this thread:

"For years he (Heine) had been trying to maintain his claims to genuine
progressive spokesmanship, while fending off radical changes of apostasy.
A whole strategy of his life was damaged by this revelation, and he responded
to it at once with a public explanation. He denied that the state pension had
in any way compromised his views, declaring it was one of the numerous acts of
generosity of the French government toward exiles seeking freedom. The pension
made up for the loss of income incurred by the Federal decree of 1835. Guizot,
Heine says, was pleased to continue the pension in November 1840, the first and
last time Heine ever spoke to him....the statement that Guizot *continued* it
implies strongly that it was granted by the other leading politician of the
July Monarchy, Adolphe Thiers, whom Heine elsewhere describes as solicitous of
his welfare...."
--Jeffrey Sammons (Heinrich Heine, pp. 223-4)

Why should that be "Hard to believe" (*notwithstanding* the cited later
oppression)?

Heine was trenchant in his criticism of the French political situation.
This happened under both Thiers and Guizot, who also continued the subsidy.

"When Guizot succeeded Thiers at the head of foreign affairs he informed
Heine, who had attacked him more than once for his reactionary opinions,
that he would continue to pay him the subsidy." (page 197)

"Heine continued to attack Guizot's home and foreign policy just as violently.
The majority of Heine's German biographers - even the most indulgent - could
never bring themselves to understand how French statesmen, capable of
distributing a considerable pension to a foreign writer without a quid pro
quo, could possibly exist. In Germany it would not have been possible."
(also page 197)

"Heine is careful to say that *Guizot* required no services from him; he does
not mention Thiers, who undoubtedly arranged the pension. It is very doubtful
that Thiers did not have something in mind besides charity when he made this
arrangement. Under the same heading of 'Service extraordinaire' are a number
of men who did write for the advantage of the French government and were
compensated for doing so. Heine's stipend, roughly equal to the annual salary
of a French university professor, was too large to be a mere gratuity; others,
who were supported on humane grounds, such as the blind and paralysed historian
Augustin Thierry, whom Heine mentions in this connection, received much less.
Heine had just renewed his contract with the Augsberg 'Allgemeine Zeitung', to
which Thiers had previously close connections, and indeed in his first articles
he spoke very admiringly of Thiers' person and statesmanlike gifts, if not
uncritically of his policies, although a comparison with the partisan Parisian
press of the time shows that he generally supported them...Heine did ultimately
conclude that Thiers was without a sense for the 'ideal needs of mankind' and
the 'great social institutions'.

It looks very much as if someone got wind of the secret pension at the time.
Insinuations that he was writing in the 'Allgemeine Zeitung' as an agent of
Thiers appeared in a French newspaper in 1840, planted by Heine's German
enemies in Paris. He published a notice defending himself and repeated the
defence to Campe. There is too much guesswork involved to judge this matter
with certainty. One would need to know to some details of how the arrangement
came about in the first place, but this is wholly obscure. It does seem that
the original motivation cannot have been as innocent as Heine makes out, and
such a connection must necessarily have put his much vaunted political
independence under some strain. On the other hand, Heine's reportage does not
show him unduly attachd to French policies and purposes. To a remark in the
'Allgemeine Zeitung' that he was paid not so much for what he wrote as for what
he did not writer, he riposted that the 'Allgemeine Zeitung' knew perfectly
well, not so much from what it printed of his as from what it did not print,
that he was not a 'servile writer'. This seems fair, and Heine appears truthful
when he indicates that he exchanged no favours with Guizot, though from time to
time he praised him personally as he did Thiers in articles for the 'Allgemeine
Zeitung', passages that in the book version after the Revolution he tended to
delete."

--Jeffrey Sammons (Heinrich Heine, pp. 224-5)

"We are not accustomed to carry things with the same hand, or to look at 'em
from the same point."
--Charles Dickens (Bleak House)

--Nick