Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-25T17:48:09.519Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Jews on Ships; or, How Heine's Reisebilder Deconstruct Hegel's Philosophy of World History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Todd Samuel Presner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although it is known that Heine attended Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of world history and became involved with the Hegelian-inflected “science of Judaism” just before beginning the Reisebilder, little attention has been given to Heine's early engagement with Hegelian ideas in his travel writings. This essay argues that Heine transforms the travel narrative into a critique of history by taking the grand historical narrative, with its investment in the “Greek” trope of seafaring, and deconstructing its systematic claims of national belonging and teleological development. Through an analysis of the North Sea poems, I show how Heine reworks both the genre of travel literature as self-discovery and Hegel's geographically determined movement of “World Spirit.” The result is a nonsystematic Jewish conception of historicity, which, in its embrace of particularity, subverts the absolutism of Hegel's philosophy of history by exposing the metaphors on which the philosophy's progressive development relies.

Type
Special Topic: Imagining History
Information
PMLA , Volume 118 , Issue 3: Special Topic: Imagining History , May 2003 , pp. 521 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor W. “Heine: The Wound.” Notes on Literature. Vol. 1. Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholson. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. 80–90.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. Negative Dialectics. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum, 1997.Google Scholar
Aristotle. The Poetics. Trans. Ingram Bywater. New York: McGraw, 1984.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. Das Passagen-Werk. Ed. Tiedemann, Rolf. 2 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert. “Hegel at the Court of Ashanti.” Hegel after Derrida. Ed. Barnett, Stuart. London: Routledge, 1998. 41–63.Google Scholar
Briegleb, Klaus. “Abgesang auf die Geschichte? Heines jüdisch-poetische Hegelrezeption.” Heinrich Heine: Ästhetisch-politische Profile. Ed. Höhn, Gerhard. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991. 17–37.Google Scholar
Briegleb, Klaus. Bei den Wassern Babels: Heinrich Heine, jüdische Schriftsteller in der Moderne. Munich: DTV, 1997.Google Scholar
Bunyan, Anita. “Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx Meet.” Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, 1096–1996. Ed. Gilman, Sander L. and Zipes, Jack. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997. 171–77.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Glas. Trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., and Richard Rand. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986.Google Scholar
Gans, Eduard. “Dritter Bericht im Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden.” Waszek 75–85.Google Scholar
Gans, Eduard. “Halbjähriger Bericht im Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden.” Waszek 62–75.Google Scholar
Gans, Eduard. “Rede bei der Wiedereröffnung der Sitzungen des Vereins für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden.” Waszek 55–62.Google Scholar
Goethe, J. W. Italienische Reise. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche. Ed. Michel, Christoph and Dewitz, Hans-Georg. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker, 1993. Vol. 15 of Sämtliche Werke.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. “Der Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksal.” Hegel, Werke 1: 274-6–418.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte. Ed. Ilting, Karl Heinz, Brehmer, Karl, and Seelmann, Hoo Nam. Vol. 12. Hamburg: Meiner, 1996.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie des Rechts. Ed. Angehrn, Emil, Bondeli, Martin, and Seelmann, Hoo Nam. Vol. 14. Hamburg: Meiner, 2000.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Werke. Ed. Moldenhauer, Eva and Michel, Karl Markus. 20 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969–71.Google Scholar
Heine, Heinrich. Heinrich Heine, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke. Ed. Windfuhr, Manfred. 16 vols. Hamburg: Hoffmann, 1986.Google Scholar
Heine, Heinrich. Sämtliche Schriften. Ed. Briegleb, Klaus. 6 vols. Munich: Hanser, 1968–75.Google Scholar
Heine, Heinrich. Werke, Briefwechsel, Lebenszeugnisse: Säkularausgabe. Berlin: Akademie; Paris: Cars, 1970.Google Scholar
Hermand, Jost. Der frühe Heine: Eine Kommentar zu den “Reisebildern.” Munich: Winkler, 1976.Google Scholar
Heschel, Susannah. “Revolt of the Colonized: Abraham Geiger's Wissenschaft des Judentums as a Challenge to Christian Hegemony in the Academy.” New German Critique 77 (1999): 61–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. “Language, Poetry, and Race: The Example of Heinrich Heine.” Prismatic Thought: Theodor W. Adorno. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1995. 105–18.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, S⊘ren. Fear and Trembling. Trans. Alastair Hannay. New York: Penguin, 1985.Google Scholar
Krüger, Eduard. Heine und Hegel: Dichtung, Philosophie und Politik bei Heinrich Heine. Kronberg: Scriptor, 1977.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg. Deutsche Realisten des 19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Francke, 1951.Google Scholar
Lutz, Edith. Der “Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden” und sein Mitglied H. Heine. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mah, Harold. “The French Revolution and the Problem of German Modernity: Hegel, Heine, and Marx.” New German Critique 50 (1990): 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Michael A. The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749–1824. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1967.Google Scholar
Prawer, S. S. Heine's Jewish Comedy: A Study of His Portraits of Jews and Judaism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Ranke, Leopold von. Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514. Leipzig: Duncker, 1885.Google Scholar
Sammons, Jeffrey. Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Seeba, Hinrich C. “‘Keine Systematie’: Heine in Berlin and the Origin of the Urban Gaze.” Heinrich Heine's Contested Identities: Politics, Religion, and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Ed. Hermand, Jost and Holub, Robert C. New York: Lang, 1999. 89–108.Google Scholar
Strich, Fritz. Goethe und die Weltliteratur. Bern: Francke, 1957.Google Scholar
Waszek, Norbert. Eduard Gans (1797–1839): Hegelianer-Jude-Europäer. Texte und Dokumente. Frankfurt: Lang, 1991.Google Scholar