Heinrich Heine

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, born Harry Heine, was a German poet, writer, and literary critic best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, much of which was set to music as Lieder by composers including Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and Franz Schubert. His later verse and prose are distinguished by satirical wit and irony, and he is considered a member of the Young Germany movement; his radical political views led German authorities to ban many of his works, which only added to his fame, and he spent the last twenty five years of his life as an expatriate in Paris. He is remembered for the phrase Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also, a warning that came true under the Nazi regime's book burnings and the Holocaust.