Heine’s conversion to Christianity could not erase antisemitic charges of inauthenticity

Evidence

Heine was not an authentic Jew. He never aspired to be a traditional Jew. He grew up within a family that was already quite assimilated, his knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish religious matters was limited, and his Jewish faith probably even more so. He attended Jewish but also Catholic schools and tried—to a certain extent he also succeeded—in establishing himself as a German poet, writing in German. Yet even though he took the ultimate step and converted to Christianity, his baptismal certificate would never become the entrance ticket to European culture that he had expected it to be. For one, he did not get his academic career. However, it was also as a poet that he encountered resistance. Notwithstanding his conversion, Heine remained, in the eyes of antisemitic critics, a Jewish poet—a negative label that had nothing to do with the use of any Jewish subjects or with the Jewish religion, and everything to do with his presumed lack of truthfulness. Heine’s style was considered inauthentic, pretentious, not genuine art. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1663

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete historical instance of the ‘double bind’ pattern familiar from studies of assimilation (cf. W.E.B. Du Bois’s double consciousness, and the reader’s notes on trust and authenticity).