HEIDI URBAHN DE JAUREGUI
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occasion of the eighteenth of Brumaire, the day on which Napoleon
broke the peace and elevated himself to Consul. Still, there is a vast sup–
ply of later remarks on Napoleon. In the fragment "Waterloo," written
shortly before his death, Heine calls Napoleon the standard-bearer of a
free and truly democratic Europe against the "flag-aristocrats." The bat–
tle at Waterloo was lost by "the interests of freedom, equality,
brotherhood, truth and reason." When the mature Goethe designated
Napoleon as the ever-enlightened "compendium of the world," the late
Heine matches
him
step for step: "Napoleon was not made of the wood
that kings are built of; he was made of the marble that is the stuff of gods."
In his "Winter Tale," he describes how he was moved to tears in
December of 1840 at hearing "the forgotten love-cry 'Vive l'empereur!'"
as Napoleon's casket was led down the Champs-Elysees from Ste.
Helene's to the Invalides. Many have attributed Heine's unflagging rever–
ence for Napoleon to his lifelong gratitude for the Napoleonic Code,
which gave the Jews of the Rhine Valley the rights of full citizenship.
But, as we have said, Heine was not a man to subordinate the course of his
life to moments in history. Napoleon, the one who "tamed the many–
headed monster of anarchy" without resorting to populist flatteries, was
not only the incarnation of the people's will, but also the enemy of all
abhorrent forces. He was besieged, in Heine's view, by the English mon–
eybags, the Spanish clerics (who had rallied their faithful against him), the
Prussian
military
(prudently spared from the fire on the Wartburg), and
Russia's slave hordes. He exalts even the Russian campaign, which had
cost so many their lives, as a "triumphal procession of freedom and equal–
ity," these las t threatened wi th ruin "by cold and slaves."
He condemns the bourgeois republicanism of February 1848, and
supports the election of Louis Bonaparte as President. "The most secure
equality among men, the most genuine democracy," could flourish only
under one sole "will of the people incarnate." I feel it is not necessary
at this juncture to set Heine's ideas against our own experiences. History
before Heine was obviously well-stocked with illustrious examples of
tyrants and evil sovereigns; of course Heine made no attempt to deny the
dangers wrought by abuse of power, having fought them more vigorous–
ly than others. But he considered other forms of government to be wrong
from the outset, and extremely damaging in the long run: the direct,
unmediated rule by the masses (including proletarian dictatorship, which
he feared), and rule by interest groups like the "coterie economy" and
"plutocracy." This explains why he was assailed by the Left as well as the
bourgeois democrats and the less powerful sovereigns. He would have
needed three backs to cover this threat, but the only one he had was
already bent.
