SOURCE: Holub, Robert C. “Heine's Conversion: Reflections from the ‘Matratzengruft.’” The Germanic Review 74, no. 4 (fall 1999): 283-92.

In the following essay, Holub examines Heine's conversion to Protestantism as it relates to his Confessions.

Heine's Confessions [Geständnisse], one of the last works he published before his death, is an unusual text in both intention and composition. Originally conceived as a new introduction to an earlier work, De l'Allemagne, which had appeared in the mid-1830s, it moves through several generic styles and perspectives, never settling on any one mode of presentation. In the foreword to the work Heine announces that he wrote the Confessions as a kind of appendix or emendation to his major essays on German literature and philosophy, but after employing a confessional style for a few paragraphs, he soon turns to an extended and satirical reflection on Madame de Staël, whose De l'Allemagne Heine had...