to Christianity in 1825 in order to obtain a law degree. He received his degree but never practiced law. In 1826 Die Harzreise (The Harz Journey 1887), a prose account of a trip he had taken to the Harz, a mountain range in central Germany, was published. This work, with its wit and grace of style, won success immediately and established Heine's literary reputation. In 1827 his Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs, 1846) was published. Many noted composers, including Franz Schubert of Austria and Robert Schumann of Germany, wrote music to accompany these verses.From 1827 to 1831 Heine lived in England and Italy as well as in various parts of Germany. During that period he wrote the three volumes of travel stories that, with Die Harzreise, make up the four volumes of his Reisebilder (1826-1831; Travel Pictures, 1887). He also wrote a number of prose works in which he displayed sympathy with the democratic ideas of the French Revolution (1789-1799) and bitterly satirized the feudal regimes of the German kingdoms and duchies (see Feudalism).In the 1830s Heine became a prominent member of a literary group known as Junges Deutschland (Young Germany), which attacked the German school of Romanticism for having come under the domination of the monarchy and the church. He had hoped to obtain a position as a professor of German literature, but his political ideas brought him into the disfavor of the established German governments. Seeking a more friendly political and literary atmosphere, Heine left for Paris in 1831. Except for two brief visits to his native land, he spent the rest of his life in France.In Paris Heine wrote for several German newspapers and became friends with writers such as Honor de Balzac and George Sand and composers such as Hector Berlioz and Frdric Chopin. In 1835 the writings of the Junges Deutschland group were banned in most of Germany, and Heine's income was considerably reduced. In 1845 he contracted a spinal disease that c...
