uesseldorf on the
Rhine, December 13th, 1799. His father was a well-to-do Jewish
merchant; and his mother, the daughter of the famous physician and
Aulic Counlor Von Geldern, was, according to her son, a "_femme
distinguee_." His early childhood fell in the days of the occupation
of Duesseldorf by the French revolutionary troops; and, in the opinion
of his biographer Strodtmann, the influence of the French rule, thus
brought directly to bear upon the formation of his character, can
scarcely be exaggerated. His education was begun at the Franciscan
monastery of the Jesuits at Duesseldorf, where the teachers were
mostly French priests; and his religious instruction was at the same
time carried on in a private Jewish school. His principal companions
were Jewish children, and he was brought up with a rigid adherence to
the Hebrew faith. Thus in the very seed-time of his mental development
were simultaneously sown the germs of that Gallic liveliness and
mobility which pre-eminently distinguish him among German authors, and
also of his ineradicable sympathy with things Jewish, and his
inveterate antagonism to the principles and results of Christianity.

As the medical profession was in those days the only one open to Jews
in Germany, the boy Heine was destined for a commercial career; and in
1815 his father took him to Frankfort to establish him in a
banking-house. But a brief trial proved that he was utterly unsuited
to the situation, and after two months he was back again in
Duesseldorf. Three years later he went to Hamburg, and made another
attempt to adopt a mercantile pursuit under the auspices of his uncle,
the wealthy banker Solomon Heine. The millionaire, however, was very
soon convinced that the "fool of a boy" would never be fit for a
counting-house, and declared himself willing to furnish his nephew
with the means for a three years, course at the university, in order
to obtain a doctor's degree and practice law in Hamburg. It was
well-known that this would necessitate Harry's adoption of
Christianity; but his proselytism did not strike those whom it most
nearly concerned in the same way as it has impressed the world. So far
from this being the case, he wrote in 1823 to his friend Moser: "Here
the question of baptism enters; none of my family is opposed to it
except myself; but this _myself_ is of a peculiar nature. With my mode
of thinking, you can imagine that the mere act of baptism is
indifferent to me; that ev