In the final years of his life, Heinrich Heine lived confined to a bed, which he himself, with bitter irony, called the Matratzengruft, the “mattress grave.” From that narrow space, marked by pain and paralysis, he nonetheless continued to write, reflect, and question the meaning of faith, suffering, and poetry. Living in exile in Paris, […]

The “Mattress Grave”: The Final Years of Heinrich Heine