The first edition of this book appeared in 1932, one year before the start of the Third Reich, and the second in 1951, six years after its end. Heine was banned in Nazi Germany, and Marcuse had to flee. »I had never considered what I would do if I had to do something – but wrote a Heine book in which I very vigorously described the position of the beloved writer. I grew so fond of him because he had addressed myself and my friends long before we came into the world, and is just as relevant today as he was in 1840 and 1933. When I published the book in 1932, I had no idea whom I had written so much about.« Almost 70 years after the first edition, almost 150 years after the death of Heine, and nearly thirty years after the death of Marcuse, this biography is still relevant.