Heinrich Heine Club

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Anna Seghers (here in 1966) was President of the Heinrich Heine Club .

The Heinrich Heine Club was an association of German exiles in Mexico that existed from 1941 to 1946.

history

The Heinrich Heine Club met for the first time on November 7, 1941 in the offices of the Spanish exile publisher Edición Seneca . It was named after the German poet Heinrich Heine , who in turn spent many years in exile in France. The club, which at times had several hundred members, set itself the task of creating a cultural forum for the German-speaking emigrants living in Mexico.

The organizers of the first meeting were Rudolf Feistmann , Bodo Uhse , Egon Erwin Kisch and Anna Seghers , who also formed the club board. Anna Seghers became president, Egon Erwin Kisch became vice-president. The first event with a reading from Seghers' novel The Seventh Cross was the start of a series of cultural events - discussion evenings, readings and theater performances - which attracted up to 1200 visitors. The Heine-Klub became a recognized, multinational cultural center of a small community of German-speaking exiles and emigrants, in which members of artistic and academic professions were also offered a field of activity.

In addition to the cultural work, the aim of the association was to promote rapprochement between the "Free Germany" movement and bourgeois Jewish as well as Austrian and international emigrants and Germans abroad, but this did not succeed.

To say goodbye to the Heinrich Heine Club, Anna Seghers gave a speech:

“One would like to root as deeply as possible in all hearts the legacy of the man of whom one said at home: the great German and the sick Jew [...]. He was the patron saint of our community in this strange land to which we ended up on our wanderings. With our little strength we have tried to revive the reflection of his spirit, of his ridicule and his criticism here while he lies far away in his beloved Paris in the cemetery of Montmartre [...]. When homesickness overcame us too much, we let ourselves be comforted by his mocking grief: the same stars will float as death lamps over our graves, on the Rhine or under palm trees, even if you don't pray a requiem or say a kaddish.

The country wouldn't have seemed so strange to him. He has called himself a tireless fighter for freedom, and someone who fights for human rights feels fraternized with those who fight in all countries. [...] We were able to cover a great distance together in his name because our life inside and outside had many points in common with his. The most important, deepest internal questions and external fates. Like him, we have tried to hold onto values ​​from our homeland. [...] Heine shared all stages of emigration with us: the flight and the homelessness and the censorship and the struggles and the homesickness. "

- Author: Anna Seghers : Source: Sigrid Bock (Ed.): Anna Seghers. About artwork and reality . Vol. I, Berlin 1970, pp. 205-207.

Publications

  • Heine's spirit in Mexico . Edited by the Heinrich Heine Club. Mexico 1946.

literature

  • Elisabeth Gronau: The Heinrich Heine Club in Mexico City, 1941-1946 . Grin-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 978-3-656-06816-7 .

Web links