Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen

Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, a satirical epic by H. Heine, written and published in 1844. It is written in four-line stanzas of rhyming verse and comprises 27 ‘chapters’ (each designated a ‘Kaput’). The poem arises partly out of the visit Heine paid to Germany at the end of 1843, but it does not reproduce his itinerary. Its basis is an imaginary journey from Paris via Aachen, Hagen, Bückeburg, and Hanover to Hamburg, and its substance is a cannonade of witty, yet serious, satire directed at German philistinism and political life. Its most famous passage deals with the idealization of the Middle Ages and the anachronism of monarchy under the image of the Emperor Barbarossa (Kaput XIV-XVII), otherwise Friedrich I.