Romantic Afterlives: Heinrich Heine’s “Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen” in Yiddish Translations

This paper presents the reception of Heinrich Heine’s “Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen” in Yiddish translation. For many of his younger colleagues he was “der grester liriker fun 19tn jorhundert, der sharfster humorist und biterster satiriker in der daytsher literatur” [the greatest poet of the 19th century, the sharpest humorist and bitterest satirist in the German literature]. My aim is to show on the example of Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen [Germany. A Winter’s Tale] (1844) how Heine’s subversive drawing on Romantic ideas and language is rendered into Yiddish in the first half of the 20th century by Moyshe-Leyb Halpern and Moyshe Khashtshevatsky.