Heinrich Heine has a special place in literature: he is the last romantic poet. An author who knew how to transform the language, to the extent that Nietzsche wrote: “Sometimes it will be said that Heine and I have been, by far, the first artists of the German language”.

Beset in Germany by censorship and anti-Semitism, he emigrated to Paris, his schöne Zauberstadt (beautiful magical city), where he found the freedom to write. In 1832 he published the report I speak of cholera, which at that time caused a stir. Presenting this work now has the macabre motivation of showing a reflection of our time. "Strange and horrible curiosity that often prompts men to cast their eyes on the tombs of the past!" says Heine.

Around 1840, Heine wrote the last part of his novel The Rabbi of Bacherach—which, however, remained unfinished—on the life of German Jews in the Middle Ages. The form of the story and the circumstance allow him to highlight, with his proverbial irony, the confusion between romanticism and religion, God and gods and devils. Perhaps we are more contemporaries of this romantic imbroglio than we think?