'One of the first men of this century' is how Heine described himself when he claimed to have been born in the early hours of 1800. It was typical of Heine to create this humorous doubt - he was in fact born in 1797. He was a restless and homeless poet, a Jew among Germans, a German in Paris, a rebel among the bourgeoisie and always, as his famous doppelg nger poems show, a man divided against himself. This selection, with the German...