Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was a German poet, writer, and literary critic who lived from 13 December 1797 to 17 February 1856. Outside of Germany, he is most known for his early lyric poetry, which was adapted to music by musicians such as Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, and Lola Carrier Worrell as lieder (art songs). Later verse and prose by Heine are notable for their caustic wit and irony. He is thought to be a member of the Young Germany movement. Many of his writings were outlawed by German authorities as a result of his radical political ideas, which only contributed to his fame. He lived in Paris for the last 25 years of his life as an exile. Heinrich Heine's works were among the thousands of volumes burned on Berlin's Opernplatz in 1933, following a Nazi raid on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. One of the most famous lines from Heine's 1821 play Almansor, spoken by the Muslim Hassan upon hearing that Christian conquerors burned the Quran in Granada's marketplace, was engraved in the ground at the site to commemorate the event: "Das war nur ein Vorspiel, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." ("That was only a precursor; where books are burned, people will be burned as well.")

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