Die Harzreise

Compiled in autumn 1824, it was first published as a serial in January and February 1826 in the magazine Der Gesellschafter by Friedrich Wilhelm Gubitz and ran for 14 instalments.

In his work, Heinrich Heine describes his journey as a student from Göttingen, where he had attended the Georgia Augusta University in 1820/21, through the Harz range and over its highest mountain, the Brocken summit, to the small town of Ilsenburg.

During the trip he meets well known and unknown contemporaries, who he sometimes describes in detail and compares with other people, sometimes historical protagonists.

For example, he meets in Göttingen the physician and (like Heine) Jewish Burschenschaft member, Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx and recounts their exchange about medicine as well as Marx' treatise, Goettingen in medicinischer, physischer und historischer Hinsicht ("Göttingen From a Medical, Physical and Historic Perspective").

She runs through the blessed Ilse valley, on whose twin sides the mountains rise gradually higher, and they are, down to their feet, most often covered in beech, oak and familiar leafy bushes, no longer in firs and other pinewood trees.