Thomas Theodor Heine (28 February 1867 – 26 January 1948) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

painter, illustrator and cartoonist. Born in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, Heine established himself as a gifted

caricaturist A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures. List of caricaturists * Abed Abdi (born 1942) * Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) * Alex Gard (1900–1948) * Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977) * Alfred Grévin (1827–1892) * Al ...

at an early age, which led to him studying art at the

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Magdalena Jetelová ...

and, briefly, at the Academy of Fine Arts in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

.Sepp Kern, "Heine, Thomas Theodor," ''

Grove Art Online ''Grove Art Online'' is the online edition of ''The Dictionary of Art'', often referred to as the ''Grove Dictionary of Art'', and part of Oxford Art Online, an internet gateway to online art reference publications of Oxford University Press, ...

'',

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

ccessed 21 April 2008 In 1896, he became successful as an illustrator and political cartoonist for the

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or ...

Munich magazine ''

Simplicissimus :''Simplicissimus is also a name for the 1668 novel Simplicius Simplicissimus and its protagonist.'' ''Simplicissimus'' () was a satirical German weekly magazine, headquartered in Munich, and founded by Albert Langen in April 1896. It continued ...

'', for which he appropriated the stylistic idiom of

Jugendstil ''Jugendstil'' ("Youth Style") was an artistic movement, particularly in the decorative arts, that was influential primarily in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to a lesser extent from about 1895 until about 1910. It was the German counterpart of ...

and the graphic qualities of

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in th ...

Aubrey Beardsley Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 187216 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the ...

and Japanese

woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas tha ...

s. The illustrated critiques of

social order The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order ...

s, and the

monarchy A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic ( constitutional monar ...

in particular, that he made for the magazine led to a six-month prison sentence in 1898. He also began work as a book illustrator in the 1890s. He fled Germany in 1933, first to

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

. From 1938 until 1942 he lived in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

, and from 1942 until his death in 1948 he lived in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...

. He published a highly cynical

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

in 1942 ''Ich warte auf Wunder'' ( en, I Wait for Miracles).Brian Keith-Smith, "Review of ''Thomas Theodor Heine: Fin-de-siècle Munich and the Origins of 'Simplicissimus'' by Timothy W. Hiles," ''The Modern Language Review'', vol. 94 (Apr., 1999), pp. 591-592.

While ''I Wait for Miracles'' claims neither to be autobiographical nor a

roman à clef ''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship be ...

, it was written in 1941 while

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

was in power in Germany and the Second World War was ongoing. Despite the author's protestations, it is a novel based upon the events of the day, and in particular the events in Munich during the

German Revolution of 1918-1919 German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law ** ...

, the Bavarian Soviet Republic, and the rise of

National Socialism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Naz ...

from 1920 to 1925. Hitler is unfavorably portrayed as the character named "Icarus", a soldier who first mesmerizes Munich audiences in the chapter entitled "The Mass Meeting". It also depicts with less accuracy the 14 September 1921 assault by Hitler on the separatist

Otto Ballerstedt Otto Ballerstedt (1 April 1887 – ) was a German engineer, writer and politician. Ballerstedt was mainly known as leader of the secessionist Bayernbund and as a political rival of Adolf Hitler in the early days of his political career who caused ...

, which resulted in Hitler being convicted and sentenced to 100 days in jail.

Gallery

File:Thomas Theodor Heine - Siegfried, 1921.jpg, alt=, Siegfried, oil on panel, 1921

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Heine, Thomas Theodor 1867 births 1948 deaths Academy of Fine Arts, Munich alumni German illustrators 19th-century German painters 19th-century German male artists German male painters 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists German prisoners and detainees Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni Art Nouveau painters Art Nouveau illustrators Artists from Leipzig Refugees in Norway Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to Sweden