Excerpt from Heine: Selections From the Reisebilder and Other Prose Works But the earlier date seems to be correct, so far as can be ascertained, for the Dusseldorf registers were destroyed by fire early in the century. He was the eldest son of Samson Heine, army clothier, and of his wife Elizabeth, daughter of a Doctor van Geldern of Dusseldorf. Samson Heine settled in Dusseldorf to please his father-in-law, and was a cloth merchant, who in later life acquired honorary military rank in his capacity of commissary to the army. He seems to have been a man of ordinary attainments, who did very little for his son, and was regarded by him accordingly with no very strong feelings. He shared Heinrich Heine's admiration for Napoleon, and that is almost all we learn of his Opinions. The mother, on the other hand, as is so often the case with great men, had much to do with forming her son's mind and inspiring his heart with a love for literature. She was a woman of quick wit and strong mind, with a passionate love for music, which she transmitted to her son. She spared no pains in his training, and was repaid by him with a devoted love. Wayward and moody by nature, he was never such towards her; thoughtless and inconsiderate as he was. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.