A LONDON INTERLUDE 93Borne. Heine referred to his encounter with Weitling in a letter
to Marx, written on September 21, 1844. According to Heine's
version of the incident, the tailor introduced himself as a "col
league" who championed "the same doctrines of revolution and
atheism" as the poet. During the conversation Weitling remained
seated, tailor-fashion, on a bench. He did not remove his cap and
he held his right leg in one hand, pulling it up near his chin, and
rubbing it constantly, presumably to stop the itch caused by his
prison chains.
Whatever his earlier radical sympathies may have been, Heine
by this time hated communism as "an artist, poet and learned man,"
and believed it would destroy the very flower of civilization. Es
sentially Heine was a literary snob, and by no stretch of the
imagination can he be described as a democrat. He always felt un
comfortable among "the people, these poor kings in rags," and
now he was both embarrassed and insulted to have a tailor, posing
as a social philosopher, refer to him as a "colleague" and show such
"complete lack of respect." Yet despite his fury at the moment be
cause of this "repulsive familiarity," when Heine recalled his en
counter with the "forgotten leader" of the men of toil some years
later, he referred to him as a "man of talent," and characterized
his Garantieen as "the catechism of the German communists,"
whom he regarded as "cohorts of destruction," "sappers whose
axes threatened the whole social edifice, ... in whose methods
there is madness." When the poet's strictures were brought to
Weitling's attention several years later, he professed to be genu
inely amused, though he considered Heine's satire "somewhat ill-
mannered" and commented sharply on "the aristocratic vanity of
the poet."^2
The same publisher in whose office the two men had met pub
lished Weitling's Kerkerpoesien, a little 72-page volume of jail
poems. In a preface, the author explained that they were written
(^2) See Rep. d. Arb., November 4, 1854; and Ernst Elster (ed.), Heinrich Heine's
Sämmtliche Werke (Leipzig), VI, 42-45. Heine's letter of September 21, 1844,
to Marx was reprinted in the Berliner Zeitung, July 12, 1947, a paper published
in the Russian zone of occupation.