4 ideas
Crossing into Prussia at Aachen in winter 1843, the returning exile watches customs officers rummage through his trunk for smuggled lace, jewels and forbidden books. He mocks them because the real contraband, the subversive ideas and verses, travels in his head, where no search can reach it. The episode is concrete evidence that border inspection and censorship aimed at physical objects cannot stop ideas carried by people.
In the Kyffhäuser dream sequence the narrator meets the sleeping emperor Barbarossa, the Romantic symbol of a restored German empire. He finds him senile, obsessed with medieval trivia and ignorant of the guillotine. Longing for a mythic savior-king is shown to be backward nostalgia that leaves people waiting instead of acting. The poem argues that Romantic medievalism serves reaction, not national renewal.
Heine claims deep love for Germany's language, food, landscape and people while ridiculing its Prussian army, censors, clergy and princes. The poem separates the homeland from the regime that claims to speak for it. On this view, attacking the rulers is a loyal act, and nationalist loyalty to the rulers is a betrayal of the country.
In the opening canto a harp-girl sings the 'old renunciation song' promising reward in heaven. Heine reads it as a lullaby the powerful use to keep the poor quiet about hunger here and now. Against it he offers a 'new, better song': build heaven on earth, with enough bread for everyone and pleasure without guilt. Otherworldly religious consolation works as political pacification by postponing material justice until after death.