Drama
Poetic Drama
Subject:
Art
History
Politics and Government

Text in:

he

en

 “Momentary Kingdom”
is a play about the life in exile of the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine.
From the time he began writing he was persecuted by the King
of Prussia for his criticism of the Prussian regime. In 1831 he
was forced to flee Germany
and find refuge in Paris.
The King of Prussia continued with his
attempts to gag him by banning all his books, prohibiting German publishers to
publish and sell his works, and forcing newspapers to reject his articles.
Despite all this Heine continued to write poetry and prose in which he
criticized the king, his government, the clergy, and also writers and
intellectuals who took no part in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Germany. Heine
led the struggle against the kings of Prussia until his last breath. He
died in Paris
in 1856.

While the play deals with a
historical character in a historical context, it is not a historical play. It
explores the power of the writer in a modern world to change the political
reality by creating a public discourse on the values of the political regime.
It explores the personal sacrifice that radical writers must make for
expressing their demand for changes in the political climate. It also explores
the effect of the writer’s political convictions on his own life and on the
aesthetics of his own writing.