“The Börne Identity” addresses the central problem of identity in Heinrich Heine’s extraordinary yet little-known book on the political writer Ludwig Börne. Here Heine famously distinguished between himself as sensualist “pagan” Hellene and Börne as moralistic “Christian” Nazarene. Heine’s strategy was a humorous means of differentiating among competing dimensions of literature and politics as well as different agendas, sensibilities, and talents between two emancipated, assimilated, converted, ambivalent German Jews. He thereby deconstructed the dichotomies of identity at the heart of a nascent, virulent, Germanic anti-semitism. Re-examining Heine’s complex thought can transform our understanding of its profound impact on Friedrich Nietzsche.
Alexander Soros is the founder of the Alexander Soros Foundation, Global Board Member of the Open Society Foundations and Advisory Board Member of Global Witness.
Furthermore he is a Board Member of Bend the Arc and the Central European University in Budapest. Currently he is a guest at the IWM.
