The Runaway Romantic. The great new biography of Heinrich Heine. He referred to himself as a "runaway romantic," developed an almost absolute ear for the dissonances of his time, and, as Karl Kraus noted, "loosened the corset of the German language." Heinrich Heine was the first to bridge the gap between poetry and life. Yet he was also the first truly European intellectual. As Rolf Hosfeld shows, he has surprisingly become a contemporary of ours again. In an era of emerging national movements, Heine had a keen sense for the not-so-subtle difference between republican and old German nationalism. He was the first to keep a watchful eye on the dark energies of a looming populism and cultivated a distinct distinction between "culture" and "civilization" beyond the usual ethnology.