A house-museum of Heinrich Heine, the most famous native of Duesseldorf, is a part of the entire institute named after the great poet.
Heine was born in 1797 in the family of a local merchant of Jewish origin. He became the last Romantic German poet, a true European poetic star of the mid-19th c. Duesseldorf is justly proud of him: apart from an eponymous institute, his name was given to a local university and one of central boulevards.
Heine is by no means the only famous name on the city map. Here, for instance, there is Karl Marx Street. Interestingly, Heine and Marx were related on the maternal line, and their ancestors also lived in Duesseldorf. Furthermore, the great poet and the Socialist theoretician became close friends in emigration. Marx was in fact present by Heine's deathbed in Paris in 1856. All this and more awaits the visitor at Heine's house-museum where he was born and spent his childhood.