LIKE THE ENDING OF GRABBE'S Herzog Theodor von Gothland and the whole of his Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung, Heinrich Heine's Briefe aus Berlin was composed in Berlin in the early 1820s. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the two young writers were reasonably well-acquainted, and there is even a story that Grabbe threatened to kill Heine if he ever discovered that the latter had attacked him in print. Yet, if this incident took place, it did not prevent Heine from reading an early manuscript of Gothland and expressing confidence that it would be a success. Both men published their works within northern Germany and, like Grabbe's early plays, Briefe aus Berlin also faced Prussian censorship controls. As its title suggests, however, Heine's early prose work pays more sustained and detailed attention to contemporary reality than either Gothland or Scherz, Satire, and thus provides a distinctive perspective on the interaction between censorship and literary writing in the 1820s.

When Heine arrived in Berlin in March 1821, the Prussian capital was undergoing a period of rapid expansion. In the years between 1815 and 1837, the city grew in population from 190, 000 to 283, 000; and it counted many leading German writers and intellectuals among its inhabitants. The theatrical scene of Berlin was thriving, and its eleven-year-old university had already emerged as a center of German scholarly life. This cultural importance was matched by Berlin's industrial development.