THROUGHOUT THE 1820S, repressive government actions such as those described in Briefe aus Berlin continued to stifle political life throughout the German lands. The Carlsbad Decrees were renewed in 1824, and surveillance of universities, persecution of political dissidents, and censorship controls prevented the emergence of any serious threat to the status quo before 1830. The reactionary climate affected Heine directly: officially implemented anti-Semitism led him to become baptized as a Protestant shortly before receiving his doctorate in law in 1825; and when first published in the Gesellschafter in 1826, his poetic travelogue Die Harzreise suffered severe cuts due to censorship. In January 1826, however, the writer met Julius Campe, the owner of the Hamburg publishing firm Hoffmann und Campe, a specialist in oppositional writings. Campe soon agreed to publish a first volume of Heine's Reisebilder, which included a reworked and extended version of Die Harzreise. Reisebilder I was very successful; and a second, politically more daring, volume of Reisebilder appeared in April 1827.

In November 1827, Heine moved to Munich to take up a job offer made to him by the south German publisher Johann Friedrich von Cotta, who wanted him as co-editor of a new political magazine, Neue allgemeine politische Annalen. The writer was at first enthusiastic about the project, but soon faced various difficulties. He had trouble obtaining suitable material for the Annalen, found the intellectual climate in Munich too reactionary, and had a strained relationship with the journal's other editor, Friedrich Lindner.