Book excerpt: Collects papers from an October 1997 conference that took place in Berkeley, California. Papers examine how the Heine's identity was formed, reformed, and revised in relationship to the politics, religion, and nationalism of his era. Several papers focus on his Jewish identity and most touch on his relationship to the politics of his era, offering, not a radically different vision of Heine, but one that recognizes the ambivalences and vacillations, as well as the development and consistency, of his complex identity. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR