Moritz Daniel Oppenheim · Public domain

The most quoted German poet after Goethe, and the funniest — a lyric writer whose verses Schubert and Schumann set by the hundred, and a political journalist sharp enough to be banned across the German states. He converted to Lutheranism to qualify for a legal career he never practised, called the baptismal certificate his ticket of admission to European culture, and remained unmistakably Jewish in his subject matter. In 1821 he wrote that where they burn books, they will end by burning people.