Printed Bill of Exchange for amount of 5000F, payable through the banking house of Salomon Heine in Hamburg

Salomon Heine (1766-1844), German Jewish banker and philanthropist, was the uncle of Germany’s outstanding Jewish writer and poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). Though Salomon refused to give his daughter Amalie (and later her sister Therese) to his nephew in marriage, Uncle Salomon did finance young Heinrich’s studies at the universities of Bonn, Berlin and Goettingen (1812-1825) and remained his patron for many years to come. For a few years (1815-1819), Heinrich tried his hand at commerce, eventually driving his firm - in which his uncle had invested - into a miserable bankruptcy. See EJ, Vol. VIII, cols. 270-276