14. The Development of the German Soul

Now, of course, I cannot boast of such a science. However, I did have the opportunity to enjoy the long-standing friendship of a good successor and student of Jakob Grimm, the Austrian dialect, legend and myth researcher, and later also Goethe researcher, Karl Julius Schröer. I have already spoken about this in these lectures, except about what he, I would like to say, tried to research so truly in the spirit of Jacob Grimm, namely about the intimate life relationships of the German folk soul to the various folk souls that prevail in Austria. For many years I was privileged to participate in his attempts to fathom the essence and significance of the German dialects prevailing in Austria – and there are many prevailing there – and I can say that I participated with heartfelt interest. I was also able to see how the soul of a people, especially the German soul, comes to life where it has to blend with Slavic and Magyar folk traditions. In those years, when I was young, one could already study the mutual relationships between the souls of nations. If one considered what happened in Austria in the 1870s and 1880s, one could apply in a vivid way what a researcher, a student of Jacob Grimm, could bring to bear from his science about the nature of the soul of a nation. And then I was able to deepen what had been offered to me in this way, again through an intimate friendship with the now long since deceased scholar of legends and myths, Ludwig Laistner, a friend of Paul Heyse. And so I was at least offered the opportunity to get to know the way in which one can immerse oneself in that external science that summarizes everything that is lawful in the nature of the folk soul and its development.