Bach‟s spirit, the German spirit, stepped forth from the sanctuary of divinest Music, the place of its new-birth. When Goethe‟s “Götz” appeared, its joyous cry went up: “That‟s German!” And, beholding his likeness, the German also knew to shew himself, to shew the world, what Shakespeare is, whom his own people did not understand. These deeds the German spirit brought forth of itself, from its inmost longing to grow conscious of itself. And this consciousness told it – what it was the first to publish to the world – that the Beautiful and Noble came not into the world for sake of profit, nay, not for sake of even fame and recognition. And everything done in the sense of this teaching is “deutsch”; and therefore is the German great; and only what is done in that sense, can lead Germany to greatness.
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The German Folk arrived at its rebirth, at unfolding of its highest faculties, through its conservative temper, its inward cleaving to itself, to its own idiosyncrasy: once it shed its life‟s blood for the preservation of its Princes. ‟Tis now for them to shew the German Folk that they belong to it; and where the German spirit achieved its deed of rebearing the Folk, there is the realm whereon the Princes, too, have first to found their new alliance with the Folk. It is highest time the Princes turned to this re-baptism: the danger that menaces the whole of German public life, I have already pointed out. Woe to us and the world, if the nation itself were this time saved, but the German spirit vanished from the world!