When Görres pursued his life as a teacher of science he
was also dedicated to other academic fields. He was an
autodidact who was eager for knowledge.
During his leisure time Görres received mediaeval history
and old German poetry.
The power of emotion, language, music and art would enable
to discover the true and good things within oneself and
make that someone capable of acting.
For Görres it was a metaphysical search. The human being
finds to himself and to God whose own image he is said to
be. To Görres the different myths were the expression of
this search: Even the early mankind beheld the secrets of
the divine and maintained it in the purest way. Due to
this conviction he analyzed Asian legends and learned Per-
sian and Sanskrit. In 1806 Görres started to lecture phi-
lology and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg.
It was there where he met Clemens Brentano and Achim von
Arnim.
Being influenced by those two romanticists he felt con-
firmed in his notion that the focus on the intellectual
as well as on the mutual conviction creates public spirit.
During this era a certain development can be noticed which
Görres approved:
A part of the educated society turned their attention to
romanticism and used the poetry of the German language to
set themselves apart from the foreign rule.
The intellectuals meanwhile abnegated the “French-rational
spirit” which more and more seemed cold and militaristic.