Johann Joseph Görres (von Görres after his ennoblement in Bavaria in 1839), an eloquent but erratic political writer, a visionary and a polemicist, a patriot and a religious propagandist, an autodidact and polymath, assumed an important role in German literature during the years 1804 to 1811, and especially from 1806 to 1808, when he was lecturing at Heidelberg University. At this time, researching the origins of myth and enthusiastically publishing and editing older German literature, he collaborated with the Heidelberg Romantics Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano and associated briefly with the poet Joseph von Eichendorff.

Born in Coblenz in 1776 to Moriz Görres, a timber dealer, and Helena Theresia Mazza Görres, Joseph Görres was inspired throughout his life by affection for his native Rhineland, and in later years he reverted to the traditional Catholicism of this area of Germany. Equally influential, on the...