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with various traditions of different cultures but also shows his good
approach to the people surrounding him. Throughout his life his
observations were highly detailed. One small and simple incident of
1883 may be cited. Once, Gundert visited a Reverend who was also
a painter and bee-keeper in the countryside about a hundred
kilometres northeast of Stuttgart. There he observed: "I saw a queen-
bee, too, with honey and some subjects [drones] feeding her,
preserved in a glass."6 It is, however, also true that the more
complicated the circumstances became, the more Gundert came
back to his inmost talent by confronting it with the holy Scripture and
transforming it into deep-rooted verses of a high ethical standard,
poems and tracts. The category in which he could express himself
best was the folk literature.
Folk literature is the melting-pot of the highest philosophical
thinking and simplest natural behaviour, the expression of creativity
and formality, the hinge holding together chaos and order, the
melting-pot of all old and young, of the experienced and the naive,
of the educated and the illiterate, the place where all ways of life
meet. Gundert was endowed with the talent of absorbing folk
literature of many cultures as well as of different theological and
philosophical concepts. At the same time he was able to create his
own style of literature, fascinating old and young for decades and
even centuries. It is overwhelming to see what Gundert learned,
worked and created when he was only thirteen, fourteen or fifteen
years old. This inner creativeness never vanished. Even in his old age
he was able to formulate sentences and letters with the wit and
freshness of a youth.
This explains why he, a theologian and missionary, was able
to combine his first Bible tract of Genesis 1-11 with Indian myths
of creation as well as with biblical apocryphal material which is
related closely to many other traditions seeking an answer concerning
the beginning of the world. It is not surprising that he puts together
dogmatical views of the medieval church with modern theological
opinions destined by Martin Luther's "Freiheit eines
Christenmenschen" (a Christian's Freedom) in his tract.
In the introduction and commentary to the Song of Songs,
Gundert expresses his understanding of this book which belongs to
the Holy Scriptures and at the same time is a folk Song. By the way,
