He is best known for his Volksgeist (folk poetry) and for assembling his Stimmen der Völker in Lieder - important texts collected from other countries in the nineteenth century which composers such as Schubert and Schumann would later set to music. He hated the French Enlightenment and that it entailed - (reason, science, progress) and advocated virtue/simplicity, intution, rebellion, Sturm und Drang and was strongly against neo-classicism.