The context of Paul Kleinert's review of the Requiem in the Neue evangelische Kirchenzeitung is discussed in the last section of the preceding chapter. Its comprehensive examination of the text and the music appearing in a theological publication is remarkable. Kleinert's judgment of the Requiem as an evangelical work, the article's positive reception by Brahms and Kalbeck, among others, and its misunderstanding by recent scholars makes it worth reading in full.

A German Requiem is a great achievement. Just as in architecture the evangelical church is situated solely within the legacy of the church of the Middle Ages, our church music is in many ways still held in the bonds of bygone forms, although Protestantism has produced in this field its characteristic and creative geniuses. And through Mozart and Cherubini it has been widely accepted that, for example, a Requiem without a Latin text cannot be imagined. And when the unconscious mood that runs through most thoughtful minds begins more or less to give up hope that religious life in the present day will be able to produce any great and original works, then one may consider it all the more a welcome appearance, a great German and evangelical achievement, when directly from the very depths of the heart of artistic life, from the sanctuary of music, a new Requiem, one even in a German and evangelical tongue, is announced. The reviewer felt an inner joy, similar to that which he felt when in the exhibition of designs for the new Berlin cathedral, among a row of eclectic and old-style sketches, he caught sight of one that, even though it was everywhere evident that it was inwardly saturated with every good thing from the past, bore the stamp of unity and of a new spirit and with this unified spirit immediately vigorously testified in the eye and mind of the beholder; and when he saw that the motto of this plan was “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”