In all these poems there is nothing specifically Jewish except the language, and they might as well have been written in any other language without losing the least part of their significance. Dr. Ettinger is thus an exceptional phenomenon among his confreres, but exceptional only in appearance, as the cause for it is not far to seek. From the few data of his life we have learned that he received his training in the beginning of this century in Galicia, where at that time the influence of the Mendelssohnian school was most potent. He brought with him to Russia not only a love for enlightenment, but also what then was a necessary concomitant of that culture, a love for German learning; hence his exclusive imitation of German originals. At first the privileges of Western education were not only enjoyed by a small number of learned men, but there was no attempt made at introducing them to the masses at large, for that would have been a hazardous occupation for those who entered in an unequal combat with the superstitious people. It was only after J. B. Levinsohn had pointed out in his Hebrew works the desirability of educating them, and after he had undertaken to do so single-handed, that the other writers, late in the thirties and in the forties, began to approach the masses in the least offensive manner, by means of the folksong. Dr. Ettinger's activity, however, fell in the period preceding the militant energy of the Haskala. If he wished at all to write in Judeo-German, he could appear only as the interpreter of German culture to a public imbued with a love for it. What in the beginning was only a pastime of his leisure hours, soon became a passion to try his ingenuity, and he proceeded in writing original poems, and continued that practice even at a time when the main purpose of Judeo-German literature was to educate the people.