ABSTRACT
The chosen path, in retrospect and in prospect, appears at every juncture in a different light, with a different tone, and stimulates different interpretations. Several features, however, although hardly recognizable to oneself, run continuously throughout the regions of thought. Their image appears in the little pamphlet, The Pathway, written in 1947/48. The decisive, and therefore ineffable, influence on the author’s own later academic career came from two men who should be expressly mentioned here in memory and gratitude. The one was Carl Braig, professor of systematic theology, who was the last in the tradition of the speculative school of Tubingen which gave significance and scope to Catholic theology through its dialogue with Hegel and Schelling. The other one was the art historian Wilhelm Voge. The impact of each lecture by these two teachers lasted through the long semester breaks which the author always spent at his parents’ house in his hometown Messkirch, working uninterruptedly.
