As the development of the Lithuanian national written culture was constantly impeded by foreign forces, German writers and scholars were mainly interested in the spoken tradition of folk culture, songs in particular. The best example is a bride’s song “Aš atsisakiau savo močiutei” [“I Said No to My Granny”], which was first noted down by Pilypas Ruigys (1747), quoted by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, later published in Johann Gottfried Herder’s “Collection of Folk Songs” and finally even included in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s operetta “Fisherman’s Daughter”, produced in Weimar in 1782. In the 19th–20th centuries, the image of the Lithuanian culture in Germany was mainly affected by romantic historicism for which collections of folk songs were more important than the texts created at that time. This folk aesthetics is obvious even in the novel by Johannes Bobrowski “Lithuanian Pianos” (1965), and songs convey the tonality of the spoken language characteristic of the Lithuanian language. The dialogue between Germany and Lithuania could also be enriched in the European context by a critical and self-critical liberal communication at the level of urban culture today, especially so, because the year 2009 is approaching when Vilnius becomes the European Capital of Culture
