Germany and Spinoza

I have loved German poetry from my earliest adult life for reasons which only now have become clear. Goethe, Holderlin and Rilke were the centre of my poetic universe with only Shakespeare among English poets consistently in the same pantheon - and greater than any as a playwright/dramatist. The reason that became clear was many years later when I read Goethe's remark 'I am not a Christian.' This non-Christian, non-religious in the normal sense, view of the world meant an entirely different perspective to the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the English religious outlook. And also one different to the religious sensiblities of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky - much as I adore Tolstoy. It fitted, in a different way, with the savage realism of Balzac - my favourite novelist after Tolstoy. Jane Austen's deconstruction of the monetary relations underlying society was also the nearest in an English novelist.
The reason for the liking of the sensibility of German poetry became clearer when I found Goethe's admiration for Spinoza - as can be seen I did not have enough time to do research when younger!
But a further point that arises is that if you take the dominant figures of later 19th century German thought - Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche, Freud - they were also not Christian/non-religious. That is, an entire central thread of German cultural thought is outside the Christian, and to some lesser extent, religious framework. This was clearly the sensibility that struck a chord in appreciation of Germany poetry even when the reason for it was not known - a clearer view of the world, looking at reality, not obscured by religious/Christian confusions and mystifications.

PS Naturally there are major Christian/relgious influenced writers in Germany - Kant and Hegel to take only two. But the aChristian tradition in Germany is far greater than in England,