Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966) and Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) were contemporaries whose academic as well as social activities began in the early 20th century and rose to prominence especially in the interwar period. On the background of their respective Protestant and Buddhist milieu these German and Japanese intellectuals came to develop very similar and comparable theories of religion, in which the sphere of intuition and emotion were especially emphasized. Taking this similarity of their theories as a starting point, I attempt to draw revealing connections between their theoretical developments and their attitudes towards politics and society. The overall theory of religion which they both developed and which had the notion of the importance of each nation’s or ethnic group’s particular characteristics for the specific development of religious thought and life in each of these groups at its center, will be analyzed thoroughly. And yet it is noteworthy that both these scholars had also developed their visions for an improvement and renewal of the world in its entirety, which went far beyond such seemingly particularistic thinking. Thus their thoughts meet where they both express a cosmopolitic world-view. ‘Healing’ and the possibility of overcoming the crisis of modernity and war were considered feasible as soon as the relevance and importance of the world’s particular national religious traditions for each nation’s respective development was generally acknowledged. The ‘rediscovery’ of religion as the essence of the people to which it belonged in each case is thereby a reflection of the general issue of nationalism in the years preceding the Second World War.