Categorisation of colour impressions under a small number of generally applicable ("abstract") terms like blau and rot was, for him, the outcome of long evolutionary development, and only a minority of languages had achieved this.

[3] Simplistically, he reported a decline since ancient Germanic times in the verbal expression of colour, with objects nowadays perceived as colour-bearers, not colour-transmitters (Farbträger, nicht Farbsender).

[5] Resonance in the Anglo-Saxon world was limited partly by Weisgerber's arcane terminology, but more by his French-German ethnic background in an "Americanized scientific community", dominated by structuralist universalists like Noam Chomsky.

One of his pupils, Helmut Gipper, prominently developed his ideas in modified form, in a series of articles and as co-editor of the Duden Grammatik from the late 1950s onwards.

[7] Weisgerber can be seen as an epigonic scholar of the German idealistic and romantic traditions alike, that insisted on the compatibility of reason and history and did not play off the first contra the latter.

[citation needed] Before World War II, Weisgerber established links with Celtic nationalists in Ireland, Britain and Brittany, which were seen as a threat to national unity by the respective majority governments (the British Crown and the Centralist French Republic).

[8] This "augmenting – assumed or real – ethnic fractions in enemy states" was a political tactic supported by the German Society for Celtic Studies, under the remit of the Ahnenerbe.

[citation needed] After the defeat of the Nazis, Weisgerber assisted the members of the Breton Bezen Perrot SS militia, led by Célestin Lainé, providing them with false papers to allow them to escape to Ireland with the help of other Celticists, a practice that can be seen both critically political and/or humane.