Lagarde's anti-Semitism, anti-Slavism, and aversion to traditional Christianity are viewed as having been among the most influential precursors of Nazism.

[3]: 6 Bötticher attended Humboldt University of Berlin from 1844–6 where he studied Oriental languages, theology, and philosophy under professors like Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, who was a friend of his father.

[7] In 1855, Paul de Lagarde taught languages at Köllnisches Gymnasium in Berlin where his duties included teaching gymnastics.

In a letter to Adolf Hilgenfeld, Lagarde described himself as an "anchorite", simultaneously lamenting and imposing his self-isolation.

[3]: 115–9  His own eulogist, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, described Lagarde as a lonely man who sowed the wind and reaped the storm.

[11] Paul de Lagarde wrote on a broad range of topics, moving fluidly between multiple languages.

In 1880, de Lagarde attempted to reconstruct a Syriac version of Epiphanius' treatise, On Weights and Measures, which he entitled, Veteris Testamenti ab Origene recensiti fragmenta apud Syros servata quinque.

Praemittitur Epiphanii de mensuris et ponderibus liber nunc primum integer et ipse syriacus (Gootingae 1880).

Lagarde was a member of the Prussian Conservative Party until 1849 when it fabricated evidence of treason against Benedikt Waldeck.

[14]: 74–5 He concludes his 1875 book, Über die gegenwärtige Lage des deutschen Reichs (On the Current Situation of the German Reich):[14]: 167 Germany is the totality of all German-feeling, German-thinking, German-willing Germans: In this sense, every one of us is a traitor if he does not consider himself personally acountable in every moment of his life for the existence, fortune and future of the fatherland, and each is a hero and liberator if he does.Lagarde despised the bland version of Christianity that he knew and dreamed of a nationalistic religion.

He also showed interest in folkish-anti-Semitic societies such as the Deutscher Volksverein of Bernhard Förster and Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg, as well as the Deutschsoziale Partei of Theodor Fritsch.

"[19] In addition to his influence on anti-Semitism and anti-slavism, Lagarde is also of importance to the formation of German imperialist thought.

This land acquisition aimed to create a Mitteleuropa under German leadership "that reaches from the Ems to the mouth of the Danube, from the Neman to Trieste, from Metz to about the Bug.

[12] A 1920 handbook of Septuagint studies concluded that Lagarde's work set the modern standard for the field.

[20] Shortly after his death, The New York Times described Lagarde as "the most remarkable writer on Semitic studies that the world has ever known".

When John Dyneley Prince was alerted that it was for sale and would immediately bestow the owner with the best Oriental library in America, he arranged for New York University to purchase it for $7,000 in 1893.

[22] In his 1918 book, The New Europe, Tomáš Masaryk regards Lagarde as one of the leading philosophical and theological spokesmen of Pan-Germanism, and furthermore describes Heinrich von Treitschke as its historian, Wilhelm II as its politician and Friedrich Ratzel as its geopolitical geographer.

[24] Fritz Stern zeroed in on the aimless nature of Lagarde's political writings:"He wrote as a prophet; he neither reasoned nor exposited, but poured out his excoriations and laments, his intuitive truths and promises.