Nature worship in Germany goes back to the origins of modern romanticism. It was felt almost everywhere, from the writings of Goethe to the symphonies of Mahler. Students at the University of Heidelberg had hiking clubs through the entire 19th century. In the 1920s, an assortment of occult and pseudo-scientific ideas coalesced around the idea of a German Volk into a romantic nationalism, romantic racism, and a mystical nature-worshipping faith. Combining interest in folklore, ecology, occultism and romanticism with ethnic nationalism, their ideologies were a strong influence on the Nazi party. Nature worship is often considered the primitive source of modern religious beliefs and can be found in theism, panentheism, pantheism, deism, polytheism, animism, totemism, shamanism and paganism. Common to most forms of nature worship is a spiritual focus on the individual's connection and influence on some aspects of the natural world and reverence towards it. The nature circle symbolizes the time cycle in nature (starting with birth, continuing with growth, maturing, harvest to dying away and death)