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Russian formalism was not cut off from European developments, and in particular from a form of German formalist thought that arrived in Russia through the formalist Viktor Žirmunskij. The article discusses Žirmunskij’s journey through the German human sciences during his various stays in Germany. Aleksandr Veselovskij, founder of Russian comparative literature to whom Žirmunskij often referred, had already shown the way. Žirmunskij’s courses during the 1940s and 50s can be broken down into four main subjects: foundations of literary studies (from textology to author biography), a theory of literature, poetics (art of the word, metrics, stylistics) and historical-literary processes. The core of his interests can be found in the parts devoted to poetics. It is here that his reliance on historical poetics appears. There exists a continuity between the analysis of folklore and that of literature, particularly the epic and medieval literatures.