Richard Strauss was "educated", at a time when the concept had not yet been endowed with and negative connotations. He had read "his Goethe" and read it again in Garmisch in later years – all the works of Goethe, though, interestingly, not the Farbenlehre, a work he did not like.

In 1882 his school leaving certificate from Munich’s Ludwig’s Gymnasium referred to his talent, interest and ability to grasp things quickly. "Despite his exceptional musical activities, dedication has meant he has achieved good results in language subjects and shown mature understanding in his explanation of the classics. His knowledge of history is also worth mentioning."

Late in life the classics and history were again the object of his interest and attention. He studied the works of the historians Ranke and Burkhart, thought about Christianity, a religion that he eyed critically and felt detached from, and read Schopenhauer. His compositions testify to his literary education. The symphonic poems are partly based on Shakespeare, Lenau, Nietzsche and Cervantes, while his vocal works set poems by Schiller, Goethe, Rückert, Uhland, Eichendorff, Hesse, Morgenstern and Herder as well as contemporaries who have today faded into obscurity.

Strauss himself wrote or arranged the librettos for Guntram, Salome and Intermezzo and for his librettists Strauss the composer was a demanding and well-informed partner.
The composer’s grandson Richard recalls the high level of education his grandfather expected and later generations struggled to reach: "Latin and Greek are part of an educated European, said Grandpa, otherwise he is only a second-class person. One was to read the philosophers, and Goethe was to lie on the bedside table. Herder, Wieland, Homer and Sophocles were to be studied in the original. Education, concentration, dedication."

Strauss sought to deny the horrible reality of World War II and he escaped to the comfort of reading. To Clemens Krauss at the end of 1944 he writes, "I’m pottering towards the inevitable old age myself, and waste my time on Plutarch and Ranke, on Shakespeare and Nestroy, and keep reading the most obscure Wagner texts."

In later years Richard Strauss described himself as "the Greek German". The composer’s classical education complemented his German sense of identity, something that had nothing at all in common with the barbarity of the Nazi era Strauss personally experienced.