After a biographical reminder of Marie-Joseph Lagrange, the present study aims to demonstrate how the Dominican scholar takes the opportunity of a public lecture given at the Institut Catholique de Paris between December 1917 and February 1918, and published under the title Le sens du christianisme d'après l'exégèse allemande, to turn a masterpiece of «German science» in exegesis - the famous Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung from Albert Schweitzer - by the addition of a chapter on Martin Luther into a theological weapon not only against German liberal biblical criticism, but against Lutheranism and against Germanism in general. The failure of the «first quest of the historical Jesus» highlighted by the Alsatian Lutheran theologian becomes in Lagrange’s view the scientific, religious, cultural and finally the human failure of Germany.