R.E. KELLER regards dialect literature as generally suspicious. Many dialect writers, he says, were unable to escape from the standard in which they were educated, and therefore they merely transformed their standard German thinking into dialect by using its phonology and grammar. So the writer's dialects are, in his opinion, strange to the natives with regard to vocabulary, style, and idioms. And he quotes Ernst SCHWARZ who maintains that only few dialect poets could really think in their dialect and thus use it as an artistic tool. Walter HENZEN, too, thinks dialect poetry was merely a translation of standard writing patterns. Summing up Keller states that "much that is written in dialect has a false ring". On the other hand he concedes that "dialect literature of some merit will therefore only be found in areas where the dialect enjoys a certain prestige and is spoken habitually also by the educated classes." (loc. cit. p. 13) Keller neglects is that all dialect utterances must be neutrally seen as variants, that all variants are principally equivalent and that each and every writer is free to choose an individual variant as an artistic tool for expressing his own views and ideas. Innumerable discussions on modern art have proven it senseless to judge whether this or that form of expression is of higher artistic value. So, as far as dialects are concerned we had better stop acting as linguistic referees.