Sauerteig (i.e. leaven), an imaginary authority alive to the “celestial infernal” fermentation that goes on in the world, who has an eye specially to the evil elements at work, and to whose opinion Carlyle frequently appeals in his condemnatory verdict on sublunary things.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Sauerkraut * Saul