The Prussian reforms of Kleist's age were founded upon fundamentally pedagogical considerations. Long before the rout of 1806, the reformers recognized the need to mobilize the energies of the entire population in order to match the achievements of revolutionary France, and the comprehensive defeat of the old corporative state at Jena and Auerstedt gave them the opportunity to implement their ideas. Their primary insight was that the French Revolution had revealed the importance of giving soldiers a reason to fight for their country, which led them to conclude that elements of the corporative state needed to be dismantled in order to open up new opportunities for those with talents to use them. Taking France as their model, they expected that the liberalization of legal and economic frameworks would encourage hard work, commitment, and innovation throughout the population.

This was a relatively new concept in Prussia. For much of the eighteenth century, not even progressive educationalists had questioned the rigid social hierarchy. The Pietist educationalist August Hermann Francke was a pioneer in his concern for the moral improvement of the socially marginal, but the education that he offered poor children was strictly functional, consisting substantially in instruction in religion, literacy, and numeracy. The development of the intellect was a secondary concern. The Pietists were progressive in arguing that all children should be literate, and their influence was duly felt in Prussia as literacy was officially recognized as an educational goal.