Scarcely any phenomenon of recent German history has proved as many-sided and protean as the German nationalist movement, the social counterpart to the process of nation-formation in the nineteenth century. This theme has hitherto largely been avoided by historians, in spite of the unmistakable historical significance of the nationalist movement, on account of its vague and diffuse character – the result of the long-delayed unification of the central European area into one nation-state. Consequently, numerous contradictory projects and programmes, blueprints and Utopias aimed at the unification of Germany remained possible but unfulfilled for generations. Added to which, the one common denominator shared by all the many conflicting ideologies and parties of the age was the idea of nation. In an age of economic revolution, population explosion and permanent social change in Europe, when every value was overturned, the nationalist idea alone stood for legitimacy, community and a new order. The idea of nation as an organisation was not easy to pin down, being more of a mood than a programme, but it dominated the collective mentality of the two generations prior to the unification of the German Reich (Empire). It could almost be said to bear the marks of a new religion of the emergent industrial age. The nationalist movement was a religious movement – and this proved decisive in determining its success.