Given its status as a foundational text in nationalist political thought, the main emphasis in discussions of Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation has not surprisingly tended to be on the issue of the kind of nationalism that is to be found in this text, particularly the question as to whether it contains an ethnic nationalism, based on descent, or a cultural nationalism, which defines nationality in terms of linguistic and cultural differences, or a mixture of both these forms of nationalism. Although the Addresses to the German Nation clearly does constitute an attempt on Fichte's part to shape a German national identity, in what follows I focus on the question of the relation of this attempt to shape a German national identity to Fichte's ideas concerning the moral vocation (Bestimmung) of the scholar (der Gelehrte) in society, and on the means that Fichte employs to achieve the end of shaping a German national identity. By so doing, I draw attention to at least two elements of continuity that must be thought to exist between the period of Fichte's professorship at the University of Jena and his Addresses to the German Nation, which were delivered and then published in the period 1807–08, in the wake of Napoleon's defeat and subjugation of Prussia, while Fichte was in Berlin without an academic position, having moved there in 1799 after losing his professorship at Jena in the wake of the Atheism Controversy.