No two noblemen later seen as so opposite entered the revolutionary era with backgrounds more alike than the future Prussian statesman Baron Carl vom und zum Stein and the later Austrian chancellor Count Clemens Metternich-Winneburg-Beilstein (1773–1859). And yet they emerged from it with widely differing ideas about the “nation,” the social order and the nobility. Their historical and popular reputations are no less at variance. Where Stein has assumed a place in the pantheon of German heroes, Metternich has been reviled as the leading opponent of German national self-determination. None of Stein's countless biographers has failed to play up the importance of his past as a Free Imperial Knight for his understanding of himself or for his social and political views. Metternich's roots as an imperial nobleman, in contrast, have received neither the same attention nor been accorded a similar significance.