This article examines the history of the German Fürstenbund prior to the Prussian take-over of the scheme in 1785. In charting the union's initial conception as a small-state alliance designed to resist both Prussian and Austrian expansionism, the article reveals the cultural dimension of imperial diplomacy. Exclusive concentration on the straightforward diplomatic sources produced by Prussian-style bureaucracies has led historians to underrate the contribution of smaller German principalities, which typically employed more indirect, metaphorical means of political communication. A prominent example of such ‘cultural politics’ is the process by which Prince Franz of Anhalt-Dessau drew on English precedents in shaping the Fürstenbund. Its participants were to be united not just by formal agreements, but by a shared spirit. Under the leadership of a ‘Patriot king’, they were to act as champions of ancient regional liberties, thus resembling the English aristocrats of the anti-Walpole opposition whom Franz admired. At the same time, an English-inspired rhetoric of sentimentalism was employed to suggest that this political union would function in analogy with sentimental friendships, creating a firmer bond whilst preserving that small-state ‘individualism’ which was the source of so many reform initiatives in the late eighteenth-century German Empire.