Were one to describe the development of the German nationalist movement on the level of political history and the history of events until its dissolution in 1867 as the history of an attempt to influence the great political decisions of the age, one would produce an impression of great helplessness and uselessness. The history of Germany in the nineteenth century is presented as a history of revolution from above, in which the state, or rather a few statesmen, inaugurated, against a background of set economic conditions and determinants, changes such as an elite of political journalists, cut off from the sphere of political action, could only dream of. This wholly conventional picture of a state separated from society, with the former exercising an uncontested jurisdiction over the latter, might suffice were it not that in the long term, politics had progressed precisely towards the realisation of the nationalist movement's basic aims, while the opposition of powerful prerevolutionary and pre-industrial elites was gradually eroded. The results show that the state and the nationalist movement were far more closely linked and interrelated than a superficial study of successive historical events would indicate. Might it not even be possible, on another level, to write the history of the constantly collapsing nationalist movement as success story?

Let us recall our introductory comments about the transformation, unique in the history of the world, from the old agrarian society of Europe to the industrial mass-civilisation of the outgoing nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, which people experienced in terms of the breakup of the feudal order, the loss of social and religious ties, the collapse of their social milieu and the absurdity of traditional loyalties.