At the end of the eighteenth century, Germany was a figment of the imagination, more a state of mind than a territorial state marked on the European map. Its closest political approximation was the arcane structure of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, both in its political and legal institutions and in the person of the Kaiser. Most of the Germanspeaking population of Europe could be found within its borders, but it also contained substantial non-German-speaking populations, particularly at its extremities. Many felt that the Empire had served the Germans well by maintaining stability and a common tradition, while preserving political diversity and the rule of law. But its major powers, Prussia and Austria, each had substantial territorial interests outside its borders. Since the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, the larger territorial states had been primarily concerned with reconstruction and the centralization of power, and placed their dynastic territorial considerations before imperial or national interests. However, in the course of the eighteenth century, public intellectuals began to portray other possibilities: Germany as the initiator of cosmopolitanism in Europe, or as a politically disinterested nation of creative intellectuals, mediating between and synthesizing other national cultures.

The seemingly inexorable rise of the French nation-state after 1789 presented a serious challenge to the political, social, and cultural foundations of the German states, which provoked some serious and sustained reflection on the reforms that would be needed in the future.