German Nationalism: From Herder to Prussian Statism
This paper examines the development of German nationalism from its philosophical origins in Johann Gottfried Herder's late eighteenth-century concept of cultural nationalism through its transformation into a more militant and exclusionary ideology by the mid-nineteenth century. Beginning with Herder's humanistic notion of the Volk — rooted in language, geography, and mutual respect among nations — the paper traces how the German Enlightenment fostered a tolerant national identity. It then explores how sustained conflict with Napoleonic France, regional rivalries, and the French occupation of the Rhineland radicalized German nationalist sentiment. The paper concludes by showing how Herder's originally pluralistic conception of nationhood became increasingly co-terminus with state power, paving the way for the virulent nationalism that would emerge in Prussian Germany after 1871.
- Herder's Cultural Nationalism and the Natural Origins of Nationhood: Herder roots nationhood in nature, geography, and language
- Language, Tolerance, and the German Enlightenment: Enlightenment literacy and religious tolerance shape national identity
- French Influence and the Radicalization of German Nationalism: Conflicts with France push German nationalism toward extremism
- Regionalism, the Napoleonic Wars, and the German Confederation: Regional rivalries and French occupation reshape German politics
- From Cultural Idealism to State Nationalism: Herder's pluralism absorbed into authoritarian Prussian nationalism
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper traces a clear intellectual lineage, beginning with Herder's philosophical framework and following its transformation through historical events, giving the argument a coherent arc from idealism to radicalization.
- It contextualizes abstract ideological shifts within concrete historical events — the Edict of Toleration, the French occupation of the Rhineland, the Congress of Vienna — grounding philosophical claims in historical evidence.
- The paper demonstrates nuance by acknowledging the complexity of intellectual responses to France, noting that even during the occupation prominent German thinkers like Hegel admired Napoleon, avoiding an overly simplistic narrative.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies the use of intellectual history as a lens for political analysis. Rather than simply cataloguing events, it traces how a set of ideas evolved in response to political pressures, showing how Herder's tolerant cultural nationalism was gradually co-opted and distorted by the realities of war, occupation, and state-building. This technique — tracking the transformation of an idea across time — is particularly effective for history and political theory essays.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with Herder's foundational theory of nationhood, establishes the Enlightenment context that supported it, then pivots to the disruptive influence of French power and the Napoleonic Wars. It addresses the complicating factor of regionalism before arriving at its thesis-affirming conclusion: that Herder's progressive vision was ultimately absorbed into a conservative, state-centered nationalism by 1871. The structure follows a clear chronological and causal logic.
Herder's Cultural Nationalism and the Natural Origins of Nationhood
Johann Gottfried Herder locates the origins of nationalism in nature. According to his perspective, the planet's natural geographical evolution gave rise to different groups of "peoples" who developed their own customs in isolation from other nation-based identities. He identifies a nation as a "natural state" with a "character" of its own. If the state is well governed, then whoever rules it will cultivate it according to its own natural laws.
Besides nature, from which national character springs over a period of thousands of years, there is language, which gives one a national identity. Herder declares language to be the heart of the people. Without it, he argues convincingly, there is no way for a nation to express its culture.
Above all, Herder's conception of nationalism calls for the peaceful co-existence of nations under the guise of mutual respect for their individual characteristics, culture, and language. At the time of its publication in 1784, it was a version of nationalism — called "cultural nationalism" — that called for the acknowledgement of a strong German national identity as well as respect towards other, foreign national identities, without privileging one over the other. In that regard, it is quite distant from the negative characteristics one tends to associate with the term "nationalism" today, particularly the version of nationalism that came to be privileged in twentieth-century Germany.
Language, Tolerance, and the German Enlightenment
Herder's tolerant views on nationalism were firmly rooted in the thinking of the German Enlightenment. His thinking coincided with the slow development of tolerance towards religious minorities in the German states. While this initially had more to do with economic and social considerations, Herder's views on the subject endowed cultural nationalism with a moral, humanistic quality: "As God tolerates all the different languages in the world, so should a ruler not only tolerate but honor the various languages of his peoples."
It is worth noting that Herder composed these words three years after Joseph II's 1781 Edict of Toleration, which granted the majority of non-Catholics the right to practice their religion in Germany. It is not hard, therefore, to see Herder's thoughts on nationalism as firmly rooted in the progressive intellectual zeitgeist of the late eighteenth century.
The rise of education and literacy throughout the German Enlightenment helped cement the conception of a German national identity. By the end of the eighteenth century, nearly all books published in the German states were in the German language. Before, the vast majority of books had been published in Latin, and could thus only be read by the educated minority. The new attitudes towards education and the accessibility of ideas ensured a wider reading public for new ideas, such as those of Herder.
French Influence and the Radicalization of German Nationalism
Herder's conception of cultural nationalism was in some ways a reaction to the earlier predominance of French language and culture in the German states. His idea was that every nation was an organic cultural community — a Volk — and should thus be judged on its own terms, rather than those of some other nation (in this case, France). At the same time, Herder proclaimed his admiration of the French Revolution early on, as did many other German intellectuals.
Yet the progressive conception of nationalism that Herder espoused was to be marred by Germany's continual conflicts with France throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. These conflicts would eventually give rise to a more reactionary strain of nationalism. The evolution of German nationalism in the nineteenth century, rooted in a popular hatred of Napoleon, gave rise to fanaticism visible in every realm of social, cultural, and political life — from the apocalyptic rhetoric of Fichte to Schleiermacher's conviction that the German Volk were the creation of God and should be treated accordingly.
Even during the German lands' domination by the French, Hegel and other prominent German intellectuals wrote admiringly of Napoleon. In this respect, there were certainly two distinct views of nationalism during Herder's lifetime and the decades to follow. Whereas the intellectual protagonists of the Enlightenment encouraged the German people to locate freedom and national identity within themselves — thus advocating personal development over what they perceived to be a vain conception of nationalism — a more extreme view was espoused by leading politicians of the era: namely, the supremacy of German culture über alles.
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