The Roots and Forming of the German Nationalism Ideology – Part 1: from 1740 (Prussia under Frederick the Great) to 1815 (Congress of Vienna)

Abstract

The work considers the development of the idea of the German nationalism from the turn of the 19th century to the outbreak of the First World War. On the one hand, the political and social situation of the German territories in the 19th century (the policy of Frederick the Great, the German Enlightenment, the state crisis during the Napoleonic wars, the student movement and the rise of the corporation movement, the unification of the German lands, the German expansionist policy before WWI and the concept of Mitteleuropa) had an impact on this development. On the other hand, writings of popular representatives of the prevailing political and ideological currents cannot be ignored. The work is divided into two parts. The first one presents: the concepts of community, nation and nationality, the nationalism in the period from 1740 (Prussia under Frederick the Great) to 1815 (Congress of Vienna),and the influence of works of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, Ernest Moritz Arndt, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte on the crystallization of the concept of nationalism.