ABSTRACT
The repercussions of events in Germany after the revolution between July 1848 and February 1849 were reflected in the emigration figures a dozen years later. Although the industrial revolution elsewhere had become an attractive prospect to those seeking to better themselves, emigration from Germany had dwindled to 50,000 by 1848, half that earlier in the decade. At least one musician, Wagner, did return, and although German Romantic music before him was not explicitly nationalistic, in other ways it fitted in with the general Romantic current, which was distinctly nationalist. Liberalism and conservatism occupied a secondary place in the minds of the leaders of thought, and either could have marched hand in hand with nationalism, but the battle fought in German history between 1848 and 1871 would decide which it was to be. The New Germans were more forgiving, but they could afford to be because they were not writing symphonies.
