ABSTRACT
In the age immediately following the Thirty Years' War nationalist sentiment occupied a smaller place than ever in German history. The wave of indignation at the predatory schemes of Louis XIV spent itself and was forgotten, proving that nationalist sentiment was still undeveloped, a transitory emotion, not a constantly effective and inspiring force. This national self-assertion of Klopstock's was a claim that was barely justified. What had Germans before his time contributed to the common stock of Western civilization? Short-lived were the glories of the nation of Cosmopolitans, who had imagined that they could do without a national state with its inevitable element of coercion and wholesome discipline. The disenchantment was terrible, but on the more balanced minds of the nation the effect was bracing in the extreme. The national movement in Germany needed a state to adopt it and take over its aims, and in that event there was no limit to its potentialities.
