ABSTRACT
The advent of the modern state in Prussia was a result of radical transformations induced in European politics by the French Revolution. The historical developments in Prussia between 1807 and 1819, which are commonly called Prussian reforms, are thus intrinsically connected to the German reception of the revolutionary events in France and cannot be understood without reference to them. However, the particularity of the German development was its high degree of self-awareness: in contrast to the French case, the historical change in Prussia was not generated through a revolutionary uprising but planned and organized by a group of enlightened bureaucrats who held decision-making positions during the French occupation. The consequences and results of the French Revolution, moreover, were arguably conceptualized and understood by German rather than by French intellectuals, and the reforming bureaucracy was thus in the exceptional position of being able to draw the theoretical concepts of their political action directly from the most thorough philosophical thinking of their time.
