ABSTRACT
In G. F. W. Hegel’s view the greatness of a ‘historically significant individual’ lay purely in his or her becoming the ‘agent of a purpose that forms a step in the advance of the universal spirit’. Hegel named as a key reason for the success of the great individual in history that individual’s ability to recognize ‘what is due, what is necessary’, and to work towards it with ‘passion’, by which he meant in this instance a kind of cold obsession. Hand in hand with Bismarck’s assessment of the power question was his assessment of what moved broad sections of the population to political action. In concrete terms, with regard to the role and the wishes of the Prussian people in the Wars of Liberation he was in complete agreement with his political friends on the conservative right wing.
