INDUSTRY, CONSTITUTIONS, AND NATIONALISM 281
probably one key to Fichte's influence. Many Germans chafing under
French rule felt that, yes, they could tell: French and German really were
two different spirits; and they liked hearing that even though the French
might be dominant, the Germans might be somehow "higher" ...
Fast-forward five decades from the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte to the
year 1870. Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had just forged a sin-
gle nation out of the many little German states. France, as it happened,
was now ruled by Napoleon's buffoonish great-nephew Napoleon III, who
was twice as pompous and half as talented as Napoleon the First. Bismarck
goaded this Napoleon into declaring war on him, then overwhelmed
France with a lightning strike, conquered Paris within months, and im-
posed humiliating terms upon the French, as well as wresting two resource-
rich border provinces away from France.
German nationalism, born out of defeat and resentment, now had vic-
tory to batten on. A triumphalist vision of a German nation with a mythic
destiny took wing. Artists sought the sources of the German volksgeist in
ancient Teutonic myths. Wagner expressed the German nationalist passion
in bombastic operas. Historians began spinning a mythological narrative
tracing German origins back to the primal Indo-Europeans, the Aryan
tribes of the Caucasus mountains.
German nationalism especially captivated professors at the Gymna-
sium, which was then Germany's most prestigious institution of higher ed-
ucation. Here, philosophers such as Heinrich von Treitschke began
teaching that nations were the most authentic social entities in the world
and the highest expression of human life. They rhapsodized about a pan-
German nation that would rule all territories in which German speakers
lived. They spoke of the heroic destiny that justified "great" nations im-
posing their will on barbaric lands. (In other words, colonialism was
noble.} Their pupils, laden with these passions, moved into society as en-
gineers, bankers, teachers, or whatnot, and infected the German masses
with this virus of pan-German nationalism.
In Italy, meanwhile, a revolutionary named Joseph Mazzini was adding
further and perhaps the final pieces to nationalism as a political ideology.
Mazzini was mainly interested in rescuing Italy from foreign rulers such as
the Austrians and saw unificiation as the only means for achieving this
goal. His politics led him to propound that individuals could act only as