Presents and illustrates the formation of national movements in Central and Southeast Europe. The 67 texts, including hymns, manifestos, articles or extracts from lengthy studies exemplify the relation between Romanticism and national identity. The end of the eighteenth century and first decades of the nineteenth were in many respects a watershed period in European history. The ideas of the Enlightenment had shattered the old bonds and cast doubt upon the established moral and social norms of the old corporate society. The dramatic convulsions of the French Revolution revealed roads for the future development of European society. In arts and culture a new trend, Romanticism, was successfully asserting itself against Classicism. And, above all, a new group identity was announced, which elevated the nation as the supreme value. National Romanticism sought affiliation with this new community, the nation, which was easy to endow with a certain emotional attractiveness.

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