1842

In March FW4 had written to Metternich that 'the greatness, power, and honour of Germany' had become his life's main mission. In September after organising a ceremony and festival at Cologne based on his cathedral project, and giving a speech to the public, FW4 met Metternich who was not pleased with the romantic German national ideas of the new king. Remarkably he said of Prussia to Metternich: 'This thing [Prussia] has no historical basis; it consists of an agglomeration of territories, which themselves once had such a basis and then lost them.' Now there is single artificial unit held together by an oligarchy of officials. 'In this situation it is not possible to speak of anything that might logically be described as “reform”, because one can only reform — that is, improve — something which already exists. In Prussia, however, we have to create something new, because what already exists there is an absurdity.' Barclay: for FW4, he saw Germany in Romantic and religious terms, and dreamed of a harmonious political order of kings and estates both in each individual state and at a German level with a restored Empire: monarchy protected, social conflict banished, German nationalism reconciled with kingly sovereignty, all contributing to a force that could roll back the tides of the hated French Revolution. But his ideas were more cultural than political and institutional.