State, nation and Europe experienced a characterisation in the age of romanticism that determines their shape and debate until the present day. They today may appear as rational structures of a modernisation process which experienced a golden age especially during the enlightenment period. The historical overall context, however, reveals itself only in a synthetic synopsis that forgoes playing off the apparent emotional romanticism against the rational enlightenment. Instead romanticism can be understood as a partly congenial supplement of enlightened fundamental concerns, which puts its potential for reform and modernisation into focus.