Nation-state creation in Prussia immediately triggered the first modern antisemitic flare-up

Evidence

Antisemitism first flared up in Prussia immediately after the defeat by Napoleon in 1807, when the “Reformers” changed the political structure so that the nobility lost its privileges and the middle classes won their freedom to develop. This reform, a “revolution from above,” changed the half-feudal structure of Prussia’s enlightened despotism into a more or less modern nation-state whose final stage was the German Reich of 1871. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 126

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘revolution from above’ mechanism — reform imposed by state elites rather than a rising class — which Arendt treats as the distinctive path to the modern nation-state.