"The consequent German intellectual emphasis on private culture..."

"The French Revolution had revealed, at least in the view of most Germans of the educated class, the disastrous effects of trying to remodel society in accordance with purely rational theories. But, equally, the paternalism of the German principalities was insufficient and even worse, self-defeating, as a means of reforming society to achieve the conditions of human dignity, in that it treated men as means rather than as individuals in themselves. The consequent German intellectual emphasis on private culture reflected disenchantment with the conditions that public life presented. It justified for some (though not for Humboldt and Schiller) a flight from politics when the alternative approaches to political questions appeared either unpalatable, impractical, or both.
"Humboldt's thought is an attempt to make this conception of the cultured man within a civilized society the criterion for the political arrangements of society."

-- Wilhelm von Humboldt and German Liberalism, A Reassessment, John Roberts, 2009, p. 72.