In the last few years, education and nationalization, marginalization and re-integration of religious, social and ethnic groups have been accorded special attention in the research undertaken by a number of different disciplines. In the form of a dialogue between literary and historical studies, the present volume reflects on modernization processes from a historical perspective and attempts to trace the emergence of the corresponding conceptual instruments between 1850 and 1918. The volume assembles the contributions to a colloquium held in 1995 in honor of Wolfgang Frühwald's 60th birthday. The first group of papers centers around the problem of the construction of Nation and of the identity of the 'educated classes' via language and aesthetic anthropology. The second group gravitates around education and denomination from the angle of literary studies and social history.