The experience of the French Revolution as a part of the historical process, together with economic, political, social, and cultural changes, encouraged a new sensitivity towards and interest in national history in Germany at the turn of the century. Especially in the fields of literature and history, intellectuals began to look for the roots and the identity of the German nation, and found them in the time of the Hohenstaufens. Their era soon not only became well known, but was seen as an ideal period of German history and an example of >the power and the glory< of bygone times. Against the background of the current territorial und national diversifications in Germany, the time of the Hohenstaufens — and above all the time of Friedrich I Barbarossa — was seen as an historical example of what national unity and a nation state could look like. The best known of all Hohenstaufen emperors was not only famous because of his historical achievements but also because of the legend about him from the fifteenth century onwards, in which he was thought to sit sleeping in the Kyffhäuser mountain awaiting better times. Then he would wake up, free his people and establish a new and powerful rule. This legend accorded perfectly with the deepest wishes of the national movement in Germany, and therefore the figure of Barbarossa soon became the personification of national hopes. The appearance of Friedrich Barbarossa in historiography, drama, lyrics and visual arts in the first three decades of the nineteenth century and the analysis of the associated political implications is the aim of this article.