in 1871, as a "Kleindeutsche Lösung" under Prussian domination, only fulfilled part of the German nationalists' objectives, wishing and struggling as they did for the unification of all German speakers in a single nation state. The more Volkstum concept was now part of a nationalist ideology and political propaganda. It often served as a patriotic or visionary binding-agent to cover over or overcome the real contradictions inside and outside the German empire: for example, by providing a "Volkstumskampf", it summoned a corporate-agrarian Volksgemeinschaft or ideal community as the key features of Volkstum, though these did not actually exist. It was the term of choice for every figure wishing to turn to an irrational feeling and definition of unity, against both enemies inside and outside the Reich. While the Brothers Grimm had not yet distinguished between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society), Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) noted in his 1887 work Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft that the two were mutually exclusive - he defined "community" as a form of mutual affirmation of the people in themselves as in their resources, their respective communities (such as their family) but as an understood purpose - as opposed to its mutual form as "society" in which the individual himself was a purpose, with a 'community' (e.g. a corporation) watching over his means. 'Community' would in his terms be felt by children as "the permanent and genuine" against the "temporary and apparent cohabitation" of 'society'. This was directed against the Marxism of social democracy, whose "scientific" reasoned ideal of the classless society was felt by Tönnies to be unworkable. He was very sceptical about a concept such as "Volksgemeinschaft" - in the political sphere, he held that the ancient polis, or the medieval Hanseatic city as its most pronounced form, little more than which could be expected by modern people. Underscored by the context of Wilhelmine militarism and imperialism on the eve of the First World War, however, Heinrich Claß (chairman of the Alldeutscher Verband) in contrast defined Volkstum as national assertiveness and "Menschlichkeit" (humanity): He also took the "German disease" to be the German Jewish minority, who for him embodied all the moral values and ethnic roots of "corrosive" internationalism. During the war the "Deutsche Volkstum" and "Deutschtum", particularly in universities, again became popular, in the sense of chauvinism. In "Deutschen Reden in schwerer Zeit" (German Speeches in a black time), 35 Berlin professors spoke out against