Rather than viewing ethnically-defined nations and nation states as historic inevitabilities, Graus tried to understand the evolution of national consciousness and sensibilities as historically contingent processes – an idea which, although met with some skepticism at the time, foreshadowed the work of contemporary scholars like Benedict Anderson and Herwig Wolfram.
Graus challenged the notion of ethnically-defined nations and nation states as predetermined historical realities, instead proposing that their emergence was a product of historically contingent processes. This perspective, though initially met with skepticism, paved the way for later scholars such as Benedict Anderson and Herwig Wolfram to explore similar ideas.