The term "Germanic" should be understood in the historical context of the mid nineteenth century. In 1846, German linguists and historians, amongst them the Brothers Grimm, Leopold Ranke and Jacob Burckhardt, had met in Frankfurt, and decided to use "Germanistik" as a comprehensive term embracing all the fields of their academic disciplines related to the culture of German-speaking regions. The German revolutions of 1848–49 had failed to achieve a liberalised and unified Germany. Thus the name of the museum maintained the idea of a close cultural relationship within a region defined by the common German language, and a shared German cultural tradition. In 1852, the museum's intention to document the cultural unity of the German-speaking areas was a progressive concept, free from any exaggerated Chauvinism. Only in 1871, when the German Empire was constituted, the museum paid tribute to it by adding "national" to its name.