For the most part, however, the Enlightenment had made a few inroads among intellectuals in the German states. Politically and economically, Germany was a set of feudal states. Serfdom would not be abolished until the nineteenth century. The majority of the population was uneducated and agrarian. Most were deeply religious, dominantly Lutheran. Unthinking obedience to God and to one’s feudal lord had been ingrained for centuries. This was especially true in Prussia, whose people Gotthold Lessing called “the most servile in Europe.”
