Renan was inducted into the Académie française on 13 June 1878. His vindication, on that occasion, of the superiority of French civilization over the “culture” of neighbouring, less convivial societies drew on an ingrained stereotypical opposition between the perceived French and German “national characters”, provoked German publicists like Gustav Solling and, alongside the altercations with D.F. Strauss (q.v.), fed into Renan’s 1882 classic Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?