As a child, Droysen witnessed some of the military operations during the War of Liberation, his father by then being pastor at Greifenhagen, in the immediate neighbourhood of Stettin, which was held by the French for most of 1813.

[7] It was in some ways the herald of a new school of German historical thought, for it idealized power and success, a conceptual framework Droysen had learned from the teaching of Hegel.

[4] His Vorlesung des Freiheits Krieg (in English: Lectures of the War of Liberation)[9] appeared in 1846 and his Outlines of the Principles of History, published 1858, translated 1893, was widely read throughout German universities.

[10] He followed this with Erhebung der Geschichte zum Rang einer Wissenschaft (1863), a methodological study that reflected his new approach to research and writing.

"[12] Droysen was one of the first members to retire from the Frankfurt Parliament after King Frederick William IV of Prussia refused the imperial crown in 1849.

In the following two years, Droysen continued to support the cause of the duchies, and in 1850, with Carl Samwer, he published a history of the dealings of Denmark with Schleswig and Holstein, Die Herzogthümer Schleswig-Holstein und das Königreich Dänemark seit dem Jahre 1800 (Hamburg, 1850).

The work was one of great political importance and contributed to the formation of German public opinion on the rights of the duchies in their struggle with Denmark.