The conclusion places the findings of this study within contemporary debates about Germany’s colonial past, using the Humboldt Forum as an entry point. It contrasts the official culture of remembrance, shaped by a redemption narrative, with a broader argument about global interconnectedness: German colonialism shaped not only societies in Africa, the Pacific, and China, but also the metropole and its political system. Yet these entanglements remain largely hidden, as their structural effects were absorbed into the institutions of the nation-state. To counter this obfuscation, the study traces the colonies’ imprint on imperial (later presidential) authority, the accountability of political officials, parliamentary leverage, the growth of the federal administration, naval expansion, increasing fiscal centralisation, the nationalisation of citizenship, and the expansion of civil society, revealing these developments as responses to the varied challenges of colonial governance. Taken together, they contributed to Germany’s consolidation as a more centralised nation-state. The argument culminates in a lateral theory of state formation, highlighting the pathways and mechanisms through which cross-border entanglements have shaped European nation-states.