Kindergarten pedagogy, which was based on educational play and cognitive development, was designed by the German Friedrich Frobel in the 1840s to train the future citizens of the new state that liberals aspired to create. It created a professional role for women, whom Frobel believed were innately gifted teachers of young children. German kindergarten teachers were forced into exile in the US when the revolution of 1848 was suppressed. In the years from 1851 to 1914, the kindergarten had much greater success in the US than in its native Germany. In 1900, most German school authorities refused to incorporate the kindergarten into public school systems, but many American school systems included kindergarten classes. In order to account for this, the article compares three aspects of German and American society: the Church-State relationship, the evolution of womens movements, and the political context in which public school systems developed. (Contains 58 footnotes.)