Richard Samuel's paper "Kleists 'Hermannsschlacht' und der Freiherr vom Stein" first appeared in Jahrbuch der Schillergesellschaft V, 1961, and is reprinted in HvK,
ed. Mueller-Seidel, Wege der Forschung CXLVII, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1967.
It is as convincing a case based on circumstantial evidence as can be expected from a serious and meticulous scholar like Samuel and links Kleist's drama and Hermann's
politics and strategy to the contemporary plans of Stein, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to get rid of Napoleon.

Even if you disagree that the constellations in the drama mirror that of Prussia and other German states in 1808, it is undeniable that the piece advocates a war of national
liberation. This is not chauvinism or Hurra-Patriotismus on the part of Kleist but an insistence on the right to national self-determination. Kant and Edmund Burke are
his staunchest allies here. So are Goethe's Iphigenie and Egmont, Schiller's Jungfrau and Tell.

And Kleist's  hysterical hatred of Napoleon was in large measure caused by Napoleon's betrayal of the French Revolution culminating in his coronation as Emperor "by
the grace of God" rather than by the "grace of butchers and tailors" (in Friedrich Wilhelm IV 1848 phrase). That deep disappointment was shared by many, with
Beethoven's reaction the most famous. See your own Christa Wolf quotation from Kein Ort, Nirgends.

National self-determination, however, leaves no room for colonialism or imperialism (this was Ho Chi Minh's most eloquent political argument, remember?). And this is
why you can stress both in you essay, nationalism/patriotism and what you call cosmopolitanism (what I would call anti-colonialism). You need not chose between them,
in fact your argument will be stronger if you see the link between them.
Having liberated Germany in his war of national liberation against a colonial power, Hermann will now declare war on colonialism and imperialism. The destruction of
"Raubnest Rom" is Hermann's metaphor for an anti-colonial assault on the colonial superpower Rome and it echoes Scipio's phrase, repeated ad nauseam: ceterum
censeo carthaginem esse delendam.

Carthage and Rome are not just towns, they are symbols of hostile or competing cultures. To destroy a culture you must destroy their symbols and shrines. Holy Oaks
and other sacred monuments, the Buddha statue in Afganistan, Sodom and Gomorrha in the Old Testament, Babylon and Jericho, Troy, Carthage and Rome, Stalingrad
and Berlin, Vucovar and Sarajewo, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center ...
The Anglo-Saxon monk Wynfrith, later known as St. Boniface (673-745) is said to have destroyed, in  his christian missionary zeal, a sacred oak in East-Westphalia
near Geismar/Fritzlar (cf. the OT, Kings and Chronicles in particular, for accounts of a campaign against the monuments and priests of Baal). Unfortunately for him his
reputation preceded him; when he tried to work his magic in Northern Germany a bunch of enraged Frisians clubbed him to death and created a martyr.

Incidentally, in Tolstoy's War and Peace the roles of national liberator and farsighted statesman are given to two vastly different people, the general Kutuzof and the
Tsar Alexander.

"The war of 1812, besides accomplishing the national object[ive] so dear to every Russian heart, was destined to have another significance still -- a European one. The
movements of the nations from west to east were to be followed by a movement fro east to west, and for this new war a new actor was needed, who had other qualities
and views from those of Kutuzof, and was moved by other impulses.
Alexander the First was as necessary to ... establish the boundaries of the [European] nations as Kutuzof had been for the salvation ond glory of Russia.
Kutuzof had no notion of the meaning of Europe, the balance of power, Napoleon. He could not understand this. For the representative of the Russian people, after the
enemy had been annihilated, Russia saved and established on the highest pinnacle of glory -- for him, a Russian, as a Russian, there as nothing left to do. For the
representative of the national war there was nothing left except death."
(Tolstoy, War and Peace, The John C Winston Co,1949, p. 686).

Paradoxically (?), Kleist is not at all on the side of the former slaves of Haiti, freed by the French Revolution in 1793 and made French citizens, who get rid of their
French masters in 1803. See his Verlobung in Santo Domingo. He is, as always, on the side of the victims, the whites in this case. An attempted reconciliation between
the races based on love, gratitude, respect, and a whole complex array of other emotions, fails. Please keep this in mind when reading the excerpts from James Fenimore
Cooper.
Kleist, incidentally, does not even mention the original population of Hispaniola, there are no Indians in this story or his Earthquake in Chili.