National concept

I'm not super sure what the lady means by national concept, but in case anyone here still thinks German is an ethnic concept, consider that the whole German identity (much like Italian identity btw) is largely a construct of 19th century liberalism, a concept against the authoritarian-aristocratically governed small states and towards a somewhat democratic 'nation state' unifying all the German (or Italian) speakers. And to this day, there's plenty of Germans who self-identify with their region first and Germany second.