Otto Bismarck concluded the unification of Germany at Versailles on January 18, 1871. Praise of the Hohenzollern dynasty accompanied the elation felt in Germany at the defeat of France, and no less a composer than Johannes Brahms was caught up in the surge of national feeling with the writing of his Triumphlied, op. 55, which he dedicated to Wilhelm I. Bernhard Hopffer (1840–77), as a young composer, was inevitably drawn into writing patriotic works of this kind. The year 1871 was an auspicious one for him: his opera Frithjof, written when he was just 21, had its premiere on April 11 in Berlin, receiving ten performances.

At the beginning of 1872, however, Hopffer contracted a lung ailment that forced him to live in spa towns in Switzerland and Italy. He finally settled in Wiesbaden in the autumn of 1876. His brother Emil, who had also studied music and to whom he was very close, joined him there in the spring of 1877. Despite his poor health Hopffer completed another opera, Sakuntala, on a text by his brother who, also ailing, passed away in July of that same year. Bernhard, deeply upset by Emil's death, sought physical and spiritual relief in the curative spa, the former Jagdschloss (Hunting Lodge) Niederwald, at Rudesheim, where, after a short illness, he died on August 20, 1877. Among his papers were the scores of Sakuntala, the comic operas Der lustige Capitan and Der Student von Prag (his first composition), lieder, cantatas, and other works that remain unperformed.

Hopffer seems to have composed his cantata Darthula's Grabesgesang, op. 23, during his time in Rudesheim; Robert Lienau published the work posthumously, in 1878. It is dedicated to Louis Ehlert. The story of Darthula made an early impact in German-speaking lands: Michael Denis (1729–1800), a Jesuit priest in Vienna, had produced the first complete translation of the Ossian poems in 1768–69. “Darthula” was greatly admired by Friedrich Schiller, who believed the poem to be one of the most beautiful in Ossian.