This thesis investigates how far the political theory of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks (1929-35) had its immediate origins in the crisis going on in Germany at the time he wrote them. The crisis was a matter of burning interest to all European communists for whom the whole future of the revolutionary project started in 1917 depended on what happened in Germany. The thesis reconstructs the historical context of the Prison Notebooks year by year and identifies a series of notes - the 'German' notes - in which Gramsci theorises about questions suggested by current events in Germany. A few of these notes are in a concrete state and their German content is readily identified but many were written in general terms which must be decoded before their 'practical origins' in the German events become apparent. The method of decoding Gramsci's notes is to contextualise them.