Enlightened War: German Theories and Cultures of Warfare from Frederick the Great to Clausewitz

Abstract

Reviewed by: Enlightened War: German Theories and Cultures of Warfare from Frederick the Great to Clausewitz Martin Kagel Enlightened War: German Theories and Cultures of Warfare from Frederick the Great to Clausewitz. Edited by Elisabeth Krimmer and Patricia Anne Simpson. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. viii + 348 pages + 8 b / w images. $85.00. Enlightened War is a broadly conceived, ambitious anthology, which draws its readers’ attention to the different ways in which warfare and the military are reflected in eighteenth-century German thought. In twelve chapters, the volume explores the “intricate interrelations between the literature and culture” of the Enlightenment “and contemporary theories and practices of war” (2), contending that the institution of the military left its imprint on all areas of eighteenth-century life. Divided into four parts—“War and Enlightenment,” “Cultures of War in Classicism and Romanticism,” “War and Gender,” and “War and Theory”—the volume comprises contributions on a wide range of topics, from Wilhelm von Humboldt’s integration of the war experience into his theory of self-formation (Felix Saure) and the inverted perspectives on war embedded in Heinrich von Kleist’s anecdotes (Galili Shahar) to Immanuel Kant’s thoughts on the legitimate use of political violence (David Colclasure), Carl von Clausewitz’s hermeneutics (Arndt Niebisch) and the continuation of Clausewitz’s thinking in the current U.S. Army / Marine Corps Field Manual (Wolf Kittler). In toto, the volume gravitates to the time period around 1800, with a forward-looking trajectory rather than an emphasis on developments in the eighteenth century proper. In this sense, its title may be somewhat misleading, considering that only one contribution—Sara Eigen Figal’s stimulating essay on mid-eighteenth-century bellicism and conceptions of enmity in texts that “accepted war as an inevitable component of civilization” (22)—directly addresses the period around the Seven Years’ War, a time of intense nationalism in German letters inextricably connected to Prussia’s military campaigns. For in the only other contribution under the heading “War and Enlightenment,” Johannes Birgfeld’s apt discussion of Daniel Jensch’s war epic Borussias, the Seven Years’ War is no longer the actual subject, but rather “a Trojan Horse” (41) that allowed Jensch to insert himself into aesthetic debates of the 1790s. Not just for historical reasons, but also for reasons of the argument put forth by the volume as a whole, a more extensive treatment of the earlier period would have been desirable. The editors themselves contributed two of the essays in the volume. In her instructive discussion, Elisabeth Krimmer addresses the relationship between creative and martial genius as represented in Goethe’s Faust II and shows that Goethe “links [End Page 274] warfare and violence to human motivations that are assigned a negative moral value,” but also “portrays a bond between warfare and men’s highest aspirations,” including “the appreciation of beauty and art” (135). While Goethe’s text offers a rationale for the continued existence of warfare and recognizes the significance of war in relation to creativity, he does not endorse it wholeheartedly. Instead, Krimmer maintains, he critiques it and advocates “for art’s ability to temper the destructive force of war” (128). Patricia Anne Simpson reads three fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm—“The Devil and his Grandmother,” “The Devil’s Sooty Brother,” and “Bearskin”—as stories reenacting the war experience and the subsequent reintegration of soldiers into society. Her astute analysis demonstrates how the texts illuminate “the homologous relationship between military culture and civil society” (154), speaking in exemplary fashion to the volume’s overall aim. Simpson also addresses the question of gender as it is reflected in the texts, notably “the struggle to reimagine masculine identity in a postwar context” (151). Ultimately, she concludes, the soldiers’ tales “point to a disjuncture between the dominant discourse of a military ethos in reform and the popular ethics that embrace deserters, impoverished warriors, and newly civilized armed men” (168). Simpson’s discussion provides a smooth transition to what is arguably the strongest part of the volume, a section on “War and Gender,” which includes contributions by Inge Stephan, Waltraud Maierhofer, and Ute Frevert. Similar to Simpson, who had noted that the fairy tales did not...