Spatial Mobilization: Kleist's Strategic Road Map for the Berliner Abendblätter and Tactical Displacements in the "Tagesbegebenheiten"

Abstract

According Carl von Clausewitz's famous dictum, is continuation of politics by other means. Kleist's Berliner Abendblatter (BA), I argue, can be characterized similarly as continuation of by means of printing press, which allows for wide distribution of concealed, politically explosive messages in medium of ambiguous news reports and anecdotes instead of weapons. Recent studies have explored how Kleist's poetry reflects profound practical and theoretical transformations of warfare during Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and guerilla counter-insurgences.1 This article aims complement these interpretations by showing how geopolitical changes and subsequent societal challenges of this revolutionary and counterrevolutionary age have informed editorial and journalistic tactics of BA-not just represent and reflect them, but mobilize Prussian/German people and wage against Napoleon in virtual public sphere created by this medium.War is father of all in-depth thinking about politics of space, and totality of in Napoleonic era triggered a mobilization of space and dynamization of status quo that urged political leaders and military strategists rethink static, stratified organization of their state and army. Anders Engberg-Pedersen's recent study delineates series of spatial transformations that originated from National Convention's decree of national conscription and military mass-mobilization in 1793, so-called levee en masse. The withdrawal of distinctions between regular soldiers and civil fighters as well as between battlefield and hinterland resulted in an expansion of warfare potentially any terrain and a general increase of its complexity. In his treatise On War, Clausewitz introduced concept as an integrative category of many new uncertainties and imponderabilities which have turned modern battles into events of chance, and tactics into a science of observing and exploiting opportunities of moment for short-term gains and advances. Accordingly, overall strategic planning of has become predominantly an issue of intelligence assessments and probability calculations (see Engberg-Pedersen 37-68).In response these changed conditions, Clausewitz reassessed relationship between tactics and as centerpiece of his great theory of war. He defines strategy as the use of engagement for purpose of war and describes its tasks and challenges as follows:The strategist . . . will draftthe plan of war, and aim will determine series of actions intended achieve it: he will, in fact, shape individual campaigns and, within these, decide individual engagements. Since most of these matters have be based assumptions that may not prove be correct, while other, more detailed orders cannot be determined in advance at all, it follows that strategist must go campaign himself. Detailed orders can then be given spot, allowing general plan be adjusted modifications that are continuously required. The strategist, in short, must maintain control throughout.2That Clausewitz insists here a mobile strategist who remains flexible enough adapt changing situations and adjust general plan spot must be regarded as a concession great extent of friction in modern warfare, which seems privilege tactics. In a subsequent passage, however, he draws a sharper line of distinction between tactics and strategy. He emphasizes now that it is of greatest importance for strategist to follow through steadily, carry out plan, and not be thrown offcourse by thousands of diversions, whereas in tactics of individual engagements is carried away by pressures of moment, caught up in a maelstrom where resistance would be fatal, and, suppressing incipient scruples, one presses boldly on (Clausewitz 178). …