Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Figures and Maps
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- Revisiting Prussia’s Wars against Napoleon
- Part One A History of Defeat, Crisis and Victory
- Part Two Discourses on the Nation, War and Gender
- Part Three Collective Practices of De/Mobilization and Commemoration
- Part Four Literary Market, History and War Memories
- Part Five Novels, Memory and Politics
- Epilogue Historicizing War and Memory, 2013–1813–1913
- Bibliography
- Name Index
- Subject Index
- Plate section
Part One - A History of Defeat, Crisis and Victory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2015
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Figures and Maps
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- Revisiting Prussia’s Wars against Napoleon
- Part One A History of Defeat, Crisis and Victory
- Part Two Discourses on the Nation, War and Gender
- Part Three Collective Practices of De/Mobilization and Commemoration
- Part Four Literary Market, History and War Memories
- Part Five Novels, Memory and Politics
- Epilogue Historicizing War and Memory, 2013–1813–1913
- Bibliography
- Name Index
- Subject Index
- Plate section
Summary
A History of Defeat, Crisis and Victory
The events of 1806 and their aftermath were one of the most important subjects in German historiography until 1945 because they stood at the heart of the national myth of Germany’s “renewal” after the “debacle” of the crushing Prussian-Saxon defeat. If we want to understand the importance of this defeat and its aftermath for the history and memory of the period of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars, we need to understand more fully the experiences of war and occupation and to take into account the distinct regional differences within German Central Europe. These variances can explain why in Prussia and other parts of northern Germany the hatred of Napoleon and all things French was more intense in 1813 and the patriotic-national movement more developed than elsewhere in German Central Europe – in particular the south and west. These northern regions had suffered more during the war of 1806–07 and the subsequent occupation by the French army under Napoleonic rule than the southern and western territories belonging to the Confederation of the Rhine. The experiences of warfare and occupation fed anti-French sentiment far beyond “educated circles.” The distinction between an “inner” and “outer fringe” of the Napoleonic Empire introduced by Michael Broers is helpful here. The southern and western territories of Germany, alongside the Low Countries and Northern Italy, belonged to the “inner empire.” These territories profited from French rule; here, the Napoleonic system left a powerful institutional heritage. In the “outer empire,” to which the old Prussian and other northern and eastern territories belonged, Napoleonic rule “was traumatic and destabilizing.” It was “ephemeral, in that it left few institutional traces.” This difference was felt not only by contemporary politicians but also by the people, a fact that has been ignored in some of the recent scholarship.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Revisiting Prussia's Wars against NapoleonHistory, Culture, and Memory, pp. 31 - 32Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015