• DOI:10.1086/245342
• Corpus ID: 143695987

The Wars of Liberation in Prussian Memory: Reflections on the Memorialization of War in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany

@article{Clark1996TheWO,
  title={The Wars of Liberation in Prussian Memory: Reflections on the Memorialization of War in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany},
  author={Christopher Clark},
  journal={The Journal of Modern History},
  year={1996},
  volume={68},
  pages={550 - 576}
}

• C. Clark
• Published 1 September 1996
• History
• The Journal of Modern History

A prominent Prussian clergyman observed in 1846 that the sufferings and achievements of the Wars of Liberation (1813-15) still lived "fresh and vivid in the hearts of the nation." He noted that Prussia's hard-won victories in the campaigns against the armies of Napoleon were permanently memorialized in its national institutions. The cap of the Landwehr militiaman had become part of the "national costume," the Prussian Army still bore "the signature of that time in which it experienced its rebirth," and the walls of the churches were decked with plaques listing the names of the fallen, for which "a virgin hand is always weaving fresh wreaths." 1 For Friedrich Rulemann Eylert, a bishop of the Prussian United Church and the author of these words, popular recollections of the Wars of Liberation were part of the fabric of consensus, a "piece of national property" held in common by all Prussians. Passing "from mouth to mouth," the "legend" (Sage) of war served not merely to recall past events but also to affirm present allegiances to king and fatherland. The memory of 1813 evoked above all "that luminous moment when [our] sovereign of blessed memory went to Breslau, when he issued his call to his people ... and everyone rushed to join the colours." 2 In fact, as this article will suggest, public recollections of the Wars of Liberation in Prussia were more problematic, more contested, and less consensual than is implied by Eylert's rosy vision of a nation warming its hands over a hearth of shared memories. The "memory" of war in early nineteenth-century Prussia was both politically divided and socially fragmented. The first part of this article discusses the emergence in the immediate postwar years of conflicting "voluntarist" and "dynastic" narrative interpretations of the Wars of Liberation. The second part is concerned with nonnarrative modes of memori-