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
- 4 Mobilizing Public Opinion
- 5 Defining the Nation
- 6 Debating War
- 7 Regulating Participation
- Conclusion
- 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
- References
4 - Mobilizing Public Opinion
Propaganda, Media and War
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
- 4 Mobilizing Public Opinion
- 5 Defining the Nation
- 6 Debating War
- 7 Regulating Participation
- Conclusion
- 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
- References
Summary
“A nation that does not dare to speak boldly will dare still less to act boldly,” wrote the Prussian officer and military reformer Carl von Clausewitz in a letter of December 1808 in which he reflected on the future of Prussia and Germany. Like most patriots, he believed in the power of “public opinion” (öffentliche Meinung). Without its mobilization, he supposed, it would be impossible to turn Prussia into a “valorous nation.” This belief reflected the enlightened quest to probe and grasp the world rationally, which since the end of the eighteenth century had increasingly included political and social phenomena, and was decisively fed by the experience of the French Revolution and Napoleonic rule. Both had impressively demonstrated the power of public opinion. Views of what constituted this power and how it should be handled differed, to be sure. There was, however, a broad consensus in patriotic circles that the formation of “public opinion” was the “most important and indispensable pillar of any well-ordered state organization,” as the Prussian official Baron Friedrich Ludwig von Vincke wrote in his August 1808 memorandum for the king, titled “Aims and Instruments of Prussian State Administration.” For that reason, Vincke supported the systematic promotion of “publicity” or free access to the public sphere. His model was England with its extensive press freedom, where only abuses were prosecuted. He firmly opposed preventive censorship such as existed in Prussia.
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- Information
- Revisiting Prussia's Wars against NapoleonHistory, Culture, and Memory, pp. 79 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015