Friederich, The Battle of Zorndorf on August 25, 1758.

Kriegsgeschichte

v. Eberhardt, The Battle of Kunersdorf on 12 August 1759. Berlin 1903.

Organisation

The Prussian Army under Frederick William I (1713 - 40) - Preface and Table of Contents

Law No. 46 in the Gazette of the Control Council in Germany of 31.03.1947 decreed the dissolution of the state of Prussia. Thus Prussia officially came to an end; however, it is disputed whether the Prussian state had not already been lost within the German Reich and whether the victors' dictate after the Second World War therefore served only as political window dressing. The clarification of the question whether it was in 1871 or 1947 that the short and eventful Prussian history, full of light and shadow, came to an end is ultimately idle; the historical fact is that Prussia no longer exists today. In this respect the Prussian state, which entered European history relatively late, shares the fate of many extinct polities; notable, however, is that — although the Prussian state no longer exists and thus belongs to the past — it still excites passions today and remains a controversial object of interest. The turn to this chapter of German history was reinforced and updated by the major Prussia exhibition in 1981 and by the 200th anniversary of Frederick the Great's death. Even in the former GDR the Prussian tradition was rediscovered and politically instrumentalized before reunification. The attention with which Prussia is still regarded is evident in many forms. Alongside the opening of various — in particular locally oriented — museums, an unabated flood of printed works on this subject continues to inundate the book market. It is striking that, both in the civilian and in the military sphere, the father, Frederick William I, always stands in the shadow of his brilliant son. While the number of biographies about Frederick the Great has become almost unmanageable, for a long time there was a lack of a comprehensive — scholarly — life description of Frederick William I from the viewpoint of more recent historiography 1).

Uniformierung & Ausrüstung

The Prussian Army under Frederick William I (1713 - 40) - Chapter 16 - The Colorful Coat (The Infantry).

The uniform, as a standardized military garment precisely defined by detailed regulations, determines the wearer's belonging to a particular army, to a particular branch of service and to a particular regiment. The soldier's clothing standardized in cut, color, insignia and manner of wearing arose — apart from some isolated medieval attempts — only with the emergence of standing armies, and the process of introducing uniforms in the various states could span from the mid-17th into the 18th century. A prerequisite for the uniform clothing of entire armies was on the one hand the emergence of the princes' centralized authority while at the same time securing the financing of the army's needs against the resistance of the estates, and on the other hand the advent of early-capitalist production methods within manufactories. The standing army — that is the miles perpetuus — was an expression of princely governmental authority. Already in the Thirty Years' War the economic benefit of mass-producing military clothing and weapons was recognized. Besides this economic aspect, the introduction of a uniform military dress also had rational reasons. Through the increased use of firearms the massive smoke development of the muzzle-loaders on the battlefield became a problem. For this reason the different troop units had to be made recognizably distinct by color; camouflage was completely foreign to the mindset of contemporary European soldiers. In addition, uniform clothing acted sociologically as a group-bonding element, i.e., the psychological effect of the uniform on friend and foe was fully acknowledged. In this sense color was the trump card1.