The Long Ride of Major Von Schill: A Journey Through German History and Memory
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Overview
This unique book traces the past 200 years of German history, using an iconic German folk hero as a bellwether of changing politics and culture. In 1809, at the height of Napoleon's power in Europe, the Prussian Major Ferdinand von Schill led a revolt against the French empire. Within a month his rebellion was crushed, and Schill became a martyr for German nationalists. As the years passed, Schill's legend grew and evolved until he had become one of Germany's most famous and celebrated Napoleonic figures: the subject of hundreds of novels, poems, plays, operas, films, biographies, and monuments. Sam A. Mustafa explores the radical changes in German society and politics in the two centuries since Schill's death. In the first English-language work on the subject, he shows how Schill remarkably endured as other heroes fell in and out of fashion. For imperial propagandists, Liberal Democrats, Nazis, and Communists alike, he was a favorite historical icon and cultural touchstone. The author traces how an obscure failed rebel became a revered national symbol of patriotism and heroism and the ways each successive German regime coopted his story for its own ideological mission. Drawing on a rich array of primary and secondary sources, Mustafa considers the nature of patriotism, the creation of heroes and heroic mythology, and the fragility of history itself in a masterful narrative that will be an invaluable reference for anyone interested in the German experience during the Napoleonic Wars.
Synopsis
This unique book tells the remarkable story of Ferdinand von Schill, the Prussian major who led a failed revolt against Napoleon. After his death in 1809 Schill became a ubiquitous figure of German nationalism, a symbolic hero used by monarchists, Liberal Democrats, Nazis, and Communists alike, each for their own ends. Using the narrative of Schill's famous _ride,_ Sam A. Mustafa guides readers through the radical changes in German society and politics in the past two centuries. In the process, he considers the nature of patriotism, the creation of heroes and heroic mythology, and the fragility of history itself in a masterful narrative that will be an invaluable reference for anyone interested in the German experience during the Napoleonic Wars.
Editorials
Journal Of Military History
In recognition of the bicentennial of Schill's escapade, Sam A. Mustafa has produced an extremely impressive piece of historical scholarship that is as much a biography of Schill as an historiographical autopsy on the myths and legends that have since swirled about the Prussian major. . . . And as Mustafa's book is the first English-language monograph on Schill, a wider array of readers will now have access to Schill's extraordinary journey not only through Westphalia in the spring of 1809, but also throughout German history in the centuries that followed.The Journal Of Central European History
How did Schill, who had been an obscure thirty-year-old second lieutenant in the Queen's Dragoons when he was wounded at Auerstädt, become within two years the toast of Berlin society and the most visible and lionized popular symbol of Prussian resistance to Napoleon? Sam Mustafa's engaging book attempts to answer this question as it traces Schill's rise, literally, as a legend in his own time, to his martyrdom in 1809 as he attempted to ignite an uprising against French tyranny in Westphalia. . . . Mustafa does us a great service in his scholarly reestablishment of the importance of Schill's narrative in the story of German nationalism and patriotic culture. . . . Mustafa's book does leave us . . . with a compelling image, as embodied in the Schill legend, of a modern German nationalism: headless, peripatetic, protean.— Kevin Cramer, 2010
In recognition of the bicentennial of Schill's escapade, Sam A. Mustafa has produced an extremely impressive piece of historical scholarship that is as much a biography of Schill as an historiographical autopsy on the myths and legends that have since swirled about the Prussian major. . . . And as Mustafa's book is the first English-language monograph on Schill, a wider array of readers will now have access to Schill's extraordinary journey not only through Westphalia in the spring of 1809, but also throughout German history in the centuries that followed.