Preußische Heeresreformen, 1807–1870: Militärische Innovation und der Mythos der “Roonschen Reform"

This work asks about the place and position of the Prussian army reforms of 1859 in Prussian‐German history. And, in the process, it suggests that readers look again at the entire period between 1850 and 1871—the political and, especially, economic run‐up to the formation of Imperial Germany. This seemingly straightforward, uncomplicated, innocuous query opens up a whole world, unimagined. The author argues that, in the past, historians have focused on this period’s Prussian constitutional crisis phase, which brought Otto von Bismarck to the fore in 1862 and lasted until September 1866, when the Prussian Landtag decisively passed the indemnity bill and gave a vote of confidence to the government’s conduct of foreign affairs, thus ending the crisis. [Publisher]