The Fall of Fortress Kolberg 1761 A. Kotsebu (1815-1889), 1852.
War in Germany 2018 reached and crossed the 18th century this week with a lecture on Frederick the Great and a lecture on how 18th-century Franco-German thinkers digested the impact of the Seven Years War.
Challenges:
(1) How to offer a non-heroic and de-centered account of the Frederick phenomenon. The reading for this week was from Chris Clark’s marvelous Iron Kingdom plus his lovely BBC documentary. So the students were getting a big dose of the Prussian story from those sources.
(2) How to portray both the apex and the crisis of the absolutist military model in a frame that spans “France-“Germany”-and the world”?
It was a squeeze. The timing of the second lecture is off by 10 minutes.
Download the powerpoint here:
