Project Details
Projekt
On the matter of violence. Military raids, looting, and the destruction of cultural objects during the Seven Years' War in Saxony (1756-1763)
Applicant
Professor Dr. Marian Füssel
Subject Area
Early Modern History
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 407133841
The aim of the sub-project is a case study on military violence against people and things using the example of the Electorate of Saxony during the Seven Years' War. The results should provide a more precise definition of terms such as 'excess', under which various forms of violence were subsumed at the time. As a transit territory of the Prussian-Austrian battles in Bohemia and Silesia and a strategic target of Frederick II's exploitation, Saxony was particularly hard hit by military violence. Violence whose damage to the population and material culture was caused by both the invaders from Prussia and the 'liberators' in the form of the Austrians and the Imperial Army. Based on the destruction of castles, the plundering of porcelain factories and mines, forced recruitment, imprisonment, city fires, looting, and attacks on the civilian population, the case study will systematically expand practices and interpretations of violence to include the dimension of material destruction. Violence against property and infrastructure posed a particular challenge for standardization and control, as by no means every form of military removal of goods was considered illegitimate, but sanctions were limited to certain situations. As in the project's first phase, the contemporary standards for measuring illegitimate violence will be analyzed not only based on normative sources from early modern international law to the Articles of War but also in terms of their public thematization and scandalization.
DFG Programme
Research Units
