DIY War?: Early Modern Kriegsbücher and Their Intended Audiences

• In Event: Knowledge Embodying Power: Textual Interactions between Early Modern Professionals and Their Eminent Audiences

Abstract

Beginning with Christine de Pizan’s The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry (ca. 1410, pub. 1488), the genre of the Early-Modern Kriegsbuch took shape as a curated compilation of the information most important to military commanders of armies in Europe. This genre represented a significant break with the medieval oral-tutorial tradition of training elite warriors. While the tutors, especially the Fechtmeister, persisted long after Reformation, Kriegsbücher by sixteenth-century authors such as Leonhard Fronsperger, Ludwig von Eyb, Philipp von Seldeneck, Philipp von Cleve, Reinhard von Solms, and – later, in the seventeenth century – Johann Jacobi von Wallhausen and Wilhelm Dilich became increasingly frequent and popular. While these works, written to help warriors learn how to make war, range slightly in their structure and contents, their intended audience, the warrior nobility and proliferating literate middle-class officers, is made clear by their para-texts, content, and allegiance to the simple language of soldiers.

Author

• Patrick Brugh, Loyola University Maryland