Tlusty, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany (Mondschein)

B. Ann Tlusty

The Martial Ethic in Modern Germany

(Palgrave Macmillan: 2011) 371pp.  $112.25

B. Ann Tlusty’s The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany is one of those books that simultaneously delights and frustrates the reviewer: Delight, for the immense wealth of valuable material it contains, coupled with admiration for the author; frustration, because of the sure knowledge that one is unlikely to ever write a work as good. Then again, few scholars do: Tlusty bases her argument on an intimate knowledge of city archives, especially those of Augsburg and with an emphasis on judicial records, but incorporates a wide number of other sources, both archival and published. These are masterfully synthesized into a nuanced and far-reaching argument that addresses core questions in the historiography of early modern Europe. Martial Ethic, in other words, a definitive work of history, one that deserves to stand beside works on the history of violence and arms in Europe such as those of Ute Frevert and Kevin McAleer for modern Germany and François Billacois, Peter Blastenbrei, Trevor Dean, Robert Nye, and Pieter Spirenberg for the rest of Europe (1) and which ought to be on comprehensive exam reading lists and incorporated into survey courses on later medieval and early modern Europe. It has already achieved well-merited renown amongst the Historical European Martial Arts crowd, but seen from the perspective of Martial Ethic, the Fechtbücher (records of fencing teaching) seem like footnotes to the greater trends and ideas brought out by Tlusty.

However, like all great history, Martial Ethic is not an apolitical work. By this I do not mean that Tlusty’s objectives or arguments are in any way directed towards making a modern political argument, but rather that they resonate with an important contemporary concern—namely the American debate over firearms. This is unavoidable for two reasons: the fact that (as Tlusty points out) American gun culture owes some of its genetic material to Germany, and the fact that the historian’s ever-present obligation to make the past relevant to the present naturally guides us towards subjects of broader interest. While Tlusty’s main aim is to make a contribution to the literature of violence and the growth of the state in premodern Europe, she is certainly cognizant of contemporary resonance. In the same way, it is the reviewer’s obligation to tease out the broader implications of the work under consideration. Therefore, I will first discuss the structure and arguments of Tlusty’s book and what they mean for the historical discipline, and then editorialize on their relevance to modern society.

Tlusty begins her introduction with an anecdote, the arrest of Hans Schwarz by the town council of Nördlingen for not possessing a sword, that brings to the fore the central message in Martial Ethic: Whereas in modern society, we are concerned with legislating against the possession of weapons, burghers in late medieval and early modern Germany were concerned lest their fellow-citizens be not armed. Along with this went an entire ethos concerning the socially appropriate use of force. The citizen, in other words, was expected to be both a militiaman and a skilled martial artist, and the social structures of the armed citizenry were seen as essential to the makeup of the free city.
This anecdote leads into the first chapter, “Keeping the Peace: Household, Citizenship, and Defense,” which gives us a broad overview of the organization of early modern German towns, including how membership in militias and other civic organizations, such as fire brigades, were tied up with ideas of citizenship. In the second, briefer chapter, “Duty and Disorder,” she discusses guard duty, and how in many cases how armed citizens seemed to considered themselves superior for this role. These chapters provide an essential background for the deeper questions raised in the rest of the book.

Tlusty’s third chapter, “Negotiating Armed Power: The Control of Arms and Violence” is very interesting indeed, for it deals with the ethics and legalities of the use of force—questions which still vex us today. One’s home was considered inviolate. On the streets, weapons were worn in daily life, but there was a code as to not only when one might use force, but also how much force could be used (a theme continued and expanded upon in the fourth chapter). Guns, far more prone to causing accidental death than swords or halberds, were more tightly regulated. Further, men did not bear arms at home; they did so on the street, as a symbol for their enfranchisement and class; those not deemed worthy of such, such as the bankrupt and the unruly, had their arms confiscated. This symbolism lasted well into the age of gunpowder and mass armies.

The fourth chapter, “The Age of the Sword: Norms of Honor and Fashion” brings to the fore ideas of honor, escalation, and when it was licit to wound and kill. Interestingly, the thrust, as the more dangerous blow, was disallowed unless the stakes were grave. (The words of Joachim Meyer, who mentions several times in his 1570 Fechtbuch that thrusting was forbidden amongst Germans in his time, are thus put into context.) Instead of merely reiterating “the rules,” however, Tlusty uses this chapter for insights into how weapons codes, written and unwritten, tell us how ownership of weapons and recourse to violence were used to reinforce norms of gender and class, as well as how these ideas changed as they came into conflict with state power.

This theme is continued in her fifth and sixth chapters, “Keeping and Bearing Arms: Norms of Status and Gender” and “In and Out of the Commune: The Social Boundaries of Citizenship,” which examine weapons ownership and use in relation to gender and class. Men were more likely to reach for a weapon in need; women, to use miscellaneous items found near at hand. Weapons and their use were held to be a positive social good, reinforcing the social order—but only in certain contexts. Swords were acceptable; carrying a gun was not. If weapons ownership and recourse to violence were the attributes of the citizen-burgher, then what about those on the margins of that category—students, clergy, and Jews, for instance? Though it would have been seen as anomalous in their society, Jews bearing arms and quarrelsome clergy were not unknown in early modern German cities. The city versus the countryside—including the city’s fear of armed peasantry—is another theme found in this chapter. Especially in the cases of the peasantry and Jews, who are incomplete in her sources, Tlusty suggests that further research is required.

Not all armed performance was necessarily antagonistic. Likewise, skilled use requires training and practice. Thus, Tlusty’s seventh chapter, “Martial Sports and the Technological Challenge,” is on martial sports. While she does cover fencing competitions and sword-dancing, the main emphasis is on the more widespread shooting sports—first crossbows, and then firearms. These, she notes, were organized as social events, not military drill, and were meritocratic and in some ways acted as social levelers, as well as—like other confraternities—providing a means of binding men together in social networks while giving an outlet to expressions of class distinction and patronage.
Chapter 8, “Communities in Conflict: Competing Jurisdictions in the Empire,” concerns legal questions of jurisdictions. Tlusty points out that the Holy Roman Empire complicates the “military revolution” debate: Rather than the Revolution being a top-down process, Tlusty argues with Peter Wilson that we must look for compliance (or non-compliance) with the dictates of power on a grassroots level. This is particularly true in Germany, as the fragmented political state of the Holy Roman Empire made coordinated action difficult or impossible. Local communities could align with one power or another, make recourse to the courts, or even refuse to act at all.

Chapter 9, “Citizens versus the State: Household, Community, and Urban Politics,” continues the problems of split loyalties and competing jurisdictions. Tlusty uses the example of the Augsburg rebellion in 1584 against (of all things) the Gregorian calendar to show that, while men motivated by ideologues and acting—as they had been conditioned—against a perceived threat to house and city, could hold off state power, ultimately, this proved counterproductive. The government quickly acted to control weapons ownership, stripping the population of a degree of its prized autonomy. Thus, the place of male-citizen-as-armed-defender was continually renegotiated in the early modern era.
Tlusty’s conclusion highlights the themes addressed in the rest of the book: Early modern German society was an armed society, and the ethos of enfranchised masculinity demanded that one keep, bear, and use weapons. This was not unique in Europe, of course—townsmen in France, Spain, and Italy, the Netherlands, and of course England were also armed, and aristocrats in all nations dueled—but Tlusty makes a strong case for a broader weapons culture in Germany, as the particular anarchy of the Holy Roman Empire led to the inextricable interrelation of citizenship, town identity and assertion of rights, civilian policing, and the militia. (This, along with high literacy rates, may also be why Fechtbücher were a particularly German phenomenon.) In contrast to Ute Frevert’s assertion that modern society created a German populace with a military mentality, Tlusty believes that, rather, a preexisting ethos was placed increasingly under state control. This is a valuable and worthy argument, and I, for one, would love to see these historians in dialogue with one another.

Having dealt with the historical, let us proceed to the political: I must now address the fact that Tlusty’s work has the potential to be very dangerous. As I stated above, the history stands on its own; it is what it is, and Tlusty gives nuanced interpretations that address not modern political concerns, but the realities of weapons ownership in early modern Germany. It is only in the last two pages that she points to a connection between compulsory weapons ownership in Germany and early America. However, the fact that weapons ownership was so important to early modern Germans has the potential to be utilized by those who see the ownership of weapons as guaranteed by the US Constitution as a right still important in today’s world, and who, following the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, support their position with historical arguments. I am not idly speculating here: We have already seen such controversies erupt around Michael A. Bellesiles’ Arming America, which resulted in the discrediting of that book, and my own attempt in a class on medieval and early modern performances of violence to draw a line from Tlusty’s work on early modern Germany to the Pennsylvania long rifle to American schutzenbünde found what I shall politely call “resonance” in undergraduates of a libertarian bent. On the other side, Tlusty also provides many examples of the civic control and management of weapons and makes a strong case that the ongoing process of state-building in Germany, and the resolution of the anarchy of the early modern era, required a gradual subordination of the population’s right to bear arms to the needs of the state. The message is clear: Social progress, however, conceived, requires the taming of the individual’s right to violence.
Though history, at its best, is apolitical, historians often, intentionally or unintentionally, give weapons to ideologues. Such is the problem of doing truly great and useful history—which B. Ann Tlusty’s The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany certainly qualifies as. It is a measure of the book’s depth and completeness that the facts therein have the potential to be deployed on either side.

Ken Mondschein (ken-at-kenmondschein.com)
Westfield State University and American International College

(1) Kevin McAleer, Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin de Siècle Germany (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1994); Ute Frevert, Men of Honour: A Social and Cultural History of the Duel, trans. Anthony Williams (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1995); François Billacois, Le Duel dans la société française des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Essai de psycho-sociologie historique (Paris, E.H.E.S.S., 1986); Peter Blastenbrei, “Violence, arms and criminal justice in papal Rome, 1560–1600” (Renaissance Studies 20 (2006): 68–87); Robert Nye, Masculinities and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (Oakland: University of California Press, 1998); Pieter Spierenburg, A History of Murder, Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2008.

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