Gerhard von Scharnhorst, Private und Dienstliche Schriften, vol. 3 Lehrer, Artillerist, Wegbereiter (Preussen 1801-1804) (review)

Before his death on 8 June 1813, Gerhard von Scharnhorst, the father of the Prussian and subsequent German General Staff, stood as a controversial figure in Prussian military circles. To some, he led the dreaded charge of Jacobinism into the midst of the rigid caste of the Prussian officer corps, threatening to shatter the nobility's traditional preserve by championing revolutionary concepts such as promotion based on merit rather than birth. To others, he represented Prussia's salvation in the wake of Napoleon's crushing victories in 1806 and 1807. Dubbed a reformer, Scharnhorst and a handful of supporters struggled to resurrect the Prussian army. With few exceptions, contemporaries evaluated Scharnhorst's labors according to their own political agendas and career ambitions. Some judged measures such as opening up the Prussian officer corps to commoners to be too radical, and smacking of French egalitarianism. Conversely, others viewed the idea of creating a national army fueled by patriotism and imbued with civic consciousness as a counter to the driving force behind the victorious French and their Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

Although most of the military reforms sponsored or supported by Scharnhorst between 1807 and 1812 have been analyzed within the framework of the struggle between liberal and conservative forces, i.e., reformers versus reactionaries, such pedestrian arguments tend to ignore Scharnhorst's true rationale. He was not motivated by Prussian tradition or revolutionary zeal, but by eighteenth-century rationalism. As a result, many of his accomplishments are lost in the debate over their sociopolitical significance. First and foremost among his victories was the establishment of a General Staff. Administered by scholars in uniform, the General Staff would serve as the intellectual nerve-center of the army. Fundamental to the success of the General Staff was Scharnhorst's emphasis on education. This, too, appeared threatening to some. High-ranking career officers perceived in Scharnhorst's plans an exclusiveness that discriminated against their lack of formal schooling. Even after the debacles at Jena and Auerstädt in 1806, many brigade and divisional commanders did not see the need for a general staff to coordinate all army operations. Instead, they believed that a change in the upper echelon of the army's leadership would fix the problem. Despite encountering arguments from left, right, and center, Scharnhorst doggedly willed the Prussian General Staff into existence. The opportunity now existed for the military marriage of field commander and competent staff officer, as embodied by Blücher and Scharnhorst's successor, Gneisenau, in 1813–15, and Hindenburg and Ludendorff a century later.

From 1778 to 1801, Scharnhorst served in the army of Hanover, his birth place. His last six years in the Hanoverian army impressed on him the need for all officers to receive a quality education that included military science. Scharnhorst observed that young officers who had employed ability and diligence to master the rigors of formal academic training also excelled in the field. Leaving Hanover, Scharnhorst began service in the Prussian army in 1801. When few were looking for deficiencies in the Frederician army, he immediately identified its weakness. The Prussians placed little value on education. Vacancies were filled according to social pedigree rather than knowledge, performance, and ability. This volume, the third in a monumental undertaking, documents Scharnhorst's first years of service in the Prussian army. During these years, the future Chief of the General Staff of the Prussian Army was deeply absorbed by the military studies and observations that laid the foundations for the educational reforms he implemented in 1808.

The editors have combed the vast holdings of the Geheimen Staatsarchivs Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin-Dahlem as well as the Hanoverian state archives to produce a 777-page volume that covers Scharnhorst's life and writings from 1801 to 1804. As the volume's...