Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500–1840 by William Hagen (review)

REVIEWS 224 context. His contextualization of Poggio’s work is unique in its clarity and depth. In the final chapter of this collection, “An Analysis of Lorenzo Valla’s De voluptate His Sojourn in Pavia and the Composition of the Dialogue,” Fubini looks to the composition and content of Valla’s work in terms of the social and political climate in which it was created. Fubini finds structural prototypes for Valla’s dialogue in the writings of both Poggio and Bruni and summarizes the author’s intent as twofold: on the one hand, Valla was documenting his experiences in Rome, while on the other, he was aligning himself with the humanist elite of the time. Once again, his treatment of the textual evidence reveals not only Fubini’s expertise in humanist research, but also his sensitivity to the larger project of properly historicizing Renaissance writings. A short review such as this cannot do justice to the magnitude of Fubini’s scholastic accomplishment. His analytical method is innovative and his learning prodigious; he is able to penetrate Renaissance texts with refreshing ingenuity . Fubini skillfully penetrates humanist writings, finding both their ancient sources and contemporary influences, and carefully contextualizes this literary creativity in terms of humanist social and political interactions. This book will undoubtedly become a staple for students and scholars of Italian Humanism alike. HEATHER A. SEXTON, Art History, UCLA William Hagen, Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002) 679 pp. William Hagen has long been one of the few Americans working on the history of early modern Prussia and a significant figure in the field of agrarian history. His earlier works on the development of absolutism in seventeenth-century Prussia and the social and economic relations in rural Prussia have convincingly called for serious revisions of the fundamentals of Prussian history. Students of Prussian history and agrarian history have long waited for this book, and it does not disappoint. Briefly, Ordinary Prussians is a micro-historical study of east-Elbia, the Junker-dominated rural society made legendary by Theodor Fontane, the Sonderweg , and Hans-Ulrich Wehler. As Hagen too briefly explains in his introduction (but as anyone delving into this 700-page book will probably already well know), historians of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany have long traced its illiberal tendencies and turbulent path to the technologically, educationally , and economically backward, politically conservative/reactionary, and generally blindgehorsam east-Elbian society that existing historiography has typified as early modern Prussia. Hagen’s subject is Stavenow, a typical lordship consisting of several villages in northwest Brandenburg (presumably Ordinary Brandenburgers would not have had the same ring), ruled over by a succession of typical Junkers. Hagen traces the history of the lordship from the sixteenth through the mid-nineteenth century, though the bulk of the book focuses on the eighteenth century. In a mix of chapters organized thematically and chronologically, Hagen exhaustively portrays the everyday life and the social and economic history of Stavenow. Based on his research on Stavenow, Hagen issues a slew of observa- REVIEWS 225 tions and conclusions regarding rural society in early modern Prussia. Some of these are anecdotal and unconfirmed (volunteers Hagen), such as reversing Otto Busch’s “social militarization” thesis based on the rowdiness and insubordination of furloughed soldiers in Stavenow. Others are demonstrated with negative evidence, such as the lack of any mention of wandering poor in Stavenow. Hagen’s main themes, though, are dealt with at length and with copious evidence. For example, life in Stavenow was far from the east-Elbian misery that some historians have assumed. Stavenow’s villagers were actually fairly prosperous, desperate poverty was seemingly unknown, and even serious crime is absent. Even the Prussian army’s conscription (or threat thereof) seems to be of minor consequence. Regarding issues like inheritance politics, popular belief, kinship networks, honor and dishonor, and village factionalism, Hagen’s Stavenow seems interchangeable with any number of any other closely studied village societies. Hagen’s Prussians were, indeed, quite ordinary. Hagen deals with familial relation and sexuality at length, but of course his sources do a better job illustrating the crises involved than the day-to-day norms (in the index...