Mars im hohen Haus

In the Age of Revolutions, military service more than ever formed a central arena in the nobility’s struggle to conserve it’s privileged societal position. However, within the scope of a recently renewed academic research on the German nobility this integral sector of the noble living realm hitherto lay largely in darkness. On the basis of as yet inaccessible records emanating form the Rhenish nobility’s private archives the author focuses on a regional noble community which due to the Rhineland’s long period of French occupation was challenged above all average by the fundamental changes in the wake of the French Revolution. By means of a cross-generational approach the author not only demonstrates the increasing significance of military careers for the acquisition of patronage, income, social prestige and political influence. For the first time, noble military careers are furthermore revealed as a meaningful instrument of a patriarchal family management the Rhenish nobility virtuously utilized to adapt to radically altered political and societal conditions.