The Birmingham Lenz Project: Reform in the Sturm und Drang - The Social and Political Writings of J. M. R. Lenz

"In 1771 Lenz broke off his studies at Königsberg and travelled to Alsace where, as servant and companion to two Prussian noblemen who had joined the French army, he was able to observe the practices of the army at close quarters. One result of his experiences was his play 'Die Soldaten' (completed 1775), which analyses the relationship between the military and the civilian population. Lenz's interest was not merely literary, however, and over the next two years he invested considerable time and energy in analysing the organisation of the army and developing possible solutions to the problem of its integration into society. Lenz's investigations drew him into arguments concerning such matters as the manning of garrisons, the organisation of military assaults, and the proper social conduct of soldiers and their wives. His proposals are not without their eccentricities, but they reveal a detailed knowledge of the subject matter and a grasp of the nation as an organic whole. From this followed his concern with conflicts between the army and civil society and with the lack of cohesion in the army, two symptoms of the fragmentation of society which Lenz believed had to be prevented by institutional reform. Lenz's work in this area is especially significant as it is the only known example of sustained political analysis in the Sturm und Drang. Furthermore, it represents one of the first examples in Germany of what was to become the Napoleonic conception of the army as defender of the fatherland, and it is thus an important document of the development of ideas of nationhood in Germany. These writings, composed shortly before, during and immediately after Lenz's stay as Goethe’s guest in Weimar in 1776, survive in the form of about 600 sides of manuscript mostly lodged in the Biblioteka Jagiellonska in Kraków, Poland. One section was published in 1913 by Karl Freye under the title 'Über die Soldatenehen', and this remains the only section that appears in any of the editions of Lenz's works. The current project [...] aims to make the whole complex available to scholars for the first time."