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Consequently, the Prussian General Code which prohibited interment
under gallows allowed only a quiet burial without ritual, and
no full-blown Christian funeral. Still, some otherwise Enlightened
contemporaries took offence at the concessions and campaigned for
a return to the old punitive practice. Yet at the same time two social
groups were excluded completely from the process of decriminalization.
Soldiers and pregnant women who took their own lives were
still treated as murderers, a fact which has hitherto been overlooked
in the relevant literature. All in all, these exceptions, objections, and
ambivalences support Schreiner’s claim that the celebrated modernity
of the German Enlightenment at least needs some qualification.
Her essay clearly demonstrates how seemingly remote areas, dealt
with in an innovative way, can be made fruitful for the general history
of the Age of Reason.
The same is true of Eckhart Hellmuth’s contribution, which takes
on board ideas of recent cultural studies and attempts an evaluation
of visual material for the history of concepts and ideas. �or this purpose
he investigates a number of plans for a monument to �rederick
the Great in the decade after the death of the Prussian king in 1786
when the memory of the deceased developed into a heroic cult. In the
end, neither of the memorial projects, which culminated in two artistic
competitions in 1791 and 1795–6, were realized. This failure
notwithstanding, the designs reveal significant changes in the intellectual
orientation of Prussian officials. Whereas the competition of
1791 produced artistically unsatisfactory or at best conventional
ideas, mainly designs for equestrian statues, later plans, including
the outcome of the second competition, were of a completely different
nature. The majority of drawings are of architectural monuments,
in general, temples, and they share three characteristics: enormous
dimensions, a sacred aura, and, most importantly of all, a tendency
towards depersonalization. Though the figure of �rederick the Great
is still present in one way or another, the purpose of these monuments
was clearly different from earlier proposals. Instead of rendering
homage to the person of the king, the more abstract monuments,
designed almost exclusively by members of the official Oberbaudepartement
(Central Construction Department), were intended as ‘a
shrine for the Prussian state’ (p. 299). Nowhere is this more obvious
than in the plans of �riedrich Gilly, who designed a massive classical
temple which he deliberately placed at the intersection of two roads
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A War of Words?