ABSTRACT
The Prussian reform movement aimed at a ‘revolution from above’ and its long-term historical result was clearly anti-revolutionary. However, it would be erroneous to overlook the insurrectional impact of the reform both in its goals and its means of achievement. The label ‘revolution from above’ fits the characteristics of reform politics from 1807-19 very well, since truly revolutionary methods were on the reformers’ agenda. Drawing on the French example, Prussia ought to organize a levée en masse too. Leading military reformers, especially Gneisenau and Clausewitz, gave explicit theoretical substance to this idea as the organization of Insurrektion. According to them, Prussia should fight a national and insurrectional war against the French occupation. National war, however, meant in practice partisan war conducted by a whole population. The very idea of partisan war, however, did not only rest on the assumption that a whole population would spontaneously adhere to the goals of this war, but that the idea of the state and its authorities would be radically subordinated to the goals of the Volkskrieg.
