Simona Negruzzo. L'armonia contesa: Identità ed educazione nell'Alsazia moderna .L'armonia contesa: Identità ed educazione nell'Alsazia moderna by Simona NegruzzoReview by: By Paul F. GrendlerThe American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 1 (February 2006), pp. 267-268Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/ahr.111.1.267 .

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pump function (atmospheric pressure), much Jesuit ef-fort was directed toward explaining why the space cre-ated was not a vacuum.

This may seem like a series of obscure discussions,but they actually serve to illuminate the means used byJesuits to engage with significant scientific debateswhile adhering to their basic theological and philosoph-ical presuppositions. The third section of the volumeconsiders the crucial period of the eighteenth centuryprior to the Society of Jesus’s suppression in 1773. Thesection begins by considering attempts within the So-ciety to reopen the discussion about censorship and toimpose greater control on its members. Ultimately, thiseffort was overwhelmed by rapid changes both in nat-ural philosophy (especially the rise of experimenta-tions) and philosophy (especially those ideas that fur-ther undermined Aristotle and his “absoluteaccidents”). The ninth chapter looks at the impact notonly of specific experiments but also the greater andmore lasting impact of the “idea” of experimentation.Natural philosophy was forced to consider the impor-tance of the mechanical and the practical over andagainst “pure thought.” This had profound implicationsfor the Jesuits, in particular because of its potential im-pact on ideas about reality. The next chapter looks atthe relationship between the Jesuits and the new phil-osophical ideas of the Enlightenment. Again, theseposed significant problems for the Jesuits in that theyproposed an entirely new way of looking at, and un-derstanding, the universe. The crux of the twin problemof the practical (experimentation) and the theoretical(the Enlightenment) is discussed in the book’s finalchapter, which looks at Jesuit attempts to reconcileideas about transubstantiation with newer ideas aboutthe universe. Rather than simply rejecting these newideas, Hellyer demonstrates that the Jesuits were re-sourceful and innovative in their attempts to place theminto a modified Aristotelian worldview. The results maynot have been overly successful—or philosophicallypleasing—but they do evidence a full engagement withthe ideas of the day.

This volume successfully dispels any ideas that Je-suits were Luddites either philosophically or “scientif-ically” in the period before their suppression. They didface an increasingly difficult task of reconciling whatwas developing in the world of science and philosophywith their presuppositional beliefs in the Bible (e.g.geocentrism) and traditional Catholic theology/philos-ophy (e.g. accidents and substances). While the task wasdifficult, the Jesuits did not shy away from it. Theywalked a delicate tightrope between their belief systemand their intellectual curiosity. If for no other reason,this book deserves to be read to see to what extent theywere successful.

WILLIAM G. NAPHY

University of Aberdeen

SIMONA NEGRUZZO. L’armonia contesa: Identita ed edu-cazione nell’Alsazia moderna. Bologna: Il Mulino. 2005.Pp. 396. €29.50.

After writing excellent books on the Faculty of Theol-ogy of the University of Pavia (1995) and seminary ed-ucation in Lombardy (2001), Simona Negruzzo hascrossed the Alps to study education in Alsace, a regiondivided by religion, language (German, French, Alsa-tian, and Latin for the learned), and geopolitical forces(France vs. the Habsburg Empire). Strasbourg was Lu-theran, while Alsace as a whole was sixty percent Cath-olic and forty percent Protestant (mostly Lutheran) inthe late sixteenth century. How the two sides reacheda “contested harmony” in education between 1538 and1793 is the theme of this book.

In 1530 Johann Sturm founded a humanistic schoolin Strasbourg, and he added an academy or gymnasium(high school) in 1538, which became a Lutheran semi-university teaching arts and philosophy in 1566 and afull university with four faculties (arts, theology, law,and medicine) in 1621. The Strasbourg academy anduniversity became enormously influential in the Prot-estant world, with imitators from France to Poland. In1580 the Jesuits established a school at Molsheim, onlytwenty kilometers from Strasbourg, and added otherschools across Alsace. In 1617 the Molsheim Jesuit up-per school became a university with the right to conferdegrees in philosophy and theology. Negruzzo empha-sizes that both Sturm’s academy and the Jesuit schoolswere based on the same humanistic pedagogy, which, inturn, was influenced by the Schools of Common Lifeand modus Parisiensis, a structured approach to learn-ing. The common goal of Sturm and the Jesuits was toform the eloquent pious man. Although the Strasbourgacademy and university, which attracted students fromthroughout the Protestant world, was more importantthan the Jesuit school, there were similarities. Bothtaught the classics and used theater and music to teachand form their students and to influence the religiouschoices of the populace, the Jesuits more effectivelythan the Strasbourg school. The Protestants denouncedthe “Jesuit devils,” while the Jesuits denounced less butworked hard at preaching and catechizing in order towin converts.

Enrollments declined at the Strasbourg academy anduniversity and at the Jesuit school and university atMolsheim during the Thirty Years’ War. Then in 1681Strasbourg capitulated to Louis XIV; it was no longera free imperial city but a free royal city. The Protestantsof Strasbourg and Alsace were granted freedom of re-ligion, and the academy and university remained open,the latter the only Protestant university in France. TheJesuits moved their school from Molsheim to Stras-bourg to become a rival half-university, and the two in-stitutions competed with each other. But they alsoworked in harmony. The Lutheran university was opento Catholics; indeed, they had to attend it in order tocomplete studies in law and medicine locally. And theLutheran university taught canon law, a remarkable of-fering for a Protestant university. Over the course of theeighteenth century Catholic and Protestant studentsmingled, and the two religious communities influencedone another in various ways in Alsace. The Lutheran

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AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW FEBRUARY 2006

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academy and university of Strasbourg remained impor-tant in the Protestant world, even though its numbersdeclined, and a Lutheran scholasticism, which held it-self aloof from pietism and rationalism found elsewherein the Lutheran world, dominated theological instruc-tion. Only twenty-four percent of the students were Al-satians, while forty-eight percent were German, fifteenpercent Swiss, and the rest from Protestant Scandinaviaand even Russia. By contrast, the professors were over-whelmingly local men. At the same time, the number ofProtestants in Alsace declined to about thirty-threepercent. The story comes to an end in the late eigh-teenth century. The Jesuits were forced to leave in 1764,while a French revolutionary decree of September 15,1793, abolished all universities in France.

It is an interesting story, well told. The book is basedon an abundance of archival information from Stras-bourg, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere, plus an exhaustivelist of printed primary and secondary sources, althoughthe author fails to give pagination for articles in col-lective volumes. The writing is clear. Negruzza offers awealth of details, insights, and comments on culturalmatters in Alsace during this period. There is a ten-dency in current Italian scholarship to search for theroots of European unity and to see how people learnedto accommodate differences in the past. This book of-fers a particularly good educational example.

PAUL F. GRENDLER,EmeritusUniversity of Toronto and Chapel Hill, NorthCarolina

WILLIAM MULLIGAN. The Creation of the Modern Ger-man Army: General Walther Reinhardt and the WeimarRepublic, 1914–1930. (Monographs in German History,number 12.) New York: Berghahn Books. 2005. Pp. 247.$70.00.

I guess it’s all in how you define “modern.” WilliamMulligan dates the creation of a “modern Germanarmy” to the Weimar era. It is a novel idea, and so isthe implication that Germany fought World War I witha premodern military. A mass army, numbering in themillions, equipped with a full range of advanced ma-chine weapons and led by fully articulated systems ofstaff and command: it certainly seemed modernenough.

Beyond the title’s hyperbole, this is an interestingbook. It is part of a research field that was once hugeand has now largely vanished: civil-military relations inthe Weimar era. Arising first as a way to assess the ar-my’s responsibility for the rise of Adolf Hitler, it oncedominated the study of the interwar German army(Reichswehr). The seminal works were Harold J. Gor-don’s The Reichswehr and the German Republic, 1919–1926 (1957) and F. L. Carsten’s The Reichswehr and Pol-itics: 1918–1933 (1966). They stood at opposite poles,with the former defending the Reichswehr against sub-verting the republic and the latter accusing it. It was asprawling field, however, embracing works as notable as

Gordon A. Craig’s Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (1955), J. W. Wheeler-Bennett’s The Nemesis ofPower: The German Army in Politics, 1918–1945 (1964),and military biographies like Hans Meier-Welcker’sSeeckt (1967). All focused, more or less, on the samequestions, although Gaines Post, Jr.’s Civil-MilitaryFabric of Weimar Foreign Policy (1973) and MichaelGeyer’s Aufrustung oder Sicherheit: Die Reichswehr inder Krise der Machtpolitik (1980) broadened the discus-sion to include the army’s views on foreign policy, re-armament, and operational planning. By the 1980showever, it was clear that there was not much new tosay on the topic. Many of us would increasingly turntoward the study of the Reichswehr as a military force,rather than as a political actor. The question of “armyand republic” gave way to “the rise of Blitzkrieg.”

Mulligan’s work, therefore, represents a reopening ofsome old questions. Certainly, one can make a case fora scholarly work on General Walther Reinhardt. OtherWeimar generals—Hans von Seeckt, Wilhelm Groener,Kurt von Schleicher—have already had their day in theliterature, but Reinhardt dwarfed them all in impor-tance during the early republic. He headed the key De-mobilization Department in late 1918, spent most of1919 as Prussian minister of war, and was chief of theArmy Command in 1920. He counseled against accept-ing the Versailles Treaty in fire-breathing language in1919 but was one of the few military men to oppose theKapp Putsch in 1920. Excoriated by many in the officercorps as a closet leftist, and praised by others as thearmy’s guide through the dangerous thickets of thepostwar years, he has not been easy to fix ideologically.

Mulligan paints him largely as a pragmatist and re-former. He was a Vernunftrepublikaner, supporting therepublic only as long as he felt that it offered a path toGermany’s military rebirth. As war minister, Reinhardthad the difficult task of triangulating between the of-ficer corps on the one hand and the Workers’ and Sol-diers’ Councils on the other. Issues like the “HamburgPoints,” calling for elected officers and the abolition ofall badges of rank, found him in a no-win situation. Hedid manage to mollify the councils but won no love fromhis brothers in arms, who were infuriated by his descrip-tion of their badges and decorations as Ausserlichkeiten(“superficialities”).

Mulligan makes a convincing case for Reinhardt’simportance as a military organizer. Of crucial signifi-cance was his formation of a “Reichswehr committee”within his ministry. It drafted the “Reichswehr Law”passed in March 1919, but has largely gone missing inthe historiography up to now. He also was the pointman in creating the Reichswehr Ministry, a central of-fice responsible to the Reichstag, and in merging thewar ministries of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Wurttem-berg, and Baden. These achievements, by the way, arewhat Mulligan means by the “modern German army,”which seems a rather cramped view. Once again, therewere diametrically opposed views to be harmonized:the smaller states’ fears of “Borussification” set againstthe laments of Prussian traditionalists that the army of

268 Reviews of Books

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW FEBRUARY 2006

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