Aufklärung mittels ‚Aufklärung‘. Die Rolle des habsburgischen Militärs im Donau-Karpatenraum im 18. Jahrhundert
Enlightenment by means of 'reconnaissance'. The role of the Habsburg military in the Danube-Carpathian region in the 18th century

Summary/Abstract: This article proposes that we have to revise the image of the Enlightenment and the history of education as being exclusively linked with academic parlours, courtly and bourgeois salons, correspondence by letter, book markets and schools. Using the Habsburg army as an example, we demonstrate how newly acquired knowledge has been assessed and applied. While this could not occur during armed conflicts, we show how these developments transpired during peacetime interactions with the civil population in the Danube-Carpathian region through three sub-regional case studies: the Banat of Temeswar, the Bucovina, and the Habsburg Military Border at the southeast margins of the monarchy. The army had become an important player in these areas and was able to practice enlightened modernisation during the 18th century. Here we take a four-way approach in order to examine this nexus between the Enlightenment and the military, where the former is analysed in combination with elements of strategy, administration, function and prosopography. We finally question the extent to which research remains elusive and consider how identified gaps in the research could be solved at an interdisciplinary level, and how the subject matter continues to be relevant to the present day.

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