285 FINAL YEARS AND IMMORTALITYuntil the outbreak of the Great War killed the series at a nineteenth
tome, just short of the battle of Torgau. One of Delbriick's pupils,
Rudolf Keibel (1899), sought to overthrow the Staffs version of
Hohenfriedeberg, and the Austrian historian von Hoen proceeded to
make heavy revisions of the accounts of Prague and Kolin (1909 and
1911).
Nowadays the quarrel between Delbruck and his opponents
wears something of the character of a period piece, but its effect has
been a damaging one, for it presents the student with a great mass of
monographical and periodical literature which remains as much a
deterrent to inquiry as an aid to our understanding of Frederick the
soldier. We must regret that the antagonists took up their entrenched
positions before the publication of the full run of the Politische
Correspondenz (which is mainly on military affairs) made it possible
to take in a broader overview of Frederician warfare. Who finally got
the better of the argument? Delbruck and his school have the credit
for illuminating aspects of Frederick's strategy which would other-
wise have escaped the readers of the patriotic histories. Subjectively,
Bernhardi and the like were better at grasping the essence of
Frederick, who pursued the offensive option with the more overt
enthusiasm than any other commander of the time.
A further controversy was fuelled by those politically minded
historians who recalled the work of Frederick in order to persuade
Germany of the reality of Prussia's mission of leadership and unifica-
tion. Frederick's campaigns were now seen almost in the light of holy
crusades, which began the process of excluding the Popish and
half-Slavonic and Magyar Austria from the German body politic. In
1871 an old Protestant theologian, Dr Ewald, was actually consigned
to prison for suggesting that Bismarck had followed Frederick in
waging unjust wars against the Austrians (Sagarra, 1974, 32).
This bitter feud was revived towards the end of the century by
Max Lehmann, who claimed (1894) that the clash of 1756 proceeded
from the collision of two offensive schemes-not just the design of the
allies to humble Prussia, but also Frederick's ambition to conquer and
hold Saxony (see p. 83). Lehmann gained the support of Delbruck,
but he was rejected by the more narrowly nationalistic of the German
historians.
Rudolf Augstein concludes: The king's mentality lends support
to the case of Lehmann and Delbruck, but the sources speak for the
opposition' (1968, 176). This documentary material, or rather the
lack of it, lay at the heart of the problem, for the unwillingness of the
Prussian archivists to open up their collections served to create the
impression that they indeed had something sinister to hide. The
papers of Quintus Icilius disappeared without trace into the royal