Household, Community, and the Right to Bear Arms in Early Modern Germany

FAIN: FT-54550-06

B. Ann Tlusty
Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA 17837-2005)

This project explores the right and the duty of bearing arms in South German towns of the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and the development of a weapons culture associated with notions of householding and citizenship. My approach is cultural rather than military, with a view towards understanding the relationship men had towards their weapons and what that meant to early modern concepts of citizenship and identity. The project follows this issue through from the earliest available defense ordinances of the fourteenth century through the enlightened debates of the eighteenth and overturns a number of common misperceptions concerning men, arms, and the civilian defense systems of Germany.