The soldier friend
| The Soldier's Friend - magazine for comprehensible instruction and entertainment for Prussian soldiers
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| publishing company | ES Mittler & Sohn ( Germany ) |
| Headquarters | Berlin |
| First edition | 1833 |
| attitude | 1919 |
| ZDB | 547935-6 |
The Soldier Friend - magazine for comprehensible instruction and entertainment of the Prussian soldier was a German military magazine. During the First World War from 1914 to 1918 it was published under the title Feld-Soldierfreund - magazine for the German soldier and again briefly in 1918/19 under the soldier friend - magazine for the German soldier before it was finally discontinued. Up to issue 46.1878 / 79 the magazine was published by Hayn in Berlin , then by ES Mittler & Sohn , also in Berlin.
The magazine might have been one of the most important, if not the most important, military magazine in the German-speaking area. Inestimable for the military historian and military scientist , because it accompanied the development of the Prussian Army over 80 years. The specialty of the soldier friend was that it was intended for the sergeant and soldiers . There were already quite a few newspapers and magazines for officers , but one for the " common man " was a novelty in Prussia . The model was the "Journal de l'Armée", which has also been published in Paris since 1833 .
The editor and initially the only editor was the military historian and artist Louis Schneider . Schneider was also chairman of the historical societies in Potsdam and Berlin and a member of the " Tunnel over the Spree ".
Schneider initially feared that the government would refuse permission to print his magazine because of the "revolutionary spirit (es) that is manifesting itself everywhere" and because of the older officers' fears "that this poison could also find its way into the army" .
Any political independence of a military magazine was suspected, the press was mostly viewed as a “hostile power”. But Friedrich Wilhelm III. was so enthusiastic about the sample number that he instructed to purchase 230 of them.
The Soldier's Friend was only published internally by the army and so the circulation fell far short of the actual circle of readers and possible interested parties. Usually only one copy was acquired per battalion and passed on there. This was of course a significant financial disadvantage for Schneider and so he received compensation payments for it from 1842 to 1848. In spite of this, since 1848 the Soldier's Friend was no longer published as a weekly in quart (225 × 285 mm), but as a monthly in Octav (142.5 × 225 mm) with a colored lithograph . It is precisely these lithographs that are particularly valuable to today's military experts and helped shape our image of the Prussian army at that time.
During instruction hours, articles from military magazines were read to the soldiers , and copies of military literature were always on display in the officers' casinos . With free access to military articles, this became an essential pillar of Prussian military education.
The soldier friend is likely to have exercised considerable influence on all circles in the Prussian army . Reports on internal army events and on landwehr exercises in the provinces were supplemented by articles on army matters of the German Confederation and abroad and historical-political essays. Even the Russian tsar had a soldier friend for 18 years.
Schneider won the most important Prussian military writers for his soldiers' newspaper. I.a. the prince v. Prussia , Johann Blesson (Berliner Bürgerwehr-Zeitung, editor of the “Militair-Literatur-Zeitung” and the “Journal for Art, Science and History of War” and the “ Militair-Wochenblatt ”), General v. Maliszewski (co-editor of the “Militair-Literatur-Zeitung”).
In the German War in 1866 and in the Franco-German War in 1870/71, a "Feld-Soldierfreund" was published instead of the monthly journal.
Web links
- Record of the journal. In: Catalog of the German National Library .
Individual evidence
- ^ Record of the journal. In: Journal Database . Retrieved April 4, 2020 .
- ↑ Digital full texts of some issues of the field soldier friend. In: Berlin State Library . Retrieved April 4, 2020 .