Review of Heidi Mehrkens, Statuswechsel: Kriegserfahrung und nationale Wahrnehmung im Deutsch-Französischen Krieg 1870/71 (Essen: Klartext Verlag 2008)

Review of a book that probes how soldiers and civilians on each side of the Rhine experienced the Franco-Prussian War. Using people whose practical circumstances changed during the course of hostilities in ways both foreseen and unforeseen by the laws and customs of war, the book asks how and to what extent such wartime experiences promoted identification with her actors' respective nation in explicit contrast to the other one