Im Druck des Ereignisses. Zeitzeugnisse zur Schlacht bei Lützen 1632 in ihrer medialen Dynamik

Abstract

Summary The Pressure and Print of an Event. Contemporary Accounts of the Battle of Luetzen 1632 and their Media Dynamic The Battle that took place near the small town of Luetzen in the vicinity of Leipzig in Saxony on 6 November 1632 has often been described as one of the main battles of the Thirty Years War. It pitted a Protestant Swedish Army commanded by King Gustavus Adolphus against the Catholic Imperial forces led by Albrecht von Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland. Considering its immediate and its long-term military-political consequences this battle may not have been one of the decisive events of the Thirty Years War. But it can, nonetheless, be considered as one of the key events in this war. It was the resonance, which it found in the contemporary media and the symbolic-political importance accorded to it by contemporaries, that made the battle of Luetzen of special importance. This extraordinary resonance was to a great extent due to a dramatic personal moment, the death of the Swedish king on the ...