August Otto Rühle von Lilienstern
August Otto Rühle von Lilienstern, born 1780, died 1847. Prussian officer, joined Scharnhorst's Academy for Officers in the same class as Carl von Clausewitz. Later, they both taught at the Prussian General War School, which would become the Prussian War Academy, and Rühle became Clausewitz' second successor as its director. Rühle published many articles, kept official war diaries, and wrote a two-volume Manual for the Officer for Education in Peace and for Use in Action (Handbuch für den Offizier zur Belehrung im Frieden und zum Gebrauch im Felde), published in Berlin in 1817 and 1818. From this Clausewitz, teaching at the same school at the time of publication of this manual, took, without acknowledgment, several ideas, including that about war as pursuing political aims, and war being a duel, which Clausewitz made famous in his book On War.
Further reading[]
- For a modern English translation of excerpts of Handbuch für den Offizier zur Belehrung im Frieden und zum Gebrauch im Felde, (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1817, 1818), see Beatrice Heuser: The Strategy Makers: Thoughts on War and Society from Machiavelli to Clausewitz (Santa Monica, CA: Greenwood/Praeger, 2010), ISBN 978-0-275-99826-4, pp. 171–190.
The original article can be found at August Otto Rühle von Lilienstern and the edit history here.