Benjamin Marschke's UCLA dissertation, completed under the joint supervision of David Sabean and Geoffrey Symcox, is a thoroughly researched and well-written examination of the Halle Pietist leaders as participants in a religiously based faction within the Prussian church and state. The monograph offers an excellent structural history of the chaplaincy from the seventeenth into the mid-eighteenth century; but more importantly, Marschke uses his analysis of the recruitment, vetting, and careers of hundreds of chaplains to explore their role in disciplining, state building, factional struggles, and patronage networks. The book unfolds as a set of interpretive essays that examine these issues through the prism of the chaplaincy. Each essay offers an insightful reevaluation of established historical interpretations derived from thorough archival research. In sum, this is a valuable addition to the history of both Pietism and the Prussian state.

Marschke argues that the best scholarship on Pietism and the Prussian state was produced a half-century ago by Karl Hinrichs and Klaus Deppermann, while more recent English works by Fulbrook and Gawthrop have depended on these earlier studies rather than new archival sources. In contrast, Marschke has built a prosopographical database of chaplains from printed and archival sources and has used the correspondence among the Halle Pietists to inform his new interpretations. He sees the army chaplaincy as a small arena where cohesive interest groups—in this case the Pietists—and individuals contested for influence within the larger arena of the Prussian state. Though his prosopographical data extend from the late seventeenth century down to 1755, his analytical focus centers on the period between the ascension of Friedrich Wilhelm I in 1713 and the death of August Hermann Francke in 1727.

Lutheran chaplains had served with Prussian regiments since the end of the Thirty Years' War. Originally the position carried low status, attracting candidates who could not find civilian posts. By 1711, Friedrich I had established a military consistory, which separated the chaplaincy from the civilian church, and begun constructing military churches, hospitals, schools, and orphanages that required clerical staff as teachers and ministers. Although a chaplain's selection ultimately depended on the decision of the regimental commander, Pietist leaders in Berlin, in particular Carl Hildebrand Baron von Canstein, had begun to promote Pietist candidates to audition for the posts. With the ascension of Friedrich Wilhelm in 1713, the king's support of the Pietists gave Canstein and, on his death in 1719, Lampertus Gedicke, as chaplain for the garrison in Berlin, the opening to nominate candidates for vacant chaplaincies. Despite Francke's concern about the low status of army chaplains within the clerical hierarchy, Canstein and Gedicke convinced him that service as chaplains was an improvement over traditional first appointments as private tutors held by most recent graduates. The chaplaincy became even more attractive once Gedicke began informally using his influence at court to secure the preference of chaplains for vacant pastoral posts in the civilian Prussian church.

Marschke's prosopographical analysis identifies chaplains as primarily from bürgerliche background. They entered the chaplaincy in their late 20s, increasingly after a stint of study at Halle, where many had begun their careers as teachers at Francke's Pädagogium. A hierarchy within the chaplaincy descended from plum appointments at Berlin and Potsdam to postings to isolated regimental outposts in the East Prussian hinterlands. Service was short, however, averaging four years, after which chaplains were prime candidates for the Prussian pastorate, a step that nearly all of them must have welcomed, for the chaplains were isolated souls who felt socially and spiritually alienated from the “undisciplined” common soldiers, while also being kept at a distance by their noble fellow officers.

Marschke's analytical chapters read as separate essays on early modern social disciplining, state building, political factionalism, and patron-client relations. In terms of disciplining, traditional historiography has presented the chaplains as agents of moral disciplining among the troops, in some cases even enforcing military discipline. Marschke questions those conclusions. Marschke argues that the chaplains' effects on the soldiers were minimal, despite concerted efforts, and that their superiors emphasized the moral behavior of the chaplains themselves with the hope that good chaplains would teach by example.

In assessing state building in terms of centralization and bureaucratization of the chaplaincy, Marschke argues that bureaucratization began in earnest under Friedrich Wilhelm I but was developed by the Pietists themselves not to strengthen the state but as a means of securing their patronage network, centered on Gedicke. In time they instituted the trappings of bureaucratization, including annual reviews of the chaplains. With the deaths of Francke and Gedicke, however, the process halted. If the chaplaincy aided in state building, it did so as a secondary effect of patronage building. There was no inexorable march to modernity.

Perhaps the most original aspect of the monograph is Marschke's analysis of the Pietists as a faction within Prussian Lutheranism and the Prussian state. The Pietists maintained factional solidarity by resolving all disagreements with closed-door, face-to-face resolutions handled by Francke. They competed successfully against the Calvinist clergy attached to the Court and the Orthodox Lutheran clergy in the civilian church for the scarce resources of clerical positions. Francke headed the faction, but it was Canstein and then Gedicke who were its critical power brokers. Since the network was personal rather than structural, the faction lost its coherency with the death of Francke. His son Gotthilf August had neither the temperament nor the personal network to sustain it.

In his final chapter Marschke defines patron-client relations as vertical, reciprocal, extra-legal, and durable. All aspects were at play in the chaplaincy. As noted above Francke was the critical patron within the Pietist faction, to the point that Marschke suggests that Friedrich Wilhelm himself played the role of broker, connecting candidates proposed by Canstein and Gedicke to regimental commanders. This may work analytically, but it seems unlikely that anyone involved saw the king in such a light. In summary, Marschke has shown how prosopographical analysis built from archival research can provide historical insights into the workings of a political community and how the historical experiences of that community can shed light onto broad and significant historiographical issues.