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 Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz (; 1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral", in modern terms meaning psychological, and political aspects of waging war. His mo ...

. Later, they both taught at the Prussian General War School, which would become the

Prussian War Academy The Prussian Staff College, also Prussian War College (german: Preußische Kriegsakademie) was the highest military facility of the Kingdom of Prussia to educate, train, and develop general staff officers. Location It originated with the ''Ak ...

, 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. Lilienstern and Clausewitz, teaching at the same school at the time of publication of this manual, were in agreement on many points. For example, they agreed that war was political in nature (which was neither a novel nor a controversial idea) and that war was a ''Zweikampf.'' (That is, literally a "two-struggle," usually translated into English as "duel," though in fact the imagery and metaphor that Clausewitz pursued was a wrestling match.) Clausewitz made these ideas famous in his book

On War ''Vom Kriege'' () is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife Marie von Brühl in 1832. ...

. Their common views on such issues can be traced to the nature of the military intellectual community in Prussia and the common influence of Scharnhorst. Lilienstern was a close friend of the landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich and his writing contributed to modern research of the artist.

* 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), , pp. 171–190. * Jacek Jędrysiak: ''Prussian Strategic Thought 1815–1830: Beyond Clausewitz,'' Leiden 2020: Brill Academic Publishers. . p. 470 et seq. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lilienstern, August Otto Ruhle Von Lieutenant generals of Prussia 1780 births 1847 deaths Prussian Army personnel of the Napoleonic Wars Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences

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