Soldaten und Garnisonen. Das Militär und sein ziviles Umfeld
Soldiers and Garrisons. The Military and its Civilian Environment. This chapter outlines a regional military history of Lower Austria in the 19th century. In the context of history of the k. k. and later k. u. k. Army, peacetime relations between the land and the military are presented in two particular areas. The chapter’s first section focuses on the land’s recruitment and its transformation from a system based on forced conscription by a late-absolutist system to a constitutional monarchy employing citizen soldiers. In a second section, the phenomenon of the garrison illustrates the interdependence of the military and its civilian environment in public, social and economic life. In both sections, the question of the militarization of society is also explored. The surprisingly high incidence of individuals unfit for service and the significantly lower number of actual conscripts demand as much consideration as the economic importance of a garrison for the towns of Lower Austria in last third of the 19th century.