Pohl, Mareike: Fliehen – Kämpfen – Kapitulieren. Rationales Handel im Zeitalter Friedrich Barbarossas (Wege zur Geschichtswissenschaft), Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2014.

The book was accepted as a dissertation at the University of Regensburg in 2012. The author re-examines military events during the reign of the Staufer emperor Frederick I Barbarossa from a new perspective. Her results have evoked mixed reactions in scholarly circles. She applies modern sociological methods to medieval sources, thereby arriving at new theses and theories concerning the decisions on the conduct of sieges and field battles. The extensive historiographical source material, ranging from Otto of Freising to Romuald of Salerno, is excellently summarized and presented.

The study primarily focuses on the conflicts in northern Italy and the strategies employed by attackers and defenders. It also explores the motivations behind these actions and the resulting behaviors. For instance, Pohl shows that for the troops, rewards in the form of payment or loot were significantly greater driving forces for military action than the emperor’s honor, or the overarching objectives of a given military campaign.

In five thematic sections, Pohl analyzes historiographical descriptions from the era of Frederick Barbarossa, reevaluating them from the perspective of modern sociology, e.g., with regard to the rational-choice model, or the exchange of goods after G. Homans. In the first chapter, she examines how military leaders calculated their chances of success in upcoming engagements, and inquires whether these leaders, once the engagement was over, would subsequently engage in combat again, or refrain from doing so. The second chapter focuses on the consequences of individual actions as a threat to the common good, and on the extent to which these considerations influenced decision-making in the field. In the third chapter, Pohl explores the extent to which the ends justified the means, and whether deception and trickery held greater significance in warfare than honor. In the fourth chapter, she extensively demonstrates that cities that surrendered often followed rational reasons, choosing the lesser of two evils and avoiding being pillaged. The restoration of honor through deditio is notably not addressed here (though, curiously, this is mentioned in chapter 5, p. 256). The author dedicates her final chapter to the relevance of monetary resources and their role in warfare-related decision-making processes.

Pohl concludes that many of the actions described can be traced back to rational behavior, which she examines across several thematic areas and varying recurring patterns of action. Her conclusion aligns in some parts with the widely accepted theory of Knut Görich, who identified honor as a driving factor in many political actors’ decisions. However, she challenges the honor-theory in a separate excursus (pp. 165 ff.) and develops her own argument that sets honor in the context of further motivational factors. For example, she argues that Frederick’s actions during the Battle of Legnano in 1176 were not motivated by honor; rather, this motivation was retroactively introduced by later writers to explain the defeat. Honor, she asserts, appears as only one of several motivating factors that stand alongside each other in their plurality—a thesis that still requires further substantiation.