In the 18th century, as many as 300 German-language plays were produced with the military and its contact and friction with civil society serving as focus of the dramatic events. The immense public interest these plays attracted feeds not least on the fundamental social structural change that was brought about by the establishment of standing armies. In his historico-cultural literary study, Tilman Venzl shows how these military dramas literarily depict complex social processes and discuss the new problems in an affirmative or critical manner. For the first time, the findings of the New Military History are comprehensively included in the literary history of the 18th century. Thus, the example of selected military dramas - including Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm and Lenz's Die Soldaten - reveals the entire range of variety characterizing the history of both form and function of the subject.