EN
The religious aspect of a conflict like the Prusso‑Austrian War of 1866 may at first sight seem marginal and not very interesting. With pronounced exceptions, the subject has never been the subject of research by many authors who have otherwise literally broken the conflict down into micro‑parts and described in minute detail most conceivable phenomena of a military‑historical nature. Although the conflict could certainly not be classified as a religious or confessional war, the transparent dichotomy between the Catholicism of the Austrian Em pire and the Protestantism of the Prussian Kingdom has inspired – especially in the German‑speaking world – many analyses. These are, however, exclusively structuralist texts, and the analysis mentioned in them tends to be rather quantitative. In our contribution, we would like to focus on an otherwise completely overlooked phenomenon, namely: the personal experience of (dis)belief, the reflection of confessional differences and the (dis)observance of ritual against the backdrop of a dynamic period of wartime conflict. As a source base we will use contemporary memories, memoirs, or chronicle records of ordinary people, soldiers, but also church leaders.