Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow

Who was Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow?

Dietrich Heinrich Freiherr von Bülow, Prussian soldier and military writer, and brother of General Count Friedrich Wilhelm Bülow, entered the Prussian army in 1773. Routine work proved distasteful to him, and he read with avidity the works of Jean Charles, Chevalier Folard and other theoretical writers on war, and of Rousseau.

After sixteen years service he left Prussia, and endeavoured without success to obtain a commission in the Austrian army. He then returned to Prussia, and for some time managed a theatrical company. The failure of this undertaking involved Bülow in heavy losses, and soon afterwards he went to America, where he seems to have been converted to, and to have preached, Swedenborgianism.

On his return to Europe he persuaded his brother to engage in a speculation for exporting glass to the United States, which proved a complete failure. After this for some years he made a precarious living in Berlin by literary work, but his debts accumulated, and it was under great disadvantages that he produced his Geist des Neueren Kriegssystems and Der Feldzug 1801. His hopes of military employment were again disappointed, and his brother, the future field marshal, who had stood by him in all his troubles, finally left him.