The study reconsiders the nexus between political and religious thought within the Prussian old conservative milieu. It presents a religious party within the Prussian state church as the origins of Prussia’s conservative party post-1848. The roots of this church-political party, however, lie within the experiences of the Napoleonic Wars (1806-15) and the social movements dominant at that time. In this way, early nineteenth-century Prussian conservatism is presented as being bound to a generation unit of young Prussian nobles who had experienced the Napoleonic Wars at first hand. These men rejected the modernisation of both the Prussian state and the church(es), while at the same time they campaigned for a re-Christianisation and re-organisation of state and society following an idealised (and constructed) past. A coherent conservative political or religious doctrine, however, did not evolve before the 1840s. Therefore, conservatives’ thinking is considered as resulting from a ‘trauma reaction’ towards agents’ individual war experiences and the general sense of crisis in Prussia from 1806 to 1815. The search for orientation resulting from this sense of crisis led conservative agents into Awakened and neo-Pietistic circles in Berlin. These circles were the origins of the so-called ‘party of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung’ that is conservatives’ newspaper founded in 1827. This thesis examines how the brothers von Gerlach and their peers actively engaged with and took part in Prussian Church policy and politics. The debates regarding the Prussian Church Union (1817), the Prussian Church Agenda (1822), and the debates on a Prussian Church Constitution (1820s to 1850s), are presented as evidence for an increasing politicisation of the conservative milieu while at the same time highlighting the origins of Prussia’s first conservative party in the church-political ‘party of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung’. At the same time, these debates were proxy wars for underlying ongoing debates on Prussia’s overall political constitution. The German Revolution of 1848 and the foundation of Prussia’s first conservative party in its aftermath, as well as the foundation of the Neue Preußische Zeitung (aka Kreuzzeitung) were therefore the result of a decade-long struggle for a religiously motivated ideal of church, state and society. The shift from church politics to state politics is key to understanding conservative policy post-1848. In this way, conservatives sought to maintain Prussia’s character as Christian and monarchical state, while at the same time adapting to contemporary political and social circumstances.