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The Debate About the Ethnogenesis of the Germanic Tribes*

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The Debate About the Ethnogenesis of the Germanic Tribes* chapter 6 The Debate about the Ethnogenesis of the Germanic Tribes* 1 The Problem of the Nature of the Ethnicity of the ‘Germani’ and of the Germanic Tribes In her book The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, Averil Cameron wrote: ‘It is obvious that a steady process of cultural and demographic change had been taking place long before the formations of the barbarian kingdoms . The Roman government was not so much faced with discrete incursions as with a slow but steady erosion of Roman culture in the western provinces from within’.1 The question immediately arises to what extent the culture of the set- tlers made a positive contribution to this erosion of a specifically Roman cul- ture. But this question is not at all easy to answer. The ethnic units from the north (gentes: ‘peoples’, ‘tribes’) which figure in our sources as settlers in the western provinces of the Roman Empire are described in three different ways. Sometimes we read about ‘Germans’, elsewhere we are told about Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Franks, and Alamanni, all of whom may sometimes be described as ‘Germans’. Finally there are numerous smaller tribal units, which in Late Antiquity seem to be components of the major gentes. The problem of the precise relationship between the Germans as a whole, their major peoples and those peoples’ sub-tribes is a very difficult one. Because the German were illiterate until they entered the Empire, they have not been able to leave us their own account of how they related to each other. We depend almost entirely on Roman accounts. And the Romans were not really very much interested in the institutions of their barbarian neighbours. So there has been very much scope for speculation on Germanic ethnicity. * This article was previously published in From Rome to Constantinople, Studies in Honour of Averil Cameron, eds. Hagit Amirav & Bas ter Haar Romeny, Leuven: Peeters, 2007, pp. 341–355. 1 The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity: AD 395–600 (London, 1993), p. 45. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�895�9_007 86 chapter 6 2 The Reconstruction of the ‘Germani’ It has often been said that the culture of modern Europe flows from two prin- cipal sources, one Roman the other Germanic. The Roman contribution is easily demonstrated. We have many volumes of Latin literature and law. The Germanic contribution is much more obscure. The Germanic tribes that set up their kingdoms in what had been the Roman empire have left very few indis- putable traces of their ethnic way of life. This has had to be reconstructed by scholars from scattered fragments. A great deal of the reconstruction is based on five very different works: Tacitus’ Germania (2nd cent.), the Gothic Bible (4th cent.), the Getica of Jordanes (6th cent.), the History of the Lombards of Paul the Deacon (9th cent.) and the Icelandic sagas (13th cent.). However, recourse may be had to other sources, particularly language, law, and archaeology. Germanic history and culture have been reconstructed ever since the Renaissance. A great deal of effort went into this reconstruction. The reason for this was the belief that the spirit of the ancient Germani survived over the centuries and continued to make contemporary Germans what they were. This became an important element in the creation of a German sense of nation- hood and patriotism. The Vandals, Goths, Burgundians, and Franks were seen as the original Germans,2 and their culture as reconstructed by scholars was considered a model for modern Germans to follow.3 The scholarly reconstruction of the culture of the old Germans has had an enormous impact upon many branches of modern scholarship; one might even say that it helped create it. (I refer, for example, to the great series of pub- lications of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, itself only a very small part of the contribution which the search for the ancient Germans has made to Ancient and Medieval History.) But the motives that inspired so much scholarly effort became ever more political, and it is not surprising that politicians exploited its products. Such exploitation entered a new phase after Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859. The concept of the survival of the fittest allowed politicians, in western Europe in general but in Germany in particular, to make genetic inher- itance, that is race, the mechanism by which the spirit and mentality of the 2 E.g. ‘So wollen wir uns wenigstens nicht ohne Stolz zu diesen riesigen Heerscharen des früh- esten Mittelalters als unserer Art und unseres Blutes bekennen . .’ A.S. von Stauffenberg, Das Imperium und die Völkerwanderung (Munich, 1950), p. 8. He was the brother of the von Stauffenberg who tried and failed to assassinate Hitler. 3 K. von See, Barbar, Germane, Arier: die Suche nach der Identität der Deutschen (Heidelberg, 1994)..
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