I think there is another German who predates Teutoborg by about 50 years, and who really captivated me when I found out about him - Ariovistus.
He was a leader of the Suebii (mentioned in TFA), who extended German rule into Gaul around the same time as Julius Caesar launched his invasion. The two men met right before an ultimate battle between the Suebii and Rome.
Ariovistus's message was simple: while they are both invading Gaul, Caesar is doing so under the pretence of protecting states that are friendly to Rome, but ultimately he wants all of the Gaul to be Roman anyway, because the Romans see all of Gaul and Germany as "barbarians". So basically, he called out the Romans on what he rightfully recognised to be hypocrisy based in a false feeling of cultural superiority.
Caesar beat Ariovistus the day after and proceeded to put all of Gaul under the Roman rule.
We also know this famous part from Caesar, describing moose without joints who lean against trees to sleep at night:
There are also [animals], which are called moose. The shape of these, and the varied color of their skins, is much like roes, but in size they surpass them a little and are destitute of horns, and have legs without joints and ligatures; nor do they lie down for the purpose of rest, nor, if they have been thrown down by any accident, can they raise or lift themselves up. Trees serve as beds to them; they lean themselves against them, and thus reclining only slightly, they take their rest; when the huntsmen have discovered from the footsteps of these animals whither they are accustomed to betake themselves, they either undermine all the trees at the roots, or cut into them so far that the upper part of the trees may appear to be left standing. When they have leant upon them, according to their habit, they knock down by their weight the unsupported trees, and fall down themselves along with them.
It's quite probable that Caesar exaggerated the German menace to justify the invasion of Gaul. Interestingly, it's never very clear in De Bello Gallico what's the difference between Germans and Celts, but that the Celts can be civilized, and the Germans can not.
Caesar mixing his Celts and Germans also leads us to wonder if England really was Germanized in the 5th century with the Angle invasion, or if the east of the island was already Germanic when Caesar first visited.
Caesar's "Germans" were almost certainly Celtic/Gallic - "Celtic" cultures and tribes stretched from Iberia in the west to Galatia (Anatolia) in the east.
I'm sketchier on where the Angles/Saxons/Jutes came from before they emerged into the historical record in modern-day northwestern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. Whether they were a reconfiguration of the tribes that had been there since time immemorial, or were groups previously to the east, displaced westward as a ripple effect of the great migrations out of central Asia.
I can't find the sources right now, but I think linguistic studies have confirmed that the celts and germans could not have come from the same origin. My impression has always been that the celts were the original inhabitants of western Europe and the British Isles and the Germanic/Nordic tribes slowly conquered and assimilated them into their culture.
I am not a historian of course. Would love to hear counterpoints; I'm interested in historical facts not propaganda :) .
Speaking of "original inhabitants" of the British Isles there was a fascinating Time Team special that mentioned that there were 7 waves of human occupation of Britain - with each of the previous six waves completely dying out.
Caesar is known to exaggerate and make things up to make his story interesting. Caesar is one of the world's great self-promoters and self-propagandists. He knew the power of propaganda and historical legacy. So I'd take what he wrote with a grain of salt.
Romans did not give up after a single loss in battle. They didn't give up after getting thrashed by the Carthiginians, nor the Parthians, nor the Gauls, nor the Germans in eastern Europe. I can't buy the argument that this one defeat forever made western Germania a no-go zone for the Romans.
"Germanicus" became an honorary title given to (a lot) of Romans who fought at beat Germans over the centuries...
I think you are comparing two different Romes. The punic wars were for Rome's survival. The gallic wars were for Caesar's political survival, for significant gain in capital (human slaves) and to establish a buffer zone against the Germans (that were already more feared than the Celts). Back then, Rome was essentially unstoppable, you feel kinda bad for their enemies. 100 years later, Rome was well
established and cozy for the elite - why risk your neck against the now battle proven Germans? Eventually this cozyness would be Rome's downfall.
Interesting I did not know the story of Arminius, and it mirrors in multiple ways the story of Vercingetorix and the battle of Alesia, that was also used in the XIXth century as a "national foundation myth", up to the erection of a giant statue.
This article tells two stories; one about the actual battle and it’s archaeology and one on its impact centuries later (”But the war cries and clang of swords also echoed through the ages in other ways: as a creation myth – glorious and catastrophic at once — that later forged the German nation. […] The cult around Hermann the German peaked in 1875, when a gigantic monument of him was completed near the town of Detmold. This copper hero holds aloft a sword seven meters long and faces France, Germany’s old foe, beaten four years earlier in a war that had finally ushered in German unification”)
The battle matters a lot in terms of it being a useful myth for propaganda during the forming of the German nation state after its unification.
I had to learn about it in art school. Specifically, about a German artist who criticised how eagerly post-war Germany was to forget it altogether, pretending the monuments raised for it and the operas written about it didn't exist. As if pretending it never happened is somehow better than remembering that what happened was wrong.
A battle that catastrophic could be seen as an early precursor to the crisis of the third century, slight dents appearing in Rome's facade and armour. A stretch maybe but worth discussing.
This was before there was a concept of Rome's invincibility, their peace with Parthia was not built on Roman success. This was just a lost battle, most noteworthy for setting up Germanicus' retrieval of the lost standards. Not comparable to the hell that was the crisis of the third century.
The idea of Roman invincibility is sort of bizarre concept, looking at the history. Roman armies were routinely defeated and destroyed. Rome's great advantage through the Republic and early Empire was that they could absorb such losses, which would be catastrophic for most states, and keep churning out new armies.
This is absolutely correct and I think the same thing whenever I read suggestions that Roman defeats are/were significant to its decline. Rome's major strength from the beginning was an indefatigable political will. Hannibal did not just cross the Alps, he decimated multiple Roman armies in Italy and then rampaged around the peninsula for over a decade. There is an anecdote that when Hannibal's armies approached Rome, inside the city Roman traders sold land rights to the spot on which his army camped. Much like the Russians and Americans have found in Afghanistan, it is hard to defeat an enemy that shares a common fundamental belief in its own persistence and refusal to acquiesce.
Even in this story, as the article notes, after having lost three legions in an utterly decisive battle in the wilds of Germania, Emperor Tiberius' son Germanicus decided he would go back and wage more war to recover the standards. That is not the sort of political will we are used to.
I had learned the story of the battle of teutoberg forest when studying roman history (in which it looms large as a shocking and humiliating defeat), and I was surprised when I spent some time living and working in Germany that none of my German colleagues had ever heard of Hermann or the battle (as I expected it to be a relevant date in the timeline of Germany’s formation of identity).
- Modern Germans don't really see themselves as descendants of those Germans, in the German language both are named differently. Modern Germans are 'Deutsche' - ancient Germans are 'Germanen'. English does not make this distinction. There are more annoying confusions like this, for example, the Germanic tribe of the Saxons has nothing to do with the modern state of Saxony, as the ancestors of modern Saxons spoke a different dialect. There are several breaks like this in between modern Germany and Germanic tribes which are masked by nomenclature.
- German (Deutsche) Catholics distanced themselves from the 'barbaric', non-Christian Germanic tribes.
- As usual, the Nazis ruined it. The battle was sometimes used for propaganda reasons by the Nazis, replacing Romans with Jews. Modern Nazis are also using it for their own purposes (replacing Romans with immigrants and the US)
Edit: the battle itself isn't silenced or anything, I do remember quite a few events when the 2000 year anniversary happened, including the cover of the SPIEGEL having it (IIRC?)
Very interesting. So are the modern Germans descendents of the 'barbaric' ones? Is the distinction made only for separating the earlier pagans from the Christianized tribes?
And is the distancing only for religious, or for cultural reasons as well? I mean, were the modern Germans really more 'civilized' (whatever that means) than the barbaric ones, or is it just propaganda?
The distinction is strongly related to the habit of claiming Charlemagne as the founding myth. Makes a lot more sense as a precursor of the EU, but in the fast-forward way history is taught at school, this is usually the point where the wording shifts from "tribes who lived in the same geographic area" to "a precursor state".
People who want to identify with victory over Romans to fuel a nationalistic mindset won't stop at Arminius, they also claim the legacy of various gothic etc tribes who troubled and/or continued thedying western empire.
Really? May be a generation thing. I'm in my 40s now and we learned about that battle around 6th grade. And this was on a Hauptschule (secondary modern school) where I spent two years.
Also German TV is full of historic documentaries about that time - at lest the public service broadcasters (phoenix, zdf info, arte, etc). Of course you will not notice that if you only follow the private channels.
hermansdenkmal is a lot less catchy, than Herman the German, but many people have see in picture or film.
However I would guess, that your colleagues just forgot about the 'Schlacht im Teuteborger Wald', because it definitely visit part of the history curriculum.
In modern days the French Revolution as a well as Bismarcks doing have the focus for the 'identity' of Germany.
just like the last ice age, its tangential but not defining. I did hear it mentioned, but I probably can only remember it because of the alluded connection to the autonym of the germans: teute~deuts*.
It is very interesting as the Romans lost the battle because of complete lack of scouting and intelligence/information gathering. They had a disdain on it. They also had a disdain on archery as well (they considered it unmanly). They lost in similar fashion with Partha as well.
As an german: No, Germany wasn't created 2.000 years ago. That kind of history telling was made by Hitler. Modern historians say Germany was created in 1871.
As a fellow German, at the very least you'll need to account for the Treaty of Verdun. (No, not that one. The other one :)
From there, Louis the German received East Francia, which in many ways formed the core of what would later be Germany. From there, we certainly took a long and winding road. (The reformation settlement is probably another point worth touching upon, though)
1871 is merely the point where there was an actual administratively unified nation state called Germany. It's the first time we did that, so in that sense, sure.
(Sorry. I nerd out on history. Really, it's a distraction to your main point - the whole legend of Arminius thing is a German nationalist myth. Tied to 1871 - each nation state needs a founding myth)
You're half-right: this battle was used as nationalist propaganda. However, while I'm sure the Nazis took it to new extremes, that usage predates them by almost a century.
Remember that the nation state an accidental invention of the industrial revolution after all; pro-nation state propaganda was happening all over Europe at the time, and a lot of it is quite offensive to our modern eyes.
I find it kind of frustrating that Nazis are mainly depicted as this evil that came into existence in a vacuum, or in the best case solely as a reaction to the situation in Germany after WWI. The seeds of fascism and xenophobia had been shown all over Europe long before that. I suspect Germany just got there first.
Complementary reading: "A Most Dangerous Book. Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich" by Christopher B. Krebs (W.W. Norton & Company, NY, 2011)
(German translation: "Ein gefährliches Buch. Die 'Germania' des Tacitus und die Erfindung der Deutschen"; DVA, München 2012)
Especially interesting for pointing out a rather ambiguous role of early humanism (as related to the reception of the Germania) in German history.
It quite interesting how little land north of Rome was conquered. You can draw a line on the map where the winter average temperature goes below -5 and it will be close to the border.
Augustus was furious about the defeat, and allegedly would shout out the above phrase (translated roughly as "Varus, return [the/my] legions!") on occasion – in stark contrast to his typical, reserved demeanor.
He was a leader of the Suebii (mentioned in TFA), who extended German rule into Gaul around the same time as Julius Caesar launched his invasion. The two men met right before an ultimate battle between the Suebii and Rome.
Ariovistus's message was simple: while they are both invading Gaul, Caesar is doing so under the pretence of protecting states that are friendly to Rome, but ultimately he wants all of the Gaul to be Roman anyway, because the Romans see all of Gaul and Germany as "barbarians". So basically, he called out the Romans on what he rightfully recognised to be hypocrisy based in a false feeling of cultural superiority.
Caesar beat Ariovistus the day after and proceeded to put all of Gaul under the Roman rule.
And we know all this from Caesar himself: http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.1.1.html