The origins of the Germanic peoples are obscure. During the late Bronze Age, they are believed to have inhabited southern Sweden, the Danish peninsula, and northern Germany between the Ems River on the west, the Oder River on the east, and the Harz Mountains on the south. The Vandals, Gepidae, and Goths migrated from southern Sweden in the closing centuries bc and occupied the area of the southern Baltic coast roughly between the Oder on the west and the Vistula River on the east. At an early date there was also migration toward the south and west at the expense of the Celtic peoples who then inhabited much of western Germany: the Celtic Helvetii, for example, who were confined by the Germanic peoples to the area that is now Switzerland in the 1st century bc, had once extended as far east as the Main River.
By the time of Julius Caesar, Germans were established west of the Rhine River and toward the south had reached the Danube River. Their first great clash with Romans came at the end of the 2nd century bc, when the Cimbri and Teutoni (Teutones) invaded southern Gaul and northern Italy and were annihilated by Gaius Marius in 102 and 101. Although individual travelers from the time of Pytheas onward had visited Teutonic countries in the north, it was not until the 1st century bc was well advanced that the Romans learned to distinguish precisely between the Germans and the Celts, a distinction that is made with great clarity by Julius Caesar. It was Caesar who incorporated within the frontiers of the Roman Empire those Germans who had penetrated west of the Rhine, and it is he who gave the earliest extant description of Germanic culture. In 9 bc the Romans pushed their frontier eastward from the Rhine to the Elbe, but in ad 9 a revolt of their subject Germans headed by Arminius ended in the withdrawal of the Roman frontier to the Rhine. In this period of occupation and during the numerous wars fought between Rome and the Germans in the 1st century ad, enormous quantities of information about the Germans reached Rome, and, when Tacitus published in ad 98 the book now known as the Germania, he had reliable sources of information on which to draw. The book is one of the most valuable ethnographic works in existence; archaeology has in many ways supplemented the information Tacitus gives, but in general it has tended only to confirm his accuracy and to illustrate his insight into his subject.
Tacitus relates that according to their ancient songs the Germans were descended from the three sons of Mannus, the son of the god Tuisto, the son of Earth. Hence they were divided into three groups—the Ingaevones, the Herminones, and the Istaevones—but the basis for this grouping is unknown. Tacitus records a variant form of the genealogy according to which Mannus had a larger number of sons, who were regarded as the ancestors of the Suebi, the Vandals, and others. At any rate, the currency of these songs suggests that in Tacitus’ time the various Germanic peoples were conscious of their relationship with one another. While individual Germans in Roman service would sometimes refer to themselves as Germani, the free Germans beyond the Rhine had no collective name for themselves until the 11th century ad, when the adjective diutisc (modern German deutsch, “of the people”) came into fashion. The meaning of the word Germani and the language to which it belongs are unknown.
The principal Germanic peoples were distributed as follows in the time of Tacitus. The Chatti lived in what is now Hesse. The Frisii inhabited the coastlands between the Rhine and the Ems. The Chauci were at the mouth of the Weser, and south of them lived the Cherusci, the people of Arminius. The Suebi, who have given their name to Schwaben, were a group of peoples inhabiting Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia; the Semnones, living around the Havel and the Spree rivers, were a Suebic people, as were the Langobardi (Lombards), who lived northwest of the Semnones. Among the seven peoples who worshiped the goddess Nerthus were the Angli (Angles), centred on the peninsula of Angeln in eastern Schleswig. As for the Danubian frontier of the Roman Empire, the Hermunduri extended from the neighbourhood of Regensburg northward through Franconia to Thuringia. The Marcomanni, who had previously lived in the Main valley, migrated during the last decade bc to Bohemia (which had hitherto been occupied by a Celtic people called the Boii), where their eastern neighbours were the Quadi in Moravia. On the lower Danube were a people called the Bastarnae, who are usually thought to have been Germans. The Goths, Gepidae, and Vandals were on the southern Baltic coast. Tacitus mentions the Suiones and the Sitones as living in Sweden. He also speaks of several other peoples of less historical importance, but he knows nothing of the Saxons, the Burgundians, and others who became prominent after his time.
By the end of the 3rd century ad important changes had taken place. East of the Rhine there were three great confederacies of peoples unknown to Tacitus. The Roman frontier on the lower Rhine faced the Franks. The Main valley was occupied from about 260 by the Burgundians, while the Agri Decumates (of the Black Forest region) were held by the Alemanni. The Burgundians appear to have been immigrants from eastern Germany. The Franks and the Alemanni may have been confederacies of peoples who had lived in these respective areas in Tacitus’ day, though perhaps with an admixture of immigrants from the east. The peoples whom Tacitus mentions as living on the Baltic coast had moved southeastward in the second half of the 2nd century. Thus the Goths now controlled the Ukraine and much of what is now Romania; the Gepidae were in the mountains north of Transylvania with the Vandals as their western neighbours.
By the year 500, the Angles and Saxons were in England and the Franks controlled northeastern Gaul. The Burgundians were in the Rhône valley with the Visigoths as their western neighbours. The Ostrogoths were established in Italy and the Vandals in Africa. In 507 the Franks expelled the Visigoths from most of the Gallic possessions, which had stretched from the Pyrenees to the Loire River, and the Visigoths thereafter lived in Spain until their extinction by the Muslims in 711. In 568 the Lombards entered Italy and lived there in an independent kingdom until they were overthrown by Charlemagne (774). The areas of eastern Germany vacated by the Goths and others were filled up by the Slavs, who extended westward as far as Bohemia and the basin of the Elbe. After the 8th century the Germans recovered eastern Germany, lower Austria, and much of Styria and Carinthia from the Slavs.
According to Julius Caesar, the Germans were pastoralists, and the bulk of their foodstuffs—milk, cheese, and meat—came from their flocks and herds. Some farming was also carried out, the main crops being grain, root crops, and vegetables. Both the cattle and the horses of the Germans were of poor quality by Roman standards.
The Iron Age had begun in Germany about four centuries before the days of Caesar, but even in his time metal appears to have been a luxury material for domestic utensils, most of which were made of wood, leather, or clay. Of the larger metal objects used by them, most were still made of bronze, though this was not the case with weapons. Pottery was for the most part still made by hand, and pots turned on the wheel were relatively rare.
The degree to which trade was developed in early Germany is obscure. There was certainly a slave trade, and many slaves were sold to the Romans. Such potters as used the wheel—and these were very few—and smiths and miners no doubt sold their products. But in general the average Germanic village is unlikely to have used many objects that had not been made at home. Foreign merchants dealing in Italian as well as Celtic wares were active in Germany in Caesar’s time and supplied prosperous warriors with such goods as wine and bronze vessels. But from the reign of Augustus onward, there was a huge increase in German imports from the Roman Empire. The German leaders were now able to buy whole categories of goods—glass vessels, red tableware, Roman weapons, brooches, statuettes, ornaments of various kinds, and other objects—that had not reached them before. These Roman products brought their owners much prestige, but how the Germans paid for them is not fully known.
In the period of the early Roman Empire, German weapons, both offensive and defensive, were characterized by shortage of metal. Their chief weapon was a long lance, and few carried swords. Helmets and breastplates were almost unknown. A light wooden or wicker shield, sometimes fitted with an iron rim and sometimes strengthened with leather, was the only defensive weapon. This lack of adequate equipment explains the swift, fierce rush with which the Germans would charge the ranks of the heavily armed Romans. If they became entangled in a prolonged, hand-to-hand grapple, where their light shields and thrusting spears were confronted with Roman swords and armour, they had little hope of success. Even by the 6th century, few of the Germanic peoples had adequate military equipment. None evolved a force adequate to deal with the heavily armed mounted archers of Justinian I.
Form of government.
No trace of autocracy can be found among the Germans whom Caesar describes. The leading men of the pagi (kindred groups) would try to patch up disputes as they arose, but they acted only in those disputes that broke out between members of their own pagus. There appears to have been no mediatory body at this date. In fact, in peacetime there appears to have been no central authority that could issue orders to, or exercise influence over, all the pagi of which any one people was composed. In wartime, according to Caesar, a number of confederate chieftains were elected, but they were joint leaders and held office only in time of war.
By Tacitus’ time a new type of military chieftainship had come into being. For this office only the members of a recognized “royal clan,” such as is known to have existed among the 1st-century Cherusci and Batavians, the 6th-century Heruli, and others, were eligible. Any member of this royal clan was eligible for election, and the chieftainship was in no way hereditary. A chief of this type held office for life and had religious as well as military duties. He could be overruled by the council of the leading men, and his proposals to the general assembly of the warriors might be rejected by them. The degree of his influence depended largely on his own personal qualities.
A rudimentary judicial apparatus had come into existence among the Germanic peoples by Tacitus’ time. The general assembly elected a number of the leading men to act as judges, and these judges traveled through the villages to hear private suits. Each of them was accompanied by 100 attendants to lend authority to his decisions. A person who was found guilty by these judges had to pay a number of horses or cattle proportionate to the gravity of his offense. But many disputes (e.g., those arising from homicide, wounding, or theft) continued to be settled by the kindreds themselves, and the blood feuds to which they gave rise might continue from generation to generation. Long after the conversion to Christianity the German rulers found it difficult to stamp out the blood feud.
Only one Germanic chieftain is known to have set up a personal tyranny over his people: Maroboduus, who led the Marcomanni from their homes in the Main valley about 9 bc and settled them in Bohemia. From there he conquered a considerable number of other Germanic peoples between the Elbe and the Vistula, including the Semnones, the Lombards, and the Lugii. But the Cherusci, joined by some of the king’s subjects, attacked him in ad 17, overthrew him, and drove him into the Roman Empire. All other chiefs who attempted in this period to establish monarchies were, so far as is known, defeated.
The monarchy did not become fully established in the Germanic world until German peoples had settled as federates inside the Roman Empire, and the leaders of the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Visigoths in Gaul and Spain, the Vandals in Africa, and so on are the first Germanic kings. Other famous German chieftains in this period, such as Athanaric and Alaric, who either lived outside the Roman frontier or whose peoples were not federates settled in the provinces under a treaty (foedus) to defend the frontier, seem to have had little more personal authority than the leaders described by Tacitus.
Conversion to Christianity.
Evidence suggests that before the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, none of the great Germanic peoples was converted to Christianity while still living outside the Roman frontier, but that all the Germanic peoples who moved into the Roman provinces before that date were converted to Christianity within a generation. The Vandals seem to have been converted when in Spain in 409–429, the Burgundians when in eastern Gaul in 412–436, and the Ostrogoths when in the province of Pannonia about 456–472. In all these cases the Germans embraced the Arian form of Christianity; none of the major Germanic peoples became officially Catholic until the conversion of the Franks under Clovis (496) and of the Burgundians under Sigismund. The reason for their adoption of Arianism rather than Catholicism is very obscure. The last Germanic people on the European continent to be converted to Christianity were the Old Saxons (second half of the 8th century), while the Scandinavian peoples were converted in the 10th century. England had been converted in the 7th century.