Filimer

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Filimer was a legendary king of the Goths according to the tradition of the Jordanes , who led the Goths from their settlement area in the Vistula area to the Pontic area and the Black Sea . There is no historical evidence of it.

Gothic saga

The approximate spread of the Wielbark culture (red) in the 2nd century and the Cernjachov culture (orange) in the 3rd century.

The Gothic tribal legend says Jordanes' Getica that five generations after the Conquest in gothiscandza by Berig have greatly increased the population, which is why Filimer the son Gadarichs the Great and "about the fifth" after Berig that once the Goths from the island of Scandia ( Scandinavia ) led across the sea to Gothiscandza , went with the tribe in search of suitable new settlements and was probably the king who led the Gothiscandza “into the lush meadows”, Oium , Scythia. On the hike, when crossing a bridge, it is said to have collapsed and caused the Goths to split. The front part finally arrived happily at the Black Sea .

The number-mystical naming of Filimer as the fifth king and the vagueness of the formulation at this point lead Herwig Wolfram to assume that Cassiodorus is reproducing a wandering myth here. So there are, according tungsten also a fifth king of the Lombards into Rugiland led or come in the Croatian and in the Bulgarian origin Forecast five brothers before, also the latter's brother carry with the Croats the name of the gene.

Ancient historians were familiar with the Goth tribe in the 1st and 2nd centuries. He settled north of the Vistula knee . In the second half of the 2nd century the Goths began to migrate to the southeast. From 238 they are historically tangible at the mouth of the Danube . Two different peoples, Terwingen and Greutungen, or West and Ostrogoths were known from 291 at the latest.

After Wilhelm Marten 's translation into German, the following is reported in the "Getica" des Jordanes of Filimer's emigration to Scythia :

“When the number of the people increased more and more and about the fifth king ruled after Berig, namely Filimer, the son of Gadarich, he made the decision to emigrate in an armed procession with his wife and child. When he was looking for suitable places of residence and suitable places, he came to the lands of Scythia, which are called Oium in their language. The army liked the fertile regions. But then, after half of the bridge had crossed the river, it collapsed, and it could not be restored; so nobody could go over or over. [...] So the part of the Goths who crossed the river under Filimer and came to Oium took possession of the longed-for soil. "

Hunnensaga

Filimer also gave his name to another myth of origin; according to Jordanes' Getica he is indirectly responsible for the origin of the Huns. Arriving in the new settlement area , Filimer had to banish the Haliurun (n) at , the "women who cast magic with the realm of the dead", from the community of the tribe, whereupon they surrendered to the evil spirits of the steppe and thus begat the Huns. Wolfram sees this exile as a “punishment” for a major “breach of the norms of sorcery”, which most Goths were evidently opposed to, and shows parallels to the Scandinavians, for whom the shamanic silk magic of the Finns was “tremendous and despicable”. According to Wolfram, the situation must be similar with the Goths, since they immigrated to the Pontic region and probably encountered shamanic practices there.

Wilhelm Martens translated the legendary report in the Getica des Jordanes on the descent of the Huns from Filimer's Goths as follows:

“After a short time, as Orosius reports [3], the people of the Huns, who are raw and savage beyond all concepts, broke out against the Goths. We have received the following account of their origins from ancient times. Filimer, King of the Goths, son of Gadarich the Great, after emigrating from the island of Skandza the fifth ruler of the Geten, who also, as above [IV. 26] was reported by us, moved to Scythia with his people, learned of the stay of certain sorcerers among his people, whom he himself calls Haliurunnen in his mother tongue [4]. Since he thought them suspicious, he drove them out and compelled them to wander in the wilderness far from his army. There they were seen by unclean spirits as they wandered about in the desert; they mated with them and embraced them, and so this wild race came into being. [...] So these Huns, of such origin, approached the territory of the Goths. "

Remarks

  1. Jordanes , Getica 4, 26. In: Theodor Mommsen (ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 5.1: Iordanis Romana et Getica. Berlin 1882, p. 60 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
  2. Herwig Wolfram : The Goths. From the beginning to the middle of the sixth century. Draft of a historical ethnography. 5th edition. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-33733-8 , p. 45 , p. 48 , p. 52 , p. 115 and p. 259
  3. ^ Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John R. Martindale, John Morris: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire . Volume 1: AD 260-395. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, p. 337 ( books.google.de )
  4. Jordanes, Getica 4, 25. In: In: MGH Auct. ant. 5.1 p. 60.
  5. Jordanes, Getica 4, 27. In: MGH Auct. ant. 5.1 p. 60.
  6. Jordanes, Getica 4, 27-28. In: MGH Auct. ant. 5.1 pp. 60-61.
  7. Herwig Wolfram : The Birth of Central Europe. History of Austria before its creation. Vienna 1987, p. 77 with note 1 and p. 485, note 1; see. also Walter Pohl : The Avars. A steppe people in Central Europe, 567–822 AD Beck, Munich 1988; 2nd, updated edition 2002, p. 265.
  8. Wilhelm Martens: Jordane's history of the Goths with excerpts from his Roman history . In: The historians of the German past. Second complete edition. Sixth century . 3. Edition. tape 1 . Duncker, Leipzig 1913, p. 9-10 ( archive.org ).
  9. Jordanes, Getica 24, 121-122 In: MGH Auct. ant. 5.1 pp. 60-62.
  10. Herwig Wolfram: The Goths . P. 45 and p. 115 . For another interpretation of the passage cf. Herwig Wolfram: Origo et religio. Ethnic Tradition and Literature in Early Medieval Texts . In: Early Medieval Europe 3, 1994, pp. 23-24 and p. 31.
  11. ^ Wilhelm Martens: Jordanes Gothengeschichte . S. 39, note 3 ( archive.org - the following is noted according to Jord. Get. VII. 33, 10): “The people of the Huns, who had long been enclosed in inaccessible mountains, were suddenly angry with the Goths , and expelled them, often harassed, from their old homes. "
  12. ^ Wilhelm Martens: Jordanes Gothengeschichte . S. 39, note 4 ( archive.org ): "Gothic haljaruna , in the form" mandrake "changed to a different meaning."
  13. ^ Wilhelm Martens: Jordanes Gothengeschichte . S. 39-40 ( archive.org ).

swell

Relevant edition, although Mommsen's edition is still citable:

  • Jordanes : De origine actibusque Getarum . In: Francesco Giunta , Antonino Grillone (ed.): Iordanis de origine actibusque Getarum (=  Fonti per la Storia d'Italia . No. 117 ). Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Rome 1991.

literature

  • Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John R. Martindale, John Morris: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire . Volume 1: AD 260-395. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, p. 337 (with incorrect dating and incomplete location information).
  • Herwig Wolfram : The Birth of Central Europe. History of Austria before its creation. Vienna 1987, pp. 8-90.
  • Herwig Wolfram: Origo et religio. Ethnic traditions and literature in early medieval sources. In: Wilfried Hartmann (Ed.): Middle Ages. Approaching a strange time. Regensburg 1993, pp. 27-39.
  • Herwig Wolfram: Origo et religio. Ethnic Tradition and Literature in Early Medieval Texts. In: Early Medieval Europe. 3, 1994. pp. 19-38.
  • Herwig Wolfram:  Filimer. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 9, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-014642-8 , pp. 42-43. ( books.google.de ).
  • Walter Pohl : The Avars. A steppe people in Central Europe, 567–822 AD Beck, Munich 1988; 2nd, updated edition 2002.
  • Herwig Wolfram: The Goths. From the beginning to the middle of the sixth century. Draft of a historical ethnography. 5th edition. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-33733-8 . (3rd edition. Munich 1990 books.google.de ).

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