Crimean Goths

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Brooches and buckles of the Germanic type (5th to 6th centuries) from Kerch , Crimean peninsula

The Crimean Goths were descendants of that part of the Ostrogoths who had settled on the Black Sea on the Crimean peninsula in AD 257 ; there they became allies of Rome . Their cities, the so-called Gothic castles , were mostly carved directly into the rock. They made Dori their capital. The remains of Dori are known by the Tatar name Mangup Kale and are located south of today's Bakhchysarai city .

Origins

In association with Sarmatians , the Goths invaded the Crimea between 255 and 257 and undertook raids against cities on the Black Sea coasts. As early as 256 Gothic- Boran ships had left the ports of the Cimmerian Bosporus . The Crimean Goths were Christianized early and had close ties to Byzantium . In 404, the Crimean Goths turned to the Bishop of Constantinople and asked for a successor to the bishop he had already appointed.

Migration period

Eski-Kermen

Theodoric the Great is said to have asked the Crimean Goths to move to Italy with him, but they refused. In 548 they asked Constantinople again for a successor to a deceased bishop and at the same time demanded military aid against their Hunnic neighbors.

A group of the Crimean Goths was called Tetraxites in late antique sources . Prokop of Caesarea reports that the Utigur Huns, who retreated to the east after the end of the Attila Empire in 454/455 AD, encountered Tetraxites (Crimean Goths) on the western bank of the Cimmerian Bosporus. The Tetraxites prevented them from reaching the eastern bank. However, the two peoples eventually formed an alliance and left the Cimmerian Bosporus to settle together northeast of the Black Sea, at the foot of the Caucasus . Accordingly, it seems likely that the Tetraxitic Goths are identical to the people of the Eudoses, who were described by Pseudo-Arrian as inhabitants of the north-eastern Black Sea zone. The migration of Germanic groups from the south-west of the Crimea to the Cimmerian Bosporus is archaeologically supported by the abandonment of some Germanic burial grounds (Aj-Todor, Ĉatyr-Dag ) in the middle of the 5th century. The last news about the Tetraxites dates back to 551 when they supported the Utigur Huns against the Kutrigur Huns. At that time, the Utigurs, supported by 2000 Crimean Gothic warriors, plundered the land of the Kutrigurs on behalf of East Stream after they had devastated eastern Roman territory (called by the Gepids ). After the middle of the 6th century, the Tetraxitic Goths are likely to have gradually risen up in other Caucasian peoples. The eudoses who lived on the Caucasian coast around 480 apparently spoke Gothic. However, it is likely that it was not this group in truth Goths, but rather Euten the Cimbrian peninsula, probably with the Herulians came to Black Sea.

Gothic principalities continued to exist in the Crimea for a long time, but the population soon mixed with Sarmatian groups in particular . Finds of a Germanic character, which have parallels in the Danube-Balkan region and in Ostrogothic Italy, can be traced in the city of Bosporos and on the Taman Peninsula between the 5th and 7th centuries. According to Heiko Steuer , however, from the late 6th century onwards, there are no more clearly Gothic finds in the Black Sea area. The known Gothic finds in the Crimea are concentrated in two areas in the southern part of the peninsula. One is north of the Crimean Mountains, a second south of it along the Black Sea coast. Grave fields with typical Gothic grave finds in the vicinity of Byzantine fortresses such as Chersones , Eski-Kermen and Mangup indicate the federation status of the Crimean Goths. The Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I caused them to build long walls to block access to their settlement areas. On the eastern side of the Cimmerian Bosporos, for example, the burial place of Djurso near Novorossiysk contains graves with typical East Germanic elements. In the 6th and 7th centuries, burial customs became more and more similar to the Byzantine, but also the Caucasian. Tetraxitic traces have not been found in Djurso since the 8th century.

End of Gothia

The intermingling with the neighboring peoples continued after the rebellious Crimean Goths were largely subjugated by the Khazars in the middle of the 8th century. Only a few remains of the language of the Crimean Goths have survived, some of which are unsecured. Despite clear differences from the Gothic in the Wulfila Bible , there is no doubt that the two languages ​​are related. The number seven is called sevene in Crimean Gothic , while it is called sibun in Bible Gothic . On the other hand, the word hundred differs because it means hunt in Bible Gothic, but sade in Crimean Gothic and is therefore identical to the Indo-Iranian language. There is no other East Germanic word for comparison.

The Principality of Theodoro , which was also called Gothia , had existed around Mangup since the 13th century . With the conquest of the capital in 1475 by the Ottomans , the political independence of the Crimea finally ended.

In the 18th century, the Crimean Gothic language (see also: Gothic language ) seems to have finally died out. There was no connection or even mixing between the last Crimean Goths and the first Black Sea Germans , as had been claimed by the National Socialists to justify plans for conquest.

After the attack on the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler considered annexing Crimea as "Gotengau" based on the Crimean Goths, populating it with ethnic Germans from South Tyrol and renaming Simferopol as "Gotenburg" and Sevastopol as "Theodorichshafen".

literature

  • Aleksandr A. Vasiliev: The Goths in the Crimea . The Mediaeval Academy of America, Cambridge, MA 1936 (old standard work).
  • H.-V. Beyer: Istorija krymskich gotov kak interpretacija skazanija Matfeja o gorode Feodoro . Ekaterinburg 2001 (new standard work, Russian).
  • H.-V. Beyer: The story of Matthaios about the city of Theodoro . In: Byzantinische Zeitschrift 96 (2003), pp. 25–56 (poetic description of the Crimean Gothic capital from around 1400 with German translation).
  • Ottar Grønvik : About the origin of the Crimean Goths and the Goths of the Migration Period. A linguistic-critical assessment of the Goth question. In: John Ole Askedal, Harald Bjorvand (Hrsg.): Three studies on Germanic in old and new times. Odense University Press, Odense 1995, ISBN 87-7838-061-8 , pp. 69-94.
  • Ottar Grønvik: The dialect geographic position of the Crimean Gothic and the Crimean Gothic cantilena . Oslo 1983.
  • Johannes Preiser-Kapeller: The last Goths in the Crimea. In: carbuncle. Magazine for history that can be experienced. No. 66 (October – November 2006), pp. 122–124 (general overview with source citations in translation and other literature).
  • Stephan Albrecht: Sources on the history of the Byzantine Crimea. Monographs of the RGZM 101, Mainz 2012, ISBN 9783884671979 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herwig Wolfram: The Goths: from the beginning to the middle of the sixth century . Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-33733-3 .
  2. ↑ Herwig Wolfram, Die Goten , 2001, p. 87 f.
  3. ↑ a b c Heinrich Beck u. a .: Real Lexicon of Germanic Antiquity . Volume 27, ISBN 3-11-018116-9 , p. 438 ff.
  4. ↑ Wilfried Menghin: The Longobards. Archeology and history. Theiss, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0364-4 .
  5. ↑ a b Herwig Wolfram, The Goths. 2001, p. 32.
  6. ↑ a b c Heinrich Beck u. a .: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde , Volume 17, S. 373 ff., ISBN 3-11-018116-9 .