Northwest block

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The northwest block

The term Northwest Bloc covers groups of people who lived in the last centuries BC. BC in the north-west of Central Europe and should have spoken neither Celtic nor Germanic , but an Indo-European idiom different from these forms . The north-west block is therefore also known as the "peoples between Teutons and Celts ".

The Northwest Block Hypothesis

The hypothesis of the existence of the north-west block was first put forward by the linguist Hans Kuhn in 1959 on the basis of his evaluation of place names, in some cases also personal names and other linguistic indicators, and expanded in the following years.

According to Kuhn, the southern border to the Celtic-speaking area extends from the Somme via the Oise to the Main . This is recognizable z. E.g. the spread of Celtic place names with the ending “-dunon” ( Latin : “-dunum”, e.g. Noviodunum ) or “-briga”, which do not occur north of the line mentioned. In the north and north-east the area of ​​the northwest block extends to the Lower Weser , Aller and Harz as well as to Thuringia and Hesse . To the north and east of it sat Germanic-speaking peoples.

The north-west block is characterized by the occurrence of the following phenomena, which, however, are not evenly distributed over the entire area:

  • Preservation of Indo-European p (compared to shift to f in Germanic or the complete loss in Celtic), preservation of unshifted or incompletely displaced plosives.
  • Occurrence of a st - suffix in place and partly also in personal names.
  • k suffix.
  • Element -apa in river names.
  • Suffix -andr- in place names.
  • Occurrence of certain word or name stems, e.g. B. in the east of the Veneter , in the west of the Belgian name.

Hans Kuhn put forward indications that the area of ​​the north-west block north along the North Sea coast and south through Thuringia and Hesse was surrounded by migrations of Germanic-speaking groups. Caesar already knows the river Schelde by its Germanic name "Scaldis", which indicates that around the middle of the 1st century BC. A Germanic-speaking population can be expected here.

According to Kuhn, the core area of ​​the northwest block was not Germanized until the birth of Christ . The Chatti and Cherusci also belonged to the north-west block, which is said not to have originally been Germanic tribes. With regard to the tribal name of the Cherusci, Kuhn pointed out that the suffix -sk- is not Germanic, or rather unusual as such. He sees a compound that can be linked to Indo-European language from the northwest block. The Germanization by a Germanic upper class, to which the Cheruscan Arminius is said to have belonged, was, in the opinion of Hans Kuhn, promoted by the defensive struggle against the Romans.

In contrast to the Germanic tribes, the Northwest Bloc tribes were down-to-earth and should remain so throughout the migration of the peoples .

In the past, some historians and linguists viewed the Northwest Block as Illyrians . In 1962, Hans Kuhn considered it to be the most likely assumption that the north-west block used the Venetian language or a language closely related to it.

criticism

Hans Kuhn's hypothesis met with approval, but also with strong rejection, with his critics accusing Kuhn of fleeting and imprecise work.

Wolfgang Meid considers the presence of an originally non-Celtic and non-Germanic, but linguistically related population in north-western Central Europe to be proven, but has doubts about the spatial extent of this linguistic substrate and the question of the later Germanization.

Critics such as the onomastic Jürgen Udolph see in the water names put forward as the main argument on -apa- only a derivation of idg. * Ap- / ab- in the course of the Germanic sound shift and reckon "the area of ​​the alleged north-west block with its alleged extension in southwestern Lower Saxony, Westphalia, the southern Netherlands and northern Belgium to the Germanic core areas ”.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Meid 1986, pp. 186-187.
  2. ^ Hans Kuhn: Arminius . In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Volume 1, 1973 pp. 420–421.
  3. ↑ Kuhn 1959, p. 36.
  4. ↑ Meid 1986, p. 200.
  5. ↑ Udolph 1994, p. 940.

See also

literature

  • Rolf Hachmann , Georg Kossack , Hans Kuhn: Peoples between Teutons and Celts. Written sources, finds and names on the history of northern West Germany around the birth of Christ . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1962.
  • Hans Kuhn: First and early Germanic place names in Northern Germany and the Netherlands . In: Westfälische Forschungen 12, 1959, ISSN  0083-9027 , pp. 5-44.
  • Wolfgang Meid : Hans Kuhn's “Northwest Block” hypothesis. On the problem of the "peoples between Teutons and Celts" . In: Heinrich Beck (Hrsg.): Germanic problems in today's view . 2nd Edition. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1986, ISBN 3-11-010806-2 , ( Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde supplementary volumes 1), pp. 183-212.
  • Jürgen Udolph : Name studies on the German problem . de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1994, ISBN 3-11-014138-8 , ( Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde supplementary volumes 9).