Slavic legend

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A historical theory is called a Slavic legend or Slavic lie , according to which the Slavs who settled in the eastern areas of today's Germany in the early and high Middle Ages were actually East Germans , but who had rejected Christianization . It originated before the Second World War ( Erich Bromme ) and was and is mainly spread in the nationalist - right-wing extremist spectrum, occasionally also taken up outside this circle. The representatives include Walther Steller , Lothar Greil , Helmut Schrätze and Árpád von Nahodyl Neményi . From the historical sciences such as history , archeology and linguistics , the theory is rejected as unscientific and historical revisionist .

Beginnings under Walther Steller and the reactions of the historical sciences

The Germanist and folklorist Walther Steller published in 1959 in his function as federal culture warden of the Silesian Landsmannschaft in the messages of the Landsmannschaft Schlesien, Landesgruppe Schleswig-Holstein No. 15 a work on the name and concept of the Wends (Sclavi). A verbal study. In it he took up the " primitive German theory " popular under National Socialism , but continued to do so by not only claiming the continued existence of a Germanic population in East Germany, but also denying any significant immigration of Slavic groups. The high medieval eastern settlement would not have led to a merging of the German and Slavic population, but merely a "Christianization and Germanization of the old East Germanic element with a certain influx of German populations". With these remarks he primarily connected political goals, in that he wanted to intervene with his “discoveries” in the “questions of the German eastern border ”. Under the catchphrase "Error of science - loss of homeland", he accused the historical scientists of having caused the loss of the eastern German territories by tolerating and spreading old heresies. Steller's theses were enthusiastically taken up in the publications of the associations of expellees and authors with similar ideas such as Hans Scholz from Berlin.

Soon after the appearance of Steller's work, replies and reviews by well-known specialists such as the archaeologists Wolfgang La Baume and Georg Kossack , the Slavist Ludolf Müller , the Germanist Gerhard Cordes and the regional historian Wilhelm Koppe appeared in various publications , in which this work was unanimously and with sharp words Was rejected. The medieval historian Wolfgang H. Fritze also dealt intensively with Steller's theses and methods in 1961: “[The reader] observes ... with a growing consternation from side to side, the author's hair-raising dilettantism, who himself is most embarrassing with this book Wisely exposes itself, yes - it must be said - the scientific death sentence is pronounced. He was only able to achieve his revolutionary 'results' by restricting himself to a few sources - which he also interprets with imaginable arbitrariness - while disregarding all others. In addition, he only uses previous research where it suits him. ”In conclusion, Fritze stated for one of the“ originals ”of such theories from Steller's pen that“ we are dealing with a typical product of National Socialist pseudoscience. The narrow-minded overestimation of Germanism compared to Slavicism, which is to be discriminated by its 'Sarmatian' qualification as 'Asian', the racism that haunts the books and the primitive, pre-scientific equation of Nordic race and Germanism are clear characteristics. ... The whole book, this grotesque and at the same time harrowing product of an academic half-education guided by political tendencies, deserves to be taken seriously only in one point: its importance as a symptom. "

Revisiting the theory from the 1970s onwards

It was only at the end of the 1970s that right-wing publicists took up the theory again and distributed it in several books. These include above all Lothar Greil and Helmut Schrätze and, more recently, Árpád by Nahodyl Neményi .

Archaeological, historical and linguistic research continued to reject such theses and has now completely ignored them. This also enabled the advocates of this theory to create a largely self-contained system of mutual evidence and quotations in which the results of scientific research are either negated or used in a falsified and abbreviated form.

Jochen Wittmann's theories

In his book Die Daglinger / "Piasten" and the Germanic Continuity , published in 1990 and in the second edition in 2005 by the right-wing extremist publisher of the Austrian Michael Damböck, the author Jochen Wittmann claimed that the Polish ruling family of the Piasts was originally a Germanic family from what is now Norway . Mieszko I. would only have been called miseco / mesica , but would actually have been called Dago or Dagr, which is why he calls the Piast family Daglinger or Dagoner. His theory would prove the "continuous Germanic continuity" of this ruling dynasty and Mieszko I would have laid "the cornerstone of the Warta and Netze for the later and generally also only from the 13th century on as Poland in the East Germanic area". This work is also largely ignored in science.

The connections with the theory of the invented Middle Ages

Some proponents of the theory of the invented Middle Ages , also rejected by science as unscientific , have taken up the theory of the “Slavic legend” on various occasions since the 1990s. Book reviews of Helmut Schrätze's publications can be found in the Zeitensprünge magazine published by Heribert Illig (2004 issue 3).

literature

Representative of the theory
  • Lothar Greil: Slavic legend. The Germans, victims of an erroneous view of history. Educational documentation. Volkstum, Wien / Munich 1971, ISBN 3-85342-024-9 (2nd supplementary and extended edition Landig. Wien, Munich 1972; 4th supplementary and extended edition AKZ-Schlee. Eschweiler 1988) .
  • Helmut Schrätze: Indo-Germans - Teutons - Slavs. Your roots in Central and Eastern Europe. Orion-Heimreiter-Verlag , 2003, ISBN 3-89093-024-7 .
  • Helmut Schrätze: Teutons - Slavs. Prehistory and early history of the East Germanic area 2nd edition. Verlag für holistic research (Verlag der Ludendorffer ) 1999 Viöl (North Friesland) ISBN 3-922314-97-X ; again Panorama, Wiesbaden 1999 ISBN 3-932296-00-1
  • Árpád by Nahodyl Neményi: The Slav myth. How East Germanic became a people of the "Slavs" with a foreign language and mythology. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2015, ISBN 978-3-7386-3786-1
Criticism of Steller's Slav thesis
  • Wolfgang H. Fritze: Slavomania or Germanomania? Comments on W. Steller's new theory of the older population history of East Germany . Yearbook for the History of Central and Eastern Germany 9/10, 1961.
  • W. Kuhn in: Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 8, 1960, p. 214.
  • Wolfgang La Baume in: Ostdeutscher Literatur-Anzeiger 6, 1960, p. 145.
  • Georg Kossack, Ludolf Müller, Gerhard Cordes, Wilhelm Koppe in: ZSHG 85/86, 1960/61, pp. 296-318.
  • H.-D. Kahl in: Research questions of our time 7, 1960, p. 74 ff.
  • L. Müller, "Ostholstein-Slavic". Reply to an article by Prof. Steller . Schleswig-Holstein, Monthly Bulletin for Heimat und Volkstum 12, 1960, p. 292 f.
Confrontation with the theory
  • Torsten Kempke: A contribution on the subject of "Slavic legend": Controversial issue - East Elbe Germanic or Slavic? . In: Lübeckische Blätter 145, 1985, pp. 121-124.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Handbook of Austrian Right-Wing Extremism, Vienna 1994; abridged version of the manual online ( memento of November 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), with the entry on Damböck
  2. ↑ There were only a few reactions to the book: Review in Genealogische Mitteilungen / Arbeitskreis Genealogie Braunschweig, Vol. 33/34 (1995), pp. 35–54.