Primitive German theory
The Urgermanentheorie claims a historical continuity between the migration period fracturing west Germans of eastern Central Europe and nearly a thousand years later, during the German Ostsiedlung east withdrawing Germans : The Germans returned, therefore, in the form of the Germans in their ancestral homeland, they only temporarily left.
A quote from Wolfgang H. Fritze makes the core of the theses particularly clear:
"The narrow-minded overestimation of Germanism compared to Slavicism, which is to be discriminated against 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."
Origin and historical background
The primitive German theory emerged in the second half of the 19th century against the background of the conflict between the Prussians and the Poles in the areas that had belonged to Prussia since the Polish partition . The Poles demanded the restoration of national state autonomy in the original Polish territories. The Prussians justified the refusal of Polish statehood with the argument that German claims existed to these areas even before the Polish partitions: namely, it was the homeland of the Teutons, who have become Germans in the course of history, but are actually more or less original Germans .
In addition, the Slavic-Polish areas would have been transformed into a country shaped by German culture through the German eastern settlement , which would have acquired a claim to this land through this cultural achievement . The corresponding “ culture carrier theory ” thus arose at the same time and in the same context, as did the “ Slavic legend ”, according to which there are actually no Slavs at all ; Rather, these are East Germans who have refused Christianization .
Exemplary quote:
“ The migration of the Germanic peoples and the return migration of the Germans have left two types of monuments in these vast river lands of the lowlands, each of which is unique and dignified in its own way, and which are cultural witnesses of the development and growth of an eternally young people : the barrows of the legendary prehistory and Foundling churches from the era of colonization, which experienced a kind of hero age in the early tenth and eleventh centuries and reached its economic and political climax in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and represents a fulfillment of German cultural will. "
Critical discussion
One of the main representatives of this nationalistic and unhistorical perspective in the 20th century was Walther Steller . One of his argumentative main opponent was Wolfgang H. Fritze , which in Steller rebuttal at the end "Slawomanie or Germano mania?" : Stated (1961) , "It would have to be screened thoroughly at the time, the emergence of the German prejudice about the Slavs." Before With this background and not least for this purpose, Fritze founded the interdisciplinary working group “ Germania Slavica ” at the Free University of Berlin in 1976 .
Fritzes most important counter-argument: Not only did the German people emerge from the Germanic tribes who migrated from Eastern Europe, but also rulers were initially founded in Spain ( Andalusia ), North Africa (e.g. today's Tunisia ) and France . The exact tribe structure of the Teutons, the names and the temporal and spatial location of the individual tribes, their transformations and new associations or divisions are still controversial today. The medieval German empire emerged from a Saxon-East Franconian empire under Otto I , which, without prejudice to a certain ethnic continuity, could at best have asserted claims as a partial inheritance, which would first of all require proof that the (western and eastern) Franks would have settled in Eastern Europe at all. In no case is there any state-political continuity: "Meanwhile, the German people cannot invoke historical rights for their territorial claims in the East that are older than the time of their creation" (Fritze).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfgang H. Fritze: Slawomanie or Germano mania? Comments on W. Steller's new theory of the older population history of East Germany . In: the same: early days between the Baltic Sea and the Danube. Selected contributions to the historical development in Eastern Central Europe from the 6th to the 13th century. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, p. 43.
literature
- Wolfgang H. Fritze: Slavomania or Germanomania? Comments on W. Steller's new theory of the older population history of East Germany. In: Yearbook for the History of Central and Eastern Germany Vol. 9/10 (1961), pp. 293–304; again in: Wolfgang H. Fritze: Early Period between the Baltic Sea and the Danube. Selected contributions to the historical development in Eastern Central Europe from the 6th to the 13th century, ed. v. Ludolf Kuchenbuch and Winfried Schich , Berlin 1982, pp. 31–46.