Lecture II
25 October, 1904
The picture of Central
Europe has altered fundamentally between, say, the year 1 and the
6th century A.D. This change involves a complete replacement of the
peoples who lived on the Weichsel, the Oder and the Elbe, by others;
hence it is very difficult for us to picture those races, to learn
anything about their customs and way of living. We must find a way
of our own to form such a picture. Tacitus, in his Germania,
gives descriptions of the country at that time. No other records
have been preserved to us of those days, and we must enlist the help
of the North Germanic legends to complete the account. What Tacitus
says about these races is very significant, in contrast to the Roman
conception of the conditions of those days. In the opinion of
Tacitus, these peoples were the original inhabitants of that land,
for he cannot imagine that any other races would be able to get on
in that inhospitable regiion. He mentions the tribes which dwell on
the Rhine, the Lippe, the Weser, the Danube and in Brandenburg;
these alone are known to him. He tells of characteristic features in
them, and on account of their similarity groups them together under
the name Germani. They, however, felt themselves to be different
tribes, and the struggles with the Romans, they were called may
different names, of which only a few, such as the Suevi, Longobards,
Frisians, etc. have been preserved to later days
They were descended
originally from one, Tuisco, to whom they pay divine homage,
expressing it in songs of battle. Tuisco's son was Mannus, after
whose three sons they named their chief tribes: the Ingavones,
Istavones and Herminones If we compare this information of Tacitus'
with the myths of another Aryan race, we find in Sanscrit, the
sacred language of the Hindus, the same disignation Manu, for their
supreme leader. This indicates a tribal relationship. Indeed, we can
follow like deities in all the Indo-Germanic tribes. Thus Tacitus
relates that the hero of Greek legend, Hercules, was also honoured
by the Germani, bearing among them the name of Irmin. We know that
there existed among the southern Indo-Germanic tribes a legend which
found artistic elaboration in Greece: The story of Odysseus. Tacitus
found, in the neighbourhood of the Rhine, a place of worship
dedicated to Odysseus and his farther Laertes. So we see that the
culture of the Germani at this epoch was akin to the culture we meet
with in Greece in the 8th and 9th centuries B.C. Thus in Greece we
see later the development of a culture which in Germany has remained
stationary at a lower level.
All this points to an
original relationship between these races. The peoples who lived,
later in Germany, Greece and Russia, probably had their earlier
homeland north of the Black Sea. From there one tribe wandered to
Greece, another to Rome, and a third towards the west; the original
culture of all these peoples was maintained in this form by the
Germani, and further developed by the Celts. Tacitus tells us
nothing of the manners and customs of that remarkable race. By the
songs and sagas collected later in Iceland, in the Prose Edda
and the Poetic Edda, we must conclude that what that race
produced, persisted there. Tacitus tells us further of the customs
of the Germans in their tribal assemblies, which, however, we must
picture as deliberations of very small communities. To these
assemblies came all the warriors of that province; the consultations
were carried on to the accompaniment of beer and mead, and we are
told that the old Germans made their resolutions when drunk in the
evening, but revised them next morning when they were sober, and not
until then were the decisions valid. As we learn from the
Iliad, the same custom existed among the Persians. So we must
conclude that there was an original Aryan stem, and hence a
relationship between all these races.
Among the Germanic
races in the north, a great similarity is specially evident in the
characteristic forms of their religion, which do, indeed,
fundamentally resemble those of the south, and yet show a much
greater conformity with those of the Persians. According to the
northern Germani, there were originally two kingdoms, separated from
each other by an abyss: a kingdom of fire, Muspelheim, and a kingdom
of ice, Niflheim. The sparks which flew over from Muspelheim, gave
rise, in the abyss, to the first race of giants, of whom Ymir was
the most outstanding. Then arose the Cow, Audhumbe, which was
overlaid by the ice, and brought forth a mighty human form. From
this human form sprang the Gods: Woten, Wile and We, whose names
mean Reason, Will and Kindness. This second race of Gods was called
Asen. Its descent was traced to the first race of giants.
Here too there occurs
an important connection between the languages, for Asuras, the name
of the Persian gods, suggests the sound Asen, again indicating a
relationship connecting all these races. We find another important
indication in an ancient Persian formula or poem of exorcism, which
has come down to us. It points to changes in the mind of the race,
to ancient Gods, deposed and supplanted by others. The service of
the Devas was forsworn, the service of the Asuras confirmed. Here
appears similarity to the giants, who were overcome by the Asen.
Moreover, the North
Germanic legend tells how the three Gods found an ash and an alder
on the seashore, and from them created the human race. The Persian
myth, too, makes the human race come forth from a tree. We find
echoes of these myths among the Jews, in the story of the Tree of
Life in Paradise. Thus we see, from Persia to Scandinavia, by way of
Palestine, traces of similar mythical ideas.
So we have proved a
common fundamental character among certain races. At the same time
there are again differences between a southern and a northern branch
of the common main stock. To the southern branch belong the Greeks,
Latins, and Hindus; to the northern, the Persian and Germaninc
tribes. Let us see then what sort of races we have to do with in
Germany now. As they confront us, we are bound to believe that they
have traits of character which the Greeks and Italians have long
cast off, and indeed, the Greeks after, the Romans
during the conquest of their empire; whereas these northern
peoples developed their essential characteristics and qualities
before that conquest. They were the original, unpolished
qualities, which these races had preserved. They had not experienced
that transition-stage, through which, in the meanwhile, the southern
races had passed. Hence we have to do here with the clash of a race
which has remained conservative, against one which, although related
to it, has attained a greater height of culture.
At the time of the
rise of Christianity, which was to acquire so great a significance
for them, described by the Greeks in the works of Homer. They had
not cooperated in the advance of culture and civilisation which lay
between. In the first centuries A.D., Tacitus describes the Germani
of the borderlands of the Danube, the Rhine and the Lippe. These
races were characterised by the roving instinct, love of liberty,
and delight in hunting and war. Domestic matters lay in the hands of
women. Here we meet with a civilisation and a form of society which
had long disappeared from among the Greeks, and could only be
preserved where the several members of a tribe were still bound to
one another by blood relationships. Hence teh many tribes. In those
who were conscious of their derivation from the same family —
for they were regularised families, not hordes — tribal
kinship was evolved from the separate families. Thus the wars which
they waged were almost always against foreign blood.
Towards the end of the
4th, and during the 5th century, we see all these races compelled to
change their places of abode, and to seek new ones.
The epoch of the folk
migrations had begun. The Huns broke in and therewith knowledge
faded from among the peoples living in the east — the Gepids,
etc., and above all, the Goths. This race, divided into the
Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, had already accepted Christianity. It
is a race of special importance for us, just because of the way it
apprehended Christianity. Whereas the Franks, who later spread
Christianity from west to east, thrust it upon other races with
force, the Goths were full of tolerance. The high level of culture
which they had already attained is vouched for by the circumstances
that we owe to a Gothic bishop, Ulfias or Wulfila, the first
translation of the Bible, the so-called Silver Codex, which is
preserved in Upsula.
These Goths, whose
civilisation came from the east, held a different form of
Christianity from those whose conversion issued later from the west.
They were not like the Franks who, in the days of Charlemagne,
thrust Christianity upon the Saxons by force of arms. (All these
eastern Germanic tribes professed the Arian belief, a point of view
which, at the Council of Nicea, was declared heretical and
persecuted by the supporters of Athanasius).
The Arian Christians
maintained that God dwells in the bosom of every man. Hence the
Goths believed in the deification of man, as Christ, Who had gone
before, showed to men. This viewpoint was allied with a deep
cultivation of feeling. The Goths had the greatest possible
tolerance for every other form of religion. No compromise was
possible between two Christian creeds which were so different from
each other. As absolute tolerance was a characteristic of these
Goths; it never occurred to them to force a belief on anyone else;
thus we are at once confronted with the difference in the way
Charlemagne and Clovis, supporters of the Athanasian profession of
faith, exploited Christianity for political purposes.
The Arians saw in
Christ a man highly developed above all other men, but a man among
men. Their Christ belonged to humanity and dwelt in the human
breast. The Christ of the Athanasian Christians is God
Himself, throned high above men.
Athanasiaus won the
victory, and the evolution of culture was essentially influenced by
it.
The Germani were
hemmed in on all sides by foreign races; in the south and west by
the Romans and Gauls (Celto-Germanic tribes); while from the east
new encroachments of peoples continually took place. The first
Christian Germanic tribes had neer known anything but absolute
tolerance; the Christian Franks brought in a compulsory
Christianity. This led to a change of temperament. On the evolution
of this section of the Germani depended essentially the further
evolution of culture. A radical change of legal conditions had
gradually come about.
To a certain extent
calm and fixity set in with the end of the fifth century. Through
continual reinforcements from the east, larger tribal communities
had been formed from the above mentioned tribes, who were for ever
attacking one another, and of whom even the names (Chatten,
Frisians, etc.) have only in a few cases been preserved. Through the
loosening of the old blood bonds, another motive for clinging
together was created. In place of the blood bond, appeared the bond
which allied a man with the ground and soil that he tilled.
The connection
together of tribes became equivalent to their connection with
places. The village community arose. It was no longer the
consciousness of blood relationship, but the connection with the
soil that bound several members together. This led to a
metamorphosis of the conditions of property.
Originally all
property was held in common and private property acquired
prominence. Still, everything which could be common property
(forest, pasturage, water, etc.) remained so, for the time being.
Then an intermediate stage grew up between common and private
property, the so-called “hide” of land. The use of this
half-private, half-common property served as a basis to determine
the so-called free inhabitants of the hide, the community; and in
those early days, almost all the dwellers within these bounds were
free.
This stands in stark
contrast to actual private property: weapons, household utensils,
garments, gardens, cattle, etc., everything which the individual has
personally acquired. This limitation is expressed in the fact that
private property is closely bound up with the personality of the
possessor That is why a dead man had his weapons, horses, dogs, etc.
buried with him in his grave. It is an echo of this ancient custom
when, even today, at the funeral of a prince, his orders, crown,
etc. are carried after him, and his horse is led behind.
With the Chinese, too,
a race which in many ways shows similarity with the ancient Germani,
a dead man has the objects which belonged to him personally, buried
with him, a condition carried out today, at any rate with paper
models.
Thus we see the
transition from the tribal, to the village community, which has
developed from certain relationships, from this we understand
further metamorphoses. We understand why Tacitus does not speak of
the Asen, but of Tuisco and his son Mannus. He speaks of races which
have not yet reached to a higher level of culture. Other races came
from the north, and brought with them ideas which they developed
there. These fitted in to the higher stages of culture which had
meantime been reached. How far does a man get with the ideas that
confront us in Tuisco or Mannus? He remains with the human being,
does not go beyond himself. It would have been useless to
introduce the service of Wotan to these tribes. The service of Wotan
goes out into the universal; man seeks his origin in the bosom of
Nature. It was only in the later stage of civilisation that man
could rise to this religious level. When he has settled down, he
understands his connection with Nature. Thus we have seen how the
primitive culture of the southern Germani was influenced from the
north, and how, in the meantime, high civilisations had developed
among related races in the south.
We shall see further
on, under what conditions the southern culture was spread among the
Germani. An interesting survey is presented to us there; the
deep-seated kinship of different races. We see the external
influences which alter the character. Cause and effect become clear
to us.
And so we learn to
understand the present from the past. Eternal variability governs
not only Nature, but History. How could we face the future with
confident courage, if we did not know that the present also changes,
that we can shape it to our liking, that here too the poet's words
hold good?
The old gives way, Time alters all;
And new life blossoms from the ruins.
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