The Elbe Germans (German : Elbgermanen) or Elbe Germanic peoples were Germanic tribes whose settlement area, based on archaeological finds, lay either side of the Elbe estuary on both sides of the river and which extended as far as Bohemia and Moravia, clearly the result of a migration up the Elbe river from the northwest in advance of the main Migration Period until the individual groups ran into the Roman Danube Limes around 200 AD.
The Elbe Germans included the tribes of the Semnones, Hermunduri, Quadi, Marcomanni and the Lombards. [1] Historically they are possibly the same as the Irminones or Herminones mentioned by classical authors such as Tacitus, Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela. The most notable of these were the Suebic tribes.
All or most of the modern languages thought to derive from the languages of these historical peoples are in the High German group of the West Germanic language family.
By contrast with the settlement areas of the North Sea, Oder-Vistula and Rhine-Weser Germans (from which the Franks descended), there was a relatively uniform development in the economic and social spheres. This can be seen, for example, in the clear consistencies of material and intellectual culture (ceramics, appliances, weapons, jewellery, religious customs, etc.). This was due to the intensive contact between the Elbe Germanic tribes, as well as contact with other, more distant, Germanic tribes.
Links with the Jastorf culture have been made.
Based on the Roman sources, this cultural area was briefly united under Maroboduus (c. 30 BC -- AD 37), a Romanized king of the Germanic Suebi.
The term 'Elbe Germanic' (German: Elbgermanen) was first used in 1868 by Paul Gustav Wislicenus (1847-1917), but it was especially popularized by the German prehistorian de:Walther Matthes in 1931. [2] The term was based initially on partially speculative derivations from ancient Roman sources.
For example, numerous Roman authors mentioned the tribes such as the Suebi and the Irminones, and some other Germanic tribes of the late antiquity on the Danube limes of the Roman Empire.
In the second half of the 20th century, more archeological evidence has emerged. In 1963, the Czech archaeologist Bedřich Svoboda took up the term and postulated an Elbe Germanic connection with the finds in Bohemia and Bavaria, which was later confirmed. [3]
Archaeological finds make it possible to differentiate between the different settlement areas of the Elbe Germanic tribes. There is a northern group around the mouth of the Elbe and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a middle group in central Germany that reaches as far as the Oder, and a southern group in Bohemia, an area that was entirely Elbe-Germanic during the time of the Roman Empire.
Based on the linguistic and archaeological evidence, it is believed that the major Germanic tribes of the Alemanni, Thuringii, and the Bavarii mainly developed from the smaller Suebic groups that were part of the Elbe Germanic peoples. [4]
"Elbe Germanic", also called Irminonic, is a term introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer in his 1942 book, Nordgermanen und Alemanen, to describe the unattested proto-language, or dialectal grouping, ancestral to the later Alemannic, Lombardic, Thuringian and Bavarian dialects.
The Marcomanni were a Germanic people that established a powerful kingdom north of the Danube, somewhere near modern Bohemia, during the peak of power of the nearby Roman Empire. According to Tacitus and Strabo, they were Suebian.
The Suebi or Suebians were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names such as the Marcomanni, Quadi, Hermunduri, Semnones, and Lombards. New groupings formed later, such as the Alamanni and Bavarians, and two kingdoms in the Migration Period were simply referred to as Suebian.
The Cherusci were a Germanic tribe that inhabited parts of the plains and forests of northwestern Germany in the area of the Weser River and present-day Hanover during the first centuries BC and AD. Roman sources reported they considered themselves kin with other Irmino tribes and claimed common descent from an ancestor called Mannus. During the early Roman Empire under Augustus, the Cherusci first served as allies of Rome and sent sons of their chieftains to receive Roman education and serve in the Roman army as auxiliaries. The Cherusci leader Arminius led a confederation of tribes in the ambush that destroyed three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. He was subsequently kept from further damaging Rome by disputes with the Marcomanni and reprisal attacks led by Germanicus. After rebel Cherusci killed Arminius in AD 21, infighting among the royal family led to the highly Romanized line of his brother Flavus coming to power. Following their defeat by the Chatti around AD 88, the Cherusci do not appear in further accounts of the German tribes, apparently being absorbed into the late classical groups such as the Saxons, Thuringians, Franks, Bavarians, and Allemanni.
The Irminones, also referred to as Herminones or Hermiones, were a large group of early Germanic tribes settling in the Elbe watershed and by the first century AD expanding into Bavaria, Swabia, and Bohemia. Notably this included the large sub-group of the Suevi, that itself contained many different tribal groups, but the Irminones also included for example the Chatti.
The Quadi were a Germanic people who lived approximately in the area of modern Moravia in the time of the Roman Empire. The only surviving contemporary reports about the Germanic tribe are those of the Romans, whose empire had its border on the River Danube just to the south of the Quadi. They associated the Quadi with their neighbours the Marcomanni, and described both groups as having entered the region after the Celtic Boii had left it deserted. The Quadi may later have contributed to the "Suebian" group who crossed the Rhine with the Vandals and Alans in the 406 Crossing of the Rhine, and later founded a kingdom in northwestern Iberia.
The Thuringii, Toringi or Teuriochaimai were an early Germanic people that appeared during the late Migration Period in the Harz Mountains of central Germania, a region still known today as Thuringia. It became a kingdom, which came into conflict with the Merovingian Franks, and it later came under their influence and Frankish control. The name is still used for one of modern Germany's federal states (Bundesländer).
The Teutons were an ancient northern European tribe mentioned by Roman authors. The Teutons are best known for their participation, together with the Cimbri and other groups, in the Cimbrian War with the Roman Republic in the late second century BC.
Germania, also called Magna Germania, Germania Libera, or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a historical region in north-central Europe during the Roman era, which was associated by Roman authors with the Germanic peoples. The region stretched roughly from the Middle and Lower Rhine in the west to the Vistula in the east. It also extended as far south as the Upper and Middle Danube and Pannonia, and to the known parts of southern Scandinavia in the north. Archaeologically, these peoples correspond roughly to the Roman Iron Age of those regions. While apparently dominated by Germanic peoples, Magna Germania was also inhabited by other Indo-European peoples.
The Lemovii were a Germanic tribe, only once named by Tacitus in the late 1st century. He noted that they lived near the Rugii and Goths and that they had short swords and round shields.
The Sciri, or Scirians, were a Germanic people. They are believed to have spoken an East Germanic language. Their name probably means "the pure ones".
The Brisigavi or Brisgavi were a Germanic tribe dwelling in the southern region of the Black Forest, in south Germany, during the 5th century AD.
Barbaricum is a geographical name used by historical and archaeological experts to refer to the vast area of barbarian-occupied territory that lay, in Roman times, beyond the frontiers or limes of the Roman Empire in North, Central and South Eastern Europe, the "lands lying beyond Roman administrative control but nonetheless a part of the Roman world". During the Late Antiquity, it was the Latin name for those tribal territories not occupied by Rome that lay beyond the Rhine and the Danube : Ammianus Marcellinus used it, as did Eutropius. The earliest recorded mention appears to date to the early 3rd century.
The Dębczyn culture is an archeological culture in Pomerania from the third to sixth centuries. It was derived from the neighboring Wielbark culture with influences from the Elbe region. The culture was superseded as the result of the later migrations of West Slavs, in particular of the Pomeranians.
Elbe Germanic, also called Irminonic or Erminonic, is a term introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer (1898–1984) in his book, Nordgermanen und Alemanen, to describe the unattested proto-language, or dialectal grouping, ancestral to the later Lombardic, Alemannic, Bavarian and Thuringian dialects. During Late antiquity and the Middle Ages, its supposed descendants had a profound influence on the neighboring West Central German dialects and, later, in the form of Standard German, on the German language as a whole.
Weser–Rhine Germanic is a proposed group of prehistoric West Germanic dialects which would have been both a direct ancestor of Dutch and a notable substratum influencing West Central German dialects. The term was introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer as a replacement for the older term Istvaeonic, with which it is essentially synonymous. The term Rhine–Weser Germanic is sometimes preferred.
After the glaciers of the Ice Age in the Early Stone Age withdrew from the area, which since about 1000 AD is called Pomerania, in what are now northern Germany and Poland, they left a tundra. First humans appeared, hunting reindeer in the summer. A climate change in 8000 BC allowed hunters and foragers of the Ertebølle-Ellerbek culture to continuously inhabit the area. These people became influenced by farmers of the Linear Pottery culture who settled in southern Pomerania. The hunters of the Ertebølle-Ellerbek culture became farmers of the Funnelbeaker culture in 3000 BC. The Havelland culture dominated in the Uckermark from 2500 to 2000 BC. In 2400 BC, the Corded Ware culture reached Pomerania and introduced the domestic horse. Both Linear Pottery and Corded Ware culture have been associated with Indo-Europeans. Except for Western Pomerania, the Funnelbeaker culture was replaced by the Globular Amphora culture a thousand years later.
The Gustow group is an archaeological culture of the Roman Iron Age in Western Pomerania. The Gustow group is associated with the Germanic tribe of the Rugii.
Friedrich Maurer was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
Reinhard Wenskus was a German historian who was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Göttingen. His theories on the identity of Germanic peoples have had a major influence on contemporary research by historians of late antiquity.
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