Urn from the Lombard grave field at Putensen - 1

The Elbe Germans () or Elbe Germanic peoples were

Germanic tribes The Germanic peoples were tribal groups who lived in Northern Europe in Classical antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In modern scholarship, they typically include not only the Roman-era ''Germani'' who lived in both ''Germania'' and parts ...

whose settlement area, based on archaeological finds, lay either side of the

Elbe The Elbe ( ; ; or ''Elv''; Upper Sorbian, Upper and , ) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Ge ...

estuary on both sides of the river and which extended as far as

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

and

Moravia Moravia ( ; ) is a historical region in the eastern Czech Republic, roughly encompassing its territory within the Danube River's drainage basin. It is one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The medieval and early ...

, clearly the result of a migration up the Elbe river from the northwest in advance of the main

Migration Period The Migration Period ( 300 to 600 AD), also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories ...

until the individual groups ran into the Roman Danube Limes around 200 AD.

Tribal affiliation

The Elbe Germans included the tribes of the

Semnones The Semnones were a Germanic and specifically a Suebi people, located between the Elbe and the Oder in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. They were described in the late 1st century by Tacitus in his ''Germania'': "The Semnones give themselves out t ...

Hermunduri The Hermunduri, Hermanduri, Hermunduli, Hermonduri, or Hermonduli were an ancient Germanic tribe, who occupied an inland area near the source of the Elbe river, around what is now Bohemia from the first to the third century, though they have als ...

Quadi The Quadi were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people during the Roman era, who were prominent in Greek and Roman records from about 20 AD to about 400 AD. By about 20 AD they had a kingdom centred in the area of present-day western Slovakia, north ...

Marcomanni The Marcomanni were a Germanic people who lived close to the border of the Roman Empire, north of the River Danube, and are mentioned in Roman records from approximately 60 BC until about 400 AD. They were one of the most important members of th ...

and the

Lombards The Lombards () or Longobards () were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774. The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the ''History of the Lombards'' (written betwee ...

. Historically they are possibly the same as the

Irminones 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 ...

or Herminones mentioned by classical authors such as

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. Tacitus’ two major historical works, ''Annals'' ( ...

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...

and

Pomponius Mela Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest known Roman geographer. He was born at the end of the 1st century BC in Tingentera (now Algeciras) and died AD 45. His short work (''De situ orbis libri III.'') remained in use nea ...

. 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 The High German languages (, i.e. ''High German dialects''), or simply High German ( ) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German" – comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Ben ...

group of the

West Germanic The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic languages, Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic languages, North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages, East Germ ...

language family. By contrast with the settlement areas of the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

, Oder-Vistula and Rhine-Weser Germans (from which the

Franks file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...

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 The Jastorf culture was an Iron Age Europe, Iron Age material culture in what is now Germany, stretching north into Jutland, and east into Poland, spanning the 6th to 1st centuries BC, forming the southern part of the Pre-Roman Iron Age. Peri ...

have been made. Based on the Roman sources, this cultural area was briefly united under

Maroboduus Maroboduus (d. AD 37), also known as Marbod, was a king of the Marcomanni, who were a Germanic Suebian people. He spent part of his youth in Rome, and returning, found his people under pressure from invasions by the Roman Empire between the Rhi ...

(c. 30 BC—AD 37), a Romanized king of the Germanic Suebi.

History of research

Germanic grave goods from Schwanbeck - fibula

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. 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 file:1st century Germani.png, 300px, The approximate positions of some Germanic peoples reported by Graeco-Roman authors in the 1st century. Suebian peoples in red, and other Irminones in purple. The Suebi (also spelled Suavi, Suevi or Suebians ...

and the

, 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. 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 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MV; ; ), also known by its Anglicisation, anglicized name Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, is a Federated state, state in the north-east of Germany. Of the country's States of Germany, sixteen states, Mecklenburg-Vorpom ...

, 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 The Alemanni or Alamanni were a confederation of Germanic peoples, Germanic tribes * * * on the Upper Rhine River during the first millennium. First mentioned by Cassius Dio in the context of the campaign of Roman emperor Caracalla of 213 CE ...

, Thuringii, and the

Bavarii The Baiuvarii or Bavarii, sometimes simply called Bavarians (; ) were a Germanic people who lived in and near present-day southern Bavaria, which is named after them. They began to appear in records by the 6th century AD, and their culture, lang ...

mainly developed from the smaller Suebic groups that were part of the Elbe Germanic peoples.Heinrich Beck
Germanenprobleme in heutiger Sicht
Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 1999,

Elbe Germanic protolanguage

"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 In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...

, or dialectal grouping, ancestral to the later Alemannic, Lombardic,

Thuringian Thuringian is an East Central German dialect group spoken in much of the modern German Free State of Thuringia north of the Rennsteig ridge, southwestern Saxony-Anhalt and adjacent territories of Hesse and Bavaria. It is close to Upper Saxon s ...

and Bavarian dialects.

References

Literature

* {{Authority control

Tribal affiliation

History of research

Elbe Germanic protolanguage

See also

References

Literature