You gotta wonder why no-one ever says there's an inherent contradiction between being so big on the Romans as I am (the Republic, not the Empire nor the Church) and having an image of the Hermann Heights Monument in New Ulm MN, a copy of the Hermannsdenkmal in Germany, as a cover photo as I do. Well actually it's no wonder; the monument commemorates one of the most decisive events in world history that changed all subsequent history to the present, yet now hardly anyone knows about it, and there's reasons for that.
Huh? What does that even mean? OK let's start with Who's Hermann.
Who's Hermann?
Hermann is a name given, possibly first by Martin Luther, to a guy named Arminius. Great, who's Arminius? Arminius is the Latin name of a hostage from a Germanic tribe called the Cherusci, who lived right around present-day Hannover. Hermann was the son of the tribal chief Segimerus (in Latin, in German it's Segimer). He was taken hostage, raised in Rome, given military training, made a Roman citizen, and made a member of the ordo equester, the order of knights. This is not knights in the European mediaeval sense, but a property-based class below the patricians. Patricians are so-named as the descendants of the patres, the founding fathers and families of Rome. The ordo equester was originally based on the ability to provide men and horses for military service, and in Arminius' time it was just below the ordo senatorius, the order of Senators and their families. Arminius was about eighteen when Jesus was born in another part of the Roman Empire.
Arminius turned against Rome and united various Germanic tribes against Roman direct rule, and sometime in September 9 A.D. inflicted arguably the worst defeat ever suffered by Rome in its entire history. In German this is called die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald. Holy crap, what's a schlacht, what's a wald, and what's this Teutoburger thing, some kind of hamburger at Five Guys? OK, die Schlacht is a battle, der Wald is a forest or woods, and Teutoburger is the name of the forest. However, the German name only dates from 1875, and the reasons for that reflect not so much the ancient battle but its continuing influence even up to the present time. Yet that influence, though there, is hardly known now, and there's reasons for that. Which is why I'm posting about it. Here's the deal.
Why the Battle Was a Big Deal Then.
The Latin name for this event comes from when it happened. It's called clades variana, the Varian Disaster, after Publius Quinctilius Varus, the losing general. Arminius lured his former ally into a trap, and defeated three Roman legions (Legions XVII, XVIII and XIX) plus six cohorts of associated non-citizen auxiliary troops and three squadrons of non-citizen cavalry (alae), with a total Roman loss of somewhere between 15 to 20K men. It was so bad that as it was ending Varus following custom committed suicide by falling on his sword, as did a number of his sub-commanders. The rest were killed, including his second in command, the Legate Numonius Vala, who tried to run away. The others were either killed in action, or, Tacitus records, later cooked alive in native German religious rituals, and many captured soldiers were made slaves. Arminius had Varus' head cut off and sent it to another German king, Maroboduus of the Marcomanni, to propose an alliance, but that king stayed out of it and sent the severed head to Rome for disposition. Topping it all off, in what the Romans considered a great shame and humiliation, each legion had its aquila, eagle standard, captured.
No Roman account tries to minimise the extent of the loss. Bear in mind that in 9 AD the Roman Empire was just 36 years old, under its first emperor, Caesar Augustus, eager to establish itself over the former Roman Republic, for which some still held sympathy, and not in the mood to sustain catastrophic defeats. Suetonius records in The Lives of the Caesars (De vita caesarum) that Caesar Augustus was so upset at the magnitude of the loss that he repeatedly banged his head on the wall shouting Quintilius Varus gimme back the legions (well, he actually said Quintili Vare legiones redde, I translated).
OK so where did this happen exactly? The precise location of the battle was not known for centuries and is still not settled, and, the whole engagement happened in several places over several days, but in general it was just south and east of Hannover, Arminius' tribe's area, which is east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, or Rhein and Donau in German; their true, that is, Latin, names are Rhenus and Danubius. In present-day Germany, it's in the states of Nordrhein-Westfalen, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Niedersachsen (Neddersassen in the local dialect), Lower Saxony, both created 23 August 1946 by the British military administration of their occupation zone following World War Two.
After the clades variana, from 14 - 16 AD under Tiberius, who succeeded his stepdad Augustus as Emperor, Roman forces under the command of Tiberius' nephew Germanicus inflicted some severe local losses on the Germans, including recovery of two of the three lost eagle standards. That's how Germanicus got the name by which he is known; it's a victory title (that's called an agnomen btw) conferred by Rome. With this, Arminius and his Germanic allies were defeated and honour recovered, but Tiberius ordered operations to cease, satisfied with the result and thinking that anything to be gained from further expansion frankly was not worth what it would take to gain it. That changed everything. Details in the next section.
After their impressive victory, the unruly Germans descended into internecine war. Tacitus records that a plot to poison Arminius by Germanic rivals was proposed to Tiberius but he rejected it, saying Rome does not avenge itself by secret plots but by open arms. And guess what, in 21 AD Arminius was killed by rivals in his own tribe who thought him too powerful. The Romans continued to hold him in high regard and respect, as Tacitus and others record, as one who had the skill to beat them even at the height of their power.
The third and last eagle standard (aquila) was recovered in 41 AD by forces under the command of Publius Gabinius, by which time Claudius, Germanicus' brother, was emperor. Yes, the Claudius of the famous historical novel "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves.
Why the Battle Was a Big Deal Later.
So how did Rome's decision to never again attempt direct rule of Germania, though it may make treaties and arrangements with client kings, shape the course of all subsequent European history and American too? And yet hardly anyone will hear of it in general education. How does that happen?
The impressive stand against Rome forever determined the culture of subsequent Europe. Rome's decision that further expansion was just not worth it began a military boundary across continental Europe (which is to say, Europe) that would last 400 years, with the effect that Latin and Germanic cultures remained distinct. To this day there is a palpable difference in the "feel" of those parts of Europe which were part of the Roman Empire and those that weren't, as those areas beyond which Rome never directly ruled did not absorb Roman culture into their identity.
Had Rome expanded Europe would have become much different than it is. The rest of Europe would have been under direct Roman rule. The German language would have evolved as another Romance language. Later on in the Roman Empire when it replaced traditional Roman religion by creating its state church the Catholic Church in 380 AD that church, though present because by that time was the only one, would have been much more secure with a more unified state and culture behind it, thus not allowing the conditions in which the Reformation could happen. And thus the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648, which devastated all of continental Europe to an extent not surpassed until WWII, between the Protestant of various kinds northern Europe and the Catholic southern Europe, which they still are nominally now, would not have happened. Thus the colonisation of the Americas would not have seen such intense rivalries. Thus the "French and Indian War" that began in 1754 between the French and British over American colonies would not have happened. Thus in turn not helping ignite and become part of the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763, which as Winston Churchill commented was the world's true first world war as it was fought in Europe, both Americas, Africa, India and the Philippines, which did not change the various states per se (status quo ante bellum, status as before the war) but produced a massive shift in alliances largely as a result of changes in colonial jurisdictions. Thus in turn completely changing the balance of power, with Britain emerging as the world's superpower, Prussia as the driving German power, a drive for independence of the British American colonies emerging, France's decline and eventual internal revolution, and finally, along with the Thirty Years' War, fuelling a desire among Germans for a unified state (nothing like modern Germany existed before 1949). Which takes us back to Arminius.
Arminius and his victory continued in the Germanic sagas that formed Germanic sense of identity. Not in historical record but in literary sagas; Arminius is the basis for the character Sigurd in the Volsunga Saga and the Niebelungenlied.
By Luther's time (1483-1546), about 1500 years after the battle, the Roman Empire was long gone but its state church, the Roman Catholic Church, was not, and continued as the state church in what understood itself as the restoration of the Roman empire, what is now, but was not then, called the Holy Roman Empire. At the same time, Europe was experiencing a massive transformation. The "Black Death", which was called the Great Plague at the time (1346 - 1353), had wiped out roughly half of Europe's and the Middle East's population. Food prices and land values dropped and the demand for workers rose. Also, beginning in Florence in the 14th Century (1300s) and extending to Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, all cities within the ancient empire, and eventually Rome itself, feudal society, based on land and class, began giving way to a mercantile society, based on trade, capital, goods and services. There being no explanation for the plague catastrophe, theories abounded, and there was an awareness of the emergence of a via moderna, a modern way, across the board, in society, theology and philosophy, art, science, everything. Adding to this transformation was the arrival of scholars with classical Greek texts fleeing the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire to the Muslims on 29 May 1453.
Manuscripts long tucked away in monastic libraries were examined, and among many other discoveries, Tacitus' histories were found and with that recovery of information about Arminius. Thus Luther found in Arminius a figure for a successful stand against Rome, this time not militarily or politically, but religiously, against the necessity of control by Rome's church of ultimately everything.
Later, Arminius also became an important figure in German opposition to French control, once again of the ability of Germans to stand against great empires, Roman or otherwise. From 1792 through 1802, the French, their killing of the royalty and having a revolution to establish Liberty, Equality, Fraternity having resulted in a Reign of Terror then Napoleon, were at war with pretty much everyone else in Europe. Not to mention within themselves. Napoleon had ended the 1,000 year run of the "Holy Roman Empire", in which nothing like modern Germany existed, and with his final defeat in 1815, the battle and Hermann became a symbol for a concept of a united German people free of non-German control.
The Congress of Vienna (1815) in its attempts to establish a balance of power so that Europe would be at peace, had not resulted in a German nation. The original monument was begun with an idea in 1834, the foundation stone was laid in 1838, the finished base was dedicated in 1841, but the 1848 German revolution did not result in a unified German state either and work (and money) stopped. Prussia's victory over Austria in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 rekindled the ideal, and the victory in the Franco-Prussian War (1870) brought even more enthusiasm for the ideal. The completed monument was dedicated 16 August 1875, with Kaiser Wilhelm I, the first head of the German Empire, the first united German state, in attendance.
Upon this completion a society for the aid of German immigrants began work on a replica, to be located in New Ulm, MN, which as the name indicates, was heavily German and not coincidentally the home of the society's head. The cornerstone was laid in 1888, and was dedicated in 1897.
Part of the united Germany free of foreign control thing was not just latter-day "Romans" like the French and Austrians, but the Kulturkampf against the control of the Roman Catholic Church of university and church/state positions. Thus Catholic Germans were not altogether on board, later joined by others. On the 1,900th anniversary of the battle in 1909, there was a large event from 14-23 August, and during World War I it was a symbol for eventual German victory.
After the defeat, in the Weimar Republic it became a meeting place for those hoping for a restoration, and plain old tourism began as well. With the Nazis, they used it somewhat but turned it down as any official symbol, preferring to have their own events and monuments. Quite in character, as much of the initial support for the Nazis was in the hopes of a successful restored Germany only to find the Nazis had a very different Germany in mind and despised the old order. After World War II, insofar at it was promoted at all it was purely as a tourist attraction.
On the 2000th anniversary of the battle, 2009, the Germans, who will likely take 1000 years to recover, especially in their own minds, from the taint of the "1000-year Reich" (Tausendjähriges Reich), Hitler's vision of the endurance of his German state, the whole thing was downplayed. Der Speigel reported that even in the deliberately small scale re-enactments, most of those participating wanted to play Romans, not Germans. The battle or Hermann is barely mentioned in German schools. Why? Association with Hitler in particular and with nationalism, which it is feared could lead to someone like him, in general. Reality -- Hitler had little use for Arminius, and Arminius had nothing to do with what others later made of him.
Why the Battle Is a Big Deal Now.
So we have choices. As to Arminius himself, there is no contradiction in using the Herman the German monument on Past Elder. Arminius was a Roman. Meaning, he was a Roman citizen, which takes no regard of ethnicity, race, national origin or anything else. A citizen is a citizen. That's where we got the idea. Moreover, in Roman society he was made an eques, a member of the equites just under the senatorial class, and had a Roman education as well as military training. Which shows that even successful opposition to Rome is Roman.
As to our choices. We could continue doing what we are doing, which is either or both of 1) thinking ourselves more advanced and/or intelligent than those who came before us and since they did not experience life as we do now therefore we need not pay them much attention 2) suppress anything that does not fit or confirm our narrative or contradicts it and/or rewrite it so it does.
This will work -- in the same way a self-fulfilling prophecy works. As we follow part two it confirms part one, and so we fall in line with centuries and millennia who did the same thing, quite unaware both that they did it and we are doing it, quite unaware that there is not a modern narrative or meta-thought that one or another ancient Greek did not express and comes to us through the Romans, quite unaware that we are doing the same thing with new labels and better technology sure that our new labels and better technology make it something new, quite unaware of what brought us to where we are thus we misunderstand where we are and misidentify who we are, seeing none of this. This is the course of most of our present educational, ecclesiastical and societal institutions.
Or, we could give up our box that we don't see is a box because we believe it to be not a box and beyond boxes, and learn from them. Not to know what happened before one was born is to be forever a child. Thus said a great figure of the Roman Republic (Cicero). Those who would establish the Empire in place of the Republic in 27 BC and were in power in 9 AD had him proscribed (proscriptio) as an enemy of the state and executed him in 43 BC. They had to.
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