Germanic people

“ Another circumstance contributed to Latinize the German races outside of Germany. After the invention of a Gothic alphabet by Bishop Ulfila, and his translation of the Bible, we hear no more of a written German language until the eighth century. There was at least none which was accessible to the people, and the Latin continued to be the language of government and religion. The priests were nearly all Romans, and their interest was to prevent the use of written Germanic tongues. Such learning as remained to the world was of course only to be acquired through a knowledge of Latin and Greek. ”

“ The fact is attested by history since the earliest times, for much of the civilization of Germanic peoples has invariably taken its source in the inspiring ideals of the wonderfully endowed inhabitants of French territory. ”

“ The languages of the Germanic and the Neo-Latin races, as compared with the pure German tongue, are lifeless and mechanical. No people which had not a free and original national feeling could have taken up and worked out to a glorious termination the great idea of the Reformation. ”

“ German was to become the language of central Europe. Interposed between the territories of Romanic and Slavic languages, the area of German speech occupies a magnificently commanding position. Originally the language spoken west of the Elbe and Saale rivers, it had advanced considerably to the east in the first century of the Christian era. The imposition of Teutonic language on Slavic populations is one of the results of this ancient expansion of Germanic peoples. During the past thousand years very little change in the distribution of the main German dialects is believed to have taken place. ”

“ The Germanic genius loves unique objects, rich in curves and quirks, and points of peculiarity.
The mediterranean genius, more precocious, got historically the earlier right of way in artistic matters, and in that field has usually kept the prestige and authority. A century ago the great literary Germans themselves almost forgot, in their admiration of the classic spirit, what they owed to their own Northern character. It was in the philosophic and scientific field, and in poetry, that the greatness of the German genius first came to be acknowledged. ”

“ Precisely such elements as we have described were found among the Germanic Races, as if they had been expressly reserved for this great purpose. I mention only these; for the devastating inroads of other Races had no enduring results; and those kingdoms of other origin, which are incorporated with the Republic of Nations now existing in Europe, have for the most part received Christianity and Culture by means of the Germanic tribes. ”

“ The Germans form one of the most important branches of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan race—a division of the human family which also includes the Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, and the Slavonic tribes. ”

“ Those German peoples who had continued to live outside of the Roman Empire, or who, during the invasions, had not settled far enough within its bounds to be led, like the Franks in Gaul, to adopt the tongue of those they had conquered, naturally adhered to the language they had always used, namely, the particular Germanic dialect which their forefathers had spoken for untold generations. From the various languages spoken by the German barbarians, modern German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic are derived. ”

“ The German lets himself go, and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty German eyes--and other countries immediately confound him with his dressing-gown!--I meant to say that, let "German depth" be what it will--among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it--we shall do well to continue henceforth to honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people of depth for Prussian "smartness," and Berlin wit and sand. ”

“ Of the separate and special means of once more raising the German spirit a very powerful one would be in our hands if we had a soul-stirring history of the Germans in that period—one that would become a book for the nation and for the people, just as the Bible and the hymn-book are now, until the time came when we ourselves had again achieved something worthy of record. ”

“ But by focusing on the achievements of prominent individuals, we risk understating the overall importance of the German heritage to our Nation's strength and development. Today, nearly one-quarter of all Americans can trace their ancestry to Germany, just as our English language finds its roots in the Germanic tongues of centuries past. German Americans honor the traditions of their lineage in the way they live, reflecting the sense of personal honor and strong work ethic passed down to them by their forebears. ”

“ But in spite of the intellectuality of classic work, we may still believe in our Germanic spirit as being the more fruitful thing. Its productions are fuller-bodied and less abstract. Something indeed it misses,—universality, simplicity, and purity ”

“ High Germans of the Roman period.—Alemanni, Suevi (?) , Burgundians (?) .
The spread of the Teutonic populations, as contrasted with the Keltic, Slavonic, and Roman, in general, combined with the numerous displacements of particular portions of the German tribes themselves, makes the question of descent excessively complicated. Perhaps the best present representatives of the High-Germanic division are the modern—
HESSIANS.
Locality.—Hesse, conterminous with the Franks, Saxons, and Thuringians. ”

“ AS a general rule the Germanic, or Gothic, stock has not only held its own area from the earliest time, but has encroached on that of others, so that although there are many parts of Europe, which, once the occupancy of non-Germanic populations, have now become more or less German, the converse rarely, if ever, can be shown to have taken place. ”

“ As a people made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, perhaps even with a preponderance of the pre-Aryan element as the "people of the centre" in every sense of the term, the Germans are more intangible, more ample, more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more surprising, and even more terrifying than other peoples are to themselves:--they escape DEFINITION, and are thereby alone the despair of the French. It IS characteristic of the Germans that the question: "What is German?" never dies out among them. ”

“ The German or Teutonic race can everywhere achieve, other things being equal, more than can any other race. Witness the conquest of the Roman Empire by German tribes; the political genius, commercial success, and final colonial expansion of the English, a Teutonic people; and the peculiar strength of the German races resident within their old homes on the Rhine, the Danube, the Weser, and the Elbe, whenever they were not fatally disunited by domestic quarrel or unwise foreign ideals. ”

“ After a few centuries, their descendants, in almost every instance, lost sight of their origin, and even looked with contempt upon rival people of the same blood. The Franks and Burgundians of the present day speak of themselves as "the Latin race": the blonde and blue-eyed Lombards of Northern Italy, not long since, hated "the Germans" as the Christian of the Middle Ages hated the Jew; and the full-blooded English or American Saxon often considers the German as a foreigner with whom he has nothing in common. ”

“ Then we are going to Berlin to knock down all the ugly statues in the Sieges-Allee and smash the parvenu German Empire. Then we shall have a new age on classic lines. People will still use French and English and Italian because there is some beauty in those languages. But nobody outside of Germany will speak or read German. It is a barbarous tongue—shapeless and hideous—used by barbarians who gobble and snort when they talk. ”

“ In the mere sensuous arts of painting and sculpture the Germans are poor, in the ennobling arts of literature and music they are great; and this fact provides a key to their character.
They are a simple, earnest, homely, genuine people. They do not laugh much; but when they do, they laugh deep down. They are slow, but so is a deep river. A placid look generally rests upon their heavy features ”

“ Let us consider the common characteristics of the Germanic race, and the differences by which it is opposed to the Latin race. Physically, we have a whiter and softer skin, generally speaking, blue eyes, often of a porcelain or pale hue, paler as you approach the north, and sometimes glassy in Holland; hair of a flaxy blonde, and, with children, almost white; the ancient Romans early wondered at it, and stated that infants in Germany had the hair of old men. ”

“ For he who has sinned against the German language has desecrated the mystery of all our Germanity. Throughout all the confusion and the changes of races and of customs, the German language alone, as though possessed of some supernatural charm, has saved herself; and with her own salvation she has wrought that of the spirit of Germany. She alone holds the warrant for this spirit in future ages, provided she be not destroyed at the sacrilegious hands of the modern world. ”

“ A whole literature has grown up around this mighty epic of old Germanic life, and men of vast scholarship and literary acumen have made it a veritable battle-ground of conflicting theories, one contending for its mythical genesis, another proving to his satisfaction that it is founded upon historic fact, whilst others dispute hotly as to its Germanic or Scandinavian origin. ”

“ No other people pay such loud compliments to themselves, and pay them with such unashamed diligence. They decorate themselves with compliments as a savage decorates himself with bits of broken glass. A philosopher like Hegel set the example of proclaiming in German accents and to German ears the ‘godlike glory’ of the German nation. The ‘spiritual nature of Germanism,’ we are assured seven days a week by German editors, makes it the standard-bearer of Christian Europe. ”

“ It is certain that even in ancient times the various Germanic stocks, according as they retained their purity of race, or became blended with the remains of a primitive population, or even with Roman blood, and in proportion as they led a savage or more civilized mode of life, differed in corporeal constitution, as well as in the formation of the face and head. ”

“ The German mythology may indeed conceal many deep thoughts under the garb of legendary poetry which have some relation to Christian truth and afford evidence of the religious needs, the speculative gifts and the characteristic profundity of German thought, but this scarcely in a larger measure than in the Greek myths, philosophemes and mysteries.200 Much more suggestive of a predisposition to Christianity than such bright spots in the mythological system of the Germans are the special and distinguishing characteristics of the life of the German people. ”

“ This ended in the invention of Germanism, the crown and perfection of the human race, a Germanism which, claiming to be the purest expression of Arianism, would have restored the idea of the elect people, and have one day undertaken the journey to the East. ”

“ There are words of Goethe in which he condemns with impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that which Germans take a pride in, he once defined the famous German turn of mind as "Indulgence towards its own and others' weaknesses." Was he wrong? it is characteristic of Germans that one is seldom entirely wrong about them. The German soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves, hiding- places, and dungeons therein, its disorder has much of the charm of the mysterious, the German is well acquainted with the bypaths to chaos. ”

“ No where does nationality exhibit itself so strikingly, as in the conduct and bearing of the people who show you the way, in different cities. Your German is sententious and solemn as an elephant, he goes plodding along with his head down and his hands in his pockets, answering your questions with a sulky monosyllable, and seeming annoyed when not left to his own meditations. ”

“ In the Germans of the eleventh century one notes a strong sense of German selfhood, supplemented by a consciousness that Latin culture is a foreign matter, introduced as a thing of great value which it were exceeding well for them to make their own. They are even conscious of having been converted to Latin Christianity, which on their part they are imbuing with German thoughts and feeling. They are not Romance people; they have never spoken Latin; it has never been and will never be their speech. They will master what they can of the antique education which has been brought to them. ”

“ The various Germanic groups of tribes now presented themselves, followed by other warlike races, Huns, Slavs, Magyars, etc., alternately driving and being driven. The Germans first came into contact with Christian elements in the second half of the 3rd century, and toward the end of the 5th a whole series of powerful German peoples are found professing the Christian faith, and each successive century far down into the Middle Ages brings always new trophies from these nations into the treasure-house of the church. ”

“ They exalted woman, and honored marriage and the family relation to an extent beyond any ancient people. When I have said that, added to this, they had a glimmering sense of human rights in communities and in the State, it will be seen that the German race had the basis of a superior civilization; and when the Christian era dawned, though the world knew it not, a great nation was coming into organic form. ”

“ Would we comprehend the Germany of to-day, we must hold firmly in our minds an epitome of what it has been, and see vividly the devious path of its development through the ages.
The German nation is of ancient lineage, and indeed belongs to the royal line of human descent, the Aryan; its ancestral roots running back until lost in the heart of Asia, in the mists of antiquity.
The home of the Aryan race is shrouded in mystery, as are the impelling causes which sent those successive tides of humanity into Europe. ”