Teutonic culture

“ Side by side with the splendid achievement of the German mysticism, the Teutonic race has always been apt to give practical proof of its individualism by endless petty quarrels and by splittings into numerous cliques. ”

“ In our reckonings and prognostications we should keep in mind that the German is the centre body of the Teutonic race. He is down, but he is not finally beaten. His mind is resentful, and indeed full of the revenge instinct. ”

“ The Teutons loved personal freedom. They never called any man master, but followed their chosen leader as companions and equals. They could not even bear to have the houses of their villages set close together. And again we see the same independent spirit expressed in their assemblies of freemen, in which meetings, all matters of public interest were debated and decided. In this trait of the Teutonic disposition lay the germ of representative government and of Protestant, or Teutonic Christianity. ”

“ And then there were the Bohemians who began the revolt, and the Swiss Calvinists, and the rebels of the Peasants' War in Würtemberg! None of these were ethnically Teutons. Let us beware of such ascriptions of a monopoly of virtue or intellect to any given race, however comforting they may be to us who are of Teutonic descent. Modern Germany, to be sure, is half Catholic and half Protestant, but the division was not of ethnic origin in any sense. ”

“ Man easily makes himself at home under any sky, and the national characteristic, far from being much changed by the place of abode, dominates and changes the latter after its own pattern. Moreover, the variety of natural influences in the region inhabitated by the Teutons is not very great. Just as little importance should be attached to the fact that the Teutonic race has intermingled with the former inhabitants of the countries it conquered ”

“ Our first glimpse of the Teutons shows them in their central German land, already occupying both sides of the Rhine, though seemingly not very old settlers on its left bank. The long wanderings of the various Teutonic and Slavonic tribes over all parts of central Europe, their settlements in the southern and western lands, are all matters of history. So is the great Teutonic settlement in the British islands, which partly exterminated, partly assimilated, their Celtic inhabitants, so as to leave them as mere a remnant, though a greater remnant, as they themselves had made the Basques. ”

“ All the remainder of the empire—no, not even excluding Prussia, east of the Elbe—is less Teutonic in type, until finally in the essentially Alpine broad-headed populations of Baden, Würtemberg, and Bavaria, in the south the Teutonic race passes from view. The only difference, then, between Germany and France in respect of race is that the northern country has a little more Teutonic blood in it. ”

“ How different it is when we come to consider the Teutons! When we have abstracted all the Latin words, the French words, the Celtic words, etc., from our vocabulary, the “English” words which remain are all Teutonic; for we, ourselves, are a branch of the Teutonic race. [8] Accordingly some of our older and most English words contain buried vestiges of the lives which our ancestors once lived in the continental forests. ”

“ Although as a result of the Thirty Years’ War the German Empire is far less Nordic than in the Middle Ages, the north and northwest of Germany are still Teutonic throughout and in the east and south the Alpines have been thoroughly Germanized with an aristocracy and upper class very largely of pure Teutonic blood. ”

“ Among those whose Aryan descent is generally recognized as beyond dispute are the Teutons, to whom the Angles and Saxons belonged.
The Teutonic or Germanic people, after dwelling together in a body, appear to have scattered in various directions, their language gradually breaking up into three main groups, which can be already clearly distinguished in the 4th century A.D., North Germanic or Scandinavian, West Germanic or Low and High German, and East Germanic, of which the only important representative is Gothic. ”

“ The beginning of the thirteenth century is as great an era in the history of German literature as the beginning of the nineteenth. The German mind was completely regenerated. Old words, old thoughts, old metres, old fashions, were swept away, and a new spring dawned over Germany. The various branches of the Teutonic race which, after their inroads into the seats of Roman civilization, had for a time become separated, were beginning to assume a national independence,—when suddenly a new age of migration threatened to set in. ”

“ The people who say that parliaments or pictures or gardens or roads or universities were made by the Teutonic race from the north can be disposed of by the simple question: why did not the Teutonic race make them in the north? ”

“ His descendants to this day never celebrate a great occasion without a huge feed and corporation dinners, thus establishing their legitimate descent from Teutonic stock. The Teutonic man ever led a life of vigorous action; hence his keen appetite, whetted by the cold blasts of his native North. What wonder, then, at the presence of sodden boar's flesh in his ancient Elysium, and of a celestial goat whose teats yielded a strong beverage? ”

“ How many heims and hams the different families of the Teutonic race have planted in England and all over Germany and Scandinavia! No word in all the classic languages of the old world ever had such living power as, this Teutonic noun-heim, ham, or home. In all the history of the world not another such a word can be found that has moved the heart of so many millions. What a heim England has become to more millions than peopled the earth in Homer's day! ”

“ The Teutonic, representing strength and depth in word and work, has been the stronghold of emancipation in life and thought, yet tinctured with the savageness and chaos of unpolished and disordered nature. The Romance, fettered by the rhythm of Latinity, has yet possessed that voluptuous wealth of the ideal and that graceful tracery of thought and wit which have been denied to the other. ”

“ In the first place, the German is a branch of the Teutonic race. Of the latter it is sufficient to say here that its mission was to combine the social order established in ancient Europe with the true religion preserved in ancient Asia, and in this way to develop in and by itself a new and different age after the ancient world had perished. ”

“ Only by some such actual superiority of the upper classes to the lower can I explain the deep respect for rank and blood, which distinguishes, and will perhaps always distinguish, the Teutonic peoples. Had there even been anything like a primæval equality among our race, a hereditary aristocracy could never have arisen, or if arising for a while, never could have remained as a fact which all believed in, from the lowest to the highest. ”

“ But the spirit of progress is Teutonic, although the form, in many instances, may be Roman. It must be observed, too, that the foundation of local government in Germany, England, and the United States was of Teutonic {283} origin; that the road from imperialism to democracy is lined with Teutonic institutions and lighted with Teutonic liberty, and that the whole system of individual rights and popular government has been influenced by the attitude of the Teutonic spirit toward government and law. ”

“ Then came the wandering of the nations, on which, as regards men of our own race, we need not dwell. The Goths marched at will through the Eastern Empire; but no Teutonic settlement was ever made within its bounds, no lasting Teutonic settlement was ever made even on its border. The part of the Teuton in the West was played far less perfectly indeed by the Slave in the East. ”

“ Varying as it does from age to age in historic value, it remains the first vernacular history of any Teutonic people, and save for the work of Ulfilas who found no successors among his Gothic people, the earliest and most venerable monument of Teutonic prose. ”

“ Converting the Saxons,—a triumph of civilization, however barbarous were the methods employed,—subduing the rebellious329 Bavarians, keeping the Danes and the Sclavonic tribes on his eastern border in check, and utterly crushing the Avars, he gave the Teutonic race that position of supremacy in Central Europe which, whatever may have been the ebb and flow of Teutonism in later centuries, it has never been forced to surrender, and which, with all its faults, has been a blessing to Europe. ”

“ Wherever the Teutonic language was spoken, wherever the Teutonic nature was in thepeople, there was the same weariness of unreality, the same craving for a higher life. England rather lagged behind than was a leader in the race of discontent. In Germany, all classes shared the common feeling ”

“ They do not belong to any one people, but have been used by the most different nations at the same stage of civilisation; and there is no historical evidence strong enough to prove that the Teutonic people were in that respect an exception. ”

“ The long, stern contention of the men of the North against the rigour of the elements, or some other profound cause, has produced in the Teutonic races a tenderness of heart, and a sympathy with every phase of wrong, which have made the Anglo-Saxon race the pioneers of mercy throughout the whole world. ”

“ The religious revolt of the sixteenth century is a Teutonic inheritance—a revolt which transmitted some evils, but which abjured formalism and based merit upon the essential, conscious attitude of man. If the impulse that grew into the revolution of the eighteenth century and led to political emancipation was not of Teutonic origin, it was received and cherished everywhere by Teutonic peoples, and was carried by them to permanent conclusions. The modern Teuton is found in his highest development in the intelligent American of to-day. ”

“ It is evident that for Teutonism to enter France, it must pass through the Gap of Belfort, around north through Flanders, or follow the valleys above mentioned. All three of these it has certainly done in the anthropological sense. It has overflowed along each of these channels, traversing the Alpine racial barrier. It has done even more. Its influence is manifest even in the nooks and byways. For the people of the whole region are well above the average French in stature. They are quite Teutonic in this respect. ”

“ But the structure of the Teutonic mind is well adapted to this journey by its robust manifoldness, sired by a primitive vigor of Nature, that propagates her turbulence, her jest and earnest, her nobleness and indecorum, the infinite variety which age cannot dim nor custom stale, the instincts of her animals and the intuitions of her men. ”

“ THE TEUTONIC RELIGION. WITCHES
The Teutons, that race of northern peoples called by the Romans,
"barbarians," comprised the Goths and Vandals who lived in
Scandinavia, and the Germans who dwelt north of Italy and east of
Gaul.
The nature of the northern country was such that the people could
not get a living by peaceful agriculture. ”

“ Germany's Mistake.—The world in recent years has witnessed the sad spectacle of a great nation, or the ruling powers of that nation, turning from Christ and substituting for Christian faith a godless pagan philosophy. Discarding the just and merciful principles of the Gospel, and adopting the false notion that might makes right, the fallen Teutonic empire has shown, by the revolting cruelties practiced in pursuance of that doctrine, what science (kultur) is capable of, when it parts company with God and morality. ”

“ While the Slavs form the great bulk of the inhabitants of eastern Europe, the Teutons, or people of Teutonic race and language, are widely spread in the west and north, including the German-speaking people of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, the English-speaking people of the British Islands (in a very far-away sense) , the Scandinavian-speaking people of Norway and Sweden, the Flemish-speaking people of Belgium, and practically the whole people of Denmark and Holland. ”

“ The great mass of modern European nomenclature springs from the class of languages which it is convenient collectively to call Teutonic.
Nothing shows the identity of the entire Teutonic race more than the resemblance of the names in each of the branches. Many are found in each of the stems—Gothic, Scandinavian, and High and Low German—the same in sense, and with mere dialectic changes in sound, proving themselves to have sprung from a name, or from words, current in the original tribe before the various families parted from it. Others are found in some branches and not in others ”

“ May all Germans of every race henceforth feel they have a common country of which they may be proud, and let each individual labor according to his faculties to promote its glory.” It is the use of the word “German” in its broad historic and ethnological sense that explains the existence, in this Teutonic Hall of Fame, of tablets in honor of Hengist and Horsa, Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great. ”

“ New nations or confederacies, bearing, for the most part, names unknown to earlier times, begin to be far more dangerous than the smaller and more scattered tribes of the earlier times had been. These movements{85} among the German nations themselves, hastened by pressure of other nations to the east of them, caused the Teutonic attacks on the Empire to become more and more formidable, and at last to grow into Teutonic settlements within the Empire. ”

“ Old High German and Middle High German Kuonrât (without mutation, like Old High German and Middle High German kuonheit) , Anglo-Saxon Cênrêd (Gothic *Kônirêþs) , may have meant ‘giving wise advice.’ Teutonic kôn-i- (literally ‘one that can understand, sensible’) is originally a verbal adjective from the verb kennen, können, hence the West Teutonic sense ‘bold,’ compared with the Old Icelandic meaning, must be regarded as derivative. All intellectual and moral conceptions of the Old Teutonic period are related more or less to war and conflict (compare bald, schnell, and Krieg) . ”