Teutonic people

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their land is the home of religious free thought within orthodox Russia. German influence prevails among them on this account, although it is doubtful whether it extends to the point of their preferring German to Russian rule. Evil memories of the attempts of the Teutonic Knights to conquer the immemorial seat of the Lettish and Lithuanian populations survive throughout their forests and marshes. Neither people has forgotten that its ancestors were [106] refugees who sought the shelter of their boglands as a last recourse from Teutonic aggression. ”

“ From this time onwards it was from the west mainly that Roman civilization made its way into Germany; but in earlier ages, as we have already noticed, there are more abundant traces of civilization in the basin of the Elbe than in the districts farther to the west. Hence it is not so surprising as might at first sight appear that the remote Aestii, a non-Teutonic people settled about the mouth of the Vistula, are represented by Tacitus as keener agriculturists than any of the other inhabitants of Germany. ”

“ They are making such inconceivable blunders as the expropriation of the Poles and the colonization scheme of Posen. It is a striking fact that with the single possible exception of the Galicians—who fear Russia even more than they detest Austria—there is not a single non-German-speaking people either in the German Empire or in the Austrian Empire who has accepted the rule of the Teuton. Alsatian and Dane, Pole and Tchech, Croatian and Roumanian—all the subject races are equally disaffected. They may disagree in everything, but they agree in their opposition to Teutonic rule. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such a trait ought to have been derived either from the north or the south of Europe. Teutonic intermixture is not a competent explanation for two reasons. In the first place,
the heads are often more Teutonic in form than those of the peoples of direct Germanic descent along the Belgian frontier; nay, more, in some cantons the people outdo the purest Scandinavians in this respect. This region is also separated from all Teutonic centers across country by several hundred miles of broader-headed peoples. That disposes of the theory of colonization from the north across France. ”

“ 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 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 cannot enter my mind, at present, to deny the Teutonic race, and especially the German people, whose mental power I esteem so highly, the ability to rise, by means of progress, above race prejudice. The German spirit has other representatives than patriotic Romanticists and philosophic book-dealers. A nation that produced men like Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Hegel, Humboldt and many more champions of humanity, must certainly possess the ability to rise to the heights of spirituality and idealism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 returning again to the West, we discover among the Teutonic barbarians indications of such youthful energy and life, that we are at once persuaded that to them has been given the future. The Franks, who, with the aid of their confederates, withstood the advance of the Saracens upon the field of Tours, and saved Europe from subjection to the Koran, are the people that first attract our attention. ”

“ And when we find a Teutonic-speaking people in Britain living under the same political and social forms as the Teutonic-speaking people of the mainland, it is surely no very rash or far-fetched inference that the tongue and the laws which they have in common are a common possession drawn from a common source ”

“ At the beginning of our era the Teutonic peoples stretched from the Rhine to the Vistula. Before Caesar's arrival in Gaul they had advanced beyond the former river, but their further progress in this direction was checked by his campaigns, and, though both banks of the river were occupied by Teutonic tribes throughout the greater part of its course, most of these remained in definite subjection to the Romans. The easternmost Teutonic tribe was probably that of the Goths, in the basin of the Vistula, while the farthest to the south were the Marcomanni and Quadi, in Bohemia and Moravia. ”

“ They were waiting for direction, and men in such a temper are seldom left to wait in vain.
General condition of the Teutonic nations.
The state of England did but represent the state of all Northern Europe. Wherever the Teutonic language was spoken, wherever the Teutonic nature was in the people, 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 ”

“ As no Teutonic inscriptions are extant from before the 3rd or 4th centuries, it cannot be stated with absolute certainty what types of objects are characteristic of Teutonic civilization in the bronze and earliest iron ages. Yet throughout the bronze age it is possible to trace a fairly well-defined group of antiquities covering the basin of the Elbe, Mecklenburg, Holstein, Jutland, southern Sweden and the islands of the Belt, and archaeologists have conjectured with much probability that these antiquities represent the early civilization of the Teutonic peoples. ”

“ It is curious how a certain strain or vein of temperament, like that just mentioned, will run through a nation's whole life, and colour its actions in all departments, recognized and commented on by the whole outside world, and yet remain unobserved by the nation itself.
Every one who has known the Germans at home—even years back—has been conscious of a certain strain in the Teutonic character which has had a like bearing in the German national life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Germans of to-day, whether they live on the farms or in the cities, are for the most part descendants of the peasants who survived, not of the brilliant knights and sturdy foot soldiers who fell in that mighty conflict. Knowledge of this great past when Europe was Teutonic and memories of the shadowy grandeur of the Hohenstaufen Emperors, 187who, generation after generation, led Teutonic armies over the Alps to assert their title to Italian provinces, have played no small part in modern German consciousness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”