Regionalism in German History: The Germanies, Plural

The year 1871 remains a pivotal point in history because, in this year, for the first time, Germany was formed as a nation-state. Germany has at least two millennia of cultural and political history behind it, and yet is less than two centuries old as a “country” in the ordinary sense of the word.

For nearly 2,000 years, Germany was a collection of independent monarchies and republics. Individual kingdoms within this group were sometimes allies, sometimes enemies. Politically and economically, they were independent of each other. They were bound by a common language and culture, which in turn gave rise to artistic and educational bonds.

Why didn’t these small territories unite to form a country until 1871? Multiple causes suggest themselves. Regional variations in language were significant: while written German was standardized — or standardized enough — by around 1500 to allow for correspondence between individuals and the publishing of books throughout the region, spoken language varied wildly. A Bavarian from southern Germany and a Plattdeutscher from northern Germany were not mutually intelligible.

Certainly the political ambitions of local dynasties worked against unification.

The physical geography of the region worked against a merger as well: a journey from Kiel to Vienna went through multiple different landscapes, each of which shaped the mentality of its inhabitants, and the totality of which made travel difficult.

Historian William Hagen writes:

Apart from Russia, the German-speaking lands long formed, in a geographical sense, the largest and, in recent times, the most populous European country. Yet it was never, nor is it today, a uniform land.

Hagen notes that “six distinctive regions have stood out” and lists them: the Rhine River basin, from Switzerland to the North Sea; the Alpine-Danube watershed from Switzerland east to Hungary and sometimes beyond; the upland area, parallel to and north of the Alpine-Danube region; the maritime region, the northwest coast along the North Sea, including the western coast of Jutland; Middle Germany, between the Rhine and Elbe from west to east, and between the Alps and the coast from south to north; and eastern Germany, the Baltic coast between the Elbe and the eastern end of the Baltic Sea, including the eastern coast of Jutland.

The boundaries between these regions are not distinct. Linguistically and culturally, they fade into one another in some border areas. Yet regional cultures and speech patterns can be clearly identified.

William Hagen continues:

Each of these six regions possessed historically distinctive socioeconomic structures and political and cultural traditions that are still discernable today. Their existence underpinned a powerful centrifugal or federalist tendency that lives on in present-day Germany’s decentralized structure. Partly because of such far-flung regionalism, unity or unification was never comprehensively achieved, as is evident now in the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany, German-speaking Austria (and Italian South Tyrol), Switzerland (where Swiss German most widely prevails), Liechtenstein (a tiny remnant-principality of the Holy Roman Empire, tied now to Switzerland), Luxemburg (largely speaking German in several forms), and the Dutch and Flemish lands (once also part of the Germanophone world, as the connection “Dutch/deutsch” suggests).

To Hagen’s list could be added the southern border regions of Denmark, parts of Poland, parts of the Baltic republics, and a few other bits and pieces of eastern central Europe.

In the decades leading up to the actual unification in 1871, various versions of a potential German state were discussed, among them a “greater German” or “pan-German” territory, which would have included some of these other territories which did not become part of Germany in 1871 and are not part of Germany today.

Responsible historians do not speculate about what might have happened if things were different — about counterfactual situations — but the reader may imagine how world history would have been different if the 1871 unification had included all the German people instead of merely some of them.

Conceptualizing the Roman Frontier: The Empire and the Barbarians

When the Roman Empire replaced the Roman Republic toward the end of the first century B.C., a period of expansion had begun. Julius Caesar had explored and taken control of much of Gaul and Britain. During the early years of the empire, the expansion would continue, but the focus also included maintaining in addition to obtaining territory.

In the autumn of the year 9 A.D., the Roman military was defeated in a battle at Teutoburg Forest. Around the same time, the Romans began to look for defined and stable borders. This marked a shift from acquiring land to holding land. To be sure, in small bits and pieces, efforts would be made to acquire more land after this time, but emphasis was on maintaining territory defensively rather than conquering new areas offensively.

A border was designated for the empire, running from the Rhine’s North Sea mouth to the Danube’s Black Sea mouth. The border was not a straight line. It followed the rivers for most of their lengths. Between the source of the Rhine and the source of the Danube was the limes, the Roman designation for a series of walls and fortifications which marked the border when it was not defined by a river.

The border segment from the source of the Rhine to the source of the Danube was, for most of its length, a wall. Spaced along the wall were military camps and fortifications. There were also small Roman towns and estates.

The European border of the Roman Empire was over a thousand miles long. This cannot be imagined as a heavily manned and heavily reinforced defensive military line. Much of the border would have been unmanned, remote, and desolate, especially along the rivers in their more impassable segments.

Likewise, in regions on the Roman side of the border like Noricum and Pannonia — call them colonies, provinces, territories — Romans would have been rare. Miles of forested land, dotted with the occasional Germanic village, would separate the small Roman outposts. The Romans were content to control the major trade routes in some regions, leaving the vast rural landscape to its own devices. When the Romans annexed a new province, it sometimes meant bloody battles and harsh oppression, but more often, it made very little difference to the daily lives of the ordinary residents of the region.

Historian Angus Robertson writes:

For four centuries the River Danube was the front line between the Roman Empire and the barbarians beyond. From the North Sea to the Black Sea a heavily protected border separated Roman civilization from the unknown; fortresses, walls, trenches, and encampments defended the frontier along the Roman ‘limes’. In the heart of the European continent the Roman provinces of Noricum and Pannonia bordered the Danube, from present-day Austria to Hungary and Serbia. Here the mighty river skirts the foothills of the Alps and the Pannonian Basin, the fertile, flat, open plains that stretch all the way to the Carpathian Mountains in the east.

Over the course of a century or two, these borders moved from time to time, the Romans expanding north of the Danube and east of the Rhine for a few years, then the Germanic tribes pushing them back and holding some territory west of the Rhine and south of the Danube for a few years.

The limes (a singular noun) in central Europe between the Rhine and Danube was similar to the limes between England and Scotland. The plural form of the noun is limites. The border to Scotland, of course, became known as Hadrian’s Wall.

Who were the Germanic tribes? There were no people at that time who could properly be called ‘Germans’ — it would take a few centuries for a ‘German’ cultural identity to emerge, and two millennia for a ‘German’ nation-state to appear. These people were Germanic: a host of different tribes, with related but different languages and cultures, and as likely to be enemies as allies. But they carried within themselves the chrysalis of the German culture which was yet to emerge.

In any case, they were often amiable trading partners with the Romans, yet occasionally militant opponents. Some members of Germanic tribes worked for the Romans in civilian roles or as mercenaries. There was intermarriage between Romans and Germanic people. In the provinces, many of the German people carried on their lives as normal, ignoring the Romans and being ignored by the Romans, if they happened to be in a remote and rural area.

In any case, the boundaries between the Romans and the Germanic people was not one of constant warfare, and certainly not one of a thousand-mile-long militarized front. The border existed in large part, not to define a military conflict, but rather to regulate trade: then as now, the import and export business attracted the watchful eye of government.

The border between the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribes was mostly peaceful. Trade between the two groups was common. Warfare was rare. Neither side had the resources to sustain a constant state of armed aggression. The same is true of the border between the Scots and the Romans. The border apparatus was less an indicator of hostility and more a tool for regulating the flow of goods and people. As Robert Frost wrote, “good fences make good neighbors.”