Query Re: Post-Postscript on Przeworsk

From: tgpedersen
Message: 56373
Date: 2008-04-01

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > > Translation
> > >
> > > > Rolf Hachmann
> > > > Germanen und Kelten am Rhein in der Zeit um Christi Geburt,
> > > > p. 36
> > > > in
> > > > Rolf Hachmann, Georg Kossack, Hans Kuhn
> > > > Völker zwischen Germanen und Kelten
> > > > Schriftquellen, Bodenfunde und Namengut zur Geschichte des
> > > > nördlichen Westdeutschlands um Christi Geburt

> He does refer to a Karl Schumacher. It looks like he could be the
> guy you're looking for; p. 12-14
> "
Seventy years have passed already, since Research into Pre- and Early
History began to participate in the systematic and scientific studies
of the history of the Germani. The initiative came from Berlin. Here
the East Prussian Gustaf Kossinna in the beginning of the nineties
[TP: of the 19th cent., of course] developed points of view with
regard to the solution of anthropological problems of the early
historic, which, althought not totally without precedents, actually
did introduce something new. In the year 1895 he went public with them
[lecture in Kassel. - published in: Zeitschr. d. Ver. f. Volkskde. 6,
1896, 1 ff.]. He treated the prehistoric distribution of the Germani;
a theme he would return to over and over [cf. the G. Kossinnas'
bibligraphy in: Mannus 10, 1918, VIII ff.], using as a basis the
literary legacy of the antiquity, believing in that fashion to be
entitled to describe as Germanic the archaeological finds from the
settlement areas thus described in that literature. The origin of the
Germani he believed he could find out by examining the preforms of
those finds he assumed, safely in his opinion, to be Germanic; in the
earliest ones he saw the oldest culture of the Germani and in the area
in which they were found their original home [G. Kossinna, Die
Herkunft der Germanen (1911) 2 ff. - E. Blume's ideas go back to
Kossinna's thoughts: Die germanischen Stämme und die Kulturen zwischen
Oder und Passarge 1 (1912) 1 ff.]. In this manner it seemed possible
to him to sketch a history of the early Germani. The same procedure
should also yield something useful for non-Germanic peoples, eg. the
Celts [Cf. G. Kossinna, Korrespondenzbl. d. dt. Ges. f. Anthr. 38,
1907, 57 ff.]. Already Kossinna himself touched that subject
fleetingly in his deliberations, and it didn't take long before those
thoughts he had developed specially for the history of the Germani
were used by others also on non-Germanic peoples. In the Rhinelands
Kossinna found a particularly vigorous response from Karl Schumacher.
In various articles and books he set out to draw an image of the
history of the Celts [K. Schumacher, Prähist. Zeitschr. 6, 1914, 230
ff.; id., Siedlungs- und Kulturgeschichte der Rheinlande 1 (1921) 120
ff.]. The results of his works seemed in large measure to confirm the
written information from antiquity, and they were thus won general
acceptance [on that, cf.: G. Behrens, Germanische Denkmäler der
Frühzeit 1. Denkmäler des Vangionengebiets (1923); id., 52. Tagung d.
Ges. f. Anthr., Ethnol. u. Urgesch. Speyer 1934 (1935) 26 ff.].

Apart from spontaneous applause Kossinna and his school were also met
with downright rejection [cf. Kossinnas polemic against Ed. Meyer, O.
Schrader u. M. Hoernes in: Die Herkunft der Germanen (1911) 4 ff. -
cf. further: K. H. Jacob-Friesen, Grundfragen der
Urgeschichtsforschung (1928) 137 ff.; H. Zeiss, Germania 14, 1930, 11
ff.; id., Prähist. Zeitschr. 22, 1931, 240 ff.]. Criticism at first
was directed in the main against isolated obvious mistakes and
developed in this fashion finally into a rejection of the whole
method. It should be said that not every critic was aware that he
fundamentally worked with the same methods as Kossinna. That ios also
true for the most spirited and courageous among them, Kossinna's
student Ernst Wahle [E. Wahle, Zur ethnischen Deutung
frühgeschichtlicher Kulturprovinzen. Grenzen der frühgeschichtlichen
Erkenntnis I. Sitzungsber. d. Heidelberger Akad. d. Wiss., Phil.-Hist.
Kl. 1940/41 (1941)], who made an extensive attempt to disprove some of
the main theses of his teacher. He attempted to prove that a change of
population could take place without this appearing in the
archaeological finds, and defended the idea that under certain
circumstances if a cultural change, even a break of the development of
a culture had taken place, there was no logical need to assume that an
exchange of population had happened too. Because of those views,
Wahle felt entitled to conclude that that the solution of the
questions he examined could only be found in the opposite of
Kossinna's method. That, he claimed, was found as a rule not from
archaeological facts, but by means of literary sources [first critical
remarks to Wahle by the Kossinna student M. Jahn in: Nachrichtenblatt
17, 1941, 73 ff. - in more detail: id., Die Abgrenzung von
Kulturgruppen und Völkern in der Vorgeschichte, Ber. über d. Verhandl.
d. Sächsischen Akad. d. Wiss. Phil.-Hist. Kl. 99, 3 (1952)].

In spite of that, Wahle's investigations found a vigorous response -
mainly immediately after the second world war. In particular the
neighboring sciences noted with interest that the sources and the
methods of Prehistory Studies were seemingly not sufficient to offer
genuine contributions. It became downright fashionable to argue using
Wahle. Also within Prehistory Studies itself everywhere the apparently
appropriate conclusions were made: in resignation one turned towards
concrete objects of the past and preferred antiquarian points of view.
The field of ethnic interpretation was left to those beyond the reach
of scholarship.

It was therefore hardly noticed that beside Wahle criticism of
Kossinna partly took other routes. Approximately at the same time as
Wahle, but without knowledge of his writing, and in definite
opposition to it, Heinz Behagel, nephew of the noted Germanist [TP:
Germanistik = approx. the linguistic study of Germanic languages]
dared to propose "the claim that pedantic philological source
over-interpretation is the main reason why iron age research in
Western Germany is standing today at the same stage as 30 years ago".
In order to find a way around the traditional interpretation
difficulties, he let archaeological evidence speak before literary
evidence, consciously rejecting the traditional habits. He came in
that way to the result that beside the "Kossinna Germani" - as he
called them - also must have been other Germani, which were
genetically/by descent completely foreign ["blutsfremd"] to the
former, yet carried the name "Germani" with the same right [H.
Behaghel, Die Eisenzeit im Raum des Rechtsrheinischen
Schiefergebirges (1949) 132]. In this way for the first time that
dogma had been given up from which Kossinna - his spiritual home in
the Germanistik make this understandable - couldn't distance himself,
nor could Wahle. H. Behaghel's thoughts found no response, and not
enough time remained for him to further develop and extend his
thoughts and think through their consequences in all directions, since
he fell in battle at the end of the last war.

In the same way as H. Behagel, H. Schönberger made himself free from
the assumption, valid since Kossinna, that literary sources of the
antiquity were prevalent. He observed in connection with an exposition
of the late Latène in the Wetterau, that this area already in the 4th
cent. BCE belonged to the Celtic cultural area, that a major part of
the ceramics of the late Latène period had developed from older forms
of the same area and that therefore one must have to do with a Celtic
population in this period [H. Schönberger, Saalburg-Jahrb. 11, 1952,
71]. The Germanicness of the Ubii or Mattiaci who made up at least
part of the population of this area, could not be not questioned; the
names of these tribes were not even mentioned. In this fashion, the
archaeological material did find a straightforward interpretation, but
the contradiction between the archaeological picture and the literary
traditions was in no way solved. O. Uenze left the old thought
patterns in a different manner. He observed, that the North Hesse
group of the early Latène period could not with any certainty be
called either Celtic or Germanic. According to him, they were a tribal
group with local characteristics [O. Uenze, Vorgesch. der hessischen
Senke (1953) 26]. By that he implied that the scheme delivered by
historical linguistics doesn't always correspond to what actually
happened, but didn't yet find the nearest solution. R. von Uslar
addressed a fundamental problem. He asked to what extent the meaning
of 'tribe', 'language' and 'archaeological group' could be identical,
then proposed that the the relations between them were not always
immediate, and stressed that the areas of particular archaeological
forms were a much more permanent element that the often short-lived
state formations and the in many cases unstable tribes [R. von Uslar,
Hist. Jahrb. 71, 1952, 33 f]. He further referred to the differing
opinions on the genesis of the Germanic languages. Many problems,
according to him, were not satisfactorily solved, partially not
solvable at all.

Recently, many various attempts may be observed on the one hand
seeking a release from Kossinna's dogmas, on the other hand falling
under spell of Wahle's school of thinking. Hesitant steps were made in
the most various directions. A complete revision of the views could
not be achieved, but one is urgently needed. Finding a usable starting
point for the traditional research, and thus a new beginning, requires
us to find a view at the history of the research of prehistory and at
the particular position which Kossinna takes up in it. Almost on the
side, then, are those questions answered which were raised here.
...
"


Torsten