Running Header: GERMANIC BARBARIANS AND CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING 1 Using Germanic Barbarian History as a Tool for Cultural Understanding Rachel Newinski Minnesota State University, Mankato Honors European History to 1648 December 9, 2015 GERMANIC BARBARIANS AND CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
2 Using Germanic Barbarian History as a Tool for Cultural Understanding American poet, Robert Warren Penn, wrote, “History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.” (Department of History and International Studies). It’s amazing how one semester of an Honors history course can prove this statement to be true. On the first day of Honors European History to 1648 with Dr. Corley, we were given a survey that asked us some basic information, goals for the course, and what we knew about the process of history. I was confused about the questions referring to history as a process because I thought history was just events that happened in the past. Over the course of the semester however, I came to learn that history was the process of learning about the past and then using that knowledge to ask questions in order to have a deeper cultural understanding of the time period. This cultural understanding proved most valuable during the course were assigned to read a chapter about Germanic “Barbarians” of the early after­death time period to the eleventh century. The readings that we did illuminated some of the issues that proved as a barrier to cultural understanding in the past, and I found those same themes useful to apply to modern day life. Chapter five of ​
Discovering the Western Past: A look at the evidence volume I: to 1789 (Ed. 7)​
​
is entitled “Invading Barbarians” and it details the perceptions about Germanic Barbarians from the first century to the eleventh by providing primary sources written by educated Roman men (Wiesner, Evans, Wheeler, & Ruff, 2015, p. 91­95). These sources are all similar in nature in order to display the changes in the opinion of these barbarian tribes over time (Wiesner et al., 2015, p. 91­95). This change in the perception of the barbarian tribes indicates the relationship between familiarity, similarity, and the understanding of a culture. A clear GERMANIC BARBARIANS AND CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
3 example of this comes from differences between the earliest document ​
Germanica ​
(100 A.D.) by Tacitus and later documents. Tacitus never actually traveled to an area with a high German population so his accounts of the people that he is writing about are based off of all second hand information, and therefore his descriptions of the tribes in ​
Germanica ​
tend to be the most scathing (Wiesner et al., 2015, p. 91). For example, when describing the Germans he calls the men a contradiction of nature as they, “so love inactivity and hate peace” and he goes as far as to say that, “the Fenni have astonishing savagery and squalid poverty” (as cited in Wiesner et al., 2015, p. 96­97). Tacitus also focuses very heavily on the appearance of the Germans in his writing (as cited in Wiesner et al., 2015, p. 96­97). It seems unlikely that a man like Tacitus who had such a small amount of interaction with Germans, if any, would have very accurate information to base his opinion of the Germans off of. He is in fact basing his opinion off of the opinions of others who had just come into contact with these people. So, it would be reasonable to assume that the Romans were not familiar with these Germans and simply did not understand this other culture, and therefore thought the worst of them just as is commonly seen between modern day cultures. However this began to change as the Romans were exposed to German cultures for longer and as the Germans adapted new cultural traits more similar to the Romans, all of which lead to greater understanding by the Roman people which is observable in the later documents. By the late sixth century, the Western Roman Empire that Tacitus lived in was occupied by these Germanic tribes and the tribes were settling within the Eastern Roman empire (Wiesner et al., 2015, p. 88). This is the setting in which Agathias wrote ​
The Histories​
, in which he describes the Franks, formally known as the Germans (Wiesner et al., 2015, p. 91­95). He has GERMANIC BARBARIANS AND CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
4 some of the highest praise for this group of people as he calls them well­breed and civilized as well people of a spirit of justice and harmony(as cited in Wiesner et al., 2015, p. 100­102). There are a few reasons I hypothesize that the perception of the German/Frankish people changed over this period of time. First, Agathias and other Romans had much more interaction with these people by this time period than the people of Tacitus’ time as ​
The Histories​
is written almost 500 years after ​
Germanica ​
(Wiesner et al., 2015, p. 91­95). Next, the Germans of this time had adapted some similar cultural traits to that of the Romans. For example, the Franks that Agathias describes are Christian and settled in certain territories (Wiesner et al., 2015, p. 88). This conversion to a Christian and sedentary society makes it much easier for Agathias to look past the obvious differences between Frankish and Roman culture such as language and appearance in order to understand the inner workings of their culture like their values and motivations. From this, I concluded that the more that individuals are exposed to a culture and the more that they have in common with that culture, the more able that person is able to understand about that culture. Applying this conclusion from a historical example to modern experiences is what makes the process of history so helpful to global citizens. In our history class, we discussed some “barriers to understanding” like religion and political practices that can hinder us as people from understanding other cultures. We used the example of how it is difficult for Americans to understand the culture of North Korea due to how different our democratic beliefs are compared to North Korea’s socialist government. This kind of difference in beliefs is comparable to that between Tacitus and the Germanic tribes in 100 A.D. So, when the Germans/Franks converted to a Christian society, it was easier for Agathias to understand them. From this realization, it would GERMANIC BARBARIANS AND CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
5 be a good strategy as a global citizen to identify any large barriers to understanding when trying to learn about another culture so they disallow from these barriers from causing an immediate bias on the other culture. Also, being exposed to these Germans more than Tacitus was, allowed Agathias to have a more accurate idea of the German culture. Identifying these barriers and becoming more familiar other cultures allows global citizens the ability to understand cultures deeper and to move past the barriers for the sake of valuing the other culture. Going back to Penn’s quote, history can show us examples of unfamiliarity and barriers to understanding in the past, and how much they negatively influenced the actions and perceptions of other cultures. From this, we can use those historical examples as a learning experience so that we act differently in the future in order to acclimate ourselves better with other cultures for the sake of the common humanity. A realization such as this proves history’s critical value in cultural understanding and in turn, the process of becoming a global citizen. GERMANIC BARBARIANS AND CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
6 References Department of History and International Studies. (n.d.). ​
Why Study History?​
. University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. Retrieved from http://www.uwsp.edu/history/pages/programs/major.aspx Wiesner, M., Evans, A., Wheeler, W., & Ruff, J. (2015). ​
Discovering the Western Past: A look at the evidence volume I: to 1789 (Ed. 7)​
. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.