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Geistes-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Anzeiger ‒ Zeitschrift der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 159. Jahrgang (2024)
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Geistes-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Anzeiger ‒ Zeitschrift der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 159. Jahrgang (2024)
Borders Matter: Rereading the Rhine-Danube Limes and the End of the Roman Empire
Nummer:
159
Jahrgang:
2024
This issue reacts to Alexander Demandt’s fast-paced account of the rise and eventual fall of the Western Roman Empire, a topic of periodically hot political interest. His focus: Germanic barbarians and the Rhine-Danube limes, invasion, conflict, change, and loss (from the Empire’s perspective). The international contributors, primarily ancient historians and adherents of a more peaceable “transformation school,” respond and refine. The volume offers a study of client kingship as a strategy for making the Alamanni “us” rather than “them”. Next, one of the comparatively neglected Upper Rhine limes, following its less dramatic history as a zone of mixed ethnicities, settled by barbarian foederati that eventually became the Second Burgundian Kingdom of the early Middle Ages. An ancient stereotype is re-examined, and Romans may emerge as even more perfidious than barbarians. The joys and perils of narrative history are discussed, and a view from the Eastern Frontier shows how it differed, and why it held, despite raiding. Included are reflections on literary depictions of boundaries and borders, ancient demography, and the role of Christianity as well as a second look at the Rhine-Danube limes through the eyes of the poet and politician Ausonius, who came home from the Rhine limes and also acted as Gratian’s spin-doctor after Adrianople in 378. Migration into Europe casts its shadow over contemporary Roman historiography, and the CDU leadership in Germany tried (unsuccessfully) to suppress an earlier version of Demandt’s contribution in 2015. The volume thus includes a substantial piece on l'affaire Demandt from a modern legal scholar with expertise in Islam. The direct applicability of Roman concerns to present politics is limited, but modern conditions, will to integration, and the respective expectations of host countries and immigrant communities may augur more difficult transformations for modern Europe than for the Western Roman Empire.
Details
‘Römisch-germanische Grenzpolitik’: Events, Resonances, and Contributions Introduction
The publication history of Alexander Demandt’s work on “Römisch-germanische Grenzpolitik” reflects our continuing fascination with the end of the Roman Empire, a topic with rich literary sources and an inherent capacity to hold up a mirror to its historians. All explanations reflect their authors’ own times and troubles. The original core of Demandt’s contribution became controversial in 2015, but is arguably even more so now in 2024. His “mover” approach emphasized barbarian invasions and the transgression of borders. After invoking a sample of modern literary and scholarly imaginings of the northwestern limes, he introduction revisits some of Demandt’s themes, including Roman and the barbarian birthrates, walls, and the role of Christianity. The contributors’ articles are then contextualized and discussed individually. They concentrate on the Upper-Rhine limes (Hächler), client kings among the Alemanni (Mathisen), a case for the good faith of barbarians (Wijnendaele), the vulnerabilities of narratives (Liccardo), the quite different situation on the eastern frontier (Sarantis), and the embedding of Demandt’s work in the contemporary politics of migration in Germany (Afsah).
Schlagworte: end of the Roman Empire, Borders , Barbarians, historiography, literary reception
Seite 5 - 32 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger159-1s5
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Römisch-germanische Grenzpolitik
The problem of borders began with Romulus’ murder of Remus. Numa created Rome’s ‘sacred boundary’. Her borders then shifted outwards in all directions. After the victories over the Cimbri and Teutones and then over the Gauls, Caesar reached the Rhine; after Varus’s defeat at the hands of Arminius (9 CE), the Limes stabilised the northern border. The Danube border remained permeable from the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 CE) onwards. Germanic tribes were increasingly enlisted in the Roman army. Restive populations in the north, on the one hand, and the wealth of the south, on the other, resulted in border-crossings by migrating peoples after the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The ensuing conflicts could not be resolved either by military or political means.
Schlagworte: Fall of Rome, Borders , defence vs. integration, love of peace vs. willingness to fight, population growth vs. prosperity
Alexander Demandt
Seite 33 - 44 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger159-1s33
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Formen und Auswirkungen römisch-germanischer Grenzpolitik am spätrömischen Hochrheinlimes
This article examines the later Roman Upper Rhine Limes between Lake Constance and Basel as a borderline region with a liminal character situated between the centres of power of Rome and Barbaricum. As a border defence system, the section of the Limes examined here served both to keep the peace and to wage war, as a study of imperial activities in the 4 th and 5th centuries shows. Taking literary and documentary evidence into account, it becomes clear that the living environment of the local population changed fundamentally over the course of time. Roman administration, Christian religion and church structures as well as Gallo-Roman and Germanic culture subsequently formed the basis for new ways of life in the early medieval societies of what is now Switzerland.
Schlagworte: Alamanni, Constantine I, Constantius II, Julian, Valentinian I, Burgundians
Nikolas Hächler
Seite 45 - 60 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger159-1s45
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Managing Barbarian Clients in the Later Fourth Century (ca. 350-375 CE) - The Case of the Alamanni
Grenzen – borders – can be viewed from many perspectives. Alexander Demandt subscribes to a model where borders are well defined geographical entities, with “Römer” on one side and “Germanen” on the other. In this view, Romans and Germans engaged in an epochal conflict in which the Germans eventually broke through and ultimately emerged victorious. This contribution, however, considers another view of the frontier, in which Roman authority was regularly projected into barbaricum in many ways – political, military, social, and economic. Based on not only traditional textual sources but also material culture and visual evidence, this study suggests that by utilizing the Roman institution of client kingship, which itself was based on that most characteristic of Roman institutions, clientela, the government sponsored massive barbarian immigration into the empire and was able to engage large numbers of barbarians in Roman military service. Barbarian populations on the other side of the Grenzen were incorporated into the Roman system in the same way that first Italians and then provincials had been assimilated into the Roman world. As a result, in the late empire, an increasingly homogeneous society was created that encompassed populations on both sides of the “frontier”.
Schlagworte: client kings, Frontiers, Barbaricum, Alamanni, barbarian auxiliaries
Ralph W. Mathisen
Seite 61 - 76 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger159-1s61
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Perfdious Rome and Its Barbarian Victims
This essay responds to Alexander Demandt’s central contention that "die grenznahen Germanen bildeten eine dauernde Bedrohung für das Reich" (= “the neighbouring Germanic peoples posed an enduring threat to the Empire”). It will especially zoom in on the claim that "[w]enn die römisch-germanischen Grenz- und Friedensverträge ebenso oft wie geschlossen auch gebrochen wurden, war das zumeist die Schuld der Germanen" (= “If Roman-Germanic border and peace treaties were broken as often as they were struck, it was mostly the fault of the Germanic peoples”).1 It will focus primarily on two cases: the peoples bordering the Danube and Rhine ‘outside the Empire’ from Maximian to the death of Theodosius I (ca. 285-395), and the Goths ‘inside the Empire’ from Valens to Valentinian III (ca. 365-455).The present author will argue the opposite, demonstrating that from the late third to the early fifth century the Roman Empire was just as much – if not even more – at fault for break-downs in relations with its barbarian neighbours.
Schlagworte: Barbarians, Frontiers, Goths, Late Roman Empire, treaties
Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele
Seite 77 - 90 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger159-1s77
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Corsi e ricorsi storici or Why We Can’t Stop Obsessing About the Fall of Rome
By presenting a ‘traditional’ interpretation of the role of barbarians and imperial borders, the lecture of Alexander Demandt entitled “Römisch-germanische Grenzpolitik” provides a learned, attractive, and quite convincing narrative of the fall of the Roman Empire. My contribution expands on a few aspects of Demandt’s lecture and aims to highlight how the historian’s interpretation of the fall of Rome fits within the contemporary academic and public debates about borders and migration.
Schlagworte: the fall of Rome, Late Antiquity, barbarian migration, historiography, uses of the past
Salvatore Liccardo
Seite 91 - 100 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger159-1s91
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‘Römisch-germanische Grenzpolitik’: A Response from an Eastern Roman Perspective, 4th-7th Centuries
This essay responds to three points made by Alexander Demandt’s lecture on Roman-Germanic frontier relations: that an imbalance between economically weaker Germanic groups and the wealthier Roman Empire underpinned the dynamics of frontier politics; that the frontiers were linear barriers to movement; that the Germans ultimately defeated the Roman emperors and brought down the western Roman Empire. It draws on examples from the eastern Roman Empire to argue that the Romans also benefitted from and exploited the resources of the barbarian world, that frontiers were multi-cultural and syncretic zones of interaction; and that the northern frontiers of the Western and Eastern Empires ultimately collapsed because the imperial governments withdrew from these regions to focus their efforts on military threats and political crises in other areas.
Schlagworte: Rome, Frontiers, Barbarians, Persia, Warfare, diplomacy
Alexander Sarantis
Seite 101 - 116 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger159-1s101
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Grenzen und Migration im heutigen Europa
Conditions existing towards the end of the Roman Empire differ fundamentally from those characterising the contemporary challenge of mass migration, encumbering historical analogies. Major differences in at least five crucial areas (demography, economy, participation, military, and zones of contact) make it apparent that today’s Europe is not Rome. But the warning posed by the Empire’s eventual inability to integrate Germanic tribal migrants appears timely with respect to the inability of contemporary liberal welfare states to integrate ever larger numbers of particularly Muslim migrants. Imported cultural and religious notions at odds with the liberal constitutional acquis necessitate uncomfortable ideational and practical responses, instead of wishful thinking. The value of history in this debate is to highlight self-deception and the dangers of complacency.
Schlagworte: migration, Islam, Integration, liberalism, militant democracy
Ebrahim Afsah
Seite 117 - 158 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger159-1s117
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Walls, Boundaries, Frontiers, and Borders: Ausonius, the Rhine-Danube Limes, and the Battle of Adrianople - By way of an Afterword
Walls, boundaries, frontiers, and borders are far more than neutral markers of territory. They differ from one another and are theorized and experienced differently and subjectively. This can clearly be seen if one compares, say, an early 19th c. border crossing with modern ones. Inspired by Alexander Demandt’s “Römisch-germanische Grenzpolitik” and the questions it raises, this Afterword uses Ausonius, poet and politician, to reconsider the Rhine-Danube limes. The homecoming poet’s wishes in the Mosella betray a Rhine limes that wasn’t all it should be, despite the panegyric topoi of Epigram 28 of 369 CE. The Afterword ends with a detailed discussion of Gratian’s march east to help Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in August 378. It argues that he took his time marching east, it clarifies some details of his itinerary in the Balkans, and questions whether he ever actually reached Adrianople or Constantinople. It uses Ausonius’ Gratiarum Actio of September 379 and its emphasis on Gratian’s quasi-miraculous celerity in returning West to argue for a “schönreden” of his ineffectual role at and after Adrianople. It ends with Ammianus Marcellinus’ verdict on Adrianople arguing against those who want to read it positively as a recoverable situation. One has only to compare Rutilius Namatianus’ discourse in 417 after the Fall of Rome to see that Ammianus was no optimist. The promises of Ausonius’ Epigrams 28 and 31 that gave a triumphant and optimistic voice to the personified Danube promising success to Valens would be vain panegyric. The Goths were able to cross the Danube in 376 and defeat Valens in 378.
Schlagworte: walls, boundaries, Borders , Rhine-Danube limes, homecoming, Ausonius’ Mosella and Gratiarum Actio, Battle of Adrianople
Seite 159 - 184 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/anzeiger159-1s159
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Ausgabe:
978-3-7001-9698-3, E-Journal, PDF, nicht barrierefrei, 23.04.2025
Ausgabe:
978-3-7001-9697-6, Zeitschriftenausgabe, broschiert, 23.04.2025
Seitenzahl:
184 Seiten
Format:
24x17cm
Abbildungen:
zahlr. Farbabbildungen
Sprache:
Deutsch, Englisch
DOI (Link zur Online Edition):
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