Herwig Wolfram

This book briefly lays out the societal and political development of the German tribes between about the 2ndC BCE and the 6thC CE. The focus is on showing their internal diversity and subsequent Romanization before/while they took over large portions of the territories formerly under Roman control. This book, in combination with the Clark one, clarified my mental picture of Late Antiquity and of the tribes across the Rhine. Job well done, in other words.

Wolfram has very little patience with the various misunderstandings and/or ideological mythologies that the various Germanic tribes or their victories have been marshalled to support. It is, therefore, decidedly odd when the book ends with a paean to European unity engendered by the combination of Frankish exceptionalism and persistence in the face of danger, and Anglo-Saxon and Irish missionary zeal.

The book has only one big shortcoming, and that is the lack of maps. I don’t know where the rivers in Germany or the Balkans are (e.g. Drau, Save, Enns), and a grasp of the relative geographic location of various rivers and the Rhine is often essential to understanding the text.… (mehr)