Germanic Europe 7%
Primarily located in: Germany, Netherlands
Also found in: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland
The dramatic landscape of our Germanic Europe region rises from Dutch and German lowlands along the North Sea through forested uplands to the Austria’s Alps in the south. The German people were united by language and culture before Germany became a united country in 1871. Known as Das Land der Dichter und Denker (“the land of poets and thinkers”), Germany is home to some of the oldest universities in the world, and this region has a long tradition of producing world-class scientists, inventors, theologians, artists, and composers.
Early Germanic Tribes
Though evidence shows that humans have lived among the rivers and fertile plains in this area since Neanderthal times, the ancestors of this region’s modern-day inhabitants probably began arriving about the 5th century B.C. They likely came from Sweden, Denmark, and Germany’s northern coast and moved south, east, and west, displacing the Celts as they went. It’s unclear what led them to migrate, but it may have been a hunt for warmer weather and fertile farmland. They built wooden houses, farmed, had no written language, and didn’t use money.
We have Julius Caesar to thank for some of the earliest written accounts of the Germanic tribes. Caesar’s legions encountered them during his wars to conquer Gaul. The Romans named the lands they inhabited east of the Rhine River and north of the Danube Germania and saw the Germanic tribes as more savage and a greater threat to Rome than the Celtic Gauls.
While there was plenty of fighting along the border, there was plenty of trade as well. The Romans introduced pottery, money, and eventually written language to the Germani, who in turn sometimes fought with Rome against common enemies or served in Rome’s legions.
Die Völkerwanderung
For the most part, by 400 A.D. Western Europe was split between the Roman Empire and the restless Germanic tribes to the northeast. About this time, the Völkerwanderung (“migration of peoples”) began throughout Europe.
The Huns swept across eastern Europe, followed by the Avars, Slavs, Bulgars, and Alans. German-speaking tribes—including Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Lombards, and Franks—began pressing west into the Roman provinces, and in 410, the Visigoths attacked and sacked Rome. The Franks became the new rulers in Gaul, while the Lombards settled in northern Italy. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes crossed over to the British Isles, while Slavic peoples settled in lands to the east that the Germani left behind.
Frankly Speaking
The Franks conquered northern Gaul in 486 A.D. Over the next four centuries, a string of Frankish kings, including Clovis, Clothar, Pepin, and Charlemagne, expanded their holdings in Western Europe, and Christianity followed in their wake.
In 843 the Treaty of Verdun divided Charlemagne's empire among three of his grandsons. Charles the Bald got the western portion, which later became France. The central portion, called Middle Francia, went to Lothair. It stretched from the North Sea to northern Italy, including parts of eastern France, western Germany, and the Netherlands. Louis the German received the eastern portion, which eventually became the medieval Kingdom of Germany, the largest piece of the Holy Roman Empire.
Though it fell under the umbrella of the Holy Roman Empire, much of the region was divided into small kingdoms and states ruled by local dukes, princes, and counts. One of these, Rudolph of Habsburg, became king of Germany and put Austria under the rule of his sons. The Habsburg dynasty eventually ruled over the Holy Roman Empire for three centuries.
Reformation
Though the Black Death killed a third or more of the region’s population in the mid-14th century, the population of Germany still doubled from about 8 million in 1200 A.D to about 16 million in 1500. Knights of the Teutonic Order settled lands to the east, including territory that became eastern Prussia, and German peasant-farmers were welcomed through eastern Europe and into Russia. Germany’s intellectual tradition sank deep roots in the 14th and 15th centuries as universities were founded in Prague, Vienna, Erfurt, Heidelberg, Cologne, and Leipzig.
Martin Luther’s calls for church reform divided German-speaking states along religious lines as the Protestant Reformation took hold. Gutenberg’s printing press helped spread Luther’s opinions and writings and fueled the Reformation. On the other hand, Luther’s translation of the Bible also became the basis for a common written German language.
German lands were no longer united by one faith, and political, religious, and social tensions led to violence, including the Peasants’ War (1524-25), which ended with about 100,000 casualties. The 1555 Peace of Augsburg attempted to eliminate religious conflicts by allowing each state’s ruler to decide its religion: Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism.
Empire and Emigration
Religion helped turn a regional rebellion into the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The conflict drew in much of Europe and ravaged Germany, leaving up to a third of its population dead from war, sickness, or starvation. Meanwhile, the Dutch were becoming a world power. The Dutch East India Company made a fortune through trade with the Far East, and political and religious refugees found a place in the Netherlands' tolerant society.
It wasn’t until 1871 that the German states (except Austria) joined to form the German Empire. By then, war, economic hardship, and political change had already prompted large waves of German emigration to America, Russia, southeastern Europe, the UK, and Ireland by people looking for land, freedom, and the chance to get ahead.
