Joined Jul 2014
6,743 Posts | 472+
Lower Styria, Slovenia
I wouldn't call it racism, Slavs and Germans are the same race. It's not like we're purple and they're green.
Imteresting you mention the church though. Around here the church was important in our national struggle, even bishops were involved. Yet it only started with the rise of nationalism in the 19th century. I have a good example against it a few centuries earlier.
Joined Jun 2015
579 Posts | 5+
Camelot
It's a fair point, thanks for shedding light on that. I didn't know what better word to call it- maybe Volkism or culturalism, but I'm not quite sure if that's an adequate description either. Maybe just cultural snobbery or localism. It's hard to find modern words that can describe Medieval ethnic tensions.
The Church was very politically active in the middle ages and definitely a huge engine as you mentioned for national awakenings later on. Curiously, its role in the 15th century was more as a ground for competition. Church posts were one of the few routes for upward momentum, and, as always, major societal divisions are clashes between different groups of rich or upwardly mobile people. Slavic and German clergy and the communities they preached to are documented as being in extreme competition for Church posts in Eastern areas of the HRE, especially Bohemia. This caused the German lords West of Bohemia to enact anti-Slavic restrictions to protect their clients they were backing for investiture and their native commercial interests, while the King of Bohemia did the same against ethnic Germans.
The German ethnic snobbery against Slavs definitely increased after the Napoleonic Wars when Austria was rallied to German nationalism - and massively after German unification, but it had its roots in earlier time periods. Frederick the Great's description of Poles was not far off Hitler's.
in medieval Hungary i've noticed medieval ethnic tensions arose more within towns especially around controlling the town institutions, usually in the context of Germans vs some other group (vs. Hungarians or Slavs). Sometimes even having very modern racial tones, when for example the Germans in Buda insisted that the town judge should be pure German from all 4 grandparents, i don't know if this type of racialist regulation was also common in other German right towns?
Last edited:
Among my mother's ancestors was Michael Meller (born in 1710), who married a Polish-Kashubian woman:
Zjazd rodziny Mellerów - Chojnice24.pl
He was a peasant (so probably more likely to intermarry with Slavs), but I'm not sure if he was born Catholic. The surname is of Low German origin, which indicates that he was more likely Protestant. On the other hand, he lived in the region near Chojnice (Konitz), where Catholic Low Germans from the region of Osnabrück settled in period 1434-1438. But I'm not sure if he was descended from those Germans, or from some others who came to the region later or earlier. Meller is not listed among typical surnames of Koschneiders (= the name of that regional group of Catholic Germans), so maybe he was not one of them.
During the 1800s my Meller branch of ancestors were already Roman Catholic and identified as ethnic Poles.
Zjazd rodziny Mellerów - Chojnice24.pl
He was a peasant (so probably more likely to intermarry with Slavs), but I'm not sure if he was born Catholic. The surname is of Low German origin, which indicates that he was more likely Protestant. On the other hand, he lived in the region near Chojnice (Konitz), where Catholic Low Germans from the region of Osnabrück settled in period 1434-1438. But I'm not sure if he was descended from those Germans, or from some others who came to the region later or earlier. Meller is not listed among typical surnames of Koschneiders (= the name of that regional group of Catholic Germans), so maybe he was not one of them.
During the 1800s my Meller branch of ancestors were already Roman Catholic and identified as ethnic Poles.
Who knows, maybe that Michael Meller was himself of Germanized Slavic origin. I should probably convince my mother's brothers or their sons (my cousins) to test their Y-DNA haplogroup and we will see if the result turns out Slavic or not.
Last edited:
My own Y-DNA lineage turned out to be surprisingly Non-Slavic - but also Non-German - despite my Slavic surname.
People belonging to the same lineage live in Cornwall (seven families, more than in any other region or country), Lithuania, the Basque Country, Welsh Marches, Cambridgeshire, Northumberland, Aragon, Asturias, Scotland, Brittany, French Flanders, Ile-de-France, Belgium, Hessen (just one family), Somerset, Oxfordshire, Essex, Kent, London, Yorkshire, Cumbria, Scotland, Durham, Devon, Isle of Man. There are also families of colonial American background (in Virginia and Pennsylvania since the 1600s).
I share one common direct paternal ancestor with all those people, who lived probably around 1800 BC (3800 years ago).
I would say this lineage looks like something which expanded with ethnic Celts, or even before, during the Bronze Age.
Edit: http://historum.com/european-history/125064-who-could-our-ancestor-1800-bc.html
People belonging to the same lineage live in Cornwall (seven families, more than in any other region or country), Lithuania, the Basque Country, Welsh Marches, Cambridgeshire, Northumberland, Aragon, Asturias, Scotland, Brittany, French Flanders, Ile-de-France, Belgium, Hessen (just one family), Somerset, Oxfordshire, Essex, Kent, London, Yorkshire, Cumbria, Scotland, Durham, Devon, Isle of Man. There are also families of colonial American background (in Virginia and Pennsylvania since the 1600s).
I share one common direct paternal ancestor with all those people, who lived probably around 1800 BC (3800 years ago).
I would say this lineage looks like something which expanded with ethnic Celts, or even before, during the Bronze Age.
Edit: http://historum.com/european-history/125064-who-could-our-ancestor-1800-bc.html
This sentiment went on for centuries before Hitler, and it wasn't only a one way street.
There's a museum in Berlin devoted to German-Russo relations and those people really didn't have time for one another and the propaganda from both sides was an eye opener. Mistrust and spite on a scale unimaginable.
Joined Jun 2014
6,170 Posts | 607+
US
I have always wondered if many Germans who moved into eastern Pomorze and Poznan after the Partition weren't themselves from western Pommern - and possibly Germanized Slavs from times past.
And yet we're sometimes little different than "Hottentots" for some of the older German generations. You have the same in Austria - Graz (Gradec), Leibnitz (Lipnica), Dobratsch (Dobrač, a million places called Feistritz (from Bistrica), but the Germans (Austrians) masked them well and sometimes came up with their own names. Places like Ferlach (Borovlje), Kottmansdorf (Kotmara vas), Spielfeld (Špilje) are harder to see through. And sometimes villages, fully Slovene 100 years ago, have very unrelated names in German. Like Vorderberg (Blače) or so.
To be honest, I'm surprised that Slovenes did not demand the incorporation of Austrian Carinthia to Slovenia after WW2.
Now as you can see it is too late for you to get these "recovered territories". But why didn't you get more land in 1945?
Last edited:
Racism can be based on imagined racial differences as well.
In Bolivia today Spanish-speakers are racist against Quechua-speakers and Aymara-speakers, even though pretty much all Bolivians are racially Native Americans, even if they identify as Mestizos (but the amount of European ancestry in Bolivia is in fact very minor):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gimwICxs_dA
People who identify as Mestizos are racist against Indians, but an average Bolivian Mestizo is still in 9/10 Indian:
Group - Indian / European / African ancestry (averages):
Mestizos from Pando - 91% / 8,5% / 0,5%
Mestizos Cochabamba - 93% / 7% / 0%
Mestizos all over Bolivia - 88% / 12% / 0%
Quechua Indians Bolivia - 99% / 1% / 0%
Did the Germans ever not look down on others at first place? Long before Hitler and the Nazis, German colonial administration followed a systematic policy of extermination in Namibia between 1904-1908. It is part of German history and culture. Hitler and Nazism only proved what Germans were capable of doing when proper conditions are provided. Germans were motivated by a racist ideology. Jews were "parasitic vermins" worthy only of eradication. That's why they made no segregation. Over one million of the victims of Germans at the end of World War II were children. Hitler also built the Nazi racial doctrine upon the ideas of German social Darwinists of the late 19th century and theory of the "survival of the fittest".
Hitler was inspired by the ideas of Marx and Engels, who advocated the extermination of primitive nations in Europe. In the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" journal of 1849, Engels for example, called Serbs "racial trash". He also wrote about the "dirtiness and vulgarity" of the Slavic people and that Poland for instance, had no reason to exist. But it does not only end with Slavs. While considering the Jews as their main enemy, Germans targeted other groups for persecution, imprisonment and extermination. Gypsies, disabled people, Poles, Soviet war prisoners, Afro-Germans and homosexuals were only some of them. For the Germans, these people were enemies of the state and a high security risk for the Nazi regime.
According to Hitler, the Weimar Republic was losing the rivalry for land and demography against the inferior Slavic and Asiatic people. That's why the Germans followed a strategic vision to dominate especially Slavs and also "Asiatics" (Central Asia and Muslims of Caucasus), who were "eastern barbarians". According to Nazi worldview, these inferior races were organized by the Jews through the Bolshevik-Communist doctrine and western civilization had to be saved from them. I also used the term German instead of Nazi on purpose. In modern terminology, the words German and Nazi are often used distinctively like Nazis were a different ethnic group or they say "but Hitler was not even a German, he was an Austrian" like some mad, racist Austrian forced the poor Germans to become Nazis all by himself.
Long before Hitler and the Nazis, German colonial administration followed a systematic policy of extermination in Namibia between 1904-1908. It is part of German history and culture. Hitler and Nazism only proved what Germans were capable of doing when proper conditions are provided. Germans were motivated by a racist ideology. Jews were "parasitic vermins" worthy only of eradication. That's why they made no segregation. Over one million of the victims of Germans at the end of World War II were children. Hitler also built the Nazi racial doctrine upon the ideas of German social Darwinists of the late 19th century and theory of the "survival of the fittest".Hitler was inspired by the ideas of Marx and Engels, who advocated the extermination of primitive nations in Europe. In the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" journal of 1849, Engels for example, called Serbs "racial trash". He also wrote about the "dirtiness and vulgarity" of the Slavic people and that Poland for instance, had no reason to exist. But it does not only end with Slavs. While considering the Jews as their main enemy, Germans targeted other groups for persecution, imprisonment and extermination. Gypsies, disabled people, Poles, Soviet war prisoners, Afro-Germans and homosexuals were only some of them. For the Germans, these people were enemies of the state and a high security risk for the Nazi regime.
According to Hitler, the Weimar Republic was losing the rivalry for land and demography against the inferior Slavic and Asiatic people. That's why the Germans followed a strategic vision to dominate especially Slavs and also "Asiatics" (Central Asia and Muslims of Caucasus), who were "eastern barbarians". According to Nazi worldview, these inferior races were organized by the Jews through the Bolshevik-Communist doctrine and western civilization had to be saved from them. I also used the term German instead of Nazi on purpose. In modern terminology, the words German and Nazi are often used distinctively like Nazis were a different ethnic group or they say "but Hitler was not even a German, he was an Austrian" like some mad, racist Austrian forced the poor Germans to become Nazis all by himself.
Joined Jul 2014
6,743 Posts | 472+
Lower Styria, Slovenia
We did. And then we didn't. Our forces took control over the Slovene ethnic territory in Southern Carinthia with Celovec, but were then forced back by the British. The Allies said the border in Carinthia can't be changed because it was already subject to a democratic (read "crooked") plebiscite in 1920. In Styria a satisfactory border was reached already in Saint-Germain, thanks to the military actions of general Rudolf Maister, leaving almost no Slovenes on the Austrian side. Later, in 1955, when Austria signed their State Treaty, partisan resistance by Carinthian Slovenes was one of the major reasons for them to look in a somewhat better light (in a sense, hey look, we were fighting Hitler as well). Slovenes in Austria were given rights, written in the State Treaty, but there's been more or less fierce arguments ever since and Austria not fullfilling its duty. Of course, they like to remind us that we haven't even recognised a German minority in Slovenia. It looks like a Sisyphean task sometimes ...
Germanics were thought to all belong to the Nordid branches of the Caucasoid race, while Slavs were "supposedly" all Alpinids, Lappish and Mongoloids who were considered to be "inferior" in the eyes of some arrogant Germanic fools. Though it is much more complicated than that. Germanics were also presented as the only "blonde ones" which is truly just nonsense.
First of all, Slavics are Europids and not Mongloids.
The Sinid phenotype well exemplified below is not found in any of the ethnic Slavic populations.
http://m.blog.hu/em/embartanitipusok/skins/sinidm.jpg
http://m.blog.hu/em/embartanitipusok/skins/sinidf.jpg
Thus let's eliminate the "Mongoloid" phenotype among Slavs.
First of all, Slavics are Europids and not Mongloids.
The Sinid phenotype well exemplified below is not found in any of the ethnic Slavic populations.
http://m.blog.hu/em/embartanitipusok/skins/sinidm.jpg
http://m.blog.hu/em/embartanitipusok/skins/sinidf.jpg
Thus let's eliminate the "Mongoloid" phenotype among Slavs.
Darwin didn't say anything about "survival of the fittest" in the context it is sometimes mistaken, just as Hitler and associates cynically manipulated what Nietzsche had to say.
Neither men said anything like what Hitler and associates believed, and in the final analysis Hitler and associates were quite probably the most stupid people who have ever walked this earth.
Not a brain cell between 'em, with the exception of Goebbels and Speer. How on earth such a rabble of oddballs, social misfits, petty criminals and out-and-out lunatics managed to get into a position of power will always be a source of mystery.
Darwin was a liberal. He didn't say anything about "survival of the fittest" in the Nazi sense of the term.
Did the Germans ever not look down on others at first place?
Hitler was inspired by the ideas of Marx and Engels, who advocated the extermination of primitive nations in Europe. In the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" journal of 1849, Engels for example, called Serbs "racial trash". He also wrote about the "dirtiness and vulgarity" of the Slavic people and that Poland for instance, had no reason to exist. But it does not only end with Slavs. While considering the Jews as their main enemy, Germans targeted other groups for persecution, imprisonment and extermination. Gypsies, disabled people, Poles, Soviet war prisoners, Afro-Germans and homosexuals were only some of them. For the Germans, these people were enemies of the state and a high security risk for the Nazi regime.
According to Hitler, the Weimar Republic was losing the rivalry for land and demography against the inferior Slavic and Asiatic people. That's why the Germans followed a strategic vision to dominate especially Slavs and also "Asiatics" (Central Asia and Muslims of Caucasus), who were "eastern barbarians". According to Nazi worldview, these inferior races were organized by the Jews through the Bolshevik-Communist doctrine and western civilization had to be saved from them. I also used the term German instead of Nazi on purpose. In modern terminology, the words German and Nazi are often used distinctively like Nazis were a different ethnic group or they say "but Hitler was not even a German, he was an Austrian" like some mad, racist Austrian forced the poor Germans to become Nazis all by himself.
Both Germany and Austria were not "perfectly Nordid" or "pure" in racial phenotype, neither were they all pure blond/blue-eyed.
Last edited:
Did the Germans ever not look down on others at first place?
Hitler was inspired by the ideas of Marx and Engels, who advocated the extermination of primitive nations in Europe. In the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" journal of 1849, Engels for example, called Serbs "racial trash". He also wrote about the "dirtiness and vulgarity" of the Slavic people and that Poland for instance, had no reason to exist. But it does not only end with Slavs. While considering the Jews as their main enemy, Germans targeted other groups for persecution, imprisonment and extermination. Gypsies, disabled people, Poles, Soviet war prisoners, Afro-Germans and homosexuals were only some of them. For the Germans, these people were enemies of the state and a high security risk for the Nazi regime.
According to Hitler, the Weimar Republic was losing the rivalry for land and demography against the inferior Slavic and Asiatic people. That's why the Germans followed a strategic vision to dominate especially Slavs and also "Asiatics" (Central Asia and Muslims of Caucasus), who were "eastern barbarians". According to Nazi worldview, these inferior races were organized by the Jews through the Bolshevik-Communist doctrine and western civilization had to be saved from them. I also used the term German instead of Nazi on purpose. In modern terminology, the words German and Nazi are often used distinctively like Nazis were a different ethnic group or they say "but Hitler was not even a German, he was an Austrian" like some mad, racist Austrian forced the poor Germans to become Nazis all by himself.
These are the principal Europid/Caucasoid phenotypes found in the following populations:
Germany (going from north to south):
1.) Borreby (Ancient North European variety), most common in the north.
Skin: Pale to fair
Hair: Straight or Wavy blond (sometimes red or brown)
Eyes: Blue or mixed
Nose : Straight
Body build: Mesomorph to endomorph (heavy bone structure) and tall
Head shape: Mildly brachycephalic
Dalo-Faelid, most common in north and central regions of Germany.
Skin: Pale or fair skin
Hair: Straight or curly blond (sometimes red or brown)
Eyes: Gray or mixed
Nose: Straight or slightly convex
Body build: mesomorph (robust bones) and tall, sometimes in old age endomorph
Head: Mildly brachycephalic
Face: broad with square jaws and cheekbone.
Joined Aug 2016
338 Posts | 10+
Poland
The laughter of history is that Germans are one of the most genetically mixed nations in Europe.. not mentioning that 20% have Slavic origin, Prussians had huge mix of Baltic blood and they are mixed with Celts.
The closest to original of Germanics are Norwegians.
The laughter of history is that Slavs are genetically closest from all European people to the groups nazi science was aspiring to meaning to Arians and the groups which entered Northern India which are R1A.
I had a co-worker from Italy in 2009.Heard the most outrageous and comical story from him.
Tino was from Milan or Lombardy (Langobardia) somewhere and mentioned to me, that to this day Italians call their countrymen from the lands in Northern Italy,where many germans,like the langobardi,gepids and some ostrogoths settled in in the 500 and 600s AD...barbarians.
It is amazing that after 1400 years after the fact,people from one part of the country distinguish themselves in this fashion.
Tino was from Milan or Lombardy (Langobardia) somewhere and mentioned to me, that to this day Italians call their countrymen from the lands in Northern Italy,where many germans,like the langobardi,gepids and some ostrogoths settled in in the 500 and 600s AD...barbarians.
It is amazing that after 1400 years after the fact,people from one part of the country distinguish themselves in this fashion.
Last edited:
Yes, indeed Germany is located in North-Central Europe has links with Germanic, Celtic (Gauls, etc...) and Slavic (Wends, Sorbs, etc...) people. Talking about purity at this time is a joke. The closest to what we might call to the "Original" Germanic people are the Swedish, Norwegian and some Danish people of Scandinavia. Nevertheless there is no "pure" race as such today. We all are mixtures of various peoples.The so-called Aryans/Arians were not even European in the strict sense to begin with, they were from India as you already quoted. Most were dark, but there was a fairer phenotype among them, which we could call Proto Nordid.
These are the characteristics of Proto-Nordid (Ancient East Nordid variety)
Today it's not very common at all and is usually found in more mixed type. It was widespread in prehistoric Proto-Indo-European populations of the Eurasian Steppes. The type is found sopradically found amongst the Russians, Lithuanians, Latvians, some southern Bulgarians and northern Greeks and non-Europeans especially some Kurds, Gilanis, Alawis, Samaritans, Druze, some Persians (Iranians, etc...), Kalash, Pamiri of Pakistan and northern regions of India, even sometimes Uygurs.
Illustration of Proto Nordid:
Skin: Pale to fair
Hair: Straight/wavy blond (sometimes reddish)
Head: Dolicephalic
Face: Long with rugged features, deep mandible, marked chin
Eyes: Blue/gray/green
Nose: Long, prominent, hyperleptorrhine, sometimes convex
Body build: Tall, ectomorph to mesomorph
More History Discussions
- Locked
Trending History Discussions
-
The Great Captains of History - How Many Battles? - Version 7- Started by DiocletianIsBetterThanYou
- Replies: 861
-
-
The Great Captains of History - How Many Battles? - Version 5
- Started by DiocletianIsBetterThanYou
- Replies: 3K
-
The Diversity Of Early African Architecture/Ruins Thread- Started by Kilwa Sultanate
- Replies: 2K
-