PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
June 2015
435
“T
he Germanic tribes, which probably originated
from a mixture of peoples along the Baltic
Sea coast, inhabited the northern part of
the European continent by about 500
B.C
. By 100
B.C
.,
they had advanced into the central and southern areas of
present-day Germany. At that time, there were three major
tribal groups: the eastern Germanic peoples lived along the
Oder and Vistula rivers; the northern Germanic peoples
inhabited the southern part of present-day Scandinavia; and
the western Germanic peoples inhabited the extreme south
of Jutland and the area between the North Sea and the Elbe,
Rhine, and Main rivers. The Rhine provided a temporary
boundary between Germanic and Roman territory after
the defeat of the Suevian tribe by Julius Caesar about 70
B.C
. The threatening presence of warlike tribes beyond
the Rhine prompted the Romans to pursue a campaign of
expansion into Germanic territory. However, the defeat of
the provincial governor Varus by Arminius at the Battle of
the Teutoburg Forest in
A.D
. 9 halted Roman expansion;
Arminius had learned the enemy’s strategies during his
military training in the Roman armies. This battle brought
about the liberation of the greater part of Germany from
Roman domination. The Rhine River was once again the
boundary line until the Romans reoccupied territory on
its eastern bank and built the Limes, a fortification 300
kilometers long, in the first century
A.D.
“The second through the sixth centuries was a period
of change and destruction in which eastern and western
Germanic tribes left their native lands and settled in newly
acquired territories. This period of Germanic history, which
later supplied material for heroic epics, included the downfall
of the Roman Empire and resulted in a considerable expansion
of habitable area for the Germanic peoples. However, with the
exception of those kingdoms established by Franks and Anglo-
Saxons, Germanic kingdoms founded in such other parts of
Europe as Italy and Spain were of relatively short duration
because they were assimilated by the native populations.
The conquest of Roman Gaul by Frankish tribes in the late
fifth century became a milestone of European history; it was
the Franks who were to become the founders of a civilized
German state.
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF
“One of the largest Germanic tribes, the Franks, came to
control the territory that was to become France and much of
what is nowwesternGermany and Italy. In
A.D
. 800 their ruler,
Charlemagne, was crowned in Rome by the pope as emperor
of all of this territory. Because of its vastness, Charlemagne’s
empire split into three kingdoms within two generations,
the inhabitants of the West Frankish Kingdom speaking an
early form of French and those in the East Frankish Kingdom
speaking an early form of German. The tribes of the eastern
kingdom--Franconians, Saxons, Bavarians, Swabians, and
several others--were ruled by descendants of Charlemagne
until 911, when they elected a Franconian, Conrad I, to be
their king. Some historians regard Conrad’s election as the
beginning of what can properly be considered German history.
“German kings soon added the Middle Kingdom to their
realm and adjudged themselves rulers of what would later
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 81, No. 6, June 2015, pp. 435–439.
0099-1112/15/435–439
© 2015 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.81.6.435
