Popular Science Monthly/Volume 52/November 1897/The Racial Geography of Europe: Germany X

by William Zebina Ripley

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THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)

By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

X.—GERMANY.

GERMANIA! A word entirely foreign to the Teutonic speech of northern Europe. Deutschland then, the country of the Deutsch—not Dutch, for they are really Netherlander. What do these words mean? What territories, what peoples do they comprehend? The Austrians speak as pure German as the Prussians; yet the defeat of Königgratz, barely a generation ago, left them outside of Germany. On the other hand, the Polish peasants of eastern Prussia, with their purely Slavic language, are accounted Germans in good standing to-day.^[1]

Ambiguous linguistically, do these words, German or Deutsch, imply any temperamental or religious unity? This can not be, for the main participants in the Thirty Years' War—

"Fighting for conciliation,
And hating each other for the love of God"—

were Germans. Historians are accustomed to identify the division line of belief in this conflict with that of racial origin. They are pleased to make the independent, liberty-loving spirit of the Teutonic race responsible for the Protestant Reformation. Let us not be too sure about that. Such bold generalizations are often misleading. Racial boundaries are not so simple in outline. The Prussians and the Prussian Saxons—Martin Luther was one—were anything but pure Teutons racially; this did not prevent them from siding with Prince Christian and Gustavus Adolphus. And then there were the Bohemians who began the revolt, and the Swiss Calvinists, and the rebels of the Peasants' War in Würtemberg! None of these were ethnically Teutons. Let us beware of such ascriptions of a monopoly of virtue or intellect to any given race, however comforting they may be to us who are of Teutonic descent. Modern Germany, to be sure, is half Catholic and half Protestant, but the division was not of ethnic origin in any sense. Thus the word German is even more nondescript religiously than linguistically. In short, it applies to-day to an entirely artificial concept—nationality—the product of time and place. Religious, linguistic, and in large measure political differences have merged themselves in a sympathetic unity. Thus has the original meaning of the word Deutsch—a people or nation—come to its truest expression at last.

The fact is that nationality need not of necessity imply any greater uniformity of ethnic origin than of either linguistic or religious affiliations. Such we have seen is the case in Trance and Italy. Especially clear are the two distinct racial elements in the latter case. Now in Germany, on the northern slopes of the main European watershed, we are confronted with a great nation, whose constituent parts are equally divergent in physical origin. With the shifting of scene, new actors participate, although the plot is ever the same. This time it is not a question of the Alpine and Mediterranean races. The Alpine element remains, but the Teuton replaces the other. Briefly stated, the situation is this: northwestern Germany—Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Westphalia—is distinctly allied to the physical type of the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes. All the remainder of the empire—no, not even excluding Prussia, east of the Elbe—is less Teutonic in type, until finally in the essentially Alpine broad-headed populations of Baden, Würtemberg, and Bavaria, in the south the Teutonic race passes from view. The only difference, then, between Germany and France in respect of race is that the northern country has a little more Teutonic blood in it. As for that portion of the empire which was two generations ago politically distinct from Prussia, the South German Confederation, it is in no wise racially distinguishable from central France. Thus has political history perverted ethnology; and, notwithstanding, each nation is probably the better for the blend, however loath it may be to acknowledge it.^[2]

First, and always, as to the physical geography of the country: everything ethnically depends upon that. It is depicted upon the

It will be observed that in all cases we have preserved the German spelling of geographical names. This is done for special reasons of weight, which can not be explained in this place.

map on this page, which represents elevation above sea level by means of darkening tints, the mountainous regions being generally designated by the broad bands of shading. Draw a line from

Breslau, or, since that lies just off our map, let us say from Dresden to the city of Hanover, and thence to Cologne. Such a line roughly divides the uplands from the plains. To the north stretches away the open, flat, sandy expanse of Hanover, Oldenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Prussia. This vast extent of country is mainly below one hundred metres in elevation above the sea. South of our division line the land rises more or less abruptly to a region upward of a thousand feet in altitude. In Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Bohemia lie extensive table lands fully five hundred feet higher even than this, giving place finally to the high Alps. The transition from north to south is particularly emphasized along our artificial division line by the fringe of mountains which lie along it, including the Riesen and Erzgebirge bounding Bohemia, the heavily

Teutonic Blond Type. Mainz. Stature, 1·75 metre. Cephalic Index, 75.

wooded mountains of Thüringen, and farther west the Harz, the Waldgebirge, and the Westerwald by Cologne. On this side, the highlands across the narrow gully of the Rhine River have already been described in speaking of the Ardennes uplands in France and Belgium. Their extension in Germany is known as the Rhenish plateau.

For the sake of unity of treatment, preserving the general form of argument already adopted in the cases of France and Italy, let us consider the head form of the people first. At once we perceive a progressive broadening of the heads, that is, an increase of cephalic index, as we travel outward from the northwestern corner of the empire in the vicinity of Denmark. Thus we pass from a head form identical with that of the Scandinavians to one in the south in no wise distinguishable from the Swiss, the Austrian, and other Alpine types in France and northern Italy. Our three accompanying portraits

Mixed Type. Achern i. Baden. Stature, 1·62 metre. Cephalic Index, 83·3.

will serve to illustrate this gradual change of physical type.^[3] The first is a pure blond Teuton, blue-eyed, fair-haired, with the characteristically Disharmonic Mixed Type.
Bavarian Tyrol. long head and narrow, oval face of his race. The features are clear cut, the nose finely molded. Such is the model common in the upper classes all over Germany. Among the peasants it becomes more and more frequent as we approach the Danish peninsula. Here in these northwestern provinces it predominates, but gives place slowly to a mixed and broader-headed type as we pass eastward into Prussia. The intermediate type of head form prevalent in regions of ethnic intermixture is depicted in our second portrait. In this particular case the eyes were blue, but the hair was brown. This variety occurs all along the division line between upland and plain, which we traced a few moments ago. It appears that it is indigenous in Thüringen, the Hesses, and, in fact, all the isolated bits of highland down to the Baltic plain. Oftentimes the result of intermixture is a disharmonism, in which the broad Alpine head is conjoined with the longish face of the Teuton, or the reverse. An example of the first combination is depicted herewith. Types of this kind occurring everywhere in the south prove that the Teutonic invaders were finally outnumbered by the indigenous Alpine inhabitants. The pure, unmixed Alpine race finds its expression in the plateaus of Bavaria and Würtemburg, in the Schwarzwald, the Rauhe Alp, and parts of the Thüringerwald. Such is our third type, with its rounded face and skull foreshortened from front to back. Our representative here photographed was dark brown both in hair and eyes, nose rather irregular, less finely molded perhaps; certainly considerably broader at the nostrils than in the Teutons. At the same time the stature was short, only five feet one and a half

Alpine Type. Oberwolfach i. Baden. Stature, 1·59 metre. Cephalic Index, 86·5.

inches, with a correspondingly stocky figure. Other examples of these several types will be found scattered through the following pages. We need not enter into further details. The facts speak for themselves. There can be no doubt of two distinct races of men.

It is especially important to emphasize the fact that the heads broaden not only from the neighborhood of Denmark southward but toward the east as well. This raises what was once a most delicate question. What is the place of the Prussians among the other peoples of modern Germany? The political supremacy of the house of Hohenzollern in the Diet of the empire and the whilom rivalry mid jealousy of the other states made it once a matter of some concern to determine this point. Happily for us, such questions have no terrors to-day. We have already seen how securely nationality may rest upon heterogeneity of physical descent. Be that as it may, it seems to be certain that the peasantry of Prussia is far from being purely Teutonic in physical type. We should expect this to be the case, of course, in those eastern provinces, Posen and Silesia, which still retain their Slavic languages as evidence of former political independence. These ought normally to be allied to Russia and eastern Europe, as we have already observed. But as to Brandenburg—the provinces about Berlin. How about them? Do they also betray signs of an intermixture with the broad-headed Alpine race, of which the Slavs are part? It seems to be so indeed. Germany on the east shades off imperceptibly into Lithuania and the Polish provinces of Russia. Little by little the heads broaden to an index rising eighty-three. Whether this is a product of historic expansion we may discuss later. For the present we may accept it as a fact.^[4]

The race question in Germany came to the front some years ago under rather peculiar circumstances. Shortly after the close of the Franco-Prussian War, while the sting of defeat was still smarting in France, de Quatrefages, an eminent anthropologist at Paris, promulgated the theory, afterward published in a brochure entitled The Prussian Race, that the dominant people in Germany were not Teutons at all, but were directly descended from the Finns. Being nothing but Finns, they were to be classed with the Lapps and other peoples of western Russia. As a consequence they were alien to Germany—barbarians, ruling by the sword alone. The political effect of such a theory, emanating from so high an authority, may well be imagined. Coming at a time of profound national humiliation in France, when bitter jealousies were still rife among the Germans, the book created a profound sensation. It must be confessed that the tone of the work was by no means judicial, although it was respectably scientific in its outward form. Thus the chapter in it describing the bombardment of the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, of which de Quatrefages was the director, intended to prove the anti-civilized proclivities of the hated conquerors, could not in the nature of things be entirely dispassionate. The Parisian press, as may be imagined, was not slow to take advantage of such an opportunity. Articles of de Quatrefages in the Revue de Deux Mondes were everywhere quoted, with such additions as seemed fitting under the circumstances. The affair promised to become an international incident.

A champion of the Prussians was not hard to find. Professor Virchow of Berlin, set himself at work to disprove the theory which thus damned the dominant people of the empire. The controversy, half political and half scientific, waxed hot at times, both disputants being held victorious by their own people.^[5] One great benefit flowed indirectly from it all, however. The German government was induced to authorize the official census of the color of hair and eyes of the six million school children of the empire which we have so often mentioned in these pages. One of the resultant maps we have reproduced in this article. It established beyond question the differences in pigmentation between the north and south of Germany. At the same time it showed the similarity in blondness between all the peoples along the Baltic. The Hohenzollern territory was as Teutonic in this respect as the Hanoverian. Thus far had the Prussians vindicated their ethnic reputation. It is profoundly to be regretted that the investigation was not extended by a comprehensive census either of stature or of the head form of adults, similar to those conducted in other countries. Such a project was, in fact, sidetracked in favor of the census of school children. Whether politically inspired, or whether considered derogatory to the noble profession of arms, the Prussian army is forbidden for all scientific investigations of this kind, despite the efforts of Virchow and other eminent authorities in that direction; so that data are still scrappy, as we have seen.

To an American the apparent unwillingness on the part of the Germans boldly to own up to the radical ethnic differences which exist between north and south is incomprehensible. It seems to be not improbable that the Teutonic blond race has so persistently been apotheosized by the Germans themselves as the original Aryan civilizer of Europe, that to acknowledge any other racial descent has come to be considered as a confession of humble origin. Or, more likely still, this prejudice in favor of Teutonism is an unconscious reflection from the shining fact that this type is widely prevalent among the aristocracy all over Europe. Whether Aryan or not, it certainly predominates in the ruling classes to-day. At all events, the attempt is constantly being made to prove that the ethnic contrasts between north and south are the product of environmental influences, and not a heritage from widely different ancestry. This is not an impossibility in respect of pigmentation; but it can

 

Relative Frequency of Brunette types in Germany

 

not be pushed too far. Thus Ranke of Munich, most eminent authority, has striven for years to account for the broad-headedness of the Bavarian population by making it a product of the elevated and often mountainous character of the country. This being proved, it would follow that the Bavarians still were ethnically Teutonic, merely fallen from dolichocephalic grace by reason of change of outward circumstances. This theory seems to be completely incapable of proof; for, as Ranke himself has shown,^[6] the effect of the malnutrition generally incident to an abode at considerable altitudes is entirely in the opposite direction. Among poorly nourished children in factory towns, for example, the immediate effect is to cause an arrest of development about the temples, exactly where the broad-headed Alpine race is so well formed. It is strange to us in America to find how important such matters may become by reason of a social differentiation between races. Another potent example is offered in Russia. The late Professor Zograf, of Moscow, than whom none stood higher as an anthropologist in Russia, confronted by the same division of ethnic types as Germany contains, has positively identified the blond long-headed one as the original Slav.^[7] This may or may not be true; it may be gratifying to have it so. To us the evidence apparently points the other way. In Russia, however, no other conclusion than this would be tolerated for an instant. Pan-Slavism prevails even in science.

After this excursus, let us come back to statistics and examine the evidence from the study of blondes and brunettes among the school children. Our double-page map, as will be observed, includes not only the German Empire but Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria, down to the Adriatic as well—exclusive, however, of Hungary. Virchow's great census in Germany was extended over the other countries in quick succession.^[8] The system employed was identical in all, save in Belgium; and even here the definition of brunettes was the same, although the term blond was made more comprehensive. For this reason the results are strictly comparable so far as our map is concerned. A great defect in all such investigations on children, as we have already stated, lies in the tendency to a darkening of hair and eyes with growth. This is probably intensified in the more southern countries, so that our shading probably fails to indicate the full extent of the progressive brunetteness in this direction. North of the Alps, however, we may accept its evidence provisionally, at all events.

One or two points on this map deserve mention, after noting the general contrast between northern and southern Germany. Observe how sharp the transition from light to dark becomes all around the mountainous boundaries of Bohemia. Here we pass suddenly from Germanic into foreign territory; for the Bohemian Czechs are truly Slavic in origin as in speech. One wonders if it is purely chance that so accentuated a brunette spot occurs about Prague. That is the capital city, the nucleus of the nation. As for the German-speaking Austrians, they are in no wise distinguishable in pigmentation from the Slovaks, Slovenes, Czechs, or other Slavic neighbors all about them. The second point which we would emphasize is the striking way in which blondness seems to have trickled down, so to speak, through Würtemberg, and even as far as the Swiss frontier. We have already called attention to this in a preceding article. It will bear repetition here. The Rhine Valley bears no relation to it. At first sight, the infiltration seems to have taken place directly across country. Closer inspection shows that it coincides with other evidence derived from the study of the head form in the same district. Especially noteworthy are the peculiarities of Franconia (Franken), the southern edge of which appears as the light-dotted area on our map on page 61. This Franconian long-headed district extends over nearly the whole basin of the Main River well into Bavaria, and, as our map shows, up along the Neckar. It constitutes by far the clearest case of wholesale Teutonic colonization south of the Baltic plain. This is probably the cause of the wedge of blondness upon our large map. Historians tell us the Franks were Teutons, and here is where they first settled.

It is interesting to observe how this Teutonization of Franconia, manifested in our map of brunette traits, tallies with geographical probability. Here is just where we should be led to expect a settlement in any case. Turn back for a moment to our map of physical geography. As the invaders pushed southward, they would naturally avoid the infertile uplands bordering Bohemia, and on the west the difficult, heavily forested Rhenish plateau. Each of these wings of the German upland are of a primitive geological formation, agriculturally unpropitious, especially as compared with Thüringen—rugged, but well watered and kindly, as it is. Suppose our Teutonic tribes to ascend the Weser and its affluents, the Fulda and Werra, or perhaps the narrow gully of the Rhine to Mainz. There would be little to tempt them to turn back to the wooded country, either of Hesse or Thüringen. What was more natural, however, than that sedimentation should take place on reaching the fertile valley of the Main? Its basin, light dotted on our map, with that of the Neckar just south of it, forms as a consequence the great Teutonic colony in the Alpine highlands. Corroborative testimony of place names also exists. Canon Taylor, for example, states that this district is a hotbed of Teutonic, mainly Saxon, village and local names. It closely resembles parts of England in this respect. Further wholesale colonization to the south seems to have been discouraged by the forbidding Rauhe Alp or Swabian Jura. The Teutonic characteristics have heaped up all along its northern edge, as our map on page 61 shows; but the mountains themselves remain strongholds of the broad-headed type. A considerable colony of dolichocephaly lies on the other side of them, seemingly bearing some relation to the Allgäuer dialect. Beyond this all is Alpine in type. Allemanni and Helvetii have left no trace of their Teutonism in the living population.

Viewed in the light of these geographical facts, the contrast in brunetteness between Würtemberg and Bavaria is readily explained. The fluvial portals of the Bavarian plateau open to the east, not the north. We know that the Boii (Bohemians) and the Bajovars or ancient Bavarians came from this side, following up the course of the Danube. Their names are Keltic, their physical characteristics seem to have been so as well.^[9]

One more physical trait remains for consideration before we pass from the present living population to discuss certain great historic events in Germany which have left their imprint upon the people. We refer to stature.^[10] The patent fact is, of course, that the areas of blondness and of dolichocephaly are also centers of remarkably tall stature. Our three portrait types illustrated this clearly. The first grenadier was five feet nine inches in height (1.75 metre); the mixed type was shorter by about five inches (1.62 metre), while the conscript from the recesses of the Black Forest in Baden stood but five feet two inches in his stockings (1.59 metre). This last case is a bit extreme; averages seldom fall in Germany below five feet five inches. Local variations are common, as elsewhere; crowded city life depresses the average, prosperity raises it; but underneath it all the racial characteristic, so inherent in the Teutons, makes itself felt wherever they have penetrated the territory of the short and sturdy Alpine race. A few anomalies in the distribution of this trait should be noted in passing. In contravention of the general law, that the severity of climate and poverty of environment in mountainous districts exert a depressing influence upon stature, the Bavarian Alps and the Böhmerwald contain a population distinctly above the general average in the great plateau south of Regensburg. (See map of physical geography.) This is all the more extraordinary, since these mountaineers are Alpinely broad-headed and relatively brunette to an extreme. It would be a highly discouraging combination did we not remember that the great Bavarian plateau is itself of considerable altitude; even then one is led to suspect that some process of selection has been at work to compass such a result. For if we turn to the Black Forest, we there find our racial law holds good. Wolfach, from which our portrait type was taken, exemplifies it completely. Here, on the high plateau known as Die Baar, the average stature falls below five feet four inches, the lowest recorded, I believe, in the empire.

 

Two great events in the history of northern Europe have profound significance for the anthropologist. The first is the marvelous expansion of the Germans, about the time of the fall of Rome; the second is the corresponding immigration of Slavic hordes from the east. Both of these were potent enough to leave results persistent to this day.

We know nothing of the German tribes until about 100 b. c. Suddenly they loom up in the north, aggressive foes of the Romans. For some time they were held in check by the stubborn resistance of the legions, until finally, when the restraining hand of Rome was withdrawn, they spread all over western Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era. Such are the well-known historic facts. Let us see what archæology may add to them. The first investigators of ancient burial grounds in southern Germany unearthed two distinct types of skulls. The round-headed variety was quite like that of the modern peasantry roundabout. The other dolichocephalic type was less frequent, but strongly marked in places. An additional feature of these latter was noted at once. They were generally found in burial places of a peculiar kind. An easterly sloping hill was especially preferred, on which the skeletons lay feet toward the rising sun—probably a matter of religious importance. The bodies were also regularly disposed in long rows, side by side, a circumstance which led Ecker to term them Reihengräber, or row-graves. Other archæologists, by a study of the personal effects in the graves, succeeded in identifying these people with the tall, blond Teutonic invaders from the north. Such graves are found all through Germany as far north as Thüringia. They bear witness that Teutonic blood infiltrated through the whole population. The relative intensity of intermixture varied greatly, however, from place to place. Our map on this page shows in a broad way its geographical distribution in Würtemburg and Baden, so far as it can be measured by the head form. Reihengräber and cephalic

Plain white, the absence of shading on this map denotes an intermediate type of head form incident upon intermixture.

index corroborate one another. The most considerable occupation seems to have been, as we have said, in Franconia. We have already adduced some geographical reasons for the settlement in this place. Still another one remains to be noted. The Frankish race spot seems to lie just outside the great wall, the Limes Romanus, which the Emperor Tiberius and his successors built to hold the barbarians in check. Von Hölder has indicated the relation between the longheaded Teutonic areas and this ancient political boundary. Our map is adapted from his.^[11] The modern limits of the Frankish dialect also coincide with it in great part. Here, just outside the Roman walls, the Burgundians, Helvetians, and Franks undoubtedly were massed for a long time.

The Teutons, in invading the territory of the indigenous Alpine population, only succeeded in displacing the aborigines in part. They followed up the rivers, took possession of the open plains; but everywhere else left the natives in relative purity. This accounts in some measure for the great differentiation between people of mountain and plain all over this part of Europe, to which we have constantly adverted. It endows the whole event with the character of a great social movement, rather than of a sudden military occupation. We can not too fully guard against the hasty assumption that this Teutonic expansion was entirely a forcible dispossession of one people by another. It may have been so on the surface; but its results are too universal to be ascribed to that alone. A revolution of opinion is taking place among anthropologists and historians as well to-day, similar to that which was stimulated in geology many years ago by Sir Charles Lyell. That is to say, conceptions of terrific cataclysms, human or geological, producing great results suddenly, are being supplanted by theories of slow-moving causes, working about us to-day, which, acting constantly, almost imperceptibly, in the aggregate are no less mighty in their results. In pursuance of this change of view, students look to-day to present social slow-working movements for the main explanation of the great racial migrations in the past.

We can not resist the conclusion that the Teutonic expansion must be ascribed in part to the relative infertility of the north of Europe; possibly to differences in birth rates, and the like. Population outran the means of support. For a long while its overflow was dammed back by the Roman Empire, until it finally broke over all barriers. It is conceivable that some such contrast as is now apparent between the French and Germans may have been operative then. The Germans are to-day constantly immigrating into northern France—all over the world, in fact—and why? Simply because population is increasing very rapidly; while in France it is practically at a standstill. Another effective force in inducing emigration from the north may have been differences in social customs indirectly due to environmental influences. Thus Baring-Gould has called attention to the contrasts in customs of inheritance which once obtained between the peasants of northern and southern Germany. In the sandy, infertile Baltic plain the land is held in severalty, inheritance taking place in the direct line. The oldest son, sometimes the youngest, remains on the patrimony, while all the other children go forth into the world to make their way alone. Primogeniture prevails, in short. In the fertile parts of Würtemberg, on the other hand, where the village community long persisted, all the children share alike on the death of the father. Each one is a constituent element in the agrarian social body, for which reason no emigration of the younger generation takes place. The underlying reason for this difference may have been that in the north the soil was already saturated with population, so to speak. The farms were too poor to support more than a single family, a condition absent in the south. The net result of such varying customs after a few generations would be to induce a constant Teutonic emigration. Military expeditions may have been merely its superficial manifestation. It would, of course, be unwarranted to suggest that any one of these factors alone could cause the great historic expansion. Nevertheless, it is far from improbable that they were contributory in some degree.

When all the Teutonic tribes broke over bounds and went campaigning and colonizing in Gaul and the Roman Empire, a second great racial wave swept over Germany from the east. Perhaps the Huns and other Asiatic savages may have started it; at all events, the Slavic hordes all over the northeast began to move. Here we have another case of a widespread social phenomenon, military on the surface, but involving too many people to be limited to such forcible occupation. There is abundant evidence that these Slavs did not always drive out the earlier population. They often merely filled up the waste lands, more or less peaceably, thus infiltrating through the whole country without necessarily involving bloodshed.

There are several ways in which we may trace the extent of this Slavic invasion before we seek to apply our criteria of physical characteristics. Historically, we know that the Slavs were finally checked by Karl the Great, in the ninth century, at the so-called Limes Sorabicus. This fortified frontier is shown on our map on page 66, bounding the area ruled in large squares diagonally. The Slavic settlements may also be traced by means of place names. Those ending in itz are very common in Saxony; zig also, as in Leipzig; a in Jena; dam in Potsdam—all these cities were named by Slavs. Indications of this kind abound, showing that the immigrant hordes penetrated almost to the Rhine.

It seems impossible that the movements of a people should be traced merely by the study of the way in which they laid out their villages; yet August Meitzen, the eminent statistician, has just issued a great four-volume work, in which this has been done with conspicuous success.^[12] It appears that the Slavic peoples in allotting land almost always followed Slavic Long Village. Trebnitz, Prussian Saxony. either one of two plans. Sometimes they disposed the houses regularly along a single straight street, the church near the center, with small rectangular plots of garden behind each dwelling. Outside this all land was held in common. Such a village was that of Trebnitz, whose ground plan is shown in our first cut on this page. In other cases it was customary to lay out the settlement in a circular form, constituting Slavic Round Village. Witzeetze, Hanover. what is known as the Slavic round village. In such case there is but one opening to the common in the center, and the holdings in severalty extend outward in triangular sectors. Beyond these, in turn, lie the common pasture and woodlands. Our second diagram represents one of these village types. Contrast either of these simple and systematic settlements with the one plotted in our third map. This Germanic village is utterly irregular. The houses face in every direction, and streets and lanes cross and recross in delightfully hopskotch fashion. Nor is the agrarian organization of this Germanic village by any means simple. Divided into small plots or "hides," so called, a certain number of each kind are, or were once, assigned by lot in rotation to the heads of households. These "hides" were scattered all about the village, so that a peasant might be cultivating twenty or more Germanic Village. Geusa, Prussian Saxony. parcels of land at one time. The organization was highly complex, including ordinances as to the kind of crops to be raised, and other similar matters of detail. We shall not attempt even to outline such a "Hufenverfasiung"; for us it must suffice to note the complexity of the type, as opposed to the Slavic form.

Our map, close at hand, shows the geographical distribution of these several village types. The circumscribed area of the original Germanic settlements is rather remarkable. It shows how far the Slavs penetrated in number sufficient thus to transform the landscape. It will be observed that on this map the small squares and triangles denote the areas into which the German tribes transplanted their peculiar institutions. That they were temporarily held in check by the Romans appears from the correspondence between the Roman wall, shown by a heavy black line on the map, and the southern boundary of the Germanic villages. Of course, when they spread abroad, a considerable change in the agrarian organization was induced by the fact that the emigrants went as a conquering class. The institutions became less democratic, rather approaching the feudal or manorial type; but they all preserved sufficient peculiarities to manifest their origin. Such hybrid village types, covering all northern France and eastern England, are as good proof of Teutonization as we could ask.^[13]

It will be observed that all the village types we have so far illustrated are closely concentrated and compact. A remarkably sudden change in this respect takes place west of the original Germanic

 

Settlements and Village types of Germany

 

village area. The whole economic character of the country changes within a few miles. It is of great historic importance. Our map shows the transition to occur strictly along the course of the Weser River. A large district is here occupied by the Celtic house, so called. The small circles denote that there are no closely built villages at all in the region so marked. Each house stands entirely by itself, in the middle of its farm, generally in no definite relation to the highroads. These latter connect market places and churches perhaps, about which are sometimes dwellings for the schoolmaster, the minister, or storekeeper; but the peasantry, the agricultural population, is scattered entirely broadcast. This resembles the distribution of our American farmers' dwellings in the Western States. We have no time to discuss the origin of these peculiarities. The opinion prevails that they stand in some relation to the clan organization of the Kelts, who are said to have once occupied this territory. The nearest prototype is, as our map shows, in the high Alps.

It is high time to take up once more the main thread of our argument—how far did the Slavic invasion, which so profoundly influenced the agrarian institutions, affect the physical type of the people of Germany? We may subdivide the Slavic-speaking nations of eastern Europe into two groups, which, however, differ from one another and from the pure Alpine race only in degree.^[14] The northern Slavs include the Russians, Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, and Wends; the southern is composed of the Serbs, Croatians, Slovenes, and Albanians. Both of these are broad-headed, the southern group being rather taller and considerably darker than the one which surrounds Germany. All the modern Slavic peoples of northern Europe approximate to the Alpine type; from which it follows that intermixture of them with the Teutons ought normally to produce shorter stature, darker hair and eyes, and, most persistently of all, an increased breadth of head. The district where these changes have been most clearly induced is in the region of Saxony, especially about Halle. A noticeable contrast is apparent between this district and the protected hills of Thuringia. The peasants in the plain of the Saale are appreciably shorter in stature and broader-headed than their neighbors. This Slavic invasion penetrated Bavaria from the northeast, the intruders apparently taking possession of the upland districts, which had been thinly peopled before. So well marked was this that the region south of Baireuth was long known as Slavonia. In places, as at Regensburg and Berlin, we may trace the Slavic intrusion in the different strata of crania in the burial places. The general extent of this Slavonization of Germany is indicated upon our large double-page map of brunette types. The wedge of color which seems to follow down the Oder and over nearly to Holstein is undoubtedly of such origin. Because of this historic movement Saxony, Brandenburg, and Mecklenburg are less purely Teutonic than they once were in respect of pigmentation. The whole east is, as we have already seen, broader-headed, shading off imperceptibly into the countries where pure Slavic languages are in daily use. Thus the contrast in customs and traditions between the eastern and western Germans, which historians since Cæsar have commented upon, seems to have an ethnic basis of fact upon which to rest.

We have now studied the Teutons at home and in their wanderings on the mainland. In our next article we shall see how profoundly they have modified the ethnic complexion of the British Isles. Then we shall be prepared to see how much truth there is in the theory, boldly proclaimed as a proved fact, that they were the original Aryan inventors of European civilization, as well as the chosen agents for its dissemination.

 

1. Fine map by von Fircks in Zeits. kön. preuss. statistischen Bureaus, Berlin, xxxiii, 1893, pp. 189–296.
2. It is to be regretted that so many of our authorities on Germany have relied upon craniometric investigations rather than study of the living population. Even more grievous is the paucity of evidence regarding the northeastern third of the empire. In our Bibliography of the Anthropology and Ethnology of Europe, to appear shortly in a Bulletin of the Boston Public Library, we have indexed all our authorities, where they may be found in extenso. In this place we may merely mention the larger standard works arranged chronologically: H. Welcker, Kraniologische Mittheilungen, Archiv f. Anth.. i, pp. 89-160, 1862. A. Ecker, Crania Germaniæ meridionalis occidentalis, Freiburg i. B., 1865. H. von Hölder Zusammenstellung der in Württemberg vorkommenden Schädelformen, Stuttgart, 1876. R. Virchow, Beiträge zur physischen Anthropologie der Deutschen u. s. w., Abh. kön. Akad. Wiss., Berlin, 1876; and also Gesammtbericht über die Erhebungen über die Farbe der Schulkinder in Deutschland, Archiv f. Anth., xvi, pp. 275-477, 1886. J. Ranke, Beiträge zur physischen Anthropologie der Bayern, München, 1883. O. Ammon, Natürliche Auslese beim Menschen, Karlsruhe i. B., 1893, and in other monographs (vide bibliography). Equally important, although not restricted to Germany alone, are the papers by Prof. J. Kollmann, especially his Schädel aus alten Grabstätten Bayerns, in Beit, zur Anth. Bayerns, München, i, 1877, pp. 150–226. Certain technical points concerning these writers we have discussed in L'Anthropologie, Paris, vii, 1896, pp. 619 seq. For ethnographic details the older work of Zeuss (vide bibliography) is now supplanted by that of K. Müllenhof, which may confidently be relied upon. Howortb, in Jour. Anth. Inst., London, vi and vii, is also good. For a convenient résumé of our knowledge, both ethnographic and anthropological, consult Hervé, Les Germains, in Revue mensuelle de l'École d'Anthropologie, Paris, vii, 1897, pp. 65–87.
3. For these photographs I am indebted to my very good friend Dr. Otto Amnion of Karlsruhe i. B, whose work we have noted elsewhere.
4. Authorities are cited in our article in L'Anthropologie, Paris, vii, 1896, p. 619 seq. Kollmann, in Archiv f. Anth., xiii, 1881, p. 117 seq., gives many references. See also Lithuania, Esthonia, etc., in our bibliography above mentioned. Virchow admits it himself, Alte Berliner Schädel, in Verh. Berl. Ges. f. Anth., 1880, p. 234.
5. Under the dates of 1871-'72, the articles by the two principal disputants will be found in our Bibliography of the Anthropology of Europe, above mentioned.
6. Beiträge zur Anth. der Bayern, i, 1877, pp. 232 seq., and 285; also ibid., ii, 1879, pp. 75 seq.
7. Vide our Bibliography of Europe.
8. For Austria, see Schimmer, 1884 for Switizerland, Kollmann, 1883; and for Belgium, Vanderkindere, 1879, in our Bibliography. Full titles are there given.
9. Vide H. Ranke, Zur Carniologie der Kelten, Beiträge zur Anth. Bayern, vi, 1885, pp. 109-121; and J. Ranke, in ibid., iii, 1880, pp. 149 seq.
10. Ranke, 1881, has mapped it for Bavaria; Ecker, 1876, and Ammon, 1894, for Baden; Meisner, 1889, for Schleswig-Holstein; Reischen, 1889, for part of Prussia, etc. Titles are given in our Bibliography above mentioned; for additional ones see index for "Germany, stature."
11. The whole extent of the Roman wall in Germany is shown upon our subsequent map of village types, by means of a similar heavy black line. Its relation there to the Germanic village type can not fail to be observed.
12. Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Westgermanen und Ostgermanen, der Kelten, Römer, Finnen und Slawen, Berlin, 1895. Other papers on the same subject are given in our Bibliography.
13. Vide map in Meitzen's Atlas to volume iii of his great work, Anlage 66a.
14. The great authority upon this part of Europe is Dr. A. Weisbach, a full list of whose papers is given in our Bibliography of the Ethnology of Europe.