The Battle That Created Germany

Caesar is known to exaggerate and make things up to make his story interesting. Caesar is one of the world's great self-promoters and self-propagandists. He knew the power of propaganda and historical legacy. So I'd take what he wrote with a grain of salt.

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There are also [animals], which are called moose. The shape of these, and the varied color of their skins, is much like roes, but in size they surpass them a little and are destitute of horns, and have legs without joints and ligatures; nor do they lie down for the purpose of rest, nor, if they have been thrown down by any accident, can they raise or lift themselves up. Trees serve as beds to them; they lean themselves against them, and thus reclining only slightly, they take their rest; when the huntsmen have discovered from the footsteps of these animals whither they are accustomed to betake themselves, they either undermine all the trees at the roots, or cut into them so far that the upper part of the trees may appear to be left standing. When they have leant upon them, according to their habit, they knock down by their weight the unsupported trees, and fall down themselves along with them.

I guess the English equivalent would be Bodicea/Boudicca.

The title, I think, only refers to the latter.

I had to learn about it in art school. Specifically, about a German artist who criticised how eagerly post-war Germany was to forget it altogether, pretending the monuments raised for it and the operas written about it didn't exist. As if pretending it never happened is somehow better than remembering that what happened was wrong.

- Modern Germans don't really see themselves as descendants of those Germans, in the German language both are named differently. Modern Germans are 'Deutsche' - ancient Germans are 'Germanen'. English does not make this distinction. There are more annoying confusions like this, for example, the Germanic tribe of the Saxons has nothing to do with the modern state of Saxony, as the ancestors of modern Saxons spoke a different dialect. There are several breaks like this in between modern Germany and Germanic tribes which are masked by nomenclature.

- German (Deutsche) Catholics distanced themselves from the 'barbaric', non-Christian Germanic tribes.

- As usual, the Nazis ruined it. The battle was sometimes used for propaganda reasons by the Nazis, replacing Romans with Jews. Modern Nazis are also using it for their own purposes (replacing Romans with immigrants and the US)

Edit: the battle itself isn't silenced or anything, I do remember quite a few events when the 2000 year anniversary happened, including the cover of the SPIEGEL having it (IIRC?)

If you look at central Europe in the last 2000 year it isn't surprising I think, most of the time it looks like a giant disaster.

Also German TV is full of historic documentaries about that time - at lest the public service broadcasters (phoenix, zdf info, arte, etc). Of course you will not notice that if you only follow the private channels.

However I would guess, that your colleagues just forgot about the 'Schlacht im Teuteborger Wald', because it definitely visit part of the history curriculum.

In modern days the French Revolution as a well as Bismarcks doing have the focus for the 'identity' of Germany.

From there, Louis the German received East Francia, which in many ways formed the core of what would later be Germany. From there, we certainly took a long and winding road. (The reformation settlement is probably another point worth touching upon, though)

1871 is merely the point where there was an actual administratively unified nation state called Germany. It's the first time we did that, so in that sense, sure.

(Sorry. I nerd out on history. Really, it's a distraction to your main point - the whole legend of Arminius thing is a German nationalist myth. Tied to 1871 - each nation state needs a founding myth)

Remember that the nation state an accidental invention of the industrial revolution after all; pro-nation state propaganda was happening all over Europe at the time, and a lot of it is quite offensive to our modern eyes.

I find it kind of frustrating that Nazis are mainly depicted as this evil that came into existence in a vacuum, or in the best case solely as a reaction to the situation in Germany after WWI. The seeds of fascism and xenophobia had been shown all over Europe long before that. I suspect Germany just got there first.