German »Hermann« (i.e., Siegfried) Monument, Detmold, Germany

By the time of Caesar Augustus, (30 B.C.-A.D. 14), they had pushed eastward to the Vistula (modern Poland).  The south of modern Germany had remained Celtic up to that time.  As they expanded, the early Germanics began to split up into various cultural and linguistic divisions:  the North Germans (Scandinavia), North-Sea Germans (Friesland to Jutland), Rhein-Weser Germans (also called "West Germans"), the Elbe Germans (throughout the drainage area of the Elbe river) and the Oder-and-Vistula Germans in the east.  The Roman authors Plinius and Tacitus tell us that they knew of three cult groupings in the west (the Ingwaeons, Istwaeons and Herminons), all of whom believed themselves to be descended from a common ancestor, Mannus ("man").

The written history of the Germanic peoples began with their violent contacts with Rome.  The Khimbrians (Cimbri) and the Teutons (Teutones) erupted into the Roman sphere of influence in the areas of modern Austria, Switzerland, southern France and northern Italy around 100 B.C.  Within a few years they were annihilated by the far more disciplined and organized Roman forces, but not before some of them had learned the alphabet used in northern Italy (the so-called "North Etruscan") and taken it to the north to use as runes - a kind of ancient tarot.

Over the next century the Romans spread northwards to conquer all of Gaul (modern France), but their expansion into the Germanic areas east of the Rhein river was permanently checked in A.D. 9, when a great Germanic military genius, Arminius, slaughtered an entire Roman army consisting of three legions and their logistical support units.  In the words of the Roman historian Tacitus, he was the "Liberator of Germany."

The pre-literate historical traditions of the Germans

Many of the great Germanic epics and songs (the Old Icelandic Eddas, the Nibelungenlied and various myths) of great antiquity center around a key figure known as Siegfried (literally, "Victorious Peace"), also known as Sigfrid and, in Old Norse, Sigurd.  In the nineteenth century, the great German composer Richard Wagner wrote a series of famous operas entitled "Der Ring des Nibelungen," which centers on the legendary hero Siegfried.  The tradition, now mostly literary, continues to this day.  For centuries, scholars have puzzled over what historical character might have generated this wealth of legends and songs.  In the third quarter of the twentieth century, the researchers finally determined exactly who this individual was: Arminius.

Arminius and the Destruction of Varus

Arminius (also written Armenius;  the name is probably Latin in origin, and recorded thus only in the Latin and Greek records of the time) was a Cheruskan prince born about 16 B.C. and treacherously poisoned to death by his in-laws about A.D. 21.  He may have obtained the name "Armenius" (likely the proper spelling) after "armenium," a vivid blue, ultramarine pigment made from a stone from Armenia, due to his piercing blue eyes, a feature which many among the Germanic peoples have to this day.  (Several centuries ago early scholars mistakenly thought "Arminius" was a Latinized form of the German "Hermann," and referred to him thus in their literary productions.)  His brother's Latin name was Flavus ("the Blond"), which is also a name based on physical characteristics.  The name of his father, a prince of the Cheruskan tribe, was Sigimêris ("Victory-renowned").  Because of the fact that first-born sons among the early Germans were usually given names beginning with the same first component as the name of their fathers, it is likely that Arminius' Germanic name was Sigiwarðus, "Victorious Protector," which later became Old Norse Sigurd and Old English Sigeweard.  For metrical and other reasons, subsequent Old and Middle High German songs modified his name to Sigifridu (modern "Siegfried") or "Victorious Peace." His wife, Thusnelda (Þûsnildo, perhaps "Powerful Beauty"), had originally been promised by her father Segestes (Sigistis, "Most Victorious"), another Cheruskan prince, to a different man, but she ran away to marry Arminius.  Segestes, whose paternal and princely rights had thus been violated, thereupon became the permanent archfoe of Arminius.  Thusnelda's son with Arminius-Sigiwarðus was born after she had been kidnapped by her father and delivered to the Romans; she gave him the name Thumelicus (Þûmêlika "Powerful Kindness"), which alliterated with her own name.

Arminius had been sent to Rome for early military training, spoke excellent Latin, possessed Roman citizenship and held the rank of Roman knight.  He seems to have commanded a regular Cheruskan auxiliary squadron in Roman service, at first during the Pannonian (Balkan) revolt of A.D. 7-8, and thereafter in Germany.

In Germany a rebellion began - originally probably as a revolt of the troops.  But it was aggravated and spread by Arminius through a coalition of the Cheruskans and neighboring tribes.

In September of A.D. 9, he drew three Roman legions (the 17th, 18th and 19th) commanded by Quintilius Varus deep into the Teuton Mountain Defile (Teutoburgiensis saltus) made treacherous by swamps and annihilated them.  This success transformed him into the most famous figure of all early Germanic history.

Kalkriese Mountain (ancient Teuton Mountain) Pass,
site of the slaughter of Varus and his legions
by the Cheruskan warlord Sigiwarðus, the Siegfried of Germanic legend
and Arminius of Roman history

Location of Kalkriese Mountain
(the Teutoburg of antiquity) in northern Germany

The later punitive expedition (A.D. 14-16) of the Roman general Germanicus had great trouble in invading Germany even with eight legions, and was unable to reestablish Roman rule there.  This effectively terminated Rome's attempts to expand into Germany east of the Rhein.

Arminius first attempted to win over Marbod, king of the Frontiersmen ("Men of the Marches," Marcomanni, ancestors of the Bavarians) but, failing this, attacked and defeated him.  Finally, in A.D. 19, the great Germanic general was undone by a revolt of the nobility and murdered (apparently poisoned) by his in-laws, who were loyal to his wife's father, Segestes.

Of Arminius, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote, "He was undoubtedly the liberator of Germany, a man who did not, as did other kings and generals, challenge Rome in its early stages, but when it stood at the zenith of its power.  In battles he fought with varying success, but in the war he remained unconquered.  His deeds live on in the songs of his people...." (Tacitus, Annals, 1, 57,58)

These songs were handed down through the generations, and the story of Arminius became transformed into myth in the process.

The Correspondences between Arminius and Siegfried

Famous twentieth-century researchers such as the University of Bonn's classical philologist Ernst Bickel and the Viennese specialist in the Old Norse Eddas, Otto Höfler, retraced the development of these epic poems and discovered that their hero, Siegfried, is indeed the figure whose Latin name has come down to us as Arminius.

As explained in S. Fischer-Fabian's book, Die ersten Deutschen: Über das rätselhafte Volk der Germanen (Bergisch Gladbach: Verlagsgruppe Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG, 1975, 2003), pp. 328f., these researchers have extracted a series of striking correspondences, among them the following:

• Siegfried was murdered by his wife's relatives - as was Arminius, since the propinqui of Tacitus can mean only Segestes' clan.

• Siegfried slew a dragon (Fáfnir), but so also did Arminius, for whom the "dragon" was the serpentine, 20-kilometer-long, Roman army column.

• Siegfried grew up in Xanten on the lower Rhein:  Xanten was the location of the location of the ancient Roman Castra Vetera ("Old Camp"), the powerful Roman stronghold to which the remnants of Varus' army had fled after the debacle;

• Siegfried was suckled by a doe and died like a deer pursued by hunters:  Arminius belonged to the tribe of the Cheruskans, a name derived from the Germanic word stem herut "deer, hart."  (In Latin, "ch" was the spelling used to render the Germanic voiceless palatal and velar fricatives, which sounded like the "ch" in modern German "Chemie" or the "g" in Spanish "gente."  Cf. the mead-hall named heorot or "Hart's Hall," in the Old English epic, Beowulf.  This word is also the ancestor of modern English hart.)

• Siegfried was the son of the king Sigemund, while Arminius' father was called Sigimer (Latin form: Segimer).

• Siegfried fought with the dragon on the Gnitaheiðr (the Rocky Heath or "rock-strewn, gravelly plain" - cf. New Norwegian gnita "broken piece, shard" and Swedish dialectal , gnitu, "crumb, particle"), while Arminius defeated the Romans on the Gnidderhöi, the Knetterheide (Knetter Heath) in the vicinity of Schötmar southeast of Herford (which itself is northeast of Bielefeld in northwestern Germany), suspected of being one of the locations where the three-day battle with Varus took place.