RhinejourneymoduleA

Grüezi mitenand!
(Swiss German for “greetings, y’all!”)

I’m Alan Keele, Professor Emeritus of German Studies at BYU. Dean Michael Thompson and his excellent organizing team, including Jeremiah Christnot, thought that the participants on this Rhine River Cruise might enjoy and benefit from a series of what we’ve been calling learning modules, based on some interesting – but perhaps lesser-known – historical facts, all suggested and tied together by the mighty Rhine.

These learning modules essentially attempt to begin to tell the story of these Western Europeans (from whom a large majority of US citizens are also descended) who they are, where they came from, how their languages developed, how their religions came about...and some of the wars and the perplexities these nations have suffered.

You will, of course, have recognized in that last phrase an echo of a favorite scripture of  BYU professors from all disciplines, namely the divine admonition and promise about learning found in the Doctrine and Covenants 88, verses 78 and 79:

“Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand; Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms...”

Ultimately, I think the spirit of this admonition drives the motivation to offer you on this cruise a bit richer cultural menu than the usual simple sightseeing banter. I sincerely hope that the topics we have chosen to focus on will prove to be interesting and instructive to all who participate. (I also hope that one of the reliable old allies – or crutches –  of us professors, namely serendipity, will lead us to discover other, unexpected, insights as we cruise along.)

I have attempted to order these modules depending on certain sights that we are scheduled to pass by on the river at any given time, but the order is somewhat arbitrary, and I hope we might have ongoing discussions of all of them and their implications after we have initially introduced them.

My area of expertise is German Literature – poetry, drama, fiction, and opera libretti – but I will inflict relatively  little of that on you. Rather, we’ll likely talk about things that are more broadly considered European Cultural History that are somehow connected with the Rhine. (I’ve found that it’s good for an old person like me to dabble in widely divergent things and try to gain more general “knowledge of countries and kingdoms.” I hope that like doing crossword puzzles, this might help stave off dementia!)

In fact, either bravely or foolishly, I have purposely included some modules on topics I know very little about indeed (but about which I would like to know a lot more because they fascinate me immensely), anticipating that we would have on board with us some who have great expertise, especially in matters of business and finance as I imagine, for example (and probably lots of other things as well), and who I hope will be willing contribute to the discussion and to our mutual learning. Please consider this an invitation to all of you to prepare yourselves, if you wish, to contribute to our discussion on any or all of the following nine topics which may happen to pique your curiosity:


 Module A. The Roman Rhine.

Since we have to start somewhere, let’s begin roughly in the middle of history by examining how the Rhine defined one of the all-important boundaries between the Roman Empire and the so-called “barbarian” tribes (of course, “barbarians” were originally simply people who didn’t speak Greek; later the Romans referred to all who lived outside the Roman Empire as barbarians).

Barbarian or not, the story of these tribes is also the story of our own ancestors in many instances, (some of whom were already Christians in Roman times) and it’s the story of Europe proper, so I believe in approaching them with a certain respect. The tribes along the Rhine which will concern us most for now were primarily Germanic and Celtic.

 (In Module B we will go even further back in history to discover that these Germanic and Celtic peoples were “Indo-Europeans,” that they had evolved from an ancient stone-age civilization located somewhere north of the Black Sea, possibly in present-day Ukraine, whose migratory descendants eventually filled the space between India and Europe, hence their name.)

Let’s start with the Celts. Norman Davies, in his magisterial (1,365 page) book Europe, himself a  proud Welshman of Celtic extraction, writes: “The Celts – ‘the first great nation north of the Alps whose name we know’ – who were the avant-garde of the Indo-Europeans ... had moved well to the west by Roman times. They had founded some of the most advanced archaeological cultures. They had been associated with the spread of metal-working, and their possession of iron weapons may well explain their dramatic expansion. (Longswords, beautifully wrought from a hard iron core and a soft iron cutting edge which could be fearfully sharpened, were the hallmark of a warrior society ...  widely identified with the Celts.) Celts stormed Rome in 390 BCE (Before the Common Era, a more ecumenical way of saying BC) and Greece in 279 BCE, terrifying their victims by their huge stature, their red hair and ferocious temperament, and by their sickening habit of head-hunting.”

The Romans annihilated two Celtic tribes about 100 BCE, but the Celts had spread widely throughout the known world, through Eastern Europe to Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic) for example, to Spain, across the Alps to Northern Italy (to Cisalpine Gaul, or Gaul on ‘this side’ i.e. the Roman side of the Alps), even to places in present-day Turkey, as this map shows. As you will also see, subsequently the Celts were pushed back into the extreme corners of extreme Western Europe where very few still speak their original Celtic dialects:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Celts_in_Europe.png


Yellow marks the core “Hallstatt” territory, named for a lake in the salt-mining region of Austria which is where the main Celtic expansion in Western Europe occurred before 500 BCE.

Light green indicates the maximum Celtic expansion by the 270s BCE.

Mid-green shows the boundaries of the six commonly-recognized ‘Celtic nations’, which remained Celtic speaking throughout the Middle Ages ( Brittany in a corner of France, Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man, Ireland, Scotland).

Dark green marks those few areas that remain Celtic-speaking today, primarily in Brittany, in Cornwall, Wales, bits of extreme western Ireland, and some north-western Scottish islands.

By about 50 BCE, Julius Caesar’s famous Gallic Wars had pushed the Celtic tribes essentially to the left (or western) bank of the Rhine, and had largely subdued them in the Roman province of Gallia Celtica or Celtic Gaul. (Not entirely, if you are a reader of the famed Asterix the Gaul comic books. There is one small Celtic village still holding out against the Romans, thanks to a magic potion that gives them superman-like powers.):

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/asterix/asterix_files/asterix_gaul_1.jpg


(The name Asterix echoes the names of some of the actual Gaulish generals faced by the Romans, including Ambiorix, Vercingetorix, Dumnorix, and Orgetorix. While looking at this comic book cover, also notice the Roman Legion’s Eagle Standard stuck into the map at the right. More about it below.)

By and large, the Germanic tribes had settled on the right bank of the Rhine, in the Roman province called Germania Magna or Larger Germania, though some were also on the left bank. (Germania is also the title of Roman historian Tacitus’s famous history of the Germanic Tribes.) A map shows this basic division: (Roman-occupied) Celtic tribes on the left and (not occupied) Germanic tribes on the right of the river Rhenus, Latin for Rhine:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Germania_70.svg/2000px-Germania_70.svg.png


(After subduing the Gauls/Celts on the left bank of the Rhine, the Romans, of course, this time under Emperor Claudius, also defeated and absorbed large portions of Celtic Britain in about 43 CE, which they named Britannia. Caeser had earlier briefly invaded England twice, during the Gallic Wars in 55 and 54 BCE, installing a Rome-friendly king, but he had had bad luck with the weather – many of his vessels were wrecked – and in the end had not occupied any land.)

These Germanic tribes, also Indo-Europeans, were located to the east of the Celts because they had moved into Western Europe later, following behind their cousins. Their presence was part of the constant pressure on the Celts to move further west, to retreat further up into the extreme corners of places like the Highlands of Scotland or to Ireland or back across the Channel to Brittany or into the corners of Wales and Cornwall. In turn, their Slavic Indo-European cousins followed the Germanic tribes into Eastern Europe and put constant pressure on them from the east.

The Romans under Augustus had earlier attempted to defeat and subdue these Germanic tribes on the right bank the way they had the Celts on the left bank in Gaul. Augustus wanted to expand the boundaries of the Empire from the Rhine to the east, to the Elbe river. But things didn’t go as well against the Germanic tribes as they had for Julius Caesar against the Gauls.

Quinctilius Varas was assigned the governorship of Germania, even though it was not conquered or pacified, and set about trying to collect taxes and tribute. This was understandably resented by many of the populace, but especially by a young German from the Cherusci tribe named Arminius who had become a trusted member of Varus’ military staff. Arminius (German: Hermann) had been sent to Rome by his father while just a boy as a required tribute in children leveed by the Romans, and had taken full advantage of the situation by learning all he could about Roman military tactics.

When Varus then took him as a Roman military officer back to his homeland, Armenius showed that his loyalty was still with his tribe. In 9 CE, Arminius choreographed an elaborate plan by which three Roman legions would have to march through the Teutoburg Forest, where their tactics and training could little help them, and then ambushed them with his Germanic kinsmen assembled from all the tribes in the area. On the third day of their march, the legions were massacred and all three of their famous Eagle Standards were captured. Roman casualties in this slaughter have been estimated at 15,000–20,000 dead, and many of the officers, including the commander, Varus himself, took their own lives by falling on their swords.

Tacitus writes that many Roman officers were sacrificed by the Germanic forces as part of their indigenous religious ceremonies, cooked in pots and their bones used for rituals. Others were ransomed, and some Roman soldiers appear to have been enslaved. The case demonstrates that the Romans had begun to employ more and more Germanic and Celtic tribesmen like Armenius in their own legions, thus training and equipping them to eventually be able to defeat Roman legions, as happened here, or invade Rome, as happens later.

This map shows the area of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, somewhere north of present-day Osnabrück, here marked with an X at a place called Kalkriese:

http://www.livius.org/a/1/maps/teutoburg_forest_map.gif


The Romans did cross the Rhine again in an attempt to avenge their losses. In 14 CE, General Germanicus (a name first given to his father Nero Claudius Drusus, marking the father’s own  battles against the Germanic tribes) – Germanicus was also the older brother of the future Emperor Claudius – led Roman troops against the Marsi tribe (shown on the map above) on the upper Ruhr river (a tributary of the Rhine), and massacred much of the tribe, recovering one of the three legions’ Eagle Standards which had been lost in the battle in 9 CE. (See also the Asterix picture above, for a version of the full Eagle Standard):

http://satriany.free.fr/tattoo/spqr.gif

During a two-year campaign against the tribes, which had regrouped around Arminius, Germanicus captured Arminius’ wife Thusnelda, whom he treated with kindness, however, and eventually recovered one other Eagle Standard. (Some sources claim he located all three.) He also visited the site in the Teutoburg Forest of the battle in 9 CE and buried the Roman dead still lying about there.

Strategically, Germanicus had no reason to continue battling against Arminius and the Germanic tribes he had gathered together. Augustus, after the defeat of 9 CE, declared that the Rhine, not the Elbe, would henceforth be the northeastern border of the Roman Empire. Germanicus apparently attacked across the Rhine on his own initiative, in order to forge loyalty in his own troops, to extract revenge, and to make a mark by retrieving the Standards.

For this reason and others, eventually the Emperor Tiberius, Germanicus’s uncle, recalled him to Rome and then, possibly to weaken him further by separating him from his army, sent him east to the province called Asia (modern-day Turkey) where he died a mysterious death, possibly of poison. The historian Tacitus believed that Tiberius’ jealousy and fear of his nephew’s popularity and increasing power was the true motive behind his death.

Once it was clear that the Rhine was to be the final border of the Empire, the Romans also settled on the Danube as a relatively easily defended border on the north-east, and they attempted to connect the Rhine and the Danube by means of a defensive wall called the Limes Germanicus (Latin for Germanic frontier) which runs 353 miles from the North Sea outlet of the Rhine to near Regensburg (Castra Regina) on the Danube. Augustus began to build fortifications along this long border shortly after the devastating Roman defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

Originally there were numerous shorter Limes walls, which were then connected to form the Upper Germanic Limes along the Rhine and the Rhaetian Limes along the Danube. Later these two walls were linked to form a common borderline. (The British counterpart to this Roman fortification is Hadrian’s Wall, which was up to 20 feet high in places. The Limes, on the other hand, was mostly an earthwork and picket wall barrier, with rather more impressive forts along the way.) Here is a map – in two segments – followed by a picture of the Saalburg, a reconstruction of one of the Roman forts along the Limes:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Limes1.png/287px-Limes1.png


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Limes2.png


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Saalburg_Main_Gate_(Porta_Praetoria).jpg


http://www.saalburgmuseum.de/museum/pics/kastell450.jpg


(Notice on the map there’s a region left of the Rhine called Germania Inferior and one called Germania Superior. Those evolved into Holland and Switzerland, respectively, in places on the left bank which were also populated by Germanic peoples.)

Many of these Celtic and Germanic tribes left their names on the European landscape. On the Celtic side of the Rhine the Belgae gave us Belgium, the Helvetii gave us the Swiss Confederation, or in Latin Confoederatio Helvetica, hence the abbreviation CH, which you will see on the back sides of Swiss automobiles. (Germany is D for Deutschland, Austria is A. Together the German-speaking countries are thus sometimes referred to as the DACH countries. France, of course, is F, the Netherlands is NL, Belgium is B).

The Parisi gave us...you guessed it, Paris; the Treveri the name for the important ancient Roman city Trier on the Mosel, a tributary of the Rhine. In England the Cantiaci gave us Kent, in the East the Boii gave us Bohemia, and so on. (These are the names the Romans gave the tribes, based, presumably on the names they heard the tribes calling themselves.)

But the Celts also called themselves the Britains, hence the name for Great Britain as well as Brittany, a Celtic province in France, and the Gauls, as in the term Gallic Wars. The apostle Paul ran into some of these Celtic Gauls living a long way east in Asia Minor: “O foolish Galatians,” he exclaimed in 52 CE. (Galatians 3:1)

The Latin words for some of the places we’ll visit can also be instructive. Cologne, for example, was called Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, CCAA, a colony of Claudius in the era of Agrippa. (The word was also later used for a kind of perfumed water which was invented there in a house numbered 4711 by  Napoleon’s occupation troops. 4711 is still a famous brand of German Eau de Cologne or water of Cologne, Kölnisch Wasser.) Just to mention one more Roman city name: Koblenz was Castellum apud Confluentes, the fortress astride the confluence of the Mosel and the Rhine.

On the Germanic side, from the State of Saxony in Germany to Middlesex, Sussex, Essex (Middle Saxony, South Saxony, East Saxony) in England we also encounter Germanic tribal names. There are the Alemani in the Black Forest and in Switzerland (and the name for all Germans in French – les Allemands – and other Romance languages, even for a German square dance style: “Allemande left with the corner girl...”). The Franks give us the words France and French (about which more later.)

Then there are the Angles, which gave us the words England and English, the Bavarii (in Bavaria where they now make BMWs at the Bavarian Motors Works), the Suebi in Swabia, around Stuttgart – these barbarians now make Porsches and Mercedes Benz...  besides some other well-known ones: the Burgundiones in the French province of Burgundy, the Goths, both west and east versions (Visigoths and Ostrogoths) who give us the Swedish island of Gothland, the Langobarden – “long beards” – who gave us Lombardy in Northern Italy, and the famous Vandals who spray-painted the walls of Rome (just kidding...) on their way to their final homes in Spain and North Africa. (Seriously: their sacking of Rome did give us our present meaning of the word vandal.)

But I’m getting ahead of my story a little bit, for these Germanic tribes did not yet inhabit the places they did later. First there had to be a gigantic stirring and moving of these peoples, variously called the Migration of Barbarians, or, a nicer term, the Migration of Peoples (German: Völkerwanderung). By walling them off to the north of the Rhine/Danube/Limes border, the Romans had doomed the Germanic tribes to overcrowding and conflicts with their neighbors, guaranteeing that they would eventually break into Roman territory. The Migration was to end with the fall of Rome and the establishment of a Holy Roman Empire of Germanic peoples.

The migrations started when the Huns, a nomadic group of mounted warriors from Central Asia, showed up north of the Black Sea around 370 CE. They crossed the Volga river and attacked the Alans, whom they subjugated. (These Alans are often referred to as a Germanic tribe, but it’s more likely they were Iranians, because they spoke Iranian.)

Nevertheless, when the Huns attacked them, they began to move, putting pressure on tribes in their path. These then, like dominoes, put pressure on the next group, and so on. It has also been alleged, that at about this same time, great storms and floods on the North Sea coast forced migrations south, putting additional pressure on neighboring peoples. In any case, there ensued a great stirring and movement. Eventually, the Vandals (who were definitely Germanic) and the Alans fled across the (frozen) Rhine, and then over the Strait of Gibraltar into North Africa, where they founded a powerful kingdom which lasted until its conquest by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century CE.

It might be useful to insert here that the Germanic tribes fall roughly into three groupings. The Scandinavian group gave rise to Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic peoples. The western group on the North Sea coast included Batavians, Frisians, Franks, Alemans, Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, ancestors of the Dutch, Flemish, English, and in part, the French. The eastern group included Swabians, Lombards, Burgundians, Vandals, Gepids, Alans (?), and Goths, both eastern (Ostrogoths) and western (Visigoths).

After the Huns subdued the Alans, they attacked the Goths, first the Ostrogoths further east and then, moving further west, the Visigoths. Eventually, in 451, a leader of the Huns, the famed Attila, still chasing the Goths, entered Gaul himself, crossing the Rhine near Cologne and Koblenz, accumulating contingents from the Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugians, Scirians, Heruls, Thuringians, Alans, Burgundians, and other tribes en route as mercenaries.

In 450 Attila had been preparing the way for his attack on the Visigoth kingdom of Toulouse by first making an alliance with Emperor Valentinian III. He had previously been on good terms with the Western Roman Empire (by this time the Empire has split into western and eastern versions) and its influential general Flavius Aëtius. However, Valentinian’s sister Honoria, who, in order to escape her forced betrothal to a Roman senator, had sent the Hunnish king a plea for help—and her engagement ring—in the spring of 450. Though Honoria may not have intended a proposal of marriage, Attila chose to interpret her message as such. He accepted, asking for half of the western Empire as dowry.

When Valentinian discovered the plan, only the influence of his mother Galla Placidia convinced him to exile, rather than kill, Honoria. He also wrote to Attila strenuously denying the legitimacy of the supposed marriage proposal. Attila sent an emissary to Ravenna to proclaim that the proposal had been legitimate, and that he would come to claim what was rightfully his.

Once in Gaul, Attila’s band first attacked Trier and Metz on the Mosel river, then Reims and other cities westwards, passing Paris to lay siege to Orléans, before being defeated by combined Roman and Visigothic forces at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (modern Châlons-en-Champagne). At this battle, the Visigothic king Theodoric I was killed. Roman General Flavius Aëtius was pleased at the outcome, having defeated Attila and rid himself of a dangerous rival at the same time.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Attila_in_Gaul_451CE.svg/300px-Attila_in_Gaul_451CE.svg.png



Attila returned to western Europe the next year, 452, still hoping to free Honoria. In the end, Attila was unable to claim her as his bride and instead moved into Italy and mobilized to attack Constantinople. In 453 he married a girl with the Germanic name Ildico, and died of a hemorrhage on his wedding night.

 Under the original attacks by the Huns, the terrified Goths and related tribes had also burst through the Danube frontier into the Eastern Roman Empire. After a crushing defeat of the Romans at Adrianople in 378, the empire was no longer in a position to drive all its enemies from its territories. Tribes that could no longer be expelled were settled within the empire as “allies” ( foederati). They received subsidies and in return supplied troops. The Germanization of the empire progressed, including that of the army.

An interesting side-bar: a certain Bishop Ulfilas (Gothic: Wulfila; “Little Wolf”), reportedly a Greek who had been raised as a Goth – likely he had been taken by Goths as a slave – was converted to Christianity during this period when the Goths were allowed to come into immediate proximity to Constantinople and to Christian teachings. This was not long after the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which established the  Nicene Creed and gave official sanction to the idea of the Holy Trinity. Ulfilas, however, was an Arian Christian, not an Athanasian. (Arius taught that the Son had a beginning, and that he possessed neither the eternity nor the true divinity of the Father, but was rather made “God” only by the Father’s permission and power, albeit that the Son was rather the very first and the most perfect of God’s creatures.)

Fluent in Latin and Greek, Ulfilas invented an alphabet and translated large portions of the Bible into Gothic, the first written document in any Germanic tongue. This had the effect of helping convert many more Goths, who when they entered Europe, were already Christians, albeit not Catholics or Eastern Orthodox.

One of the surviving manuscripts of the Gothic Bible is a true masterpiece. It consists of silver letters on purple vellum (kind of goat or sheepskin), and is thus called the Codex Argentius, the silver book. It was probably written for the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great, either at his royal seat in Ravenna, or in the Po valley or at Brescia, all in Italy. Most of it is now in the University Library at Upsala, Sweden, but one page is now, appropriately for our voyage, in Speyer. It’s the final leaf of the codex, folio 336, discovered in October 1970 at the restoration of Saint Afra’s chapel in Augsburg, rolled around a thin wooden staff contained in a small reliquary originating in Aschaffenburg. That leaf contains the final verses of the Gospel of Mark.

Here’s a sample page from the Swedish codex (portions of which were stolen in 1995 and later recovered in a locker at the Stockholm train station):

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/297/d/4/d4476c8b5694a192d019fe18383680f1-d4du6ym.jpg


You might like to hear the beginning of the Lord’s prayer in Gothic:

atta unsar þu in himinam, weihnai namo þein. (Father [of] ours, thou in heaven, blessed be the name of thine.) (German: Vater unser, der du bist im Himmel, geheiligt – geweiht – sei dein Name.)

A fusion of mainly Visigothic groups eventually invaded Italy and sacked Rome in 410, before settling in Iberia (Spain) and founding a Visigothic kingdom that lasted for 300 years. They were followed into Roman territory by the Ostrogoths, led by Theodoric the Great (German: Dietrich von Bern), who was, as we have said, perhaps the first owner of the Codex Argentius.

At the time, the Ostrogoths were settled in Byzantine territory as foederati (allies) of the Romans, but were becoming restless and increasingly difficult for the Eastern Emperor Zeno to manage. Not long after Theoderic became king, the two men worked out an arrangement beneficial to both sides.

 The Ostrogoths needed a place to live, and Zeno was having serious problems with one Odoacer (German: Ottokar – it’s possible he was also of Germanic stock), the King of Italy who had come to power in 476. Ostensibly a viceroy for Zeno, Odoacer was menacing Byzantine territory and not respecting the rights of Roman citizens in Italy. At Zeno’s encouragement, Theoderic invaded Odoacer’s kingdom.

Theoderic settled his 100,000 to 200,000 people in Italy in 488. In 493 his army took Ravenna. On February 2, 493, Theoderic and Odoacer signed a treaty that assured both parties would rule over Italy. A banquet was organized in order to celebrate this treaty. At the banquet Theoderic, after making a toast, killed Odoacer with his own hands. So now the Ostrogoths were to rule Italy and the Visigoths ruled Spain.

In Gaul, the Franks (a fusion of western Germanic tribes whose leaders had been aligned with Rome since the third century CE) entered Roman lands gradually and peacefully during the fifth century, and were accepted as rulers by the Roman-Gaulish population. Fending off challenges from the Allemanni, Burgundians, and Visigoths, the Frankish kingdom became the nucleus of the future France (from the word Frank) and Germany.

The initial Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain also occurred at this time, during the fifth century, when Roman control of Britain had come to an end and the Germanic tribes needed a place to escape the population and emigration pressures on the Continent. This resulted in further pressure on the Celts in Britain, of course, as we have seen. Here’s a simplified map:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Invasions_of_the_Roman_Empire_1.png


How about more complexity:


http://www.mr-kartographie.de/uploads/pics/voelkerwanderung-01.jpg


A bit less complexity, perhaps?


http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/44/1044-004-A41ABA54.jpg



That much about the Celtic and Germanic tribes will perhaps suffice for now, but later we will explore how some of these Germanic tribes, particularly the Franks and Saxons, became the heirs of the Romans and the defenders of Christianity in the era of the so-called “Holy Roman Empire” which endured from the great Frankish Emperor Charlemagne in 800 CE all the way down to the end of World War One in 1918.

I hope this will give you an idea of some of the history the Rhine has seen and often played a central role in. The next module will take us even further back in history to explore who these Indo-Europeans were originally and the Rhine will play another, albeit unexpected, role in that story as well.