Arminius into Hermann: History into Legend

Author(s): Herbert W. Benario

Source: Greece & Rome , Apr., 2004, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Apr., 2004), pp. 83-94
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3567880

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Greece & Rome, Vol. 51, No. 1, April 2004

ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN:

HISTORY INTO LEGEND

By HERBERT W. BENARIO

Our story begins with the discovery of Tacitus' Germania, th

of which was known in the decade of the 1420s. The great m
hunter, Poggio Bracciolini, tried mightily to have it brought
German monastery of Fulda to Italy, but was repeatedly disappointed.
He had been informed that a manuscript which lay there contained three
opera minora of Tacitus as well as some works of Suetonius. This
manuscript, known as the Hersfeldensis, was at last brought to Rome
in 1455 by Enoch of Ascoli and soon came into the hands (we know not
how) of Cardinal Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who not long thereafter
became Pope Pius II.1
In 1457, the chancellor of the Bishop of Mainz, Martin Mair, wrote
Piccolomini, as a representative of the Curia, a letter in which he
lamented the miserable state of the Holy Roman Empire, caused by
the Roman Church's harsh imposition of taxes. Mair compared the
present with the more glorious past of the Middle Ages. Piccolomini
replied early in the following year with an essay entitled De ritu, situ,
moribus et condicione Germaniae descriptio, based upon Tacitus'
Germania. He chose a different basis of comparison, namely the present
opposed to the Germany of antiquity. Tacitus here proves invaluable,
for Piccolomini is able to show that it is the church which has brought
the Germans from barbarism to their present level of culture.
1 H. W. Benario, 'Tacitus' Germania and Modern Germany', ICS 15 (1990), 163 iff. Recent
books on the Germania, with translations and commentaries or notes, are Benario, Tacitus Germany
(Warminster, 1999), A. R. Birley, Tacitus Agricola and Germany (Oxford, 1999), and J. B. Rives,
Tacitus Germania (Oxford, 1999). Piccolomini was one of the leading figures of early Italian
humanism. He was responsible for transforming his native city of Pienza into the first Renaissance
city. See C. M. Ady, Pius II (Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini): The Humanist Pope (London, 1913); R. J.
Mitchell, The Laurels and the Tiara: Pope Pius II, 1458-1464 (New York, 1963); C. R. Mack,
Pienza: The Creation of a Renaissance City (Ithaca, NY, 1987). S. Schama, Landscape and Memory
(New York, 1995), reports in chap. 2, 'Der Holzweg: The Track Through the Woods', 75 ff., on the
Nazis' hunt for the MS, at Himmler's express orders. S. Rizzo, 'Per una tipologia delle tradizioni
manoscritte di classici latini in eta umanistica,' in 0. Pecere & M. Reeve (eds.), Formative Stages of
Classical Traditions: Latin Texts from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Spoleto, 1995), 371 ff., at 392
n. 74, reports that the MS is now in the possession of the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II
di Roma. (I owe this reference to R. W. Ulery, Jr., of Wake Forest University.)

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84 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND

This essay, which was not published for almost tw

nonetheless a revelation, for it invoked the authorit
in a current dispute, which was as much between Italy and Germany,
between North and South, as it was about the proper relationship of the
Roman Catholic church with its adherents outside the Papal States.
Without knowing it, and with perhaps only the slightest intimation that
he had let a genie out of a bottle which could never again be controlled,
Aeneas Silvius had employed a Latin treasure which would soon have
enormous impact upon the lives of Europe and the Church. In his
reading of the text and his excerpting of those Tacitean comments
which denigrated the ancient Germans, he must surely have noted that
there were many more which spoke of their bravery and martial
qualities.
It was these aspects of Tacitus' narrative which were next invoked. In
1471, the Pope's nephew, Giovannantonio Campano, spent several
months in Regensburg as representative of the Holy See to the Diet.
Since the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, the Roman
Pontiffs had endeavoured to persuade German cities and princes and,
above all, the emperor to undertake a holy crusade against the infidel.
The response was marked by a singular lack of enthusiasm, for reasons
political, financial, and military. Campano attempted to win over the
Germans for this enterprise by painting a splendid picture of the ancient
Germans' military prowess and glory, invoking the Germania. Like his
uncle, Campano compared past and present, but he showed the
similarities rather than the differences. Yet he had no more success
than his predecessors at such gatherings had had.
The editio princeps of the Germania appeared in Venice in 1470; the
first German printing followed in Niirnberg three years later. In 1496,
Piccolomini's essay was published, and it was this event which gave an
enormous impetus to enthusiasm for, and study of, Tacitus' mono-
graph. Numerous editions and books concerned with Germany, its
peoples, and its history rapidly followed.
In the year 1492, Conrad Celtis had delivered an inaugural address
when he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Ingolstadt.
This oratio, based upon the Germania, invoked the warlike character of
the ancient Germans in support of the Empire against the Papacy. Eight
years later he presented the first series of lectures on the Germania when
he had moved to Vienna. The first of the German humanists, he
represents a substantial body of men who concerned themselves with
the Germans, not only in literature but also as revealed in history and

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 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND 85

tangible remains. They began the idealization of the G

research on them.2
The German people (at least the educated among
appreciate that they had a past, that there was a comm
multitude of states and principalities, and that these ancestors, so
different from the ancient Romans, were like themselves. Unlike Gaul,
ancient Germany had never been conquered by Rome. In the present
day, as many thought, why should the German peoples be subordinate,
even inferior, to the Latin races of Italy and France?
Following hard upon Celtis' lectures and early writings were the great
works of Jakob Wimpfeling,3 which were accessible to a relatively wide
public. He employed Tacitus' Germania in his work of similar title (1501)
to argue against the French and their supporters that the Rhine was not
the eastern boundary of France. Tacitus was the source of the informa-
tion that, in antiquity, tribes whom the historian called German occupied
territories west of the river.4 And, in his Epithoma of German history
published four years later, long stretches of the Tacitean text are cited.

The year 1515 saw the editio princeps of Tacitus' Annales 1-6, the
Tiberius books, where the Cheruscan chieftain Arminius plays a
significant role in the first two books, both as the greatest and most
successful of Rome's enemies and as a foil for the Roman people's
favourite, Germanicus. At the end of the second book, in the course of
his obituary of Arminius, Tacitus calls him liberator haud dubie Germa-
niae, a man unbeaten in war. At last Germans of modern times had an
historical hero, who had maintained the freedom of the Germans (as
naively interpreted) against the rapacious Italians of the South. The
ancient struggle between Roman and German, between South and
North, served as a paradigm for the present day.5
Two years later, one of the most significant events in the history of the
western world occurred in Wittenberg, when a monk named Martin
Luther posted on the door of the Schlosskirche his ninety-five theses
challenging the sale of indulgences. The religious revolution which

2 Celtis (1459-1508) was crowned poet laureate in 1487 by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick
III. See L. W. Spitz, Conrad Celtis. The German Arch-Humanist (New York, 1966).
3 Wimpfeling had influence on the development of German nationalism over a long period, born
earlier than Celtis and living later than Hutten. See J. Knepper, Jakob Wimpfeling (1450-1528): Sein
Leben und seine Werke, nach den Quellen dargestellt (Freiburg, 1902, rpt. Nieuwkoop, 1965).
4 Germ. 28.4.
5 D. Timpe, Arminius-Studien (Heidelberg, 1970); R. Kuehnemund, Arminius or the Rise of a
National Symbol in Literature (Chapel Hill, NC, 1953); F. I. Borchardt, German Antiquity in
Renaissance Myth (Baltimore, 1971).

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86 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND

ensued, the Protestant Reformation, attracted a substantial number of

the leading intelligentsia in German-speaking lands and exacerbated the
split, political and emotional, with a theological cause. Hatred and
distrust between North and South, between Germany and Italy, with
integrity on one side and corruption on the other, became ever more
bitter, culminating, perhaps, in the terrible sack of Rome in 1527 by the
armies of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.6
That event preceded by two years the publication of the literary work
which established Arminius as the great German hero in the German
mind. This was Ulrich von Hutten's Arminius, written in 1519 or 1520
and published posthumously. Its full title is Arminius. Dialogus Hutteni-
cus quo homo patriae amantissimus patriae laudem celebravit. The em-
phasis upon the word patria is worth noting; the hero Arminius is the
means of the glorification of the Germans and the lands of the various
states. In modern terms, Hutten was a rabid nationalist.7

Hutten spent time in Italy in 1515, where he became acquainted with the
text of Tacitus' Annales and closely studied Lucian's Dialogues of the
Dead. He also developed an almost vitriolic dislike of Italy and its people.
Lucian's twelfth Dialogue8 is set in the court of Minos, where Alexander,
Scipio, and Hannibal argue their respective positions in the ranking of
great generals. Hutten's dialogue revises Lucian's by introducing
Arminius into the discussion, thereby claiming for the Cheruscan a
place in world history. He is not ranked before the three greats of
Graeco-Roman history, but is added to them as one of the nonpareils of
military history. The participants in the Dialogus are Arminius, Minos,
Mercury, Alexander, Scipio, Hannibal, and Cornelius Tacitus. Armi-
nius begins by faulting Minos for not having considered him when
determining the best general. Arminius pleads his own case at great
length, with Tacitus called as witness to recite his judgement of him
from the end of Annales 2, and with virtuosic rhetorical skill wins his
case, so that Minos gives his final judgement with these words:

Necesse est vero hunc qui norunt Arminium, praeclaram ob indolem valde ament, proinde
auctum honore decet esse te, Germane, neque nos tuarum virtutum fas est unquam fieri
immemores.

6 See A. Kohler, Karl V:1500-1558: eine Biographie (Munich, 1999); W. S. Maltby, The Reign of
Charles V (NewYork, 2002).
7 Hutten lived from 1488 to 1523; see H. Holborn, Ulrich von Hutten and the German Reformation
(London, 1937).
8 This is ?25 of M. D. Macleod's Loeb edition of Lucian, VII (London, 1961).

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 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND 87

It is indeed necessary that all who know Arminius love him deeply because of his
splendid character, and further it is appropriate that you, German, be honoured, nor is it
right that we ever become forgetful of your excellent qualities.

This last recalls Tacitus' bitter comment upon the Romans' lack of
interest in contemporary and foreign events. Arminius is unknown to
them, dum vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi.9 Hutten's work was
published in 1538 and 1557 in Wittenberg (significant as the home of
Luther and Melanchthon!), but the first German translation did not
appear until 1815. Consequently, it was not widely known and was
accessible only to the educated.
It was Martin Luther himself who may have been the first to equate
the name Arminius with the German Hermann, thereby expanding his
popular appeal. In his discussion of the 82nd Psalm, Luther writes:
Herman, den die Latini ubel verkeren und Ariminium (sic) nennen, heist aber ein Heer
man, dux belli.

Herman, whom the Latins treat badly and call Ariminius (sic), is actually an Army man,
a leader of war.

The final step, perhaps, in the process of making Arminius a widely-

known German hero, who could appeal to all Germans, regardless of
their place of residence and their political attachments, was taken by
Burkhard Waldis (1490-1556), who published in 1543 his Illustrieten
Reimchronik, in German, which presented the twelve ancient German
kings and princes who were famous for bravery and achievements.
Ariovistus, also called Ehrenvest, holds the tenth place, Arminius/
Hermann, the eleventh, Charlemagne, Karl der Grosse, the last. The
verses which describe Arminius, twelve distichs, are flat and graceless,
but they are the first verses written in German which glorify him.
Arminius, den man nennt Herman,
Ein junger Held, ein ktihner Man,
Von leib und gmtit wol aufferwachsen,
Geborn vom Hartz, ein First zu Sachssen.

Arminius, who is called Herman,

A young hero, a bold man,
Who grew up well in body and soul,
Born in the Hartz, a prince of Saxony.

The impact of these verses, in their original form and by quotation in

other works, was significant. One may wonder if Ausonius' Caesares

9 Ann. 2.88.3.

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88 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND

furnished a model, or at least an idea, for this collectio

similarity of the number twelve of the subjects. The edi
author had appeared as long ago as 1472.
It is surely too much to claim that, without knowledge of Tacitus'
Germania and the first two books of his Annales, there would have been
no German religious uprising, no Protestant reformation. As the letter of
Chancellor Mair of Mainz showed in 1457, enmity toward the Roman
Church existed long before Luther. But the discovery and increasingly
wide dissemination of Tacitus' works added ancient authority to a
largely emotional and religious dispute. Tacitus enabled many Germans
to claim that they had once been not only the equals but even the
superiors of their Italian tormentors. That belief, centered upon the
figure of their great hero from antiquity, played a large role in German
national consciousness in subsequent centuries.
It is clear that Arminius' place in German history and above all in the
German imagination was secure by the middle of the sixteenth century.
He, as a person, his wife Thusnelda, his achievements, individually and
together became popular subjects for literary, dramatic, and operatic
treatment.?0 I shall mention only a few examples.

Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein (1635-83) wrote a vast novel entitled

Arminius, not yet completed when he died at age 48. He had not been
able to write the ninth and last book of the second part. Although not yet
published, anticipation was high because of his literary renown - he was
famed as 'the German Seneca' - and it was expected to be the great
national epic. The work appeared in 1689-90, with the title Grossmiithi-
ger Feldherr Arminius oder Hermann, (Magnanimous General Arminius
or Hermann), covering 3076 pages of quarto size.
The year 1769 saw the publication of two dramas with the same
subject, by authors of rather different abilities. Friedrich Gottlieb Klop-
stock (1724-1803) brought forth the first part of what proved to be a
trilogy, Hermanns Schlacht, followed by Hermann und die Fiirsten (1784)
and Hermanns Tod (1787). The three comprise a substantial portion of
the dramatic output of one of the most significant literary figures of the
eighteenth century, a man with a European reputation.
Cornelius von Ayrenhoff (1733-1819) is one of the relatively few
authors who place Thusnelda, Arminius' wife, on an equal level with

10 For many aspects of Arminius' Nachleben, see R. Wiegels and W. Woesler (eds.), Arminius
und die Varusschlacht (Paderbom, 1995).

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 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND 89

him. There is little ancient evidence about this woman; indeed, Tacitus
never identifies her by name. But clearly she was a true match for her
husband, a bold woman, ever the enemy of Rome, who became more
renowned in times much nearer our own than hers because of literature,
art, and music.'1
There is record of 75 operas on the Arminius theme, performed
between 1676 and 1910. Many were composed to the same libretto,
none is part of the repertory of any opera company. The titles present
the full range of people's views of the hero and those about him:
Arminius, der deutsche Erzheld, La Germania trionfante in Arminio,
Hermann und Varus, Hermann und Thusnelda, Hermann der Deutsche.
Few of the composers will be familiar even to a devoted student of
opera, but among them are Alessandro Scarlatti and Georg Friedrich
Handel. Complete recordings exist of only two, that of Heinrich Biber
from 1687 and Handel's (1737), which was issued by Sony in 2001. It is
a very strange opera, really more oratorio than opera, with several
peculiar twists to the story. But the music is indeed quite lovely.
I move now to the most visible evocation of Arminius/Hermann in the
nineteenth century, the great statue raised near Detmold in the Teuto-
burg Forest. Although it is not the German National Monument (that
distinction belongs to the Niederwalddenkmal of Germania near Rtides-
heim), it probably has the greatest resonance in the popular mind.
Surprisingly, it is the dream and work entirely of one man, a sculptor
named Ernst von Bandel, who, over decades, at great personal expense
and suffering, produced a monumental statue which was dedicated, in
the presence of the first German Emperor, in 1875, only a few years
after the humiliation of France and the establishment, under the impetus
of Bismarck, of a German nation.'2
There is a grand view from the top of the steep hill, with a vast
panorama of the thick forest. The spectator can then see all too clearly
how Varus could have been waylaid. The approach to the Hermanns-
denkmal, once the top of the hill has been achieved, is by a gently
sloping path, which brings the visitor to the rear of the statue. It is a most
imposing complex, some fifty metres high including the base; Arminius
himself wears a winged helmet and holds his right arm aloft. His right

11 H. W. Benario, 'Three Tacitean Women', in S. K. Dickison and J. P. Hallett (eds)., Rome and
her Monuments. Essays on the City and Literature of Rome in Honor of Katherine A. Geffcken
(Wauconda, IL, 2000), 595 ff.
12 T. Nipperdey, 'Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal im 19. Jahrhundert, ' HZ 206 (1968),
529 iff. = Gesellschaft, Kultur, Theorie. Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur neueren Geschichte (G6ttingen, 1976),
133 ff., 432 ff.

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90 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND

Fig. 1: 'The Hermannsdenkmal': author's own photo.

hand holds a sword, raised on high, on the blade of which, on the two
sides, are the inscriptions, Deutsche Einigkeit meine Stdrke and Meine
Stdrke Deutschlands Macht (German unity is my strength, my strength is
Germany's might.) The blatant nationalism expressed on the sword is a
statement of the pride of the German Empire, a perfect expression of
the mood of Bismarck's Germany.
It was precisely at this period that Arminius' consort, Thusnelda,
received her greatest tribute. The finest description we have of her from
antiquity comes from Tacitus, where she is part of the entourage her
father Segestes, who loathed Arminius and had snatched his daughter
from her husband, brings with him to the protection of Germanicus and
the Romans.

. . . et ereptus Segestes magna cum propinquorum et clientium manu. Inerant feminae

nobiles, inter quas uxor Arminii eademque filia Segestis, mariti magis quam parentis

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 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND 91

animo. Neque evicta in lacrimas neque voce supplex, compressis int

gravidum uterum intuens. 3

. . . and Segestes was rescued with a great following of relatives an

present women of noble birth, among whom was Armirnius' wife
daughter, whose spirit was rather that of her husband than of her f
down into tears nor spoke as a suppliant, with her hands pressed to
bosom and gazing at her swollen womb.

This is a remarkable passage. She is her husband's wife r

father's daughter, and she has her husband's spirit and temper. Her
downward glance at her swollen womb is portentous, as if threatening
that a second Arminius lurks there. In her silence, she forecasts future
disaster for Rome and those Germans, like her father, who support the
invaders. It is therefore essential that mother and future child be kept
away from homeland and loved one, that they become exiles in the lands
of the enemy.
Thusnelda's part in Germanicus' triumph is not described by
Tacitus. A pictorial version of what the historian might have written
did not come for more than eighteen and a half centuries. It was Karl
von Piloty, Germany's master of decorative historical painting, who in
1869 began his huge painting of 'Thusnelda in the Triumphal
Procession of Germanicus', which took four years to complete. It is
a huge canvas, measuring 7.1 x 4.9 metres, which hangs in the Neue
Pinakothek, Munich.
Piloty was famed for his superb technique in the handling of colours,
for his keen sense of the theatrical, and for his skill in representing
masses of individuals. It is the shading of colour which above all stands
out. In this vast panorama the corners are muted in various degrees of
shade and darkness. Only the captives on parade are boldly and brightly
displayed, with Thusnelda and her child in the centre represented
almost luminescently. They appear slightly to the left of centre,
preceded by male captives, accompanied by her female attendants.
Tiberius sits toward the upper right, gazing down at her with a scowl,
perhaps because her manner is so imperious, and standing next to the
emperor, in the shadow, is her father Segestes. Toward the upper left
corner, passing through an arch in his chariot, is the triumphator, barely
visible and hence a minor participant in his own great occasion. Piloty
has given the viewer a sense of the indomitable character of Arminius'
wife, long since snatched from him, first by her father, then by the

13 Ann. 1.57.3.

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92 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND

Fig. 2: 'Piloty, Thusnelda im Triumphzug des German

Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich.

Romans. To the artist, she stands for the invi

race. 14
One might expect that, after the debacle suffered by Germany in the
Nazi era and the ensuing World War, the people would wish to reject
symbols of their imperial past. With the Monument to Arminius,
however, this proved not to be the case. In a collection of essays
published in 1985, entitled Germany Today. A Personal Report, Walter
Laqueur entitled one 'Arminius or Patriotism Rediscovered'. He notes
the continuous presence of large numbers of people at the site of the
monument and suggests that 'this pilgrimage must have ... something
to do with the quest for national identity' (144). Arminius himself and
the terrain in which the statue stands represented then, almost twenty
years ago, part of the rediscovery of Heimat, a word which embraces
various concepts of old German culture, with its mores, its appreciation
and yearning for the German landscape, exemplified by artists such as
Anselm Feuerbach, and a history which seemed innocent and pure.

14 K. Lankheit, Karl von Piloty Thusnelda im Triumphzug des Germanicus (Munich, 1984).

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 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND 93

One may wonder how widespread knowledge of Arminius is among

the Germans of the present generation, after the precipitate decline in
classical education. However, events of the last fifteen years have
brought the historical Arminius to the fore once more, without the
panoply of legend and blind hero-worship. In 1987, in the area of
Kalkriese, northeast of Osnabriick, a British army officer, wandering
the fields with a metal detector, found a large number of coins, all of
which proved to be earlier than AD 9. Further finds led to excavation,
which has continued without a break. It is now clear to me, beyond any
reasonable doubt, that this was the site of Arminius' ambush of Varus
and his legions. Many of the discoveries have been spectacular, such as
the Roman equivalents of bullets, masks, bones, both human and
animal, and long stretches of the rampart behind which the Germans
hid.15 The distance between the hill and the nearby moor is only some
900 metres, and now one can easily visualize how the slaughter
developed, as the barbarians drove the Romans into the swamp.
Tacitus described the scene when Germanicus arrived with his troops
in the year 15.
. . . they visited the mournful scenes, with their horrible sights and associations. Varus'
first camp with its wide circumference and the measurements of its central space clearly
indicated the handiwork of three legions. Further on, the partially fallen rampart and the
shallow fosse suggested the inference that it was a shattered remnant of the army which
had there taken up a position. In the centre of the field were the whitening bones of men,
as they had fled, or stood their ground, strewn everywhere or piled in heaps. Near, lay
fragments of weapons and limbs of horses, and also human heads, prominently nailed to
trunks of trees. In the adjacent groves were the barbarous altars, on which they had
immolated tribunes and first-rank centurions. Some survivors of the disaster who had
escaped from the battle or captivity, described how this was the spot where the officers
fell, how yonder the eagles were captured, where Varus was pierced by his first wound,
where too by the stroke of his own ill-starred hand he found for himself death. They
pointed out too the raised ground from which Arminius had harangued his army, the
number of gibbets for the captives, the pits for the living, and how in his exultation he
insulted the standards and eagles.16

The careful work of the archaeologists has brought to light one of the
major sites of Roman Germany, which has become a tourist attraction of
considerable magnitude. On April 21, the birthday of Rome, in the year
2003, a new museum was opened to the public, where visitors can see

15 W. Schluiter (ed.), Kalkriese - Romer im Osnabriicker Land (Bramsche, 1993); W. Schltiter,

'The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest: Archaeological research at Kalkriese near Osnabrtick', in J. D.
Creighton and R. J. A. Wilson (eds.), Roman Germany. Studies in Cultural Interaction, JRA
Supplementary Series 32 (1999), 125 iff.
16 Ann. 1.61.1 ff. The translation is by A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb.

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94 ARMINIUS INTO HERMANN: HISTORY INTO LEGEND

some of the evidence for the historical Arminius, the unquestioned

liberator of Germany, in Tacitus' words. As is so often the case, facts are
more impressive than fiction.

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