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Philosophy with a Hammer

All is force against force, nothing else (Physics, Energy). With a rock and a stick, if a rock hits the stick, and the stick is weaker, it will break. If the stick is stronger, it will not break. The will to power that is in physics, is also in humanity. For Nietzsche, there is nothing else.

“The secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!”

Übermenschlich = Super-human; a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche had his character Zarathustra posit the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 novel “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. As a work of fiction, the utterances Nietzsche assigned to his Zarathustra are not immediately discernible from his own thoughts and writings.

“Man is something to be surpassed.”

“A man’s maturity: that is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play.”

“In revenge and in love, woman is more barbaric than man is.”

“What we experience in dreams—assuming that we experience it often—belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced "actually": we are richer or poorer on account of it.”

“God is a thought which makes crooked all that is straight.”

“Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch--a rope over an abyss.”

“One repays a teacher badly if one remains always only a student.”

“Many brief follies--that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with a single long stupidity.”

“To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.”

“Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will find that blood is spirit.”

“Beauty's voice speaks gently: it creeps only into the most awakened souls.”

“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

The adjective übermenschlich means super-human, in the sense of beyond human strength or out of proportion to humanity. Nietzsche introduces the concept of the Übermensch in contrast to the other-worldliness of Christianity: Zarathustra proclaims the Übermensch to be the meaning of the earth and admonishes his audience to ignore those who promise other-worldly hopes in order to draw them away from the earth. The turn away from the earth is prompted, he says, by a dissatisfaction with life, a dissatisfaction that causes one to create another world in which those who made one unhappy in this life are tormented. The Übermensch is not driven into other worlds away from this one. Zarathustra declares that the Christian escape from this world also required the invention of an eternal soul which would be separate from the body and survive the body's death. Part of other-worldliness, then, was the abnegation and mortification of the body, or asceticism. Zarathustra further links the Übermensch to the body and to interpreting the soul as simply an aspect of the body.



For Rüdiger Safranski, the Übermensch represents a higher biological type reached through artificial selection and at the same time is also an ideal for anyone who is creative and strong enough to master the whole spectrum of human potential, good and "evil", to become an "artist-tyrant". In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche vehemently denied any idealistic, democratic or humanitarian interpretation of the Übermensch: "The word Übermensch [designates] a type of supreme achievement, as opposed to 'modern' men, 'good' men, Christians, and other nihilists ... When I whispered into the ears of some people that they were better off looking for a Cesare Borgia than a Parsifal, they did not believe their ears." Safranski argues that the combination of ruthless warrior pride and artistic brilliance that defined the Italian Renaissance embodied the sense of the Übermensch for Nietzsche. According to Safranski, Nietzsche intended the ultra-aristocratic figure of the Übermensch to serve as a Machiavellian bogeyman of the modern Western middle class and its pseudo-Christian egalitarian value system.

The term Übermensch was used frequently by Hitler and the Nazi regime to describe their idea of a biologically superior Aryan or Germanic master race; a form of Nietzsche's Übermensch became a philosophical foundation for the National Socialist ideas. Their conception of the Übermensch, however, was racial in nature. The Nazi notion of the master race also spawned the idea of "inferior humans" (Untermenschen) which could be dominated and enslaved; this term does not originate with Nietzsche. Nietzsche himself was critical of both antisemitism and German nationalism. In defiance of these doctrines, he claimed that he and Germany were great only because of "Polish blood in their veins", and that he would be "having all anti-semites shot" as an answer to his stance on anti-semitism. To his friend Franz Overbeck he wrote, “I am just now having all anti-Semites shot.”

Blind pupils—As long as a man knows very well the strength and weaknesses of his teaching, his art, his religion, its power is still slight. The pupil and apostle who, blinded by the authority of the master and by the piety he feels toward him, pays no attention to the weaknesses of a teaching, a religion, and soon usually has for that reason more power than the master. The influence of a man has never yet grown great without his blind pupils. To help a perception to achieve victory often means merely to unite it with stupidity so intimately that the weight of the latter also enforces the victory of the former.

“Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.”

The central ideal of Nietzsche's philosophy was the individual and his freedom to shape his own character and destiny. The German philosopher was frequently described as the "radical aristocrat" of the spirit because he abhorred mass culture and strove to cultivate a special kind of human being, the Übermensch, endowed with exceptional spiritual and mental qualities.

Although Benito Mussolini was certainly familiar with Nietzsche's writings and was a long-time admirer of the philosopher, Hitler's own connection with Nietzsche remains uncertain. As a soldier during the First World War, he had carried the works of Schopenhauer and not those of Nietzsche in his backpack. There is no reference to Nietzsche in Mein Kampf (though there is to Schopenhauer), and in Hitler's Table Talk, he refers only indirectly to Nietzsche, saying: "In our part of the world, the Jews would have immediately eliminated Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kant. If the Bolsheviks had dominion over us for two hundred years, what works of our past would be handed on to posterity? Our great men would fall into oblivion, or else they'd be presented to future generations as criminals and bandits."

Nietzsche was clearly an elitist who believed in the right to rule of a "good and healthy aristocracy," one that would, if necessary, be ready to sacrifice untold numbers of human beings. He sometimes wrote as if nations primarily existed for the sake of producing a few "great men," who could not be expected to show consideration for "normal humanity." Not suprisingly, in the light of the cruel century that has just ended, one is bound to regard such statements with grave misgivings. From Mussolini and Hitler to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein, the last eighty years have been riddled with so-called political geniuses imagining that they were "beyond good and evil" and free of any moral constraints. One has to ask if there is not something in Nietzsche's philosophy with its uninhibited cultivation of a heroic individualism and the will to power, which may have tended to favor the fascist ethos. Musssolini, for example, raised the Nietzschean formulation "live dangerously" (vivi pericolosamente) to the status of a fascist slogan. His reading of Nietzsche was one factor in converting him from Marxism to a philosophy of sacrifice and warlike deeds in defense of the fatherland.

Spencer Sunshine writes that "There were many things that drew anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of the state; his disgust for the mindless social behavior of 'herds'; his anti-Christianity; his distrust of the effect of both the market and the State on cultural production; his desire for an 'overman' — that is, for a new human who was to be neither master nor slave; his praise of the ecstatic and creative self, with the artist as his prototype, who could say, 'Yes' to the self-creation of a new world on the basis of nothing; and his forwarding of the 'transvaluation of values' as source of change, as opposed to a Marxist conception of class struggle and the dialectic of a linear history."

The influential American anarchist Emma Goldman in her famous collection of essays Anarchism and Other Essays in the preface passionately defends both Nietzsche and Max Stirner from attacks within anarchism when she says "The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the Übermensch. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Übermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves."



Nietzsche believed that only by honestly facing the stark truth that there is no truth, no goal, no value or meaning in itself, could one pave the way for a real intellectual liberation and a revaluation of all values.

Young resorts to purely psychological explanation primarily on the subject of Nietzsche’s attitude toward women. He notes that Nietzsche had a large circle of highly intelligent and forceful female friends, and that many could be regarded as early feminists. As a Basel professor Nietzsche took a minority stand favoring admission of women to the doctoral program. But after his disastrous courtship of Lou Salomé, whose affections were stolen by Nietzsche’s close friend Paul Rée, he came to regard feminism as one of the most disastrous byproducts of modernity, and women as needing (in the words of a character in “Zarathustra”) “the whip.”

The most serious issue raised in this or any other study of Nietzsche concerns the nature of his politico-cultural program, the “transvaluation of all values,” that was to take place in the wake of the death of Christianity. Young properly criticizes attempts by the Nazis to appropriate Nietzsche as one of their own. He points out that despite some casual anti-Semitism in his early years, the older Nietzsche became a principled anti-anti-Semite, an opponent of Bismarck and a critic of the German chauvinism that emerged after the Reich was unified in 1871.

Nietzsche, however, hoped for a future hierarchical society in which the labor of the many would support the greatness of the few, one in which the cultural cacophony of contemporary liberal societies would be replaced by the solidarity of a single, common culture. Young argues that this was not really a political project, and that the Übermensch at the top of the pyramid should be thought of less as a Hitler-like dictator and more as a spiritual leader, whom he compares variously to the Dalai Lama or Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei. Cultural conformity was not, for Young’s Nietzsche, something to be enforced through political power, but rather something generated spontaneously through communal participation in art, much as the ancient Greek polis had been bound together through the common performance of tragedy.

No less convoluted were the efforts of the Nazi commentator Heinrich Härtle in his 1937 book Nietzsche und der Nationalsozialismus, where he presented the philosopher "as a great ally in the present spiritual warfare." Härtle realized that Nietzsche's advocacy of European unity, his elitism and individualism, his critique of the state, his approval of race-mixing, and his anti-anti-Semitism were incompatible with Nazi ideology.

"There were many things that drew anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of the state; his disgust for the mindless social behavior of 'herds'; his anti-Christianity; his distrust of the effect of both the market and the State on cultural production; his desire for an 'übermensch' — that is, for a new human who was to be neither master nor slave; his praise of the ecstatic and creative self, with the artist as his prototype, who could say, 'Yes' to the self-creation of a new world on the basis of nothing; and his forwarding of the 'transvaluation of values' as source of change, as opposed to a Marxist conception of class struggle and the dialectic of a linear history."

Before we begin, however, it should prove helpful to explain what Nietzsche's doctrine of “the will to power” actually is. A psychological presupposition of Nietzsche's is that humans are always attempting to inflict their wills upon others. Every action toward another individual stems from a deep-down desire to bring that person under one's power in one way or another. Whether a person is giving gifts, claiming to be in love with someone, giving someone praise, or physically harming someone, the psychological motive is the same: to exert one's will over others. This presupposition entails that all human beings are ultimately and exclusively egoistic by nature. Therefore, according to Nietzsche, there are no truly altruistic actions. The will to power is not, however, limited to the psychology of human beings.

This is not to be confused with Schopenhauer's "Will," however, though one could argue that there are residual qualities of it in Nietzsche's "will to power." The fundamental differences between the two are that the "Will" is not concerned with power; rather it is blind striving and unintelligent. Ideas and representations are the outward manifestations of the "Will," while the "Will" itself is the inner nature or essence of the universe. This "Will," according to Schopenhauer, is never satisfied. Taking the form of desires, aspirations, lusts, and cravings in human beings, the unsatiable nature of the "Will" makes a burden out of one's existence. Once one desire is satisfied, it merely gives rise to another, and then another, and so on. The "Will" is thus the source of all of the evil and suffering in the world. These ideas lead Schopenhauer to adopt a life-denying view of the world, since it contains nothing but suffering and the burden of satisfying unrelenting desires. Nietzsche's "will to power," on the other hand, is a life-affirming view, in that creatures affirm their instincts to acquire power and dominance, and suffering is not seen as evil, but as a necessary part of existence which is to be embraced. Lasting pleasure and satisfaction come about as a result of being able to live according to one's instincts--the ability to exert one's will to power. So, as Nietzsche concludes in the very last lines of The Will to Power:

“Do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?--This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!”

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

“If you gaze long enough into the an abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you.”

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privileged of owning yourself.”

“We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.”

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.”

“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”

“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings—always darker, emptier and simpler.”

“When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.”

“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

“One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

“Not necessity, not desire—no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything—health, food, a place to live, entertainment—they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.”

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

“Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.”

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

“A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.”

“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”

“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”

“In heaven, all of the interesting people are missing.”

“There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on head should be asked not to hit it at all.”

...in attempting to counteract the predicted rise of nihilism, he was engaged in a positive program to reaffirm life, and so he called for a radical, naturalistic rethinking of the nature of human existence, knowledge, and morality. On either interpretation, it is agreed that he suggested a plan for “becoming what one is” through the cultivation of instincts and various cognitive faculties, a plan that requires constant struggle with one’s psychological and intellectual inheritances.

His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy deeply affected generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights. He thought through the consequences of the triumph of the Enlightenment’s secularism, expressed in his observation that “God is dead,” in a way that determined the agenda for many of Europe’s most celebrated intellectuals after his death. Although he was an ardent foe of nationalism, anti-Semitism, and power politics, his name was later invoked by Fascists to advance the very things he loathed.

“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”

“I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantages.”

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

“Faith: not wanting to know what is true.”

“It is impossible to suffer without making someone suffer for it; every complaint already contains revenge.”

“Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.”

“There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.”

“Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.”

“It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.”

“Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.”

“Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?”

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

“The doer alone learneth.”

“Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.”

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.”

“It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.”

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason.”

“Perhaps I know best why it is man who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”

“Wit is the epitaph of emotion.”

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”

“The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of “eternity”; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what everyone doesn't say in a book.”

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.”

This then explains the central role that music played in his philosophy. Nietzsche, a talented pianist and occasional composer, had great hopes that Richard Wagner’s music might somehow serve as the foundation for a refounding of German culture on the basis of a unifying art, and for that reason he entered eagerly into the circle of Wagner and his wife, Cosima. He broke with the composer not because he ceased to believe in the project, but because he felt that Wagner himself was too crude an individual to implement it.

Nietzsche begins, in §716-719, by arguing that in the modern world, societies as a whole tell us a great deal more about the nature of mankind (as will to power) than do individuals. States act in ways toward each other for which individuals do not have the strength or courage, because states do not feel responsible for their actions as do individuals. The external behavior of the state is that of conquest and war, acting in accordance with the will to power. The state is able to engage in this behavior by dividing up the labor and executive powers among its individuals, so that no one individual can feel as though one bears significant responsibility for the state's actions. It instills in its people values such as obedience, duty, and patriotism, while it outwardly exudes values such as strength, pride, and revenge. The former values are instilled by the state's overpowering of the individual, so that one is compelled to serve in its interests.

Jared Loughner's despair that everything is unreal and words have no meaning amounts to hatred of the world (a mania of moralism and narcissism) for its failure to resemble the words we apply to it. Faced with a choice between real people and some stupid abstraction about words, themselves mere abstractions, Loughner killed the people to defend the abstraction. This, then, really is a kind of nihilism, only not the kind that people think Nietzsche was guilty of. It's the kind of nihilism that Nietzsche was trying to warn us about, and help us overcome.

By "actual neighbor," I take Nietzsche to be referring to bordering states or societies, as the context would indicate. It seems then, that Nietzsche is trying to say that the violence inherent in the way a society exerts its will to power is evidence that the true nature of man is one of violence also. What Nietzsche reveals about the nature of states in these passages is interestingly similar to some of the political views which Noam Chomsky has professed--that states are fundamentally violent institutions and a state's internally espoused values have no bearing whatsoever on its external behavior.

Therefore, in this respect, all truly great men, according to Nietzsche, are criminals in some respect, in that they are individuals who are courageous enough to act in a way that goes against the conformity of the herd. Nietzsche expresses this sentiment in §740:

“Crime belongs to the concept "revolt against the social order." One does not "punish" a rebel; one suppresses him. A rebel can be a miserable and contemptible man; but there is nothing contemptible in a revolt as such—and to be a rebel in view of contemporary society does not in itself lower the value of a man. There are even cases in which one might have to honor a rebel, because he finds something in our society against which war ought to be waged—he awakens us from our slumber.”

The criminal is thus someone to be valued by a society, as Nietzsche would have it, instead of looked upon with moral derision. The criminal points out something about society that is in need of change, helping to jolt the rest us out of our complacency. The concept of "punishment" for criminals then, simply amounts to the "suppression of a revolt," in that it is nothing more than an attempt to maintain the mediocre status quo of the herd by imprisoning (or in some cases, executing) those who deviate from it.

Nietzsche argues further that finding a punishment which will cause as much suffering as the suffering inflicted by the criminal is impossible, since every criminal experiences different degrees of pain and pleasure. Being that it is not possible to measure these degrees, how are we supposed to determine a punishment for such a person which would be fitting for the nature of the crime? Nietzsche suggests here that the institution of punishment thus fails to do what it sets out to do, in that it cannot possibly provide punishments which offer the same amount of pain to the criminal as the crime did to its victim. All this seems to suggest to Nietzsche that punishment as a practice should be abolished, but at the same time, he laments that it would be a great loss. By this statement, it is likely that he means it would be a loss of the pleasure one gets in being able to inflict suffering on those who have wronged one, as he discusses in On The Genealogy of Morals, second essay, section five:




“In ancient Rome, creditors were able to inflict painful punishments on their dilatory debtors in the form of removing body parts. They were legally given free reign to cut off as much as they felt would satisfy their loss. In the case of a society's penal code, the relationship between creditor and debtor can be put in terms in which the debtor is someone who owes a debt to society, and only the amount of suffering which seems "fitting" for the crime (debt) will suffice as payment.”

Overall, however, Nietzsche sees the criminalization of those who go against the grain as simply the herd keeping people down to their level through the use of the state. As he states in §746, such people should not be locked up, but allowed to roam free, since they would help us break out of our shared mediocrity:

Schopenhauer wanted rascals to be castrated and silly geese to be shut up in convents: from what point of view would this be desirable? The rascal has this advantage over many other men, that he is not mediocre; and the fool has this advantage over us, that he does not suffer at the sight of mediocrity. It would be more desirable that the gulf should be made wider; so rascality and folly should increase. In this way human nature would be expanded—But, after all, this is dictated by necessity; it does not depend on whether we desire it or not. Folly, rascality increase: that is part of "progress."

What helps to maintain such mediocrity among individuals is the present type of society or state in which most societies presently function. Nietzsche highly disapproves of any society which is operated on the premises of equal rights and/or universal suffrage, or in other words, any society in which the majority maintains power in one way or another. Socialism, democracy, and anarchism all rest on the idea that there are no great or superior individuals, and therefore Nietzsche rejects them all. These forms of society represent nothing more than the rule of the herd; the rule of mediocrity. Nietzsche rejects such forms of society in favor of the aristocratic ideal, which values a higher form of man; a model for society which does in fact demonstrate a belief in great and talented individuals and an elite class. For here the herd does not have any power, and therefore does not keep in check those who stand out among them who deserve rank and recognition, or in other words, individuals are free to act upon their will to power in the natural ways.

Nietzsche takes it to be a fundamental error to place the goal of society in the masses, and not in the individual, as democracy and socialism do. Rather, in Nietzsche's opinion, the masses are the means to an end. He also considers it a mistake to treat sympathy as the most valuable trait in human beings, because, as he clearly states in section seven of The Antichrist, pity asks for the multiplication of suffering (I take Nietzsche to be using pity and sympathy interchangeably enough). Pity makes us weak as individuals, sapping us of our ability to exert our will to power in the natural, instinctive (violent) ways that we normally would. It helps foster the herd, by guilting us into helping to preserve those who would otherwise perish of their weakness and life-denying attitudes. The most redeeming quality of humans is, of course, their instinctive will to power. In §768, Nietzsche writes about this nature of humans in the form of its "ego":

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”

“Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.”

“There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.”



“Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.”

“One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.”

“In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.”

“Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.”

“Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.”

“There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.”

“What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.”

“Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.”

“Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.”



Young appropriately underlines the notion that postmodernism, with its embrace of diversity in values, is no different from the 19th-century modernism that Nietzsche hated. He would not have celebrated alternative lifestyles, non-Western cultures or the right of every fourth grader to be his or her own value-creator. Acknowledgment of the death of God is a bomb that blows up many things, not just oppressive traditionalism, but also values like compassion and the equality of human dignity on which support for a tolerant liberal political order is based. This then is the Nietzschean dead end from which Western philosophy has still not emerged.

The first Soviet director of education, Anatoly Lunacharsky (who was also in charge of state censorship of the arts and bore the delicious title of Commissar of Enlightenment), saw himself as promoting a communist version of the Superman. “In labour, in technology,” he wrote, in a passage cited by Watson, “[the new man] found himself to be a god and dictated his will to the world.”

“The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.”

“Love is not consolation. It is light.”

“The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.”

“Fear is the mother of morality.”

Germanic peoples are also called Teutonic Peoples, or any of the Indo-European speakers of Germanic languages.

The origins of the Germanic peoples are obscure. During the late Bronze Age, they are believed to have inhabited southern Sweden, the Danish peninsula, and northern Germany between the Ems River on the west, the Oder River on the east, and the Harz Mountains on the south. The Vandals, Gepidae, and Goths migrated from southern Sweden in the closing centuries bc and occupied the area of the southern Baltic coast roughly between the Oder on the west and the Vistula River on the east. At an early date there was also migration toward the south and west at the expense of the Celtic peoples who then inhabited much of western Germany: the Celtic Helvetii, for example, who were confined by the Germanic peoples to the area that is now Switzerland in the 1st century BC, had once extended as far east as the Main River.

By the time of Julius Caesar, Germans were established west of the Rhine River and toward the south had reached the Danube River. Their first great clash with Romans came at the end of the 2nd century BC, when the Cimbri and Teutoni (Teutones) invaded southern Gaul and northern Italy and were annihilated by Gaius Marius in 102 and 101. Although individual travelers from the time of Pytheas onward had visited Teutonic countries in the north, it was not until the 1st century BC was well advanced that the Romans learned to distinguish precisely between the Germans and the Celts, a distinction that is made with great clarity by Julius Caesar. It was Caesar who incorporated within the frontiers of the Roman Empire those Germans who had penetrated west of the Rhine, and it is he who gave the earliest extant description of Germanic culture. In 9 BC the Romans pushed their frontier eastward from the Rhine to the Elbe, but in 9 AD, a revolt of their subject Germans headed by Arminius ended in the withdrawal of the Roman frontier to the Rhine. In this period of occupation and during the numerous wars fought between Rome and the Germans in the 1st century AD, enormous quantities of information about the Germans reached Rome, and, when Tacitus published in 98 AD the book now known as the Germania, he had reliable sources of information on which to draw. The book is one of the most valuable ethnographic works in existence; archaeology has in many ways supplemented the information Tacitus gives, but in general it has tended only to confirm his accuracy and to illustrate his insight into his subject.

The principal Germanic peoples were distributed as follows in the time of Tacitus. The Chatti lived in what is now Hesse. The Frisii inhabited the coastlands between the Rhine and the Ems. The Chauci were at the mouth of the Weser, and south of them lived the Cherusci, the people of Arminius. The Suebi, who have given their name to Schwaben, were a group of peoples inhabiting Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia; the Semnones, living around the Havel and the Spree rivers, were a Suebic people, as were the Langobardi (Lombards), who lived northwest of the Semnones. Among the seven peoples who worshiped the goddess Nerthus were the Angli (Angles), centered on the peninsula of Angeln in eastern Schleswig. As for the Danubian frontier of the Roman Empire, the Hermunduri extended from the neighborhood of Regensburg northward through Franconia to Thuringia. The Marcomanni, who had previously lived in the Main valley, migrated during the last decade BC to Bohemia (which had hitherto been occupied by a Celtic people called the Boii), where their eastern neighbors were the Quadi in Moravia. On the lower Danube were a people called the Bastarnae, who are usually thought to have been Germans. The Goths, Gepidae, and Vandals were on the southern Baltic coast. Tacitus mentions the Suiones and the Sitones as living in Sweden. He also speaks of several other peoples of less historical importance, but he knows nothing of the Saxons, the Burgundians, and others who became prominent after his time.

By the end of the 3rd century ad important changes had taken place. East of the Rhine there were three great confederacies of peoples unknown to Tacitus. The Roman frontier on the lower Rhine faced the Franks. The Main valley was occupied from about 260 by the Burgundians, while the Agri Decumates (of the Black Forest region) were held by the Alemanni. The Burgundians appear to have been immigrants from eastern Germany. The Franks and the Alemanni may have been confederacies of peoples who had lived in these respective areas in Tacitus’ day, though perhaps with an admixture of immigrants from the east. The peoples whom Tacitus mentions as living on the Baltic coast had moved southeastward in the second half of the 2nd century. Thus the Goths now controlled the Ukraine and much of what is now Romania; the Gepidae were in the mountains north of Transylvania with the Vandals as their western neighbors.

By the year 500, the Angles and Saxons were in England and the Franks controlled northeastern Gaul. The Burgundians were in the Rhône valley with the Visigoths as their western neighbors. The Ostrogoths were established in Italy and the Vandals in Africa. In 507, the Franks expelled the Visigoths from most of the Gallic possessions, which had stretched from the Pyrenees to the Loire River, and the Visigoths thereafter lived in Spain until their extinction by the Muslims in 711. In 568 the Lombards entered Italy and lived there in an independent kingdom until they were overthrown by Charlemagne (774). The areas of eastern Germany vacated by the Goths and others were filled up by the Slavs, who extended westward as far as Bohemia and the basin of the Elbe. After the 8th century the Germans recovered eastern Germany, lower Austria, and much of Styria and Carinthia from the Slavs.

...which explains how native Americans covered all of the Americas from Alaska to the bottom part South America, the Sami people in Sweden, some Asiatic traits in Finland, and Genghis Khan.

...industrial revolution which started in UK. it should be remembered that the Spanish and Portuguese went to South America for Gold. The English (including the Welsh but not Scots and Irish for historical reasons) also wanted gold but the others would not let them have it and got there first. People like Drake Raleigh, Frobisher, Hawkins etc. with the approval of Queen Elizabeth I decided to put that right. Hence the Spanish and Portuguese regard these as pirates but there was no way QE l was going to let Papists have all the Gold. That meant the English had some money and in it's way this financed the industrial revolution. In it's way USA as separate states had only to overcome the native Americans known in cowboy films as INJUNS. It should be remembered that at no time did these people dishonor a treaty. It was always the incomers.

Major characteristic of White people (Nordic) is that they respect the FAIR PRICE principle, rather than trying to obtain the maximum price which is considered greedy and dishonorable. It's the only culture that is not mercantile.

True Europeans are quite traditional and won't move unless persecuted or forced by famine: the colonization of the US followed religious persecution. Canada and Australia had to be populated by prisoners, because nobody wanted to move there.

Darwin's The Origin of the Species was published in 1859, slavery was already on its way out. It was outlawed in 1834 in the British Empire; Abraham Lincoln was elected in the US on an anti-slavery manifesto in 1860. (An interesting side note: Darwin and Lincoln were born on the same day.)

Spirituality vs Ruthlessness.

Asians may be smarter technically but they live by their rules of spirituality, they tend not to do things they disagree with, or their various religions disapprove of.

White peoples (British/Europeans) on the other hand have tended to largely ignore the spiritual side of life and pursue material wealth—land, money, power, resources—traveling far and wide to get it, and even using their religion (Christianity) as a tool to dominate (forced conversions through missionaries etc), rather than as a guide for living a simple spiritual life.

That's the difference between them - it all comes down to how ruthless you want to be.

Maybe because the white people in England were all freezing with nothing better to do so they made all these inventions to take over the world while the black people didn't care about such things as they were too busy sitting on the beach drinking Malibu.

The Asians were too busy inventing Tamagotchis to be interested in world domination.

“It’s not by hypocrisy that the playing field isn’t level. It’s by necessity.” - Xenocrates

Secondly, the word “Caucasian” arose out of the theory that all white people emerged from a region between Europe and Iran called Caucasus, and it describes a very wide range of ethnic groups. Caucasians include most fair skinned “races”, which automatically includes anyone who has the skull structure, if not the corresponding skin color. Thus, Aryans, Indians and Arabs are all considered Caucasian – only to establish Aryans as white and the rest as not.

This type of controversial classification only has social value. Words that only have social value tend to become abused to fit phobic agendas (such as racism) and thus are inherently loaded. Similarly, describing Negroes as “People of African descent” is inherently fallacious, as proven by The Genographic project, confirming the theory that all of mankind is of African descent.

So how did white men conquer the world, exactly? Through several functions of cause and effect which occurred in a specific sequence that would create that effect, starting out with:

Caucasians has many more conspicuous, traceable mutations (such as white skin and blue eyes) in the last 20 – 50 thousand years than all the others. Where as other phenotypic group expressions (commonly referred to as “races”) differ primarily in orthopedic, (and more specifically, cranial) qualities, there are enough variations in Europeans to functionally deprecate any further use of the words “race” and “Caucasian“.

White people are uniquely different from virtually all other phenotypic groups in that the genetic mutations that created them are vastly more distinct. They constitute a larger number of diverse physical characteristics that are not as subtle as the variations that exist in other groups. Thus, the prevalence of white people across the world speaks to what many scientists believe to be natural selection due to the perception of an apparent innovative survivability by female mates within the group of this distinct phenotype, giving generational prominence.

This is why blue and green eyes, fair skin, blond, brown and red straight hair became the standard qualities that describe people of this group. Virtually all of these qualities are genetic mutations that were simply given preference over most others when they first occurred, thus giving them a greater degree of ubiquity in the group than the other existing permutations.

The Germanic languages belong to the Indo-European family of languages that span Eurasia from Ireland on the west to India on the east. The origin of the Indo-European languages is believed to have been in the merger of three peoples in the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. One of the three excelled in warfare, one in agriculture and one in metal-working. The synthesis of these three strengths produced a folk that spread east and west. The western branch splits into the ancestors of the Baltic, the Celtic, the Germanic and the Slavic tribes as well as a welter of smaller groupings such as those of the Latins and Greeks. The languages of the Germanic tribes underwent a systematic sound change that distinguished them from the languages of the other branches.

By about 500 BCE, the Germanic tribes were occupying the southern shores of the Baltic and southern Scandinavia. Some of these Germanic tribes migrated and established control of new territories. Tribes from Scandinavia, known as the Goths, migrated southeast to the area north of the Black Sea. Later they divided into the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths and conquered areas in the north shore of the Mediterranean Sea as far west as the Iberian peninsula. Later the Franks from what is now Germany moved west and conquered the Low Lands and Roman Gaul, giving it their name as France. The Angles and Saxons, along with Justes, invaded Britain and created England. Another Germanic tribe, the Lombards (long beards), invaded and conquered what is now northern Italy. The Burgundians from the region which included the Baltic Island of Bornholm moved southward and ended up establishing the Kingdom of Burgundy in what is now southeast France. Still later Germanic tribe invaded the territory of the Prussians, a Slavic people, and conquered them so thoroughly that Prussian came to be identified as the epitome of Germanness. All in all it was a remarkable record of military prowess on the part of the Germanic tribes. However in the scheme of things the occupation of territory by the less bellicose Slavic tribes was more successful. And while the Slavic tribes by and large maintained their linguistic and cultural identity the conquering Germanic tribes were largely absorbed into the cultures they conquered.

The first written record of the Germanic tribes was by the Roman historian Tacitus in 98 BCE. German tribes were moving into the region that is now southwestern Germany about the same time the Romans were conquering Gaul. Julius Caesar defeated the Suevian tribe in 70 BCE and thus established the Rhine River as the boundary between Roman and German territory. But a Roman fear of militaristic peoples on their borders prompted the Roman governor Varus to invade the territory beyond the Rhine. Those Romans were soundly defeated in the year 9 AD at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. The leader of the victorious Germans was a German who had received military training in the Roman army. This German victory freed the German tribes of any serious threat of domination by the Romans, although the Romans did later conquer some territories beyond the Rhine and the Danube.

The king of the Franks, Clovis, ruled over the mixed Celtic-Roman-German population of Gaul from 486 to 511. Clovis's line, the Merovingians, ended when Pepin the Younger gained the throne of the Franks in 741. His line became known as the Carolingians.

The greatest of the Carolingians was Charlemagne (Charles the Great) who ruled the Franks from 768 to 814. Charlemagne conquered the Lombard kingdom of north Italy in 774. In 800 Charlemagne was declared Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope. Charlemagne's son Louis continued the rule of the Frankish Holy Roman Empire which stretched from the Spanish Marches to what is now Germany and Austria. But this magnificent empire was too large and unwieldy to rule so shortly after Louis the Pious died in 840 the empire was divided, in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun, between three of Charlemagne's grandsons. The title of Holy Roman Emperor went to the ruler of the Middle Kingdom.

60,000 years of evolution, the northern folks were able to revisit Africa in their now finely refined, fair skinned, brown haired, blue eyed, cotton clad, gun toting, sea faring, gold digging, monarchy backed personas, only to see their fellow humans in almost the same position they left them 60,000 years earlier living in relatively primitive civilizations.

For black folks reading this, the fair skinned men from the northern lands weren’t the first to enslave darker skinned humans. That was just the most recent case. In fact, Africans have been enslaved at least five times in world history. At the very least, the Arabs, Greeks, Persians, Romans and various European nations such as Portugal and Holland all chipped in.



As a result, the darker men in Africa constantly had their culture being rebooted every 500 – 2,000 years by their smarter, more cognitively evolved, fairer skinned northern land dwelling brothers. Some 700 years later, Africa is still trying to play catch up to the rest of the world, as it desperately tries to recover from the repeated culture rape of the last 5,000 years or so.

...since China owes its wealth to America and Africans living in the west are not as poor.

It’s the same reason why most western black people would never return to Africa, why Latinos are trying to escape Mexico, why you’re Asian and you don’t know a single word in Chinese, or why your government is no longer run by a Monarchy or a religious elite. White people have reformed our thinking and given us the ability to think about things in a wholly different way.

It is not surprising that our education systems, our governments, our politics, our clothing, the technology we use, the sports we play, many of our cultural idiosyncrasies and much of the music we love is largely based on European standards. Europeans and their descendants have defined much of what you now come to take for granted, because it was “always there“.

That’s why complaining about the hypocrisy and inequality between races is an intrinsically redundant argument. It is not by hypocrisy that the playing field isn’t level. It’s by necessity. I know this sounds Machiavellian from the outset, but all peoples needed to evolve out of their barbarianism sooner or later. Whites just got there first and are now spreading that around.

If white men had not intervened when they did, many peoples would still be living in primitive societies plagued by dangerous diseases and barbaric cultural practices. I know you might be thinking that white folks could have done the same thing without the hideous crimes against humanity. Those were certainly regrettable, but all ethnic groups are guilty of the same crime.

The unification of China saw the slaughter and exile of many ethnic Chinese groups that brought the Han Chinese to prominence. The same thing is happening in Africa even today, most recently with the genocide in Darfur and Rwanda. Even prehistoric Neanderthals had similar periods of ethnic cleansing. So white people are no more vile than the rest of humanity.

Love or hate them, we owe a great deal of our cognitive evolution to white men. But let us not get distracted. Any group of humans that migrated out of Africa to the north west would have evolved into fair skinned, blue eyed, brown haired explorers extraordinaire. The environment is what facilitated the genetic mutations. Technically, any phenotypic expression of the human genotype can produce any other. They weren’t white while they were primitive tribes in Africa.

The impending ubiquity of technology has effectively shrunken the world. While great divides still exist economically between white societies and all others, the rest of the world has finally caught up with the cognitive levels of white men – and white men are to be thanked for that. It is they who after all have educated the rest of the world on their social advancements.

No longer does the USA hold a monopoly on economies of scale nor is it the manufacturing center of the world. China now has that honor. The greatest minds in the world may still be mostly white, but now those great minds include Africans, Asians, Hispanics and every other variation of humanity in between. This is how whites have ultimately redeemed themselves.

Make no mistake though – white people still rule the world. The only thing changing this, is that there is a limitation to cognitive evolution. The more educated a group becomes, the more interested it will be in the pursuit of knowledge and the less interested it will be in the pursuit of procreation. White populations around the world, from America to Europe, are dwindling.

This is the change that will ultimately unseat the dominant phenotype – maybe not in our lifetimes, but certainly eventually. White populations are not expanding as quickly as that of other groups – most notably people of Asian, Latin and Negro descent. If the rate of cognitive evolution remains the same and the negative population growth of Europeans is unmitigated, we may very well see a successful shift in the dominant phenotype from Europeans to Asians.

Even so, this is not a cause for concern. There will always be white people around. That their populations are shrinking is only a function of being the first to civilize. That will be the fate of all distinct human groups. For as I said before, no phenotype is inherently superior by design. The perception is a fallacy based on the deceptive evolutionary impact of the environment.

Genetic advantage is a fleeting thing.

The Prussians were originally Baltic Slavs.

I just got back from Germany and wow! You guys are the best people I have have ever met. i have traveled a lot and never met anyone better than from Germany. I have a site that has a link to my travels here www.meemsgalaxy.com. Thanks a million Germans for being the most hospitable people on the planet. Is it something they put in the beer to make you so nice and beautiful? Thanks again.

Have you asked the Jews or Romani people? How about the Slavs. Ugly dog looking Hunnic creatures.
Brits and French are way better.

More Americans are Skinheads then Germans.

In the civil-American war between north and south it were mostly the Germans who fight for blacks freedom - not the Brits. All clear? And it were the Brits who made slavery, and nowadays the Arabs in Darfur, but not the Germans.

Germans are only nice to tourists. But if you plan on staying here, then oh boy their true colors come out. They are some of the most racist people on earth. Trust me on this.

And yes Germans are still Nazis.

Who were financiers and sympathizers of AH and his party?- people from all over the world, especially in the US.

60 percent of the American people, say they have German ancestor. That's why both countries are so succesful. What about the Cold War? The German people stopped this madness. On a peaceful way.

You are right Vivek. The slave trade was primarily run and operated by nasty Jewish merchants. They even admit to it in their own history books. Look up the book: "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews" if you don't believe me. Jews have a long history of cruelty and exploiting other people.

I am almost 100% German and grew up in America. I can honestly say I came from the most awesome family. They could party! They were all accomplished musicians that would jam all night. My grandfather was from Austria/Bavaria and was a jazz musician at the age of 12. We all love science, especially astronomy - and would stay up at night at our cottage out in the woods, discussing astronomy, philosophy, religion. They are the most interesting and generous people. I feel so lucky to have grown up like I did. I am really happy to be German! Oh, and their food rocks too!

Immer dieses Scheiß gelaber, dass die Deutschen Nazis sein sollen! Selbst nach gut 70 Jahren habe die Vollidioten, die uns Nazis nennen es immer noch nicht begriffen! Jede Nation hat Dreck am stecken! Aber das übersehen Antideutsche und deren Gefolge ganz gern, wem es in Deutschland nicht gefällt, der kann gebrauch von der Reisefreiheit machen, ich kann diese stimmungsmache gegen Deutschland nicht mehr hören und lesen!

I am German, I would not claim German ancestry without being able to tell you that my family moved to Russia when Catherine the Great asked Germans to farm (get food) for Russian people. In exchange I believe it was land to live on and farm. A little bit down history they came to America and lived in Kansas, which is where my Grandma grew up, and then my grandma moved to Florida with here husband where they live now, and where I live with them.

@Joe He didn't say a gauranteed 60% are German, he said 60% claim to be German. It seems like Americans like to give themselves false titles and lie about ethnicity as well. Like the great amount of you who have Native American ancestors, even though you have blonde hair and it is straight like a white persons hair.

@Anti-Kartoffel You can't judge Germans as a whole, and a little fact for you, when Hitler came to power his role model for military was America. So when you want to call Germans Nazis just remember that and that there are Nazis in America. Nobody forgot about your KKK either, or your camps for Japanese. America is far from perfect.

The Slavs are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group living in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia, who speak the Indo-European Slavic languages, and share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. From the early 6th century, they spread to inhabit most of Central and Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe. Slavic groups also ventured as far as Scandinavia, constituting elements amongst the Vikings; while at the other geographic extreme, Slavic mercenaries fighting for the Byzantines and Arabs settled Asia Minor and even as far as Syria. Later, East Slavs (specifically, Russians and Ukrainians) colonized Siberia and Central Asia. Every Slavic ethnicity has emigrated to other parts of the world. Over half of Europe's territory is inhabited by Slavic-speaking communities.

Modern nations and ethnic groups called by the ethnonym Slavs are considerably diverse both genetically and culturally, and relations between them – even within the individual ethnic groups themselves – are varied, ranging from a sense of connection to mutual feelings of hostility. Present-day Slavic people are classified into West Slavic (chiefly Poles, Czechs and Slovaks), East Slavic (chiefly Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians), and South Slavic (chiefly Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and Slovenes). For a more comprehensive list, see the ethnocultural subdivisions.

The Cherusci were a Germanic tribe that inhabited parts of the plains and forests of northwestern Germany, in the area possibly near present-day Hanover, during the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. Ethnically, Pliny the Elder groups them with their neighbors the Suebi and Chatti, as well as the Hermunduri, as Hermiones, one of the Germanic groupings said to descend from an ancestor named Mannus. They led an important war against the Roman Empire. Subsequently they were probably absorbed into the tribal confederations such as the Franks and Allemanni.



The first historical mention of the Cherusci occurs in Book 6.10 of Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico, which recounts events of 53 BC. Caesar relates that he crossed the Rhine again to punish the Suebi for sending reinforcements to the Treveri. He mentions that the Bacenis forest (a relatively impenetrable Beech forest, possibly the Harz) separated the territory of the Cherusci from that of the Suebi. In 12 BC, the Cherusci and other Germanic tribes were subjugated by the Romans. They appear to have been living in the same homeland when Tacitus wrote, 150 years later, describing them as living east of the Chauci and Chatti. This is generally interpreted to be an area between the rivers Weser and Elbe.

As Rome tried to expand in northern Europe beyond the Rhine, it exploited divisions within the Cherusci, and for some time the tribe was considered a Roman ally. At this time the tribe was split between Arminius (known in modern German as "Hermann der Cherusker", although his actual Germanic name was more likely Erminaz) and Segestes. Arminius advocated breaking allegiance to Rome and declaring independence, while Segestes wanted to remain loyal. By about 8 AD, Arminius had gained the upper hand and began planning rebellion. Segestes repeatedly warned Publius Quinctilius Varus, the governor of Gaul, that rebellion was being planned, but Varus declined to act until the rebellion had broken out.

In 9AD, in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, an army of allied Germanic tribes under the command of Arminius (the Cherusci, Bructeri,Marsi, Sicambri, Chauci and Chatti) annihilated three Roman legions commanded by Varus. The legions' eagle standards, of great symbolic importance to the Romans, were lost. The numbers of these three legions, Legio XVII, Legio XVIII, and Legio XIX, were never used again.

After the mutinies of the German legions in 14, Germanicus decided, at the urging of his men, to march into Germany to restore their lost honor. In 15, after a quick raid on the Chatti, invaded the lands of the Marsi in 14 AD with 12,000 legionnaires, 26 cohorts of auxiliaries and eight cavalry squadrons. According to Tacitus (Annals 1, 51), an area 50 Roman miles wide was laid to waste with fire and sword: "No sex, no age found pity." A Legion eagle from Varus's defeat, either from the XVII or XVIII, was recovered. Then he began a campaign against the Cherusci. He received an appeal to rescue Segestes, who was besieged by Arminius. Segestes was rescued along with a group of relatives and dependents, including Thusnelda, Segestes' daughter and the wife of Arminius. Germanicus spared them and gave them land in Gaul. He then found the site of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. His men buried the dead and built a funeral mound.

A series of battles followed. Inflicting minor casualties on the Romans, Arminius seemed to be gaining the upper hand, but in 16AD Germanicus defeated Arminius at Idistaviso and in 18 at the Battle of the Angrivarian Walls. In 19AD, Adgandestrius, a chief of the Chatti, asked Rome for poison to kill Arminius. Tacitus claimed the request was refused on the "noble" grounds that (as related by Tacitus) "Romans take vengeance on their enemies, not by underhanded tricks, but by open force of arms." Following the decisive Roman victories, Arminius increasingly became embroiled in tribal disputes; his opponents accused him of trying to make himself King. In 21AD Arminius "succumbed to treachery from his relations" (Tacitus) and a client king was appointed on the Germans by Rome.

After Arminius' death, the Romans left the Cherusci more or less to their own devices. In 47 AD. the Cherusci asked Rome to send Italicus, the nephew of Arminius, to become king, as civil war had destroyed their nobility. He was initially well liked, but since he was raised in Rome as a Roman citizen, he soon fell out of favor.

Tacitus, writing of the Cherusci in his time (about 100 AD):

“Dwelling on one side of the Chauci and Chatti, the Cherusci long cherished, unassailed, an excessive and enervating love of peace. This was more pleasant than safe, for to be peaceful is self-deception among lawless and powerful neighbors. Where the strong hand decides, moderation and justice are terms applied only to the more powerful; and so the Cherusci, ever reputed good and just, are now called cowards and fools, while in the case of the victorious Chatti success has been identified with prudence. The downfall of the Cherusci brought with it also that of the Fosi, a neighboring tribe, which shared equally in their disasters, though they had been inferior to them in prosperous days.

Claudius Ptolemy in his Geography, describes the Χαιρουσκοὶ and Καμαυοὶ (Cherusci and Chamavi) as living near each other and also near to "Mount Melibocus" (probably the Harz mountains) and to the Calucones, who lived on both banks of the Elbe.”

Later history of the Cherusci is mostly unknown. In the 4th century AD they perhaps contributed to the formation of the Saxon or the Frank peoples.

According to Julius Caesar, the Germans were pastoralists, and the bulk of their foodstuffs—milk, cheese, and meat—came from their flocks and herds. Some farming was also carried out, the main crops being grain, root crops, and vegetables. Both the cattle and the horses of the Germans were of poor quality by Roman standards.

The Iron Age had begun in Germany about four centuries before the days of Caesar, but even in his time metal appears to have been a luxury material for domestic utensils, most of which were made of wood, leather, or clay. Of the larger metal objects used by them, most were still made of bronze, though this was not the case with weapons. Pottery was for the most part still made by hand, and pots turned on the wheel were relatively rare.

The degree to which trade was developed in early Germany is obscure. There was certainly a slave trade, and many slaves were sold to the Romans. Such potters as used the wheel—and these were very few—and smiths and miners no doubt sold their products. But in general the average Germanic village is unlikely to have used many objects that had not been made at home. Foreign merchants dealing in Italian as well as Celtic wares were active in Germany in Caesar’s time and supplied prosperous warriors with such goods as wine and bronze vessels. But from the reign of Augustus onward, there was a huge increase in German imports from the Roman Empire. The German leaders were now able to buy whole categories of goods—glass vessels, red tableware, Roman weapons, brooches, statuettes, ornaments of various kinds, and other objects—that had not reached them before. These Roman products brought their owners much prestige, but how the Germans paid for them is not fully known.

Warfare.

In the period of the early Roman Empire, German weapons, both offensive and defensive, were characterized by shortage of metal. Their chief weapon was a long lance, and few carried swords. Helmets and breastplates were almost unknown. A light wooden or wicker shield, sometimes fitted with an iron rim and sometimes strengthened with leather, was the only defensive weapon. This lack of adequate equipment explains the swift, fierce rush with which the Germans would charge the ranks of the heavily armed Romans. If they became entangled in a prolonged, hand-to-hand grapple, where their light shields and thrusting spears were confronted with Roman swords and armor, they had little hope of success. Even by the 6th century, few of the Germanic peoples had adequate military equipment. None evolved a force adequate to deal with the heavily armed mounted archers of Justinian I.

The original/indigenous people of Germany are Europeans from the central and northern regions. However they are not exclusively limited to that, since Slavs also inhabitated parts of eastern Germany. Thus the physical features/ traits would be similar to North and Central Europeans in most cases. As a whole Germans belong to the light and blond branch of Europeans, however this varies greatly. The so-called Nordic type linked to a tallish stature, slender build, longish head shape, strong chin, narrow features, and a pale complexion, with light eyes and light/blond hair is seen among Germans, but is not dominant. This was the type associated to people who brought Germanic languages to Germany. However the Palaeolithic type which is larger in build, taller, broader-featured, shorter-headed, darker-haired (more brown-haired), as pale and light-eyed is dominant in northern to central Germany. The so-called Alpinid/Central-European type which is darker than both types already mentioned and is also broader-featured, shorter-statured than the Nordic, mainly hazel to brown-eyed is common in southern Germany. However due to population movements Alpinid could be found as individuals anywhere in Germany. Now as in every population there are mixing, thus Nordic-Alpinids are common, especially in central and eastern Germans populations. Nordic-Palaeolithics are very common in the north, this type is as blond as the Nordic, but broader featured. Slavs also brought another type known as the Osteuropid, which is somewhat blonder-haired than the Nordic, with more grayish-colored eyes found mostly in northeastern parts, but is in the minority. Thus a whole Germans belong more to the blond regions of Europe than brunets. The very tall, medium-build, hook-nosed, brunet-complexioned, dark-eyed Germans are also found especially in the south and are slightly more common than the Osteuropid ones. Nevertheless Germans are by far predominantly Northern European (60-80%) in physical traits, the rest Central European.

There is a Slavic tribe in central Germany called the Sorbs, but they are very small in number. I'm not even sure they exist any more.

Prussia was the Kingdom of Northern Germany that was stretched from Central Germany to what is now East Prussia. East Prussia is where it started, got its name and so on. This area was inhabited by Natives that before the Teutonic knights settled it in the 1300s, they were not necessarily Slavs but Baltic people like the Latviens and Lithuanians.

So no it was not a Slavic country, they did not have countries back when non-Germans lived there, nor where they Slavs. I thinks its pathetic what is left of the Great Kingdom. My mother's family was from Königsberg and they were expelled from the area by the Soviets at the end of WW2, but as I have read since the Soviet capitulation some small numbers of the remaining Ethnic Germans from Russian lands have resettled in East Prussia recently.


This is a huge topic, so it is easier to concentrate on one aspect of the migrations. There was a German presence in all of Prussian lands for a long long time well before its rule by the Hohenzollerns. Albrecht of Brandenburg-Anspach secularized the Prussian holdings of the Teutonic Order.

East Prussia lay along the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea and enclosed the bulk of lands of the now-extinct old Prussians. These people were not Slavs. In prehistory, the east of the area was inhabited by the Eastern Balts. In time, the Western Balts consolidated into the Old Prussian nation, while the Eastern Balts, including the "Curonians", consolidated into part of Latvia and Lithuania. Parts of the Baltic region remained wilderness for longer than anywhere else in Europe.

About 350 BC, Pytheas called the territory Mentenomon and the inhabitants Guttones, neighbors of the Teutones. The territory was called "Brus" ("Prus") on an 8th century German map. Vikings penetrated into the area in the 7th and 8th centuries and many were absorbed into the local population, especially in the bigger trade areas such as Truso and Kaup where they were said to travel back and forth across the Baltic Sea. In later expeditions launched by Danes and other Vikings, many areas in Prussia including Truso and Kaup were destroyed. After the new state of the Poland formed in the 10th century, there were also constant, unsuccessful attempts by Polish rulers to conquer the land of the Prussians. Raids in 1147AD, 1161AD, 1166AD, and a number in the early 1200s were repelled by the Prussians.

The old Prussian language belonged to the Western branch of the Baltic language group, but old Prussians spoke a variety of tongues, including German, and some related to modern Latvian and Lithuanian languages. Eastern Prussia from the 13th century on was almost entirely German as a result of German settlers. In 1457, Königsberg became the center of the Teutonic Order who since 1220AD had dotted the landscape with castles and founded numerous other towns and fortresses.



By 1939, East Prussia had 2.49 million people, 85% of them still German, and a Lithuanian and Polish-speaking minority. After the expulsion of the German population and the theft of East Prussia at the end of the War, Königsberg, a dignified cultural mecca of arts and learning founded in 1255, was renamed Kalingrad after a Soviet thug who never stepped foot there. Most traces of the area's Germanic past which survived brutal Allied bombing were intentionally blown up and bulldozed. Kalingrad turned into a grim, grey, dirty, contaminated, disease-infested and poor city with about 400,000 people in the metropolitan area and a total of one million are in the "oblast". Krieger is correct. In the late 1980's some ethnic Germans arrived, most driven out of other parts of the USSR, and by 1991, 5,000 ethnic Germans were said to inhabit the city and 13,000 the region.

Both the Baltic and Slavic languages are often said to be from a common Balto-Slavic tongue descended from the original Indo-European tongue. The Balto-Slavic speech diverged into separate Baltic and Slavic branches each of which gave rise to new languages in turn. Certainly, the dividing line between Balt and Slav was never clear and distinct.

While the Baltic-speaking Old Prussians were absorbed by the Germans, the Baltic-speaking peoples of what is now Belarus were absorbed by the Slavs. The East-Baltid racial type is common among the North Slavs and among Balts such as Latvians and Lithuanians. The pagan Slav deity Perun is essentially the same as the Baltic Perkunas/Perkons.

More importantly, while the name “Prussia” originally referred only to the land between the rivers Vistula and Memel (and was thus Baltic-speaking) the political entity under the Hohenzollerns called “Prussia” would later expand to take in areas which were indubitably once Slavic. Slavic languages were once spoken over much of what later became Germany, as far west as the Rivers Elbe and Saale and beyond, as the Slav Wagrians of Holstein attest.

A Slav language was spoken on the island of Rügen until around AD 1400, this island having pagan Slav shrines. The Slav Obodrite people of Mecklenburg retained their language until the Eighteenth Century. All these peoples were assimilated by the Germans. The Slavic Sorbs (Wends) of the Lausitz region to the east of Dresden retain their language and identity to this day, the northern Sorb dialect being like Polish, the southern Sorb dialect is like Czech.

The Slavs have left a legacy of placenames throughout what was once Prussia. Pomerania (once again Slavic) derives its name from the old Slavic tribe the Pomoryanie, whose name means “by the sea,” which renders into modern Polish as Pomorze, a more accurate transcription from the old Slavic than the German “Pommern” which was a corruption of this. Leipzig was once the Slavic Lipsk from “Lipa” (lime tree). Chemnitz derives from the Slavic root “Kamien” (stone).

Placenames of Slavic origin include those ending with the suffixes –ow, -in (as in Berlin), -au (as in Spandau) and –itz (as in Colditz and Auschwitz).

Broadly speaking, it seems from a certain modern Slav view of history, almost all of German lands were originally Slav (well, they might agree that the Rhineland was German, but then the French like to claim that...), but it just isn't true. Slavs migrated west in much the same way as Germans migrated east. The original population of Silesia, for example, was according to most scholars probably Celtic and about the year 1138AD Silesia was first transferred to the Germans. By the end of the 13th century, Silesia had virtually become a German land with Breslau growing into a leading center of trade.

Bohemia itself owed its name to the Celtic "Boii", a people which occupied the country in prehistoric times. About 78 B.C. the land was occupied by Germanic tribes, and some years after the birth of Christ, the Marcomanni King Marbod united the German tribes as far as the North Sea and the Baltic to form a great confederation which menaced the Roman Empire. When these tribes left Bohemia and Moravia in the sixth century, a Slavonic people came in from the northeast which was soon to appear in history under the general name of Cechen (Czechs). Bohemia went back and forth between Celts, Germans, Hungarians and Slavs, however German and Latin remained the prevalent language of the aristocracy in south Bohemia and Moravia, as well as in parts of north Moravia and northeast Bohemia from the 11th century, even among the Royal house of the Přemyslid dynasty.

Along areas of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, between the estuaries of the Oder and Vistula Rivers, lies the historical region of Pomerania, once all part of old Prussia and settled by Germanic tribes between 1200 and 1000B.C. Except for the easternmost districts, which were in ancient times Polish and where a small Polish-speaking, mostly Catholic minority remained, Pomerania was German and Protestant for most of modern history. That these places were "eternally Polish", etc, was a fabrication of Stalin to justify outright theft.

You are right, however, about some place names and even surnames being of Slav origin. You see, there were actually times in history when Slavs and Germans did not fight.. usually when left to their own devices without meddling from third parties eager, from greed or political power-lust, to instigate problems. Take Bavarian Duke Georg of Landhut, whose wedding with married Polish princess Jadwiga Jagiellon in 1475 was celebrated in one of the most splendid festivals of the Middle Ages.

Again, as regards toponymy I am given to understand that Breslau/Wrocław derives its name from that of a Slavic chieftain, the capital of Slovakia (Bratislava) being a different variation of this personal name. The “German” identity of these lands was built on Slav foundations, the Slav languages being gradually pushed out (for reasons of prestige, etc.) and replaced by German. In much the same way in the British Isles the Celtic languages were pushed out by English. Whereas the Welsh and Irish retained a notion of being “other than” the English (despite the fact that they now spoke English), the descendants of these Slavic peoples considered themselves to be nothing other than Germans by the end of the Nineteenth Century.

In Upper Silesia there was a population that spoke “Schlonsak,” a Polish dialect interspersed with words of German. This population was allowed to stay behind after World War II because they were held to be indigenous Poles although they were (and are) very conscious of their cultural connections with Germany.

Prussian language died out in middle XIX century, was similar to Lithuanian (Baltic language) and Polish (Slavic language with huge Baltic influences, some Germans words as well). I read once that the East Prussia longer than German has been Polish up to 1795 (Danzing 1772). German language has nothing in common with Prussian... but Lithuanian and Polish definitely...

German people gradually migrated to the east during medieval times. In the year 900, the boundary between the Germans and the Slavs was more or less in the same place it is today, on the Oder. But Germans moved eastward along the shores of the Baltic and elsewhere, starting with the Teutonic Order and the Hanseatic League, and ordinary Germans followed them into those lands. They eventually reached East Prussia and Germanized it, through a combination of displacing the original population and assimilating them.

East Prussia was a feudal fief of Poland until 1660, but was independent after that. West Prussia was added to the Hohenzollern Kingdom of Prussia in 1772, and remained German until 1919, but remained largely Polish (except for the cities of Danzig and Bromberg) throughout that time. By 1795, the partitions of Poland had been completed, and even Warsaw was briefly a part of Prussia. All of the Polish territories annexed by Prussia except for West Prussia were lost in the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807.

The old Prussian language is very similar to Latvian and especially Lithuanian, and the Prussian people prior to the Germans' arrival there were ethnically related to the Latvians and Lithuanians. The Polish language and people aren't connected to this; they're Slavs who speak a Slavic language most similar to Belarusian, Ukranian, and Russian, although many Poles once did live in East Prussia, and were the majority in West Prussia.

Prussians are Germanic-Slavs. The people of Prussia are Baltic Slavs people that immigrated to Germany, And mixed with the Germans. Prussian language is Slavic, like Polish is Slavic.

"The old Prussian language is very similar to Latvian and especially Lithuanian" truth but Polish sound differently from Russian and Ukrainian because Baltic influences so many world was similar to Polish. For example Kashubian in Poland language which came from Prussian... Bromberg city with polish architecture mainly...

Pierre Ferrand, while correct in objecting to the use of Frederick the Great of Prussia as a peace symbol for Germany, repeats a common mistake in identifying the original Prussians as a Slavic tribe (letter, Aug. 23). They were a Baltic tribe, akin to the modern Lithuanians and Latvians. CHARLES E. TOWNSEND Princeton, N.J., Aug. 29, 1991 The writer is professor of Slavic languages, Princeton University.

“The autonomous, self-determining Superman is yet another piece of counterfeit theology.” Aiming to save the sense of tragedy, Nietzsche ended up producing another anti-tragic faith: a hyperbolic version of HUMANISM.

“Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.”

“The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.”

“Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.”

“The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!”

“The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.”

“Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.”

“When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.”

“After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”

“He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.”

“A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.”

“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”

“Art is the proper task of life.”

“He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.”

“Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.”

“At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.”

“Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.”

Do not forget, man, consumed by lust: you—are the stone, the desert, are death … ~Dionysian-Dithyrambs (1888)

In 1989, the government of East Germany announced, with little planning, that its citizens would be able to visit West Germany and West Berlin

"For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!" Sec. 283, The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft) 1882 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

“Did you know that Prussians conquered a Baltic-Slavic people to establish their state (1415)? I know! I'm just as shocked as you.”
    Larry Hovekamp: “Yeah, and nearly exterminated them. If there were any survivors, they were assimilated into the German Prussian population. Sounds like a similar "conquest" and "settlement" a little later. They tried to move eastward with no success and disastrous results. Dang those Russkies!”

    Johnathan Masters: “Wow Larry, you know too much. But that's good for me, for you're willing to educate others. That's a gift not all have. Most folks keep their knowledge locked up, and close to their chest (or have none). SO, let me ask you this. Most were exterminated? OR, assimilated? Because as part Prussian, I need to know if I'm part Baltic or Slavic or not. Slavic folks look white as hell, so I can see a possible resemblance. ALSO, how come you know about this?”

    Johnathan Masters: “AND, weren't Baltic-Slavic people descendents of Germanic tribes?”

    Larry Hovekamp: “We Krauts are all mutts, or in Deutsch: "Mischling"! So much of the Prussian and East Saxon population was mixed with acquisition of Slavs and Baltic peoples when they and the Hanseatic League penetrated the region. Later, huge numbers of French Huguenot, Polish and other Protestant exiled refugees from the south of Germany were settled in the kingdom. There was a friend of our family who was ethnic German Lutheran but was living in Poland. His forebears were originally from the Austrian Alps until some crazy Catholic bishop ran them off and they ended up there. Ironically, he lived in the Austrian part of Poland until Polish independence, 1918. That's what make the Nazi fantasies such whopping lies. Germans, from the constant wars and population movements, are a mixed mess. And what is "German"?- many of my ancestors were so near to the Dutch border, Westphalia, that their dialect and local culture was identical to their neighbors and relatives across the line. Prior to WWI, German maps tended to lump the Netherlands and Flanders with the rest of the German states. Hence my not quite German or very very Low German surname "Hovekamp". What the early Prussians did was extermination and assimilation, probably mostly the former. In fact (and you might Google this), the very name "Prussia" was originally the name of a Baltic nation and people residing there eliminated by the German ones. Like the Spanish Conquistadors called themselves "Mexicans". The Medieval Prussians led to the future militarism and expansion as later expressed by the Nazis.

    Larry Hovekamp: “Jonathan, I learned the spelling of the word "Hanseatic" as in Hanseatic League, the Medieval alliance of trading cities and ports which hired mercenary knights, principally Prussia, to do their dirty work expanding into the native lands to the East and led to so much grief on all sides.”

    Johnathan Masters: “I'm familiar w/ the Hanseatic league and with Westphalia, or "Westfalisch", because that's where my Gripshover ancestors hailed from. A tiny town called Ottmarsbocholt, just like 15 miles South of Munster. They also spoke Plattsdeutsch, which was the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League. Yeah, there's no real "German", but I guess there is, since there's a State. Imagine if the State was abolished though. Maybe we'd be Westfalisch? Or Plattsdeutsch speakers. IDK Anyways. Wow. Good stuff Larry. I have made the wiping out of Prussia one of my Holidays, though I keep on going back to this region for many reasons. Neitzsche is from there. Einstein studied there. THey have solar panels on their houses, like 75% of them do. Free college. America adopted the Prussian educational system. Kindergarten is literally a German word meaning Garden for Children. Bridges, and other engineers constructed lots in AMerica. Most Germans fought for the North in the Civil War. Frederick Douglass really liked the GErmans. Germans and Bohemians were said to be agitators in that period (Haymarket Affair). While Germans have blended in w/ the whites here, I kinda of think, the best of America was brought forth by these German immigrants. Maybe, maybe not. But they have contributed a ton. Anyways. I'm also part Bavarian, Austrian, and Bohemian AND African, if you can believe it. 11% sub-Saharan blood. I guess it's hard to determine how much of a conquered people in 1415 was still around, but now I have a degree of affinity for the Slavic and Baltic peoples, as with all those other groups I mentioned earlier. Also, with the downfall of majority white in America, I think folks will start to pick up their ethnicities, or maybe not. But I like knowing where I'm from, knowing my roots. I like knowing all of these different ethnicities. I dont see a color blind society, but a colorful society, with streams of rainbow colors in every different. We're all humans, yeah, of course, but it's our differences which make us unique and interesting. Hitler probably stopped me from ever learning about these folks, when Hitler got what he was doing from the colonization of the American govt, so... anyways. Good stuff Larry, comrade dude. Karl Marx was German too.”


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