TheElbe Germans (German:Elbgermanen) orElbe Germanic peoples wereGermanic tribes whose settlement area, based on archaeological finds, lay either side of theElbe estuary on both sides of the river and which extended as far asBohemia andMoravia, clearly the result of a migration up the Elbe river from the northwest in advance of the mainMigration Period until the individual groups ran into the RomanDanube Limes around 200 AD.
The Elbe Germans included the tribes of theSemnones,Hermunduri,Quadi,Marcomanni and theLombards.[1] Historically they are possibly the same as theIrminones or Herminones mentioned by classical authors such asTacitus,Pliny the Elder andPomponius Mela. The most notable of these were theSuebic tribes.
All or most of the modern languages thought to derive from the languages of these historical peoples are in theHigh German group of theWest Germanic language family.
By contrast with the settlement areas of theNorth Sea,Oder-Vistula andRhine-Weser Germans (from which theFranks descended), there was a relatively uniform development in the economic and social spheres. This can be seen, for example, in the clear consistencies of material and intellectual culture (ceramics, appliances, weapons, jewellery, religious customs, etc.). This was due to the intensive contact between the Elbe Germanic tribes, as well as contact with other, more distant, Germanic tribes.
Links with theJastorf culture have been made.
Based on the Roman sources, this cultural area was briefly united underMaroboduus (c. 30 BC—AD 37), a Romanized king of the Germanic Suebi.
The term 'Elbe Germanic' (German:Elbgermanen) was first used in 1868 by Paul Gustav Wislicenus (1847–1917), but it was especially popularized by the German prehistoriande:Walther Matthes in 1931.[2] The term was based initially on partially speculative derivations from ancient Roman sources.
For example, numerous Roman authors mentioned the tribes such as theSuebi and theIrminones, and some other Germanic tribes of the late antiquity on the Danube limes of the Roman Empire.
In the second half of the 20th century, more archeological evidence has emerged. In 1963, the Czech archaeologist Bedřich Svoboda took up the term and postulated an Elbe Germanic connection with the finds in Bohemia and Bavaria, which was later confirmed.[3]
Archaeological finds make it possible to differentiate between the different settlement areas of the Elbe Germanic tribes. There is a northern group around the mouth of the Elbe and inMecklenburg-Vorpommern, a middle group in central Germany that reaches as far as the Oder, and a southern group in Bohemia, an area that was entirely Elbe-Germanic during the time of the Roman Empire.
Based on the linguistic and archaeological evidence, it is believed that the major Germanic tribes of theAlemanni,Thuringii, and theBavarii mainly developed from the smaller Suebic groups that were part of the Elbe Germanic peoples.[4]
"Elbe Germanic", also calledIrminonic, is a term introduced by the German linguistFriedrich Maurer in his 1942 book,Nordgermanen und Alemanen, to describe the unattestedproto-language, or dialectal grouping, ancestral to the laterAlemannic,Lombardic,Thuringian andBavarian dialects.
