LL-L "History" 2008.05.17 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

=========================================================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 17 May 2008 - Volume 03
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please set the encoding mode to Unicode (UTF-8).
If viewing this in a web browser, please click on
the html toggle at the bottom of the archived page
and switch your browser's character encoding to Unicode.
=========================================================================

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

Dear Lowlanders,

Last night I wrote:

Those of you that can understand German and are interested in history ought
to check out the online version of a full-length documentary broadcast by
Germany's ZDF TV station: *Karl der Große* (Charlemagne).

http://dokumentation.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/25/0,1872,5540825,00.html?dr=1

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/content/216460?inPopup=true

I have not yet watched the program in its entirety. So far I can say that
the technical quality is excellent. The presentation is a simplified,
jazzed-up, somewhat bombastic show-and-tell that does, however, seem to come
with merits other than the latest cinematographic bells and whistles. Most
importantly, after centuries of celebrating Charlemagne ("Charles the
Great") as a unifying hero, it introduces mainstream audiences to the notion
that this Frankish king was a brutal conqueror that got away with murder in
the name of Christianization. It introduces the average person to the real
Saxon: the ancestors of most people that are now North Germans and Eastern
Netherlanders, and it introduces them to the fact that Charlemagne's
eventual victory after three decades of war against the Saxons spelled the
end of Continental Saxon independence.

The actual title is *Mit Schwert un Kreuz: **Karl der Große *(With Sword and
Cross: Charlemagne). The documentary focuses on his war against the Saxons.

In the meantime I have watched the rest and am feeling somewhat let down.

The overall message as I perceived it:

"Non-Christian Saxons were indeed the fierce savages Charles took them for.
They kept attacking easternmost Frankish settlements (many of which
represented encroachment upon Saxon lands), all they cared about was
fighting, and they were generally hostile and not at all hospitable. All
right. So Charles was a bit generous with his brutality against them, but in
the long run it was good for them. And, well, yes, he forced them to
convert, but there were those that advocated voluntary conversion. As
Christians the Saxons became better people and eventually mingled and mixed
with their Frankish brothers (unspoken: to become good Germans that
celebrate Charles as "the Great")."

To my knowledge, there are no pre-Christian Saxon sources that give us any
sort of idea of what the Saxons were really like. As in most such cases, it
is the conquerer and the occasional visitor of other ethnicities that get to
portray the vanquished, and we are supposed to believe those descriptions.

To bring this message home in a more personalized manner, there is the
fictitious Saxon called Haddo (conjured up from one of the skeletons
discovered in Paderborn). He participates in one of the Saxon revolts and is
captured. The kindly English-educated Frisian missionary Liudger (a real
historical figure) saves him from the gallows and converts him. In these
portrayals, Liudger represents true Christian values to counterbalance
Charlemagne's use of Christianity for expansionist purposes.

The Saxons (in alliance with others) had successfully fought off the Roman
Empire. I am pretty sure that to them the Romanized Franks were just a
continuation of the same thing. Saxons cherished not only their own religion
but also their vehement rejection of monarchy, preferring their loose tribal
association with regional and general assemblies.

In general, Saxons remained apart from Franks. This can be seen in the
preservation of Saxon language and culture, also in Frankish laws that
permitted them as well as conquered Slavs to use their own languages as
defendants in a court of law.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20080517/125e36ec/attachment.htm>