Annette Droste von Huelshoff
3 - Glasilo, Spring 2013 (Continued)
How I came to research Wendish history in the first place
It all started when I was 10 or 11 years old, when I realized that what I heard in my own family about Wends and their past, and the version I was taught at school and reading about in books, contradicted each other. I was confronted with a serious dilemma: Should I trust my own family or should I trust my teachers and history books to be telling the truth? I sided with my family as being a totally reliable source. But how could I prove that all the rest of the world were wrong? I had to have proof.
I had heard at home, for example, that at some time around the mid-19th century my grandfather, as a teenager, had hiked from his Carinthian home to visit someone in Switzerland. Upon his return, he said how surprised he was that on his entire trip he did not have to speak German "even once". He had spent nights with local farmers and in local inns, and found that everywhere people either spoke a dialect close to his own, or at east understood him quite well.
In passing, I will mention here that the Rezian Wendish dialect, which Slovenes claim as one of their own, is, in my opinion, not a Slovene dialect at all. It is spoken by a small community in a very remote, quite inaccessible Alpine mountain region – until recently entirely cut off from all Italian, but also all Slovene-speaking communities. This dialect, I believe, is most likely the last and only surviving remnant of the Wendish dialect once spoken by the Helwe(nd)ti/Raeti of Switzerland. It was spoken there before they were occupied and decimated by Roman armies, and later taught to speak official languages of Christian states into which their territories were incorporated. The very name of their dialect, Rezi, is obviously derived from Raeti, as Romans used to call them. It is very closely related to the Carinthian dialect, and would have been easily understood by my grandfather who encountered it on his trip.
I was told in school that Austrian Wends, after having arrived in the 6th century from eastern Europe together with Serbo-Croatians, had never settled beyond the source of the Drava/Drau river in western Carinthia. Yet, looking at the map, it became obvious to me that the source of this river is several hundred miles distant from Switzerland. Three whole Austrian provinces, Salzburg, Tyrol and Vorarlberg, lie between it and Carinthia. According to the official version of history, no Wend had ever settled there. Yet, my grandfather claimed he did not have to speak German "even once" while crossing these provinces, presently called federal states of Austria. The question remained: Was my grandfather telling a Tall Tale, or could my teachers and history books be wrong, perhaps outrightly mendacious?
I should explain that the present name of the above-mentioned river Drava is the abbreviated form of its original name, Diryava, fast-flowing. This is derived from the Wendish verb diryat, to rush, move rapidly, which is a perfect description of this particular river. I was recently reading an article in Der Spiegel magazine about the shocking conditions in Mumbai's slums in India. In it, I found the interesting information that a rapidly flowing river flowing through these slums, called Diryava in the language spoken there, means fast-flowing. It is obvious that Wends had given it its name, ages ago, before Sanskrit Vedas and other writings were written some 3000 years ago. At that time Wends had already mixed to some extent with native Indian tribes. As a result, their language, Sanskrit, was already mixed with native languages. Nevertheless, one can easily see that Sanskrit is based on Wendish. It retains, in addition to an extensive Wendish vocabulary, also much of its ancient grammar.
It was at that point, when I realized the incompatibility of the official version of Wendish history with what I had learned at home, that my curiosity was aroused and my search began for reliable, factual information about the history of my own forebears, Austrian Wends in particular, and Wends in general. This search turned into a life-long, admittedly haphazard and unorthodox, but exceptionally interesting, even fascinating, as well as, unexpectedly, quite successful and rewarding hobby.
My early fascination with poetry, and my determination to read it in as many original languages as possible, was also very helpful in my later linguistic discoveries. At the age of 10 or 11, I had approached the Langenscheid language school, asking them to send me texts to learn Russian and English. Thus, in my late teens I was already acquainted, and had a basic knowledge of at least one language from each of the 4 Indo-European language families: Germanic, Romance, Slavic and Celtic.
At about the same time, I learned in school that Wends who still live in Germany, in the area surrounding the capital city Berlin and along the Spree River, were also described as newcomers to Germany, having supposedly settled there sometime between the 9th and 10th century. More than 70 years later, this equally fictitious version of Wends who have survived in Germany continues to be presented to their public.
In secondary school, I learned that Frederick the Great of Prussia intended to call his newly formed state Das Reich der Prussen and Wenden, The realm of Prussians and Wends. I also noticed that his mother's family had a purely Wendish name, von Strelitz. In Wendish, Strelitz or Streltz is a sharp-shooter, a warrior. I also became aware of the fact that Swedish kings, up to the end of WW1, used to call themselves Kings of Goths and Wends. So, how did Wends reach Sweden?
Within a short period of time, I found further information which supported my grandfather's statements. In an art book on Dürer's paintings, I found his sketch of a cheerful young farmer's wife, titled Windische Bäuerin, a Wendish farmer's wife. To my surprise, in the accompanying text was the explanation that he had drawn it sometime in 1505, at the Brenner Pass. He was at the time heading for Italy, crossing the Alps, and was spending some time on a farm nearby. I knew that this pass is a fair distance west of the source of the Drava/Drau River, in an area where no Wends ought to have ever settled - according to my teachers and all history books. How did a Wendish farmer get there? My trust in the wisdom and reliability of information taught in schools and printed in books waned further.
It all started when I was 10 or 11 years old, when I realized that what I heard in my own family about Wends and their past, and the version I was taught at school and reading about in books, contradicted each other. I was confronted with a serious dilemma: Should I trust my own family or should I trust my teachers and history books to be telling the truth? I sided with my family as being a totally reliable source. But how could I prove that all the rest of the world were wrong? I had to have proof.
I had heard at home, for example, that at some time around the mid-19th century my grandfather, as a teenager, had hiked from his Carinthian home to visit someone in Switzerland. Upon his return, he said how surprised he was that on his entire trip he did not have to speak German "even once". He had spent nights with local farmers and in local inns, and found that everywhere people either spoke a dialect close to his own, or at east understood him quite well.
In passing, I will mention here that the Rezian Wendish dialect, which Slovenes claim as one of their own, is, in my opinion, not a Slovene dialect at all. It is spoken by a small community in a very remote, quite inaccessible Alpine mountain region – until recently entirely cut off from all Italian, but also all Slovene-speaking communities. This dialect, I believe, is most likely the last and only surviving remnant of the Wendish dialect once spoken by the Helwe(nd)ti/Raeti of Switzerland. It was spoken there before they were occupied and decimated by Roman armies, and later taught to speak official languages of Christian states into which their territories were incorporated. The very name of their dialect, Rezi, is obviously derived from Raeti, as Romans used to call them. It is very closely related to the Carinthian dialect, and would have been easily understood by my grandfather who encountered it on his trip.
I was told in school that Austrian Wends, after having arrived in the 6th century from eastern Europe together with Serbo-Croatians, had never settled beyond the source of the Drava/Drau river in western Carinthia. Yet, looking at the map, it became obvious to me that the source of this river is several hundred miles distant from Switzerland. Three whole Austrian provinces, Salzburg, Tyrol and Vorarlberg, lie between it and Carinthia. According to the official version of history, no Wend had ever settled there. Yet, my grandfather claimed he did not have to speak German "even once" while crossing these provinces, presently called federal states of Austria. The question remained: Was my grandfather telling a Tall Tale, or could my teachers and history books be wrong, perhaps outrightly mendacious?
I should explain that the present name of the above-mentioned river Drava is the abbreviated form of its original name, Diryava, fast-flowing. This is derived from the Wendish verb diryat, to rush, move rapidly, which is a perfect description of this particular river. I was recently reading an article in Der Spiegel magazine about the shocking conditions in Mumbai's slums in India. In it, I found the interesting information that a rapidly flowing river flowing through these slums, called Diryava in the language spoken there, means fast-flowing. It is obvious that Wends had given it its name, ages ago, before Sanskrit Vedas and other writings were written some 3000 years ago. At that time Wends had already mixed to some extent with native Indian tribes. As a result, their language, Sanskrit, was already mixed with native languages. Nevertheless, one can easily see that Sanskrit is based on Wendish. It retains, in addition to an extensive Wendish vocabulary, also much of its ancient grammar.
It was at that point, when I realized the incompatibility of the official version of Wendish history with what I had learned at home, that my curiosity was aroused and my search began for reliable, factual information about the history of my own forebears, Austrian Wends in particular, and Wends in general. This search turned into a life-long, admittedly haphazard and unorthodox, but exceptionally interesting, even fascinating, as well as, unexpectedly, quite successful and rewarding hobby.
My early fascination with poetry, and my determination to read it in as many original languages as possible, was also very helpful in my later linguistic discoveries. At the age of 10 or 11, I had approached the Langenscheid language school, asking them to send me texts to learn Russian and English. Thus, in my late teens I was already acquainted, and had a basic knowledge of at least one language from each of the 4 Indo-European language families: Germanic, Romance, Slavic and Celtic.
At about the same time, I learned in school that Wends who still live in Germany, in the area surrounding the capital city Berlin and along the Spree River, were also described as newcomers to Germany, having supposedly settled there sometime between the 9th and 10th century. More than 70 years later, this equally fictitious version of Wends who have survived in Germany continues to be presented to their public.
In secondary school, I learned that Frederick the Great of Prussia intended to call his newly formed state Das Reich der Prussen and Wenden, The realm of Prussians and Wends. I also noticed that his mother's family had a purely Wendish name, von Strelitz. In Wendish, Strelitz or Streltz is a sharp-shooter, a warrior. I also became aware of the fact that Swedish kings, up to the end of WW1, used to call themselves Kings of Goths and Wends. So, how did Wends reach Sweden?
Within a short period of time, I found further information which supported my grandfather's statements. In an art book on Dürer's paintings, I found his sketch of a cheerful young farmer's wife, titled Windische Bäuerin, a Wendish farmer's wife. To my surprise, in the accompanying text was the explanation that he had drawn it sometime in 1505, at the Brenner Pass. He was at the time heading for Italy, crossing the Alps, and was spending some time on a farm nearby. I knew that this pass is a fair distance west of the source of the Drava/Drau River, in an area where no Wends ought to have ever settled - according to my teachers and all history books. How did a Wendish farmer get there? My trust in the wisdom and reliability of information taught in schools and printed in books waned further.
Albrecht Durer: A Wendish Farmer's Wife (1505)
A stunning fact: Wendish pagans in the 19th century A.D. in the heart of the Christian Frankish Empire
A couple of years later, my grandfather's tale seemed even more believable. In a book of Correspondence and Diaries of my then favourite German poet, Annette Droste von Huelshoff, I was stunned to discover a passage in which she describes "her" farmers as being incredibly primitive pagans who still venerated "animalistic" gods. In this case, a god whom, according to her, they called Tschrni Bock. In German, ein Bock happens to mean a he-goat.
At the time of her writing, in the mid 18 hundreds - that is, in my grandfather's times – descendants of former pagan owners of the land were still serfs on the estates owned by the Church and their Christian Frankish aristocracy. This new Christian aristocracy consisted of members of crusading armies, who had during the process of converting Central and North European Wends confiscated estates of resisting pagans. The backbone of resistance was the Druidical class, above all its spiritual stratum who could not honestly accept the new religion. They were executed, together with any one else who refused to convert. Their lands and property were confiscated by the church and their minions.
This reminds one of the leading Soviets, who had speedily moved into castles, mansions and homes of the former Russian upper and middle class – executed en masse after their famous October coup d'etat , called the "1917 October Revolution". I had personally the "pleasure" of seeing a member of the Soviet Politburo proudly, without the least embarrassment, showing the photograph of "his" home, a renaissance mansion, obviously built centuries ago for a senior member of the Russian aristocracy.
There was much resistance by pagans to Christianity. Local chronicles report how pagans in Northern Germany, obviously Wends, as late as in the 14th century A.D., preferred suicide to accepting superstitions of foreign Semitic tribes. Understandably, our history books do not stress these facts much, nor do they talk much about how in Gaul, present France, 1/3 of all land was already in the 7th century A.D. in the hands of the Church. They also do not mention that by the 15th century A.D. over half of all land in Germany was owned by the clergy and their relatives.
Annette's von Hülshoff estate was in the most westerly part of Germany, in the vicinity of Münster in the lower Rhine Valley, close to the Dutch border. This is another area where Wends were not supposed to have ever reached or farmed, though German historians do mention that Charlemagne had moved some pagan Wends from Eastern Germany to the west in the 8th century A.D. I do not know on which source they base this statement. It is quite possible that Charlemagne, like Hitler and Stalin much later, practised forced resettlement of populations. But I found no source mentioning that those Wends, if resettled in the Rhine Valley, continued to speak their language and remained pagan until quite recently.
On the other hand, I did find a report in the history series published by Der Spiegel, Karl der Grosse, of an inscription on an ancient sword Charlemagne had inherited, which supposedly he and his entourage could not decipher. I believe the inscription to have been Wendish. I will describe it later in this article. This would be further proof that Wendish existed in the Rhine Valley prior to Charlemagne's time.
I found additional evidence in Herodotus' Histories, of all places, that the Rhine Valley had a Wendish population already in the 5th century B.C., as well as a Wendish name, Porenye. The term Porenye is still used by Wends for the Rhine valley. Po means at, along, covering an area, and Ren, the river Rhein. The suffix -ye denotes an area along a river, a valley. For example, in Wendish, the term Podrawye, means the area along the river Drawa, and Posawye, the area along the Sawa river, the Sawa Valley. Of course, German scholars, having built up their Germanic myth to such proportions that it cannot be allowed to collapse – like Wall Street banks being too big to be allowed to go bankrupt - cannot admit that Wends had lived in western Europe from times immemorial.
Therefore, to protect the fictional version of their history, they again resort to the same trick as in the case of Tacitus's statement that Germani tribes of northern Europe spoke the same language as Celtic Britons. They simply declare Herodotus to be mistaken and grossly uninformed. He describes Porenye as starting close to the source of the Danube and lying in a south-northerly direction. His geographic knowledge and description of this area are amazingly correct and exact, especially if one considers that he lived in Asia Minor, and in the 5th century B.C.. The sources of the Danube and the Rhine River are also very close together, in the Swiss Alps, and the Rhine Valley does stretches in a south-northerly direction.
However, the "reliable" German scholars – on whom all other European and Anglo-Saxon scholars rely and copy – instead of doing a little linguistic research, invented instead a laughably simplistic and illogical story to support their own fictional position, that Wends are newcomers in civilized Europe. They ignore the purely Wendish name for the Rhine Valley, Porenye, and ridicule and accuse Herodotus of ignorance, of claiming that the Pyrenees mountains were close to the source of the Danube, when they are hundreds of miles apart. They insist that Herodotus did not even know that Pyrenees mountain chain is stretching in an east-westerly, and not in a south-northerly direction.
Seeing such sloppy research, is it surprising that the Wendish history version produced by German scholars, after having researched it and having written thousands of books about it during the last 500 years, is just a risibly fictional story – and that their own Germanic myths and history are no better?
Let's return to Annette and her equally ignorant assessment of the Tschrni Bock. She had obviously never bothered to learn the language of her Wendish serfs. Therefore, she never realized that she was in her letter misspelling their god's name. In Wendish Bog, not Bock, means God. All she knew was that in German der Bock was a he-goat, a buck. Without trying to get the facts straight, she immediately accused her serfs of venerating a goat. She also never learned that Continental Celts not only venerated the sun-god Beli/Belin or Sol, and the earth-mother goddess Baba, venerated in Ancient Greece under another Wendish name, Zemla, the earth. Ancient Wends venerated also a third god, the god of the underworld whom they called Tchrni Bog, the Black God, the god of the dark lower regions. In northern Italy all these three deities were venerated as one. They called him in the ancient Veneti inscriptions Trimujyati or Tromujyati. One of his statues was recently discovered als on an Alpine meadow in Austria.
A couple of years later, my grandfather's tale seemed even more believable. In a book of Correspondence and Diaries of my then favourite German poet, Annette Droste von Huelshoff, I was stunned to discover a passage in which she describes "her" farmers as being incredibly primitive pagans who still venerated "animalistic" gods. In this case, a god whom, according to her, they called Tschrni Bock. In German, ein Bock happens to mean a he-goat.
At the time of her writing, in the mid 18 hundreds - that is, in my grandfather's times – descendants of former pagan owners of the land were still serfs on the estates owned by the Church and their Christian Frankish aristocracy. This new Christian aristocracy consisted of members of crusading armies, who had during the process of converting Central and North European Wends confiscated estates of resisting pagans. The backbone of resistance was the Druidical class, above all its spiritual stratum who could not honestly accept the new religion. They were executed, together with any one else who refused to convert. Their lands and property were confiscated by the church and their minions.
This reminds one of the leading Soviets, who had speedily moved into castles, mansions and homes of the former Russian upper and middle class – executed en masse after their famous October coup d'etat , called the "1917 October Revolution". I had personally the "pleasure" of seeing a member of the Soviet Politburo proudly, without the least embarrassment, showing the photograph of "his" home, a renaissance mansion, obviously built centuries ago for a senior member of the Russian aristocracy.
There was much resistance by pagans to Christianity. Local chronicles report how pagans in Northern Germany, obviously Wends, as late as in the 14th century A.D., preferred suicide to accepting superstitions of foreign Semitic tribes. Understandably, our history books do not stress these facts much, nor do they talk much about how in Gaul, present France, 1/3 of all land was already in the 7th century A.D. in the hands of the Church. They also do not mention that by the 15th century A.D. over half of all land in Germany was owned by the clergy and their relatives.
Annette's von Hülshoff estate was in the most westerly part of Germany, in the vicinity of Münster in the lower Rhine Valley, close to the Dutch border. This is another area where Wends were not supposed to have ever reached or farmed, though German historians do mention that Charlemagne had moved some pagan Wends from Eastern Germany to the west in the 8th century A.D. I do not know on which source they base this statement. It is quite possible that Charlemagne, like Hitler and Stalin much later, practised forced resettlement of populations. But I found no source mentioning that those Wends, if resettled in the Rhine Valley, continued to speak their language and remained pagan until quite recently.
On the other hand, I did find a report in the history series published by Der Spiegel, Karl der Grosse, of an inscription on an ancient sword Charlemagne had inherited, which supposedly he and his entourage could not decipher. I believe the inscription to have been Wendish. I will describe it later in this article. This would be further proof that Wendish existed in the Rhine Valley prior to Charlemagne's time.
I found additional evidence in Herodotus' Histories, of all places, that the Rhine Valley had a Wendish population already in the 5th century B.C., as well as a Wendish name, Porenye. The term Porenye is still used by Wends for the Rhine valley. Po means at, along, covering an area, and Ren, the river Rhein. The suffix -ye denotes an area along a river, a valley. For example, in Wendish, the term Podrawye, means the area along the river Drawa, and Posawye, the area along the Sawa river, the Sawa Valley. Of course, German scholars, having built up their Germanic myth to such proportions that it cannot be allowed to collapse – like Wall Street banks being too big to be allowed to go bankrupt - cannot admit that Wends had lived in western Europe from times immemorial.
Therefore, to protect the fictional version of their history, they again resort to the same trick as in the case of Tacitus's statement that Germani tribes of northern Europe spoke the same language as Celtic Britons. They simply declare Herodotus to be mistaken and grossly uninformed. He describes Porenye as starting close to the source of the Danube and lying in a south-northerly direction. His geographic knowledge and description of this area are amazingly correct and exact, especially if one considers that he lived in Asia Minor, and in the 5th century B.C.. The sources of the Danube and the Rhine River are also very close together, in the Swiss Alps, and the Rhine Valley does stretches in a south-northerly direction.
However, the "reliable" German scholars – on whom all other European and Anglo-Saxon scholars rely and copy – instead of doing a little linguistic research, invented instead a laughably simplistic and illogical story to support their own fictional position, that Wends are newcomers in civilized Europe. They ignore the purely Wendish name for the Rhine Valley, Porenye, and ridicule and accuse Herodotus of ignorance, of claiming that the Pyrenees mountains were close to the source of the Danube, when they are hundreds of miles apart. They insist that Herodotus did not even know that Pyrenees mountain chain is stretching in an east-westerly, and not in a south-northerly direction.
Seeing such sloppy research, is it surprising that the Wendish history version produced by German scholars, after having researched it and having written thousands of books about it during the last 500 years, is just a risibly fictional story – and that their own Germanic myths and history are no better?
Let's return to Annette and her equally ignorant assessment of the Tschrni Bock. She had obviously never bothered to learn the language of her Wendish serfs. Therefore, she never realized that she was in her letter misspelling their god's name. In Wendish Bog, not Bock, means God. All she knew was that in German der Bock was a he-goat, a buck. Without trying to get the facts straight, she immediately accused her serfs of venerating a goat. She also never learned that Continental Celts not only venerated the sun-god Beli/Belin or Sol, and the earth-mother goddess Baba, venerated in Ancient Greece under another Wendish name, Zemla, the earth. Ancient Wends venerated also a third god, the god of the underworld whom they called Tchrni Bog, the Black God, the god of the dark lower regions. In northern Italy all these three deities were venerated as one. They called him in the ancient Veneti inscriptions Trimujyati or Tromujyati. One of his statues was recently discovered als on an Alpine meadow in Austria.