Article written by a German

[Guest guest]

1. The Ancestry Myth

 

The fair-haired, blue-eyed Aryan settling in Northern Europe and

being of superior status due to his genetically pure race was the

product of many intellectual influences, e.g. the establishment of

the Indo-European Philology to name only one.

 

Leon Poliakov showed that the roots of such caricature reach far

back into the past and that the desire to have ancestors as

illustrious and grand as possible can be found with all European

peoples. The Romans believed their ancestors to origin from Troy,

while the medieval Spanish aristocracy put emphasis on their

superior Visigothic blood which not only made them different from

their subjects but also put them above them. The French continue to

become chronic schizophrenics as soon as they are to decide whether

they are descendants either of Vercingetorix and the Gauls (Celts)

or of Charles The Great (Charlemagne) and the Franks (a germanic

tribe). Some English seemingly not satisfied with their mix of

Briton, Anglo-Saxonian, Viking and Norman predecessors still found

it necessary to have one lost tribe of Israel driven to their coasts

in order to make sure they have even older and religiously more

important ancestors.

 

Now the Germans meant to see the roots of their own history in the

changes caused by the very migration of the peoples that had caused

the illustrious ancestors of their neighbors. Considering that even

Tacitus mentioned that the Teutons were "of pure blood", not at all

mixed with other races and (therefore) authochtone, there seemed to

be hardly any reason to doubt their Northern European origin. When

the Church needed a relation to the bible, Ashkenaz, one of Japhet's

grandsons, was found who discovered a way to Northern Europe and

thus established the Teutons even within this frame. Especially

during the time of Reformation one was proud to be different from

the degenerated and corrupt Roman world. During the 18th and 19th

century, the belief in Germanic authochtony and in the power of the

Nordic peoples became stronger and stronger, supported by the

industrial and intellectual rise of the "Germanic"-speaking

countries. This belief was also supported by various findings of

research in the field of anthropology as well as in the field of

comparative linguistics. [1].

 

The concept of race theory developed simultaneously with the rise of

anthropology. Once having isolated the various human races as a

theorem, Western scholars could not resist to place their

own "Caucasian" race above the others. Soon "race" was mistaken for

or identified as ethnic group, nation and language. History was

reduced to a number of races each holding the power for a certain

period of time until they lost it to another, stronger one that

had "more energy". In blatant misunderstanding, Darwin's theory of

evolution was transferred to everything that seemed to be subject of

development in some way, be it races, nations, ethnics, or even

social or economic circumstances. Whether one looked at the busy

harbors of England, Holland, Germany and Scandinavia or at the

intellectual salons in London, Berlin, Paris or Vienna - it was

clear where the more forceful race was living. Anthropology

classified the races by their external appearance into the

Northern "dolichocephalic" races with high foreheads and the

Southern "brachycephalic" races with low foreheads, which allowed to

actually "measure" the superiority of the Nordic race. Thus, the

blue-eyed, fair-haired ancestor was no longer a mere romantic idea.

As of the end of the 19th century, "science" allowed to look back to

a superior, noble predecessor who provided "genuine" ethnic identity.

 

2. The Discovery of the "Aryans"

 

The discovery of the Indo-European language group not only enabled

science to track the historical relations between many European and

Asian languages. It was also once and for all the end of the idea

that Hebrew was the original language of all human beings and also

of the idea that all human beings are descendants of (one) Adam. As

a result the Western scholars searched for their own illustrious

forefathers in Central Asia, Persia and India following the traces

of Indian and Iranian traditions. Indo-European research started as

early as in the first decades of the 19th century, and Max Müller

and other Indo-Europeanists happened to use the word "Aryan" to

describe the old Indo-Europeans. As a matter of cause these early

Aryans had to be members of the superior white race if they were to

represent the ancestors of the modern Europeans.

 

In addition, early linguists made the mistake to interpret and even

to evaluate the linguistic classification of languages into

analytic, agglutin and flective languages in an evolutory manner.

Thus, it were again the Aryans, i.e. the Indo-Europeans, which

seemed to be superior to other races as they had developed language

to the allegedly highest evolutory level a long time before the

others. Canon Isaac Taylor once was of the opinion that the Indo-

Europeans represented an "advanced Finish race" [2].

 

So superior physiology, language and culture were allocated to the

term "Aryans" and it was assumed that those belonged to the white

race - but still their Urheimat was not yet defined to be Northern

Europe. So far, the Aryans were associated with the Hindukush or the

Himalaya. But as early as in 1870 Lazarus Geiger argued that the

very fact of the Aryan being blonde and fair-skinned proved Central

Europe, i.e. Germany, to have been his Urheimat. However, it was

Theodor Poesche who popularized the idea that the Aryans originally

came from Central or Northern Europe respectively. Looking for the

Urheimat he used means like the frequency of albinism (!) and so the

Aryans found a home in the swampy areas of Eastern Europe. An area

hostile to life as the original home of a race thought to be more

able to survive than others - Karl Penka did not have a problem to

accept this in 1883. Yet, by means of all sorts of scientific

disciplines he moved the Aryans to Scandinavia and pointed out in

his already very polemic works that no other place on earth could be

the Urheimat of the Aryans.

 

Despite his polemics, Penka's works were widely accepted. Even well-

known anthropologists like Rudolf Virchow and Thomas Huxley agreed

that the Aryans are a race of "blonde dolichocephals". The great

indologist Max Müller, disgusted by this development he had partly

induced himself, insulted anthropologists who talked of "Aryan race,

Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair" as scatterbrains and compared them

with linguists talking of "dolichocephalic vocabulary or

brachycephalic grammar". To him "Aryan" was but a name for a

language group that had nothing to do with the peoples speaking

these languages without even being actual peoples. But it was too

late already. The idea of a superior Aryan-Nordic race had settled

in the heads of too many scientists, and amateurs were satisfied

with sciolism enjoying to think themselves descendants of true super

ancestors.

 

3. The Second World War And Its Consequences

 

Until the end of the war, only one European Urheimat was accepted in

Germany. The dispute was restricted to the question, whether it was

Northern Europe [3] or rather a steppe area like the ones in Eastern

Europe [4]. But also abroad a European Urheimat was favored, only

few thought the Indo-Europeans to origin from Asia. Still, a

linguistic term was mistaken for anthropologic, political-

ideological and romanticized contents. It was the Second World War

and its results which forced the academic world to change their way

of thinking as the political effects of unscientific working methods

became apparent.

 

The myth of Aryan superiority was a widespread phenomenon of varying

distinction, usually more obvious in anthropological publications

than in linguistic ones, until the political consequences

(eventually) made it an anathema in the academic world. Having been

heavily incriminated and abused by the Nazis the linguistic

term "Aryan language group" was no longer acceptable. Modern

research considers "Aryan" merely in connection with the Iranian and

its preliminary stages. "Indo-Aryans" are seen as precursors of e.g.

the Persians. "Genetic purity" was banished to the realms of myth.

Yiddish is as much an Indo-European language as any other Germanic

dialect and the language of the Roman gypsies is much closer

to "Aryan" than any of the Northern European languages.

 

The "tree-branch"-principle of development adopted from archaeology

was given up to favor a theory of development with "overlapping"

boundaries. It was understood that any influences surrounding and

crossing a language area transform the development of a language,

and - even more important - that although language usually provides

cultural information it does hardly allow anthropological

conclusions. This is confirmed by the fact that Indo-european

science has made great strides since it returned to a dispassionate

level of scientific work.

 

___________________

 

[1] e.g. linguistic research by the Brothers Grimm etc.

[2] Finno-Ugrian is an agglutin language, i.e. evaluative suffices

are attached to root words that remain unchanged.

[3] among others represented by the archaeologist Gustav Kossina and

his followers, by the linguist Hermann Hirt and many others mostly

trying to "prove" the Nazi ideology in a pseudo-scientific manner

though.

[4] Otto Schrader, Sigmund Feist, Alfons Nehring, Wilhelm

Brandenstein, Wilhelm Koppers.

 

S. Scholz 1994, Translation: B. Kühne 2003

 

___________________

 

literature:

Mallory, J.P.: In Search of the Indo- Europeans. Language,

Archaeologie and Myth. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. 1989

Mallory, J.P.: A Short History of the Indo- European Problem. JIES 1

(1973): 21-65

Poliakov, L.: The Aryan Myth. London: 1974