Bread and Circuses

Disappointment at Museum und Park Kalkriese

I have been fortunate enough to spend the last four days in Detmold and Kalkriese filming a documentary about the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, the defeat in AD9 of the Roman general Varus by the Germanic leader Arminius and the annihilation of three legions – XVII, XVIII and XIX – around 10% of the Roman army. It was arguably Rome’s greatest defeat.

More about the documentary when it comes out – it is slated for early next year – but a couple of days at the Museum und Park Kalkriese confirmed the thoughts I had had when researching Rome’s Greatest Defeat. That it is a deeply flawed museum. It makes little use of the space it has, is badly laid out and doesn’t remotely show the exhibits it has in their best light. In fact it makes little sense unless you know both the battle and the history of its discovery well.

Just a few initial comments. The sling shots that British amateur archaeologist Tony Clunn found, that alerted him to the fact that part of the battle between Arminius and Varus might have taken place here, are shown in the second room, indeed they have their own case. But there is little explanation why they are so significant. To most people they look like three pebbles in a glass case.

The Roman cavalry mask which has been adopted as a logo by the museum – a picture is at the top of this blog post – and is certainly the most accessible visual find, is stuck in a glass display in the third room off to the side. While the bell which hung round the neck of the donkey, which for my money is one of the most exciting discoveries from the site, needed some finding. It is stuck in the corner of a case along with several other objects.

The bell is significant for several reasons. It was the analysis of the grasses stuffed in the bell that has allowed the site, and the battle, to be dated to the autumn. But more to the point, it is a vivid snapshot of what must have been going through the mind of the Romans at the time. The donkey’s handler was so scared of making noise that he stuffed the bell with grasses. An incredible moment.

A casual visitor would struggle to have any idea who either Varus or Arminius were. One display is, quite frankly, weird. In a dramatised conversation between Varus and Arminius on two spherical television screens the two appear to be naked. That puts a spin on the relationship between the two that is not entirely helpful.

There is also little engagement with what the battle has meant over the years. The Hermannsdenkmal for example, has a small rotunda near the entrance with a fantastic display of posters, toys, beer glasses and other bits and pieces from the early 20^th century that show how important a part of popular culture Arminius was. At Kalkriese there are blown up articles from academic journals like Klio from the 1920s that discuss where the battle might have taken place. And there is no mention anywhere, of how he became the figure that German nationalists could get behind. Most heinously of all, there is no mention anywhere of Hitler and his use of Arminius mythology.

The above may just be a question of taste. Museum design is an incredibly difficult craft and I am writing this immediately afterwards. But what is completely unforgivable is that the display boards in English appear to have been written by an overly enthusiastic teenager with only a passing knowledge of the language. Just two examples:

“Several thousand finds were discovered up until today. Admittedly, the majority of them are in a very bad condition. 2,000 years later, an ancient battlefield is the contrary of a treasure trove!”

“The plunderers came shortly after the noise had faded away and the smoke had disappeared. This is what happens on battlefields in more recent times. The archaeological finds show that this was not any different 2,000 years ago.”

Given that almost every German I have ever met speaks and writes elegant and virtually flawless idiomatic English, indeed that almost every display in every museum in Germany is in beautiful English, this is embarrassing.

 

Arminius in opera and Telemann's Germanicus

Operatic appearances of Arminius are frequent yet forgettable. Some thirty-seven different operatic Arminiuses appeared in the eighteenth century, and a further eighteen in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Domenico Scarlatti and Johann Adolph Hasse are among the few composers that will have been heard of and in both cases the operas are much stronger musically than dramatically.

I had thought that only two had been recorded in modern times. The former, called Arminio, counts as the first German opera (though sung in Italian) and was written by the composer/violinist Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber at the end of the seventeenth century (the exact date is disputed) in Salzburg. The other is Georg Frideric Handel’s Arminio written in the autumn of 1736 in a particularly fruitful period of the composer’s life. While musically, it will satisfy even the most jaded barocchisti, it is incomprehensible even by the shaky standards of opera – a matter not helped by the fact that the composer seemingly arbitrarily cut around a thousand lines of text from Antonio Salvi’s libretto. Suffice to say that the plot exists only in the composer’s imagination and that all’s well that ends well.

A treat to learn about Telemann's Germanicus, discussed by Charles Downey at the Classical Review, an opera about which I knew absolutely nothing, and which has recently been reconstructed:

The plot – drawn from ancient Roman history and adapted from the Annales of Tacitus – is particularly contorted. It concerns a campaign in Germania by the Roman general Nero Claudius Germanicus in the First Century A.D. during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. Although set against a military background, the vicissitudes of the story all have to do with love and betrayal: the jealousy of Germanicus provoked by increasingly ridiculous misconceptions of the infidelity of his faithful wife, Agrippina.

In the other plot strand, Claudia, the daughter of the conquered Cheruscan prince Segestes, loves the Cheruscan outlaw Arminius but is offered in marriage to the Roman prince Lucius. At the same time, in the occupied city of Cologne, a Roman captain named Florus is plotting to overthrow Germanicus and Tiberius. Magical and divine forces intercede to set things right, notably when the son of Germanicus and Agrippina, the treble role of Caligula, prays to the goddess Juno, whose oracle speaks in defense of Agrippina’s virtue.

It is now on order...

How Arminius caused the fall of the Roman Empire...

The most entertaining claim of the day comes from the Rheinbacher. Discussing the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, the author points out that Hermann defeated Varus and the Roman legions. No one would disagree. And then he suggests that this battle led to the fall of the Roman empire. Not bad since the empire survived for only another 467 years!

Der Freundeskreis Römerkanal e.V. startet wieder eine ebenso spannende wie gesellige Exkursion; diesmal nach Haltern am See und Kalkriese im Teutoburger Wald - also dorthin wo Hermann der Cherusker im Jahre 9 n. Chr. das stattliche Heer des römischen Feldherrn Varus vernichtend geschlagen hatte und so den Niedergang des römischen Weltreiches einleitete.

Full story here.

Arminius and the Forest

The way that Arminius and the Battle of Teutoburg Forest remains a drumbeat throughout Germany even today still manages to take me by surprise. Few other battles have had such a resonance. See this review at Sueddeutsche.de of the new exhibition "Unter Bäumen" at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin.

In the second par of his review, Christopher Pramstaller writes:

Es war in den Wäldern, in denen die deutsche Nation ihren Anfang nahm. Vernichtend schlug - der Legende nach - Hermann der Cherusker im Jahr neun nach Christus den römischen Feldherrn Publius Quinctilius Varus im Teutoburger Wald. In der Schlacht geeint, entstiegen die Germanen dem Blutbad. Die Wilden hatten die Zivilisation besiegt - und die Deutschen ihren Ur-Mythos gefunden.

Piloty's Thusnelda Led in Germanicus' Triumph

In the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg last weekend saw an oil sketch of Carl Theodor von Piloty's Thusnelda im Triumphzug des Germanicus, the finished work of which hangs in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. The small version, pretty much A4 in size, is almost more attractive than the finished version.

It dates to 1873 and Piloty painted the work for the Vienna International Exhibition. The art critic Friedrich Pecht was a fan. He described it the following year as a successful attempt to "express the resurgance of the German empire".

Asymmetrical warfare and Teutoburg Forest

Via History of the Ancient World, an interesting perspective from Colonel John D'Amico and the US Department of Defence on the US as ancient Rome and how it can cope with military threats. Full article is here (pdf):

The United States often goes out of its way to co-opt potential enemies. We protest China's human rights record, but feel confident that over time we can bring them into the world community by economic and political engagement. We educate large numbers of Chinese students in technical fields in our colleges and hope that they will institute change in their society. We sell them technology and teach them our methods. There is an obvious risk in doing so, but options are limited. In Augustus' time, many barbarians were trained, educated and served in the Roman army in the hopes of Romanizing them. Sometimes they were successful; other times it was used against them. Even members of Arminius' family stayed loyal to the Romans during his revolt. Whether it works on the Chinese or not remains to be seen. It did not work with Arminius.

Roman supply camp found at Olfen on the Lippe

The discovery of a military supply camp in Germany, five hectares in size and dating to 11-7BC, announced yesterday, is as significant as expected. The camp at Olfen on the River Lippe could have housed around 1,000 men.

So far archaeologists have found pottery and more than 100 coins, a ditch around the camp and a wooden wall. The camp dates to the campaigns of Drusus, brother of the emperor Tiberius. The last camp to be found in the region was at Anreppen, in 1968. Olfen is one of the smaller camps to be found, 230m by 250m.

The press release with numerous photos from the Landschaftsverbandes Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) is here. The LWL has also produced rather a good video about the find which you can also see at the bottom of this post.

There is a huge amount already in the German press. In no particular order, Focus magazine, Der Westen, Die Zeit, WDR and Bild (which was first out of the gates with the news yesterday).

 

Teutoburg - The Edge of Empire

A rather good piece on the Teutoburg massacre from The Blue Review. The author, Peter McDermott has talked to the great and the good: Tony Clunn and Peter Heather for example. He also has kind words to say about me:

In "Rome''s Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoberg Forest,"
often cited as the best English-language book on the episode,
Adrian Murdoch writes that "the search for the actual site had
become a cross between the quest for the Holy Grail and a
cottage industry. Both academics and interested parties put
forward some 700 theories that placed the battle pretty much
everywhere in northern Germany..."

Chatting over a coffee at the Kalkriese Museum, its discover
Clunn said: "There were 700 pins in a map. Anybody who was
anybody, the whole landed gentry, said it happened in their
backyard or in their town." The town of Detmold, near the
Hermannsdenkmal 70 kilometers to the south, made especially
strong claims.

"I think it''s fantastic," commented Heather, who teaches at
King''s College London. "I think it''s just an extraordinary story that
this site has come up and been identified. Everybody in the 19th
century had been putting it in the wrong place."

You can read the full article here.

The best emperor Rome never had

For better or worse, most writers are egocentric enough to pick up most places where they have been quoted. It is rare to hear about one almost a year after it happened and especially if it brings a smile to your face. Rome's Greatest Defeat was cited in Prisma, the equivalent for British readers of the Radio Times, in May last year:

Kaiser Augustus hatte in der letzen seiner wankelmütigen Nachfolgeregelungen seinen Stiefsohn Tiberius zum nächsten Kaiser bestimmt, gleichzeitig aber veranlasst, dass Tiberius den Germanicus adoptiere, und damit schon den Nachfolger des Nachfolgers auserkoren. Germanicus, "der beste Kaiser, den Rom niemals hatte" wie der britische Historiker Adrian Murdoch schreibt, stand vor einer gottgleichen Zukunft, nur dass er gerade dabei war, den entscheidenden Fehler seines Lebens zu machen."

Visitor numbers at Kalkriese up in 2009

Almost 500,000 visitors flocked to Kalkriese last year. No real surprise given that it was the 2000th anniversary of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. The museum at Haltern saw numbers triple:

Die 2000-Jahr-Feier der Varusschlacht hat sich für die beteiligten Museen als Kassenknüller erwiesen. Fast eine halbe Million Menschen besuchten an drei Orten die Ausstellungen. 100 000 Besucher zählte das Lippische Landesmuseum in Detmold. Das Römermuseum in Haltern konnte seine Auslastung um mehr als 300 Prozent von 37 000 auf 165 000 steigern. Das Museum der Varusschlacht in Kalkriese bei Osnabrück registrierte knapp 210 000 Besucher. Hier schloss die Schau erst am vergangenen Wochenende.

Story from dpa in Welt Online.