The Vends - Ancient Culture Subserved But With Traces

Imagine our current maps of Germany and Slovenia, with a wide swath of population stretching from Slovenia, where it dominated, through Eastern and Central Germany. These were the lands of the Vends, the Vendic culture, with similarities to the Celts. Here is a fine site: "The Vends and the Germans" at ://www.carantha.net/the_vends_and_the_germans.htm

Maypole - Traces of the Vends, Germany

Read the overview at Slovenia Road Ways, Expunged Ancient Dynasty of Carantania. That reviews the Vendic culture in the area then known as Carantania, and the rights of women to rule and conduct business was identical with that of men. Until another Germanic group, the Swabians, took over and poof- there went the ancient Slavica Lex and its equality. In marched the Germans, tramp tramp.

Place and people names and cultural traces that are Vendic, still there, customs living -

• Buchwald now Buchenwald, the name of the forced labor camp
• Several Berlin street names
  
• The Maypole, the tree of life for the village, sometimes with a wreath beneath (see the "Vends and the Germans" site for pictures). See more Germany maypoles, including with the suspended wreath at the top, at Germany Road Ways, Maypoles.
  
• Veneration of the Linden tree (not the oak, as other celtic groups chose). Note that Hitler had the Lindens cut down before WWII along that great boulevard, UnterDen Linden - and put up flagpoles - see ://www.voicesunderberlin.com/1950.html. Lindens have been replanted in Berlin now, still little ones, but just you wait.
• Language - Ven vill I see you again; and commerce: Vendy's. Lighten up here.
• "House Order of the Vendic Crown" established 19th Century, Mecklenburg-Schwerin roots
• Legend at Schildhorn, read it at the Vends and the Germans site - miraculous rescue from a watery death in it
  

Now - speak German language, and Polish. Earlier absorbed into much of Prussia?

Schwabisch Hall - Swabians

Schwabisch Hall. Swabians. The remains of a Celtic settlement were found here in 1939, dating from 500BC. See www.schwaebischhall.de/History.1943.0. If Schwabisch Hall had been bombed, all that would be gone, just as history is being bombed out elsewhere.

Look at the huge size of these medieval buildings. Schwabisch Hall is a town less commercial-touristy than another medieval town, Rothenberg. See www.tompgalvin.com/places/de/baden_wuerttemberg/schwaebisch_hall for one of the best city websites we found.

Climb the long stairs up to the church, and look back.

Swabians. The Brothers Grimm in 1857 wrote a politically incorrect story about The Seven Swabians. See www.pitt.edu/%7Edash/grimm119. The site says, at the source section, that stories like these are taken in good humor. Doubtful.

They deserve better. They have played a large role in many countries.

Frederick of Swabia, son of Barbarossa, supported the founding of the Teutonic Knights as a medical order to aid pilgrims and the wounded in the Crusades. See grognard.com/zines/ph/p0304.

Many Swabians migrated to Hungary and the Balkans and elsewhere. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube_Swabians.

We found Germanic settlements in Romania, see Romania Road Ways, saxons at www.romaniaroadways.blogspot.com. The names mix - they seem to have been known as Saxons as well as Swabians, so I am not sure of the separation of the ethnic groups there, seelcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field%28DOCID+ro0055%29 for more on Saxons-Swabians, Romania (temporary file - may be moved, it says). See the Swabians taking over Slovenia at Slovenia Road Ways, Expunged Ancient Dynasty of Carantania and destroying the grand Slavica Lex tradition of successors to the throne as either male or female . Thanks a lot, German machos.

The Saxons in Romania were known for their fortified churches. I understand many are returning, or financing the rebuilding of the old churches, after expulsions in WWII. This does not look like the Swabian heritage group?

The Swabians also went to Sicily - even ruling there as an extension of the Normans - and other parts of Italy. See Swabians in Italy. That site says that the Swabians in the 12th Century lived in territory extending through Bavaria and Switzerland.

Saxons: This site oriented to schoolchildren, about germanic tribes in Great Britain, uses the same term - Swabians and Saxons. See www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/kids/sax, on Saxons and Swabians. That seems too broad, even for kids.

This next and more comprehensive Teutonic-origins site says that some Saxons were descended from Alexander the Great's army in Macedonia, and some from Danes and Northmen; and that the Swabians also descend from Northmen, but that they (read all about it) undertook a long boat journey to the Elbe and other places - a different sea tack. See www.northvegr.org/lore/rydberg/016. This lays out the Saxon and Swabian Migration Saga. Bloody battles all around.