But the most fateful misreading of Tacitus emerged in the 19 th century, with the rise of “scientific” racism. In this way, Krebs shows, the Germania could be made to say just about anything an interpreter wanted. Did Tacitus also say that the Germans were poor farmers? Never mind, Moser replied-here, the Roman was simply misreading the evidence. When Justus Möser, the 18 th-century writer-statesman, wanted to emphasize that the ancient German constitution was democratic, he turned to Tacitus’ account of popular assemblies. “Some proposed that German rather than Hebrew was the primary language and that ‘Adam was a German man.’ ” Others, noting that the Jews had borrowed the name of one of Noah’s great-grandsons, Ashkenaz, to refer to Germany, suggested that this Ashkenaz was the founder of the German tribes, and that his name was a corruption of Tuisco, the god worshipped by Tacitus’ Germans. After all, he reasoned, who would voluntarily leave the Mediterranean lands to live in swamps and forests? But German writers chose to ignore the insult they loved the idea of primeval Germanness, and built towers of fantastic speculation on Tacitus’ flimsy foundation. Tacitus speculates that the German tribes were autochthonous-that they sprung from the German soil, and never mixed with any other people. Over the centuries, Krebs shows, certain themes repeated themselves in the way German intellectuals used and misused the Germania.
The leading Lutheran Philip Melanchthon hoped the work would help readers “contemplate … the strength and virtuousness of ancient Germany.” Followers of Martin Luther “produced their own Latin editions, the first German translation, and an extensive commentary” on Tacitus’ work.
In an intellectual judo-flip, this Roman treatise on German primitivism was taken over by Germans who wanted to assert their historical and moral superiority to Rome. But while Italians rediscovered the Germania, Germans made it a Renaissance best-seller.
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