Wends in Germany coming from the Balkans?(!)

[rothaer]

I'm just reading a crazy book by Heinrich Kunstmann from 1987 with the title Beiträge zur Geschichte der Besiedlung Nord- und Mitteldeutschlands mit Balkanslawen (translation: Contributions to the history of the colonisation of northern and central Germany with Balkan Slavs). Kunstmann states that he with Balkan Slavs doesn't mean today's South Slavs but early Slavs from the Balkans.

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/...00/1003655.pdf

I read it kind of unvoluntarily. The crackpottery of etymological perversions and uncritical assumptions and conclusions (like that the name of Russians is derived from Ragusa) is interrupted by him making also striking points so I can't stop reading that mess.

I've come to the preliminary opinion that there has been some south to north movement among early Slavs and I meanwhile suspect, that very early Slavs much orientated along Greek (Byzantine) culture in a resembling way that Germanics adopted and viewed Latin cultural elements as a role model. Slavic pagan political and religious centers in Northern Germany that both worked as Oracles and places where high political decisions were made like Rethre/Rethra and Archon/Arkon/Arkona are hard to etymologically explaine with Slavic language but would fit well to Greek Archonts and Spartanic big and small Rhetra (laws), both in name and function.

And as a matter of fact in Germany the Sorbs are linguistically closely realted to Czech and not to Lechitic (Polish-like) dialects. They have seemingly advanced from the south and not from the east. Actually even the bigger part of Bohemia dialectally looks like a south-to-north expansion and not coming directly from the east, see map:



I'd like to discuss one or another aspect that I can not assess myself.

One point is this: Kunstmann says that White Croats are a misunderstanding and that there in Greek is not written Bel(o)- but Vel(o)- which means big and that in a Slavic understanding also often means old/original like in Wielkopolska. The latter is undisputed. But what is written?

He quoted the Greek script and there was a letter looking like "B" at the beginning but I don't know if that means a b or a v sound.

Can anyone enlighten this?

[rothaer]

Kunstmann also states that the name of the Sorb duke Derwan, that is an unparalelled and otherwise never heard of name in the Slavic world, is an other misunderstanding. Accoring to him "Dervanus dux gente Surbiorum" means just that he is from a particular place, likely Derva/Derba in Illyria close to Gacko in Hercegowina, like "Romanus" would not mean a personal name but being Roman.

[Scarface F]

Balkan Slavka stronk

[Dušan]

I'm just reading a crazy book by Heinrich Kunstmann from 1987 with the title Beiträge zur Geschichte der Besiedlung Nord- und Mitteldeutschlands mit Balkanslawen (translation: Contributions to the history of the colonisation of northern and central Germany with Balkan Slavs). Kunstmann states that he with Balkan Slavs doesn't mean today's South Slavs but early Slavs from the Balkans.

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/...00/1003655.pdf

Is there version of this book in English?

[thatoneton]

I'm just reading a crazy book by Heinrich Kunstmann from 1987 with the title Beiträge zur Geschichte der Besiedlung Nord- und Mitteldeutschlands mit Balkanslawen (translation: Contributions to the history of the colonisation of northern and central Germany with Balkan Slavs). Kunstmann states that he with Balkan Slavs doesn't mean today's South Slavs but early Slavs from the Balkans.

I read it kind of unvoluntarily. The crackpottery of etymological perversions and uncritical assumptions and conclusions (like that the name of Russians is derived from Ragusa) is interrupted by him making also striking points so I can't stop reading that mess.

I don't know whether you're trolling or not, but I will answer anyway.

I've come to the preliminary opinion that there has been some south to north movement among early Slavs

And you came to this conclusion based on what exactly?

and I meanwhile suspect, that very early Slavs much orientated along Greek (Byzantine) culture in a resembling way that Germanics adopted and viewed Latin cultural elements as a role model.

Very early Slavs didn't have much contact with the Greek culture, being detached from it by the steppe peoples in the Great Steppe. We have no linguistic proof of any such early neighbourhood.

On the other hand there was a Byzantine influence when it started spreading Christianity into the Balkans and Pannonia going as far North as Moravia in the 9th century, just like there was a Germanic influence in Poland and Połabie. However one can hardly see it as having anything to do with main centers of West Slavic religion like Rugia.

Slavic pagan political and religious centers in Northern Germany that both worked as Oracles and places where high political decisions were made like Rethre/Rethra and Archon/Arkon/Arkona are hard to etymologically explaine with Slavic language but would fit well to Greek Archonts and Spartanic big and small Rhetra (laws), both in name and function.

Well, you only need to find any proof for any of these etymologies.

And as a matter of fact in Germany the Sorbs are linguistically closely realted to Czech and not to Lechitic (Polish-like) dialects.

Untrue. The northern group of West Slavic languages is composed of both Lechitic and Lusitian. What you're thinking of is not the genetical relation of languages but the long Czech influence in Lusitia during the Middle ages and later, as Czechia controlled this territory for centuries and Poland only for a couple of decades the Czech influence with time obviously got much bigger.

Nowadays the two languages/dialects, namely the Lower Lusatian and Upper Lusatian are respectively closer to Polish and Czech (despite there being close to zero Polish influence there for like 850 years straight).
On top of this Lusitia is the part of Połabie which lies closest to Czechia, so understandably some influence would take place anyway.

They have seemingly advanced from the south and not from the east.

Untrue once again. The best proof is how close genetically the Lusitian Sorbs are to the Poles being farther from the Czechs.

Actually even the bigger part of Bohemia dialectally looks like a south-to-north expansion and not coming directly from the east, see map:

This makes some sense since the Slavs most likely advanced from the Moravia into Czechia proper (Bohemia) so some south-north movement was actually likely within it.

One point is this: Kunstmann says that White Croats are a misunderstanding and that there in Greek is not written Bel(o)- but Vel(o)- which means big and that in a Slavic understanding also often means old/original like in Wielkopolska. The latter is undisputed.

Nothing like this comes from the know sources. As we've already discussed with Scarface in another thread, the name White is used to mean a geographic position. It's highly unlikely all the people mentioning it would not notice.

And it's not even clear which people it is meant to represent.

On top of this the comparison to Wielkopolska is out of place as Wielkopolska is not a name that existed in the early Middle Ages.

He quoted the Greek script and there was a letter looking like "B" at the beginning but I don't know if that means a b or a v sound.

B-V/W change is known in many Indoeuropean languages (and this is what he most likely alludes to), but it would still make zero sense if the word was "velo/welo" instead of "velko/welko".
On top of this the name is mentioned more than once, so he would have to assume everyone made a mistake when writing.

[thatoneton]

Kunstmann also states that the name of the Sorb duke Derwan, that is an unparalelled and otherwise never heard of name in the Slavic world, is an other misunderstanding. Accoring to him "Dervanus dux gente Surbiorum" means just that he is from a particular place, likely Derva/Derba in Illyria close to Gacko in Hercegowina, like "Romanus" would not mean a personal name but being Roman.

Many names mentioned in the early chronicles are weird, many times because the person writing the name was not a speaker of their language and thus made a mistake/change.
If we are making folk etymologies, Derwan sounds similar to "drewno" "wood", and could mean "strong, resistant, though".

Anyway, seeing the number of theories that were already postulated regarding the interpretation of times and places for which we have very sparse records, one can just as well make whatever claim.

[rothaer]

Is there version of this book in English?

I'm afraid that there is no. Unfortunately also both the scan and the text deciphering in that PDF is very poor so you can not even copy and translate well. But I here found another version where the was no text deciphering but the pics are much better. So if you use those pics for such a deciphering program and later put the result in a translation program it should work (although somewhat laborious...).

https://digi20.digitale-sammlungen.d...078_00011.html

[rothaer]

And you came to this conclusion based on what exactly?

I can not sum up all indications here now, that would be pages and pages.

Very early Slavs didn't have much contact with the Greek culture, being detached from it by the steppe peoples in the Great Steppe. We have no linguistic proof of any such early neighbourhood.

I meant after they penetrated the Byzantine areas south of the Jirecek line including Greece itself.

On the other hand there was a Byzantine influence when it started spreading Christianity into the Balkans and Pannonia going as far North as Moravia in the 9th century, just like there was a Germanic influence in Poland and Połabie. However one can hardly see it as having anything to do with main centers of West Slavic religion like Rugia.

That I know and that is understandable in the context of Christianity. But I wonder whether also their pagan scholars may have adopted one or another thing, idea and term. The Kunstmann elaborations on Arkona and Rethra are at least interesting. I don't know if you can read them.

Untrue. The northern group of West Slavic languages is composed of both Lechitic and Lusitian. What you're thinking of is not the genetical relation of languages but the long Czech influence in Lusitia during the Middle ages and later, as Czechia controlled this territory for centuries and Poland only for a couple of decades the Czech influence with time obviously got much bigger.

I myslef can not assess these things but if I get scholars right they claim this linguistic proximity for the very early times already, not after any Czech reign of Lusatia but also regarding the Sorbs in the whole area depicted in this Polish map.

Untrue once again. The best proof is how close genetically the Lusitian Sorbs are to the Poles being farther from the Czechs.

This is a thinking error. Czechs encountered lots of Germanics in Bohemia and it has changed the genetics of this Slavs and this may well have been restricted to those early Slavs who stayed and mixed there and not to those moving on further. So that genetic difference is zero disproval.

This makes some sense since the Slavs most likely advanced from the Moravia into Czechia proper (Bohemia) so some south-north movement was actually likely within it.

Yes, and also when Avars defeated Franks in 566 in Thurigia (as a kind of revenge for having been there in a battle at abt. 562) there is a more intense Slavic settlement visible east of the Saale river and if we think of where the Avars were based it's not that far fetched that they more dirigated Slavs that were closer to them in Pannonia than some far away "virgin" Lechitc Slavs from the middle Vistula.

Nothing like this comes from the know sources. As we've already discussed with Scarface in another thread, the name White is used to mean a geographic position. It's highly unlikely all the people mentioning it would not notice.

I know that this is unheard of and thus I did not ask if anyone heard of it. I asked if someone knows what exactly is written in the Greek sources that all do refer to.

And it's not even clear which people it is meant to represent.

I know but this is also irrelevant to me. I wanted to check this point of Kunstmann for seeing if he's reliable when referring to facts and I thought it should be possible to simply check this thing.

On top of this the comparison to Wielkopolska is out of place as Wielkopolska is not a name that existed in the early Middle Ages.

A lingusitic comparison does not require that things are contemporarily used. Just if you say that vel(k)o did only later get the referred to meaning it would de-legitimise the consideration.

B-V/W change is known in many Indoeuropean languages (and this is what he most likely alludes to),

It's not about abt. b-v change but about a possible - I don't know, this is why I ask - b/v ambigousity in Greek spelling.

but it would still make zero sense if the word was "velo/welo" instead of "velko/welko".

This is not applicable. The -k is a later Slavic development that first was not. It's dealt with at page 95 regarding the topic "Belcsem in der Altmark" and it seems to be an undisputed common knowledge among Slavists.

On top of this the name is mentioned more than once, so he would have to assume everyone made a mistake when writing.

No, he states it's written correctly and it is written Vel(k)o-.

[Scarface F]

Could this explain why Germans from places like County Glatz score notable Balkan admixture?
There were no Romans there ever, so it can't be explained by that.

[rothaer]

Many names mentioned in the early chronicles are weird, many times because the person writing the name was not a speaker of their language and thus made a mistake/change.
If we are making folk etymologies, Derwan sounds similar to "drewno" "wood", and could mean "strong, resistant, though".

Anyway, seeing the number of theories that were already postulated regarding the interpretation of times and places for which we have very sparse records, one can just as well make whatever claim.

Yes, and eventually he goes so far that he to my perceptions makes whatever arbitrary claim. But I try to avoid the big and very common mistake to discard all what someone writes because he writes wrong and weird things.

What he writes in the mentioned chapter about Belcsem is ingenious.

But as I already stated, I had some hints on a southern influence among some Western Slavs, let it be the Obotrite name or the fact that the early known individuals among the Obotrite chieftains had personal names with drag instead of darg which latter is the common linguistic development among Lechitic place manes in Northern Germany. But drag is more common in the south.

And as for Derwan the problem remains that the occurance is unparalelled among the Slavic names. This is unexplainable if it would be "normal" to call someone after drew/wood. And I think that "Dervanus" is documented one time only, if I got it right.