“Reconstructing the Ancient German Past: Historical Preservation after the Napoleonic Invasions”

Brent Maner, University of Tulsa

During the early decades of the nineteenth century, archaeology in Central Europe flourished.  Numerous historical and antiquities associations led local excavations, published maps based on ancient written sources, and sponsored museum displays of Roman, Germanic and Slavic artifacts.  These activities represented the first widespread attempt to reconstruct the ancient past of Central Europe from archaeological remains.  This paper investigates the roles played by members of the Prussian court and local associations in the emergence of a new policy of historical preservation after 1815.  I argue that official and local interest in pre-medieval history represented a cultural response to the devastating effects of the Napoleonic invasions.  Antiquarians turned to archaeology as a way to express the fragile nature of the past.  Military conquest, reform, and industrialization were changing the political and social order of Europe.  Those engaged in discussions about the distant past hoped to preserve delicate artifacts that the forces of modernization ignored or threatened to destroy.  Excavation and preservation became acts that memorialized cultures and practices that had not endured into the modern period.  As this characterization of early archaeology suggests, Prussian attention to the pre-medieval past (evident in excavation, inventories, and museum displays) was not merely a method of producing a coherent history in the age of Romantic nationalism.  These acts are themselves artifacts that point to a new relationship with the domestic past in Central Europe that appeared after 1815.