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Limes Germanicus—Bridge and Frontier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Goetz A. Briefs
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Extract

There is great significance in the recent renaming of the Siegfried line, Germany's line of fortifications in the West. By the will of the Fuehrer, the western fortification is now called Limes. The new name is obviously intended to imply something very specific, otherwise it would not have been chosen.

“Limes”, a Latin word meaning “borderline”, is a word of great significance in Roman as well as German history. The term was first used by the Roman conquerors to signify the line of fortifications which, after many setbacks, they built around the northernmost reaches of their realm. The Roman Limes enclosed what today is die greater part of Bavaria, the rest of Southern Germany, Switzerland and the Rhinelands. Started under the Roman Emperor Domitian in 83 A.D. and finished in the Second Century, the fortifications signified that the Roman impetus of expansion had reached its limit. It meant a consolidation of the earlier conquests against Teutonic invasion from the North and East.

Type
Articles
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , July 1939 , pp. 261 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1939

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References

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4 Ibid., p. 198.

5 Compare also Zieglor, Leopold, Der Europäische Ceist, Darmstadt, 1929, p. 104Google Scholar: the social character of the historically dominant races precludes for any reasonably predictable time “die Wiederverkirchlichung oder gar Wiederverrömischung des Occidens.… weil diesem Character der protestantische Personalismus und Subjectivismus für immer in Fleich und Blut übergegangen ist”. Compare also pp. 102–104.

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