For the first time the Germans are called by
Poseidonius (about 90 BC) and Caesar brought them later into the
Roman literature. In the first centuries after Christ the Germans
had split in North Germans (Skandinavie and Denmark), in East
Germans (the region between Oder and Vistula) and the West Germans
(between Rhine, Elbe and North Sea). They separated in single
tribes which later found together again in bigger alliances of
warriors on front on the Roman border wall. In this way developed
for example the Alemans and the Franks by the Lower and the Upper
Rhine. For the tribes of the East Germans the Gothes advanced
widest to the South East, to the Black Sea where they met Huns.
The Westgothes (Wisigothes) which later opened for the
Christianity (their bishop Ulfilas translated about 350 the Old
Testament into the Gothic) conquered under their army king Alarich
Italy and Rome (410). Under their successor Athaulf they moved to
France whrere they established an empire in the capital Tolosa
(Touluse). King Eurich expanded the regent to Spain.
In the North and in the West the break-down of the
Roman defence of the empire was in full swing. Even in 166 began
the thrust forward of the Marcomans through the Danube borders,
accompanied from the Langobard and Quads. Since the middle of the
3rd century invaded the Franks in Gaul. Single German groups
invaded in North Italy, too. 406 broke Swebs, Alans and Vandals
over the line of the Rhine and continued to Gaul and Spain. 429
went the Vandals under Geiserich over the straits fo Africa. 439
they conquested Cartago, made it to the capital and were threating
now Rome from the southern flank like once the Cartagians.
In the year 413 the Burgundian had established an
empire with the captial Worms that was destroyed in 436 by the West
Roman governor from Middle Gaul, Aetius, with the help of the Huns.
In this time arrived the state of the Huns under their king Attila
(the Eztel from the Nibelung tale what describes the fall of the
Burgundians) his tallest expansion with the Hungarian low plan as
middle point Attilas try 451 to win also the regent over Gaul with
the battle on the Catalaunic fields (near Troyes in France) was
prevened by an alliance of the West Gothes, the Burgundian and some
tribes of Frankonian tribes, led by Aeatius.
After Attilas death in 453 his empire dissolved without
having left important historical traces. The East Gothes got free
again and they built under Theodoric the Great (493 - 526),
conqueror of Odoaker, an empire in Italy. They had still the idea
that the king would exercise the power as the governor of the Roman
emperor. So stayed the Roman rights and administration in force.
For this tribe what got conveyed a third of the Italian ground
stayed Theodoric the army king in the German meaning. He wanted to
prevent a fusion with the Italian population with a prohibitation
of marriage and with the maintenance of the religious contrasts
between the East Gothic Aryans and the Italian Catholicism. To be
backed up by the German North aspired Theodoric an alliance of the
Germans under his leadership but it failed on the politic of
Chlodwig, the king of the Franks who changed to the Catholicism
because he needed the influence of the Gaulish church for the
securing of his power over his once Roman subjects.
So that sealed the fall of the German empire on the
Mediteranean Sea. The East Romans under Justinian (527 - 565)
smashed first the empire of the Vandals in North Africa (the
campaign of Belisar) and than the one of the East Gothes in Italy
what became in the year 555 to an East Roman province under the
governor Narses. The backgrounds were above all the religious
contrasts. Only in North Italy were the Langobards successful to
build an empire. The price of all in Italy lasting tribes which
detached from their original tribes was that they mixed linguistic
and racial with the natives of the former universal empire. All
states had their difficulties with their foundations which grew
from the contrasts between the German thinking of association and
the state apparatus of the Roman heritage. So the Germans
didn´t become to the heires of the Roman empire but it
developed a new German-Roman population instead of the western
empire, the world of occidental states.