8/10/2019 Ivo Vukcevich Rex Germanorum Populos Sclavorum - Review.pdf

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The Medieval Review02.07.07

Vukcevich, Ivo. Rex Germanorum Populos Sclavorum: An Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of the Serbs/Slavs ofSarmatia, Germania, and Illyria. Santa Barbara, CA: University Center Press, 2001. Pp. xviii, 602. $26.95. ISBN: 09709319-6-4.

Reviewed by:

Sebastian BratherInstitut f|r Ur- und Fr|hgeschichte und Archdologie des Mittelalterssebastian.brather@ufg.uni-freiburg.de

This volume is an extensive compilation of very different sources. Containing 25 chapters in a mysterious order "[t]his book[...] is spadework" which "barely scratches the surface". (xvii) The author, whose scientific profession remains unclear, keepshis aims a secret. The main title is cited on p. 172 without any reference as Hlodowicus rex Germanorum, populos Sclavorum

dated to AD 844. The subtitle makes the aim clear: to inquire into "the origin and early history of the Serbs". To achieve thisgoal the author presents mainly place names and personal names (at least several thousands), and short quotations fromliterary sources and modern historians, linguists and archaeologists (from the 19th and 20th centuries) ranging from JanKollar to Heinrich Kunstmann. The listings are lacking in any critical approach; they are mixed and put together without anychronological order.

Vukcevich looks for the very early origins of the Serbs, up to "Indo-european times" using the works of Marija Gimbutas, LuigiLuca Cavalli-Sforza, and others, presenting an "Indo- Iranian/Serb-Slav glossary" (pp. 34-40). This ignores, as the wholebook does, the fact that linguistics does not have any relevance for the origin of the Serbs as for the "roots" of other "people"but for language relations only. He gives some vague speculations on Urheimatand ancient migrations, on ancient "records"of "Pliny's Serbs" and "Cimmerian Serbi" (51), on "identifications" of all Slavs with the Serbs (57) and with the Sarmats (70),and on the (incorrect) equation of Wends and Vandals (78).

The following 500 pages, I suppose, try to demonstrate the presence of Serbs all over (South) Eastern and Central Europe.Names and literary sources are given for Poland (as the supposed homelandof the White Serbs; pp. 87-100), the Danube,Illyria and Dalmatia (pp. 101-131), Bosnia (inscriptions and epitaphs; p. 132-159), Germany (p. 160-553)--Sorbs in Lusatia(pp. 190-211), the Berlin region (pp. 234-87), Schleswig-Holstein (p. 288-309), Hannoversches Wendland(p. 322-35),Thuringia and Mitteldeutschlandas the territory of the Sorbs = Serbs (p. 336-476)--and in Scandinavia (p. 310-21). Therefollows some material on the immigrated Texas Serbs(p. 477-83), and on other Slavic "people" in Central Europe (p. 484-544). Finally, the author declares the Ashkenazic Jews Slavic (p. 554-5). The given bibliography contains a lot of (sometimesinteresting) titles in a very unsystematic way (p. 566-602). Some figures are embedded in the text, often strangelyappearing--e. g. the maps of "Medieval Slavia" (p. 163) and the Regnum Soraborum(p. 418) which are administrative maps(!) from the former GDR (and therefore without any relevance for the middle ages). An index is missing.

Probably the author's unlimited search for the ancient Serbs is due to his own origin, and it is apparently grounded on apassage from Nestor's chronicle (Povest' vremennykh let: early 12th century) that the Serbs had been one of the oldest (andtherefore greatest) Slavic "peoples" (along with Moravians, Czechs, Croats, and Karantanians). Therefore they had to belooked for everywhere in Europe-- migrating from somewhere in Eastern Europe (north of the Caucasus or north of theCarpathians?) through Poland and Eastern Germany to Dalmatia and Illyria. This modern essentialist and primordialist viewhas no evidence in the sources. The collected facts given by Vukcevich remain worthless and useless. Of course they show adense Slavic settlement and several spoken Slavic languages in eastern Europe, but this is communis opinioand really

nothing new. We do not get any (new) evidence for the presence of Serbs everywhere and for their "great history". Thepredominant lack of references and the unexplained or unmotivated selection of data prevent us from any examination andeven from using the volume as a "quarry" for further research. Historiography should ignore this book; this spadeworkis notneeded.