Washington Journal., 1942-01-30

Crlmea, those interested In German1c history
should find much to fascinate them.
Amid the peninsula's mixed modern popu-
lation of Slavs, Tartars, Caucasians, Bulgars,
Romanians, Italians, Greeks, Levantines and
Jews there are scattered farms and village
communities of fairly recent settlers from
Wurttemberg, Switzerland and the Palat-
mate, whose descendants still speak German
and cling to their old Swabian and Allemanic
customs and Protestant faith. Their peasant
forebears, like those of the Volga and eau
casus Germans (lately driven to Siberia or
exterminated) were induced to come to the
Crimea by the German-born Czarina Cath
crime II. of Russia.
Of the German villages, not yet destroyed
n our present war, there may still exist:
Bruderfeld, Kronenthal, Luftigthal, Marien-
thai, Sch0nbrunn und Zirichthal, numbering
until recently more than 10000 German
spoken inhabitants, the most thrifty and
clearly of all Crimeans.
Many centuries earlier, in the so-called
Dark Ages, when the Roman Empire had
split into Eastern and Western, both parts
defending themselves against the Teutons,
now here, now there, a trek of Gothic land
seekers came to the Crimea, the 'Taurian
Peninsula of the Greeks, then held by the
Romans. The Goth warriors with their wives
and children found there the mixed descend
ants of Sumerians, Sarmatians, Scythians,
Caucasians, Dacians, Avars, Greeks, Romans
and of the Crimea's most recent conquerors,
the Alani, who later were called Cumans,
Kipchaks or Polovtzi.
The Cloths in their mighty onslaught speed
lily overran the Crimea and established a
realm there under elective kings, who later
became hereditary rulers. They succeeded in
- H.. N o-o o-oooI orI
customs in the norther Crimea through many
centuries until the end of the Middle Ages.
Only when the Turks came out Of Asia,
stormed Constantinople and fought their way
into Europe, were the Crimean Cloths finally
crushed by the general onslaught Of Islam
that overwhelmed the Near East.
After the last king of Crimean Gothia with
most of his warriors were slain, their widows
with orphaned children we're sold as slaves
in STEAMBOAT. Then the Gothic kings last
mountain stronghold, Mangup, was RACED to
the ground, and the Cloths as a ruling race
in the Crimea were wiped out.
The Goths' Invasion Of the Crimea
The earliest appearance Of the Cloths in the
vicinity of the Crimea was shortly after
Rome's first Gothic War in the year 235 AID,
when Alexander Severus was Roman Emperor
and King Austraguta of the Amala tribe ruled
over the Cloths. Long before their time a
warlike horde of Cloths had broken forth
from Scandinavia and trekked southwark
and eastward, beating Town all opposition
along the Baltic and the Vistula until they
crossed the Carpathians and the lower
Danube, which brought them into the region
between the Dnieper and Bug Rivers.
In the year 234, when Alexander Severus
ruled Rome, the Cloths burst through the
Roman "Imes", a line of walled camps, block
houses and watch towers along the upper
Rhine and Danube, and had to be bought off
from further invasion by large ransom
moneys with the Roman Emperor's promise
Of annual tribute. The truce lasted but a
year.
Before Alexander Severus could resume
hostilities at the German front on the Main
River his troops, among whom were many
German mercenaries, mutinied and slew him.
They proclaimed one of their number, a Goth
centurion, as emperor. Thrax, as he had
been called hitherto, (from having been born
in Trace), assuming the imperial title as
Caius Julius Verus Maximinius, promptly
took the field at the head of the Roman legions
in Germany. Though victorious. at first, his
march into central Germany was soon foiled
by a Gothic onslaught on the Crimea from
the Black Sea, where a Gothic leader, maybe
King A~ustraguta himself, Unexpectedly had
appeared in command of a feet of Viking
dragon ships.
Their Viking Raids
The Cloths besieged Trebizond on the oppo-
site shore of the Black Sea, took the Roman
settlements of Olbia and Tyrais, and landed
in the Crimea. To save Dacia and the Balkans
from their invasion Maximinius, like his pre-
d~ecessor, had to pay a heavy ransom and
nrnmisa yearly trihnta to King Anstragnta.