Rome's Greatest Defeat

by Adrian Murdoch

  The issue that had to be addressed, that in many ways goes to the heart of Germany’s relationship with its own history, was how to present the site to the public. Certainly some solution had to be found. A farmhouse and its outbuildings had already been taken over near where the archaeologists were working, but something considerably more formal was needed. From a practical point of view alone, they were in danger of being overwhelmed. The jerry-built information centre was being swamped: some 50,000 visitors had come by the end of 2000.

  The new, purpose-built museum and park of Kalkriese opened two years later, towards the end of April 2002 – on the 21st, the traditional founding date of Rome. Landscaped by Swiss architects Gigon & Guyer, with the exhibition space designed by Paris-based Integral Concept, all at a cost of €14 million, it consciously distances the battle from purely a German past. It is difficult to think of a monument more removed from the martial grandeur of Bandel’s fantasy in stone. The site has been sympathetically and intelligently managed.

  As you pass through the gate, almost the first thing you see is a slightly disconcerting tower to your left, at the south-eastern end of the park. It is a vast, vaguely intimidating structure, 37m high and made of what turns out to be huge panels of rusted corten steel on top of a steel frame. As you climb the tower, random openings frame views of the countryside, not allowing an overview of the site until you reach the top. The choice of structural material for the tower is no accident – a reference to the weaponry used and found – nor is its resemblance to a military watchtower.

  At the base, a single-storey museum sticks out at right angles. It is by far the least successful aspect of the entire site. Intriguing from a design point of view, the permanent exhibition fails at a practical level. The curators decided not to replicate the standard layout of archaeological museums; instead they present a deliberately fractured narrative, presenting titbits of information without necessarily providing answers. There is no doubt that this approach emphasises how much our knowledge of the battle remains fragmentary but, while undeniably beautiful, this approach does rather mask the objects themselves. Visitors have to go on hands and knees to see some objects, or peer at coins displayed in semi-darkness.

  It is with some relief that you go into the actual park. The battlefield itself is cleverly laid out. The course of the Cheruscan walls is described by a long, curving row of vertical steel tubes. The tubes themselves stand closely together when they replicate an archaeologically attested path, slightly distanced from each other when their course is more speculative. The route along which Varus and his men marched is presented by a series of flat plates, upon which are etched comments from classical authors on the events that unfolded here. These plates, shaped like shields, appear only at irregular intervals, to underline the constant attacks from the German troops. A network of narrow, wood-chip paths suggests the routes by which Arminius’ men continually attacked and retreated. The use of different materials is deliberate. It underlines Varus’ misunderstanding of Arminius’ nature and refers back to the sylvan traditions of the early Germans, without overwhelming.

  If all of this appears too allusive, a long, broad rectangular excavation trench in the centre of the park, running roughly north–south and encased in a metal wall, shows the lie of the land in AD 9. Here, for the first time, the visitor has an inkling of what the three Roman legions were faced with. The sandy ground becoming waterlogged pond at the end is (even artificially created here) unpleasant terrain, while the re-created Cheruscan wattle rampart at one end, roughly 1.5m high, shows how overwhelming Arminius’ ambush was. The reconstruction brings it home in a way that Cassius Dio cannot.

  Scattered over the park are three small pavilions, each one devoted to seeing, listening or understanding. These fantastic steel structures, disconcertingly referred to as ‘perception instruments’, are intended to augment the visitor’s thoughts and experiences of the site. The ‘seeing’ pavilion, the first you come to, has a camera obscura lens bulging eye-like out of its front. Inside the little chamber, the device provides a distorted, inverted fish-eye view of the park. The ‘hearing’ pavilion is the most effective of the three. Through a massive galvanised-steel ear-trumpet that sits on top, looking similar to the gramophone of His Master’s Voice, sounds are picked up from all over the park. Inside the wood-panelled room, disorienting noises of horses and men in battle are played. In the ‘understanding’ pavilion at the end of a winding path, the most isolated of the three structures, looped television clips of contemporary conflicts are simultaneously shown on nine screens. The gnomic comment inscribed on the wall, ‘war is not history – why?’ links the battle back to the twenty-first century.

  The museum and park at Kalkriese have been sympathetically and intelligently designed. Whether or not it finds favour with individual visitors is a separate issue and a matter for personal taste. Without a doubt, a valid solution of how to present the battle has been attempted. And yet, where it fails to satisfy is where all museums, rather all ancient sites, fall down. Visiting the museum and park at Kalkriese brings to the fore the essential question of what it is that we are looking for, what was it that the visitors, for example all the 120,000 who visited in 2005, were hoping for after the €7 entrance fee had been paid?

  An inevitable element of voyeurism creeps into any visit to a military field of conflict. The relief that one is not there in person is tinged with the human curiosity about who did what to whom and where. Recognition of this is most apparent at the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where General Custer and the 7th Cavalry fell in 1876. Red granite markers now indicate the exact spots where commanders fell, white ones where the rank and file died in eastern Montana.

  But we are also hoping for some kind of enlightenment. We want the voices to speak to us from the grave. This is the reason that we go on pilgrimages to Flanders and to the beaches of Normandy. Through family stories, the national communion every Remembrance Sunday, and the wearing of poppies, all of which is augmented by documentary footage and movies, these conflicts are still real and fresh.

  But that is not possible in Kalkriese. You strain to hear the marching boots of the Roman legionaries or the battle cries of the Germans. As individuals it is difficult for us to form any kind of a personal connection with either Arminius or Varus. We know too little about them and there is too much historical distortion. At the site itself, despite the best attempts of the architects, there is not even any sense of place. The landscape itself has changed beyond all measure in the intervening two millennia; even the paths of the roadways are different. And, of course, the isolation of the ambush is impossible to re-create.

  Part of the problem is that, in wariness of the outcry and public soul-baring that would inevitably have ensued, the role that the battle played in shaping national identity is toned down. Historically, museums, certainly the European ones with large classical collections, have promoted an element of national identification and have celebrated a nation’s might. So pervasive a concept is this that, in the New World, a fictional classical past has been used deliberately to confer legitimacy. It is no accident that the national museums in both Australia and the US are overtly neo-classical in style. It should be borne in mind that this imperialistic element to museums is by no means a solely nineteenth-century phenomenon. The past is still regarded as important for conferring a sense of worth. Perennial Greek tantrums over the return of the Elgin Marbles or the increasingly vocal anti-European sentiments by the museums of Egypt are indications of that.

  Kalkriese’s inoffensive multiculturalism, a site that was discovered by a British amateur and landscaped by a Swiss company, and with a museum designed by a French firm, takes the edge off the battle’s nationalist subtexts. This allows modern Germans to visit without a sense of guilt, yet combines to give it a slightly bland texture. The park and the structures are as far removed from the martial grandeur of Bandel’s Hermannsdenkmal as it is possible to get.

  But in the en
d, the site succeeds precisely because of this deliberate distance. Rome’s greatest defeat has a resonance, not just because it is about the emergence of a German national consciousness or because it is a part of the common history of the English and German-speaking peoples today, but because it stands as a testament, recalling Carl von Clausewitz’s caution to strategists, as often ignored as it is cited: ‘The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgement that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish the kind of war on which they are embarking: neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.’

  The lessons of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest have never been learned. From the defeat of Napoleon to the opening salvoes of the First World War, the British Empire faced an army on the battlefield on only four instances. On all other occasions, it came up against enemies who refused to fight with conventional tactics. This was the reason for the number of humiliating defeats the British army suffered, from the Indian Mutiny to the ambush in the Khyber Pass during the First Afghan War in 1842. Any suggestions that the army needed an unorthodox military design to fight enemies who refused to play by her rules would have been met with the same arrogant distain in nineteenth-century London as it would have been in first-century Rome.

  Even at the time of writing, the same tragedy is unfolding once more. In the summer of 2005, the British journalist and military expert Max Hastings trenchantly observed what was going wrong with the war in Iraq. It was hard to believe, he wrote, that Washington’s objective to create a viable local government and institutions to run Iraq as a unitary state was achievable within an acceptable time-frame. He then pointed out that intelligence was proving a critical weakness. And finally, whatever military successes American forces had achieved, Hastings saw no sign that the US army was winning the critical battle, for the hearts and minds of the locals. ‘The experience of ordinary Iraqis with the US military is at best alienating, at worst terrifying. There is no hint of shared purpose, mutual sympathy and respect between the armoured columns rolling along the roads, intermittently belching fire, and the hapless mass of local people, caring only for survival.’10

  Germany in AD 9, Afghanistan in 1842, Iraq in 2005: it is the same story; the same warnings from history ignored. That is reason enough for the importance of the museum and park at Kalkriese. It is the equivalent of the fool in a medieval court or a dwarf in a Renaissance canvas. It is a repository of human memory that reminds us of the folly of grandeur and the absurd fates of those who seek power.

  APPENDIX

  The Finds

  Few would dispute that the range of finds uncovered by archaeologists at Kalkriese has been incredible. It is, however, necessary to understand the limitations of what has been discovered. First and foremost, what archaeologists have uncovered is what was left after Arminius’ men had stripped the battlefield. This was clearly done efficiently. Tacitus writes that when Germanicus visited the site, all that was left was ‘fragments of weapons’.1 It is also worth reiterating that what has been found is almost entirely Roman. As the victors, the Germans took their equipment and that of their fallen comrades home with them. What was left was either missed or unusable.

  Second, battles rarely occur within a neatly defined area. Finds have been plotted in a huge area around what we think of as the site of the battle. That area is estimated at some 50sq km, a reflection of skirmishes, smaller ambushes, or perhaps Roman soldiers trying to escape with their lives.

  For the most part, the attention of archaeologists has primarily been at the foot of the Kalkriese Berg. Their work has been carried out in the narrow pass called the Kalkrieser-Niewedder-Senke, between the mountain to the south and the Great Moor to the north. What we have is a bright light that has been shone narrowly on only part of the battle, albeit arguably the climax of the ambush. To put this into some perspective, it is a little like trying to tell the story of the Normandy landings in June 1944, only really having evidence of the assault on Omaha beach.

  A further point worth emphasising is that excavations are still ongoing. Although the number of objects uncovered in the last few years, between 2002 and 2004, has declined (the exception is a fine agricultural knife that was found in 2003), our understanding of the site and the battle is likely to continue to change and develop. At the time of writing, studies are being carried out on the increasing number of bones, both human and animal, that have been found, as well as palaeobotanical research on the environment.

  Outlined below are the highlights of the objects that have been found so far.

  WEAPONS

  Swords and Daggers

  The three main weapons of the legionary were the sword (gladius) and the dagger (pugio), together with the heavy javelin (pilum) discussed below. Evidence of all three has been found at Kalkriese. During this period, the main type of sword used is called the Mainz sword, a twin-bladed short-sword, the blade up to 60cm in length and 7cm in width, which had a broad waist with a blade that tapered to a long point. Legionaries wore it on their right side, centurions on their left. While the point – as much as 20cm long – clearly meant that it was designed for stabbing, it was an effective slashing weapon as well. Between 1.2kg and 1.6kg in weight, it had replaced the heavier Spanish sword in around 20 BC.

  Scabbards were conventionally manufactured from sheet iron or bronze (sometimes silvered) over wood, and often embossed with decorative images. A system of four rings allowed them to be attached to a leather strap. By far the best example is the so-called Sword of Tiberius, found in Mainz and now in the British Museum. The tinned and gilded scabbard shows Tiberius ceding a military victory to Augustus by handing him a Victory statuette, as two gods, Mars and Victory, look on. It is believed to have been commissioned for a senior officer to commemorate a victory during one of the campaigns in Germany, possibly those under Germanicus between AD 14 and 16.

  Every legionary also carried a dagger on his left side, a useful back-up to his sword. In design terms, these are swords in miniature, with blades up to 35cm long. Again, like swords, daggers had scabbards with four rings, which would here be attached to the belt. Throughout the period, the scabbards themselves were metal plates that were lined with wood.

  At Kalkriese, less immediately obvious evidence for swords and daggers has been found. Any blades that survived the battle were stolen. One of the arguments that Inguiomerus employed for wanting to storm Caecina’s camp in AD 15, rather than wait and ambush the soldiers, is that the weaponry would not be damaged. Later on, before the battle with Maroboduus, Arminius boasted that his men were carrying ‘weapons wrested from the Romans’.2 It should not be surprising that every metal element other than the swords themselves has been found: bronze and silver mountings on sheaths, bindings for the scabbard, sheath brackets and guards. Of special note are the complete mountings of a sheath of silver with settings for precious stones, and one sheath bracket with a garnet gem, 2cm long, engraved with the image of a woman. What evidence there is, is from smaller, individual parts. As for daggers, the bronze rivets that would have held the blade on to the hilt have been found, as well as a very fragmentary iron blade.

  Missiles

  All Roman legionaries, at least until the third century, carried a heavy javelin (the pilum). Numerous reliefs, from Trajan’s Column in Rome to the Tropaeum of Adamklissi in Romania, show these familiar missiles, up to 2m in length and weighing around 2kg. They were an effective first-strike weapon (Virgil describes how ‘the Italic shaft of cornel lightly flew along the yielding air’),3 thrown before the legionaries followed up their assault with the sword. Although a pilum could be hurled up to 30m, its effective range was really only 15m.

  The pilum assault had a twin use. Apart from killing enemy soldiers, its secondary purpose was to hinder them. In an innovation developed by Gaius Marius, the Roman general and politician at the turn of the first century BC who is credited with turning the army into a professional fighting force, the points of the pi
lum were designed to bend on impact so that they could not be used against the legionaries.4

  Julius Caesar noted the chaos that this could cause. ‘It was a great hindrance to the Gauls in fighting’, he wrote, ‘that, when several of their shields had been by one stroke of the [Roman] javelins pierced through and pinned fast together, as the point of the iron had bent itself, they could neither pluck it out, nor, with their left hand entangled, fight with sufficient ease; so that many, after having long tossed their arm about, chose rather to cast away their shield from their hand, and to fight with their person unprotected.’5

  The best preserved pila so far have been found at the camp of Oberaden. Not just the metal shanks and heads have survived, but also the parts of the wooden shafts. At Kalkriese, only one pilum tip, 16.9cm long, has been found so far, in 1995, but several pilum collets have been discovered. Made of iron and some 4.8cm tall, these reinforced the joint between the head and the wooden shaft that was typically made of ash or hazel.

  Generally one of the weapons of auxiliaries and cavalry auxiliaries, several lance spearheads of varying sizes have been also found, the longest of which is 20.5cm long. One of the most intriguing discoveries is the protective end for a lance, a so-called butt-spike. During a march, lances were usually stuck into the ground, and the spike protected against splintering of the shaft.