constructed a long fortified border, the Limes Germanicus. From 166 to 180 CE, Rome was embroiled in
a conflict against the Germanic Marcomanni, Quadi, and many other peoples known as
the Marcomannic Wars. The wars reordered the Germanic frontier, and afterwards, new Germanic
peoples appear for the first time in the historical record, such as the Franks, Goths, Saxons,
and Alemanni. During the Migration Period (375–568), various Germanic peoples entered the Roman
Empire and eventually took control of parts of it and established their own independent kingdoms after
the collapse of Western Roman rule. The most powerful of them were the Franks, who conquered many
of the others. Eventually, the Frankish king Charlemagne claimed the title of Holy Roman Emperor for
himself in 800.
Archaeological finds suggest that Roman-era sources portrayed the Germanic way of life as more
primitive than it actually was. Instead, archaeologists have unveiled evidence of a complex society and
economy throughout Germania. Germanic-speaking peoples originally shared similar religious practices.
Denoted by the term Germanic paganism, they varied throughout the territory occupied by Germanic-
speaking peoples. Over the course of Late Antiquity, most continental Germanic peoples and the Anglo-
Saxons of Britain converted to Christianity, but the Saxons and Scandinavians converted only much later.
The Germanic peoples shared a native script from around the first century or before, the runes, which
was gradually replaced with the Latin script, although runes continued to be used for specialized
purposes thereafter.
Traditionally, the Germanic peoples have been seen as possessing a law dominated by the concepts
of feuding and blood compensation. The precise details, nature and origin of what is still normally called
"Germanic law" are now controversial. Roman sources state that the Germanic peoples made decisions
in a popular assembly (the thing) but that they also had kings and war leaders. The ancient Germanic-
speaking peoples probably shared a common poetic tradition, alliterative verse, and later Germanic
peoples also shared legends originating in the Migration Period.
The publishing of Tacitus's Germania by humanist scholars in the 1400s greatly influenced the emerging
idea of "Germanic peoples". Later scholars of the Romantic period, such as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,
developed several theories about the nature of the Germanic peoples that were highly influenced
by romantic nationalism. For those scholars, the "Germanic" and modern "German" were identical.
Ideas about the early Germans were also highly influential among and were influenced and co-opted by
the nationalist and racist völkisch movement and later by the Nazis, which led in the second half of the
20th century to a backlash against many aspects of earlier scholarship.