Nudes, Swords, and the Germanic Imagination: Renditions of Germanic Sword Dance Narratives in Early Twentieth-Century Dance

The conception of sword dance and its history were repeatedly rewritten and reframed at the very start of the twentieth century. In the wake of Tacitus’s reputed account of a Germanic sword dance (Tacitus 98, Chapter 24), politically motivated nationalists as well as body culture theorists started to champion reenactments of ancient weapon dances amidst upturned swords in order to demonstrate (manly) German strength and, at the dawn of bellicose times, to playfully show the ability to put up a fight. At the very same time, the guild dance of the smiths and cutlers that dates back to the Middle Ages stood to benefit from another line of nationalist discourse. This discourse was concerned with the preservation of customs threatened with extinction and therefore favored folk dance traditions. Astonishingly—and completely spuriously—these sword dance traditions were historiographically linked to exactly the same Tacitus report: an invention of tradition at its best.

Among all these theoretical manifestations, modern dancers such as Olga Desmond (1908) and Harald Kreutzberg (1936) staged their versions of a sword dance, each referring to or objecting to the first and/or second line of discourse. In the following, the performative and discursive references of early twentieth century sword dance(s) are discussed in order to shed light on how all German sword dance histories referred back to Tacitus, and how this led to a nationalist distortion of history in the case of the guild dances, and to a distinct nationalist alliance with body culture and modern “German” dance.

The Initiation of a Discourse: From Tacitus to Sword Dances in the Middle Ages

When Publius Cornelius Tacitus’s long-forgotten historio-ethnographic work De origine et situ Germanorum (dated 98 C.E., also known as Germania) was rediscovered in the manuscript Codex Hersfeldensis in 1455, its twenty-seven chapters about the Germanic peoples had a huge impact on current identity debates and would be instrumentalized by German humanists. Tacitus’s little book was reprinted in Venice in 1470, and a second edition was published in Nuremberg in 1473 (Meschke 1931, 135). As legend has it since then, the first known mention of German sword dancing—or something similar to it—can be found in chapter twenty-four of the Germania:

In terms of public diversions, there is only one that can be seen at practically every event. Naked youths, who enjoy the sport, throw their bodies back and forth between sword blades and spears. This exercise has bred certain skills, and the skills in turn have taken on form, yet not as a business or for pay, though the spectacle is rewarded by the onlookers’ enjoyment.

(Chapter 24, 1–2)¹

For as long as there has been a discourse on German sword dance and its history, Tacitus’s report has been considered the earliest and the only one to confirm the practice of sword dancing on German soil up until the fourteenth century (Meschke 1931, 135). The lack of further reports on the Germanic practice does not allow us to definitively state whether it actually was a kind of dance or rather a ritualized demonstration of athletic skill. In the Tacitus quote, no reference to any musical accompaniment or rhythmic characteristic is made to qualify it as a dance; furthermore, it is the Latin word saltus (jump) and not saltatio (dance) that appears in the text. I argue that the generally accepted view, that Tacitus describes the prototypical German sword dance, should be taken with a grain of salt. Johannes Aventinus (1477–1534), a Bavarian humanist historian and philologist, might have been the first and last one to write about the Taciteian sword performance without linking it to medieval sword dances. Further source reading shows that it was actually the polymath Jodocus Willich (1501–1552) who created the link between the Tacitus quote and the sword dance practices he knew from his own time (Meschke 1931, 135): “The Germans are still dancing between and over sharp swords, and some also allow themselves to lead a sword dance, i.e., they frequently call...