The Saxon Slaughter at Verden on the Aller
by Hermann Löns
An Invisible Empire Publishing Translation for Historical Preservation
The morning sun casts roses and gold across the heath, lays a copper gleam on the pine trunks and May-green on the honeysuckle bushes.
From the Beeke farm comes a young man; slowly he climbs the heath-hill, his brown right hand holding the long axe.
On the crest of the rise he halts and looks about, leaning on the iron of the axe; over the brook meadows the mist-maidens still dance—he must wait.
He looks toward the sun and toward the ravens that sweep before it; many ravens fly today, all on the same course, and above them the eagles row.
The youngster tilts his head and listens to the dull booming that rolls over the heath. Behind him the shrike gives warning. The man turns; a figure is coming over the heath.
Tall and thin he is, and his red hair flames in the sun; on his back he bears a fur-sack and on his right shoulder a leather cloak. He croaks like the raven, howls like the owl, shrieks like the hawk, screeches like the jay, trills like the black woodpecker, and whistles like the curlew. The young farmer laughs; he knows the wanderer: it is Renke, the minstrel, the ballad-singer, the storyteller, the cattle-charmer, the homeless friend of all the world.
“Fine morning as well, Beekman’s son,” the stranger calls aloud. “Stay up there, my Lür, and spare your legs; I have already checked your wolf-traps—three were in them, still there; I beat them dead. And how goes it, how stands it? How are father and mother and Hille of the Brink farm?”
Laughing, Lür strikes the long-fingered brown, gold-haired hand. “Thanks to you, Renke, all is well with us and at Brinkmann’s. Weather is coming! The moor-hens are drumming. We still have turnips below; we want to bring them in—you’ll play for us and then stay.”
Renke’s roguish face turns grave.
“No hay-weather today, Lür—slaughter-weather. And those aren’t moor-cocks, boy, and this is no love-play, son; it is murder and death, child.
“And I cannot play for hay-making, either. Leave the hay where it lies; it lies well enough. Drive the mares into the heath, the cattle into the swamp, and hide yourselves in reed and rush, lest the Frank find you! Weather’s coming today, indeed; the moor-hens play, the ravens fly, the eagles head west. Fiddle I must, Renke must fiddle, play for the dance at the great ferry—play above the heads that will dance in the sand.
“Is that the sun there, that red thing, or is it a severed throat? Is that heath there, those many red patches, or is it blood? Boy, I tell you, take your legs and run: Karl is at the ferry and sits in judgment over a thousand men and another thousand and as many again and half a thousand besides.
“Boy, I tell you, the Beeke by your farm will run red for three days, and every fish in it will float stiff, and no beast will drink of it and the frogs will crawl onto the land.
“Run, boy, and let yourself not be seen for three days, and send the message-club to the Brink farm. I must go on; at the ferry they need Renke the fiddler, Renke the singer, Renke the fool, that someone besides the sun may laugh. Fie, that you laugh!”
He looks at the sun and spits toward it. Lür runs down the yellow path. The minstrel strides with bent knees into the heath, his red hair glowing in the sun and his face pale and hard.
He, who knows each bird by name, who can mimic every call and voice, who is wont to converse with eagle and owl, raven and heron, today hears neither the lark’s lure nor the thrush’s wandering cry; chin on chest, he plods through sand and moor, heath and wood.
Always, before he reaches a farm, he twists his face into laughter, brings cheer to his eyes, gaiety to his stride, and when he spies a human child, then first he cracks his jokes. And then he warns—when he sees no strange face there, no peddler, no watcher, no Frankish serf.
For the times are bad and the days are grim; the wolf upon the heath fares better than the farmer; gallows-wood is cheap in the land and ropes grow by every brook; loyalty is priced low and treason well rewarded.
An hour before the great ferry he rests in the spring thicket; a man must eat even when ice lies on the heart and fire in the brain. Slowly he cuts bread and bacon, slowly he chews, slowly he drinks from the leather cup, yet his large pale-blue eyes are far away.
He wipes the knife on moss and ties the fur-sack shut. Then he pricks up his ears and listens toward the road. Did a horse neigh, a man cry? Like a lynx the red-head crouches, like an adder he springs. Three round stones he snatches from the sand, buries cloak, shoes, sack and cap under the moss, tests the wind with a wet finger, peers about, slips into the brush, wades up the spring brook and presses into the moss.
They come: three riders at the head, a Frankish knight behind, then twenty peasants stumble along, bound to a rope, bare-headed, weals on naked backs, sweat in blond hair, blood on pale lips; three more men ride behind, and with them six panting bloodhounds.
At the brook the troop halts; the riders dismount, water the horses, cool their brows and drink. The twenty pale peasants stare at the water; half-dying of thirst for dread of death. The knight laughs: “Water for you? You’ll have plenty to drink today, louts—off with you!” He mounts again, iron-edged mace in hand.
Renke in the brush bites his lips white, his eye-teeth gleam. He lets them mount, then sets a stone in the sling, doubles the thong, whirls it about his head, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the white brow of the brown knight, gives a jerk of his fist, laughs softly, whistling in his throat, leaps into the brook, from the brook into an oak—and there he hangs and laughs and laughs inwardly.
The troop on the path swarms to and fro like ants beneath a man’s tread. What is that? What was that? Did you see it? Did you feel it? Has the blow struck the lord? Blood on his brow! And the skull is split! A stroke—an unaccustomed heavy honey-stone! And that blood? He fell on a rock. There lies the rock, red. They bind the knight to his horse and ride on. Did an owl call in the bush? An owl by day? The Franks flinch. The bound peasants nudge each other warily. Only such an owl calls—the red-feathered one who fiddles and sings and makes jests, good jests, bad jests, bloody jests. They laugh inwardly, the twice-ten. And though we die today, Renke’s wit shall cheer us even in death.
He sits in the oak and laughs no more. He chatters with rage and mutters: “One—only one. And twenty I knew, twenty whose board I shared, whose hay I slept in, whose bread I ate, whose hands I clasped. Brothers, my brothers, I see you no more.” Down the rough bark of the oak his tears run.
Renke, where have you left your tears, Renke, whence came your laughter? Is your heart like wind before rain, now so, now so? Has wrath deranged your mind? Do you sit among Frankish serfs and Rhenish girls, drink their wine and eat their bread and sing them songs?
You sing where the air reeks of death-sweat, laugh where ravens perch on every tree, jest where eagles circle the ferry? Yet why should you not laugh—the sun laughs too, and the blooming heath, and the flashing water.
For it is so fair here at the ferry and so gaudy. The royal dais is draped in purple, hung in scarlet, woven with gold; the wind waves a thousand colored banners, sparks flash from thousands of shields, the air is full of whinnying horses and ringing dogs, and the white gossamer of autumn drifts merrily by.
Beware, Renke, the king comes! Thirty Moors blow the golden horns, thirty Moors beat the golden kettledrums. Do you see the camels with the purple tents, from which the king’s concubines laugh? The boys with painted faces, the dwarfs, giants, fools, scholars, priests, knights? The traders from Italia, the mountebanks from Roma, the Gallic harlots? The man-slayers in chains, thieves, murderers, oath-breakers, hireling knaves?
Do you see the king? The fat man it is, in the purple litter, the pale bloated face, without beard, carried by six Moors, fanned by two Moors with peacock tails, before whom every head bows, every mouth cries. Scream with them, Renke, as loud as you can! The wench at your left, the servant at your right—they watch you. If you do not scream, your head is worth less than a hen’s egg.
And Renke screams, screams louder than any. “Hail! Hail!” he cries and waves his cap and stares at the king; his mouth laughs, laughs as only it can laugh, as it laughs when Renke stands on a heath-barn floor and the young folk dance by the gleam of pine shavings to his fiddle.
Before the purple, scarlet-hung, gold-adorned dais the six black bearers kneel, and from the purple, scarlet, gold-trimmed litter clambers, propped by high lords, groaning and sighing, the king; wine and women of the Southland have made his limbs slack. His eyes are glazed, his lips are thin, bad dreams haunted the night and the sleeping-draft served him ill; he is pale and under his eyes are blue hollows. About him every lip smiles and every heart trembles. The king is in foul mood; heads sit loose—not only the 4,500 blond heads of peasants and herdsmen, hunters and fishers, charcoalers and rafters, who, in bands of a hundred, bound behind a triple fence of lances and spears, stare gagged toward death.
On the purple, scarlet-hung, gold-woven dais behind the blue-gleaming wall of armored spearmen the king appears. His white robe with red border and gold embroidery shimmers in the sun. On bright cushions at his right and left crouch his mistresses, the blond Lombard and the dark Provençal; in a ring around the throne stand the great: dukes, secretaries, marshals, priests. At his side, in green raiment, the Moorish physician gazes unblinking at the king; a black boy beside him holds a case of medicines.
Two drums thunder, two horns sound; a breathless hush lies over the thousands of folk upon the sand-hills round about.
A man in a long black gold-embroidered robe steps before the king, bows deep and takes with white hands the broad long strip of pigskin on which the king’s seal hangs blood-red. Two drums boom, two horns sound, thrice and thrice and thrice again. The black-robed man steps to the edge of the dais and reads the writ aloud. From the throng not a single breath.
Courtly is the man’s manner, well he sets his words, yet what he speaks is blood and death—the blood of 4,500 loyal men, the death of 4,500 righteous who would rather bend their necks to the axe than to Frankish law and foreign ways. They beat the Frank army at Süntel, hanged Karl’s steward on the willows, sacrificed the priests at the great stones, set the red rooster atop the tax houses, leveled the prayer houses to the earth and threw the Rolands into the village ponds—free men they would be in a free land.
Free men they shall be in that free land, that land where there is neither lord nor serf, nor law nor statute, nor loyalty nor betrayal. Their heads will roll into the sand, and their blood will run into the ditch that winds between yellow sand-walls toward the Beeke. Four thousand five hundred widows and brides weep today in the land, and every eagle and raven, every wolf and fox will burst from rich feeding.
Renke, if you were now to draw the sling from your breast and the round stone from your pouch, and swing the sling, eyes wide and mouth agape staring at the white brow beneath the golden crown, and jerk your fist, and the stone shattered the Frankish king’s skull so that his brain spattered the faces of the great and his blood soaked the purple cloth—Renke, you would not have lived in vain.
From the Ems to the Elbe a cry would ring, echo through every mountain and forest, every heath and marsh, every brake and moor; beneath every thatch the long axes would be ground, from every willow-rod cords twisted, from every pine the resin scraped, from every reed stalk torches bound, from every hazel nut a dart carved, from every braid a bowstring plaited.
The cow-horns would clang all day, the wild-ox horns would howl from dawn to dusk, and from owl-flight to cock-crow the red fires would flicker on every mountain and hill. Every defile and hollow way would be choked with stone blocks and with trunks and boughs; on every road wolf-pits set with sharp stakes; every sluice thrown open, every water loosed; from every farm, from every brake, from every wood, men and lads would stream together, blood-hunger in their gaze.
And Weking, the lost duke, would be there and gather the hosts that come from Ems and Lippe, from Aller and Weser, and no Frank would live in the land; all must lie beneath the earth. The eagles and ravens would burst, the wolves and foxes bloat with fat, and on the oak limbs by the great stones the heads of the high lords would be pecked by colored tits.
Bring forth the sling, Renke, and the stone, and force your way through. It is time. The black-robed man has finished. The king breaks the white wand. Four thousand five hundred blond heads are forfeit. Four thousand five hundred throats in peril. Four thousand five hundred men’s hearts stand still. Nine thousand blue eyes break.
But you are jammed fast in the crowd, Renke. A thousand armored spear-serfs stand before you, and a thousand armored horsemen have formed ranks to right and left, spies and traitors everywhere, and four hundred fifty naked, red-aproned headsmen stand in a row before the four hundred fifty white oak blocks beneath the king’s seat.
Renke’s eyes grow enormous, no blood is in his cheeks, his lips are blue, his fingers white and cold. Between the walls of gleaming spearmen and shining riders a snake creeps from right and left, dark-backed and white-bellied. The dark stripes are war-folk and the white streaks the naked bodies of the doomed men.
Renke’s eyes grow wider still and his heart stops. Then it gives a wild bound and the breath in his throat whistles thin and sharp. The four hundred fifty white oak blocks have grown twice their size and above each flashes a silver gleam. Two drums thunder, two horns sound, a sharp cry rings out, four hundred fifty lightning-flashes strike the four hundred fifty oak blocks. A hundred drums rumble, a hundred horns roar, a thousand-fold panting rises from the rose-red heath hills all around.
Nine more times the drums roll, the horns blare, nine more times the two black, white-backed snakes crawl between the gleaming, blinding walls of armored spearmen and riders beneath the purple dais; nine more times it gasps and groans from the rose-red hills, nine more times the four hundred fifty silver flashes strike the oak blocks—but they are no longer white and clean, they are red and slimy.
Behind the high heath hill a black cloud rises and stands before the sun. The wind turns cold. All around in the heath the wolves howl. The purple dais is empty, the shining spearmen and riders have vanished. Evening falls gray upon the earth; before the tents the fires flicker. Wandering lapwings and passing curlews call and whistle pitifully.
On the shore of the Beeke the fiddler sits and gazes into the water. It is red and thick and reeks horribly, and the fish thrust up their heads gasping for air. Mute and stiff, the minstrel squats beneath the honeysuckle all night; no sleep comes to his eyes. He hears the owl call and the fox bark, the wolves howl and the martens screech, and he sits and sees the future, and the vengeance it brings.
The lark lures, the migrant thrushes pass; Renke rises, shakes himself and hastens with bent knees along the Red Beeke over heath and moor, through fen and wood. With the death bird’s cry he wakes the lamb shepherd; the shepherd stares uncertainly at the stranger. Is it Renke, the redhead? His hair is silver-white. Is it Renke, the jester? His laughter is broken. Is it Renke, the singer? His voice is shattered.
It is Renke the Avenger. Hollow whispering he bears from farm to farm, from village to village, from district to district the tidings of the grisly slaughter at the great ferry. He snatches a bite, gulps a draught, throws himself an hour on straw, leaps up again and wanders on with bent knees—from Weser to Ems, from heath to hills, from hills to moor, from moor to marsh, from marsh to the geest.
Renke is the everywhere and the nowhere, the here-already and the now-soon-there, the living cry for vengeance, the hasting roar of wrath, the racing hunting-word. Wherever his white head appears, eyes widen and lips pale, fists clench and fingers claw; where his hollow voice whispers, axes are whetted, spears honed, long knives gleam.
And as Renke runs, many hundreds of men run farm to farm, village to village, district to district—minstrels, storytellers, singers, jugglers, cattle-charmers, wolf-hunters, salmon fishers, beekeepers and rafters, all men of Stormgau who were at the great ferry the day the Beeke’s water flowed red because King Karl so decreed.
You think there is quiet in the land. Yet you forget Weking and the song hummed beneath every thatch: the song of the eldest slaughterer and of the Red Beeke.
End of Story
“Not all is dead in Westphalia that lies buried”
“It is claimed there are grey-haired folk in Westphalia who still know where the old idols lie hidden; upon their deathbed they whisper it to the youngest grandchild, and that child then carries the precious secret in a silent Saxon heart.
In Westphalia, ancient Saxon ground, not everything is dead that lies buried.
When one walks there through the old oak groves one still hears the voices of bygone days, still hears the echo of those profound magic spells in which more life wells up than in the whole literature of the March of Brandenburg.A mysterious awe thrilled my soul when once, wandering through these forests, I passed the immemorial Siegburg. ‘Here,’ said my guide, ‘here once lived King Wittekind,’ and he sighed deeply. He was a simple wood-cutter, and he carried a great axe.
I am convinced that man, should the need arise, would still today strike for King Wittekind; and woe betide the skull his axe would fall upon.
It was a black day for Saxonland when Wittekind, their valiant duke, was beaten by Emperor Karl near Engter. When he fled toward Ellerbruch and all, with wives and children, pressed at the ford and crowded together, an old woman would not go further. Because she should not fall living into the enemy’s hands, the Saxons buried her alive in a sand-hill near Bellmann’s-Camp, saying as they did so: ‘Creep under, creep under; the world is harsh to thee, thou canst no longer follow the clatter.’
They say the old woman still lives. Not all in Westphalia is dead that lies buried.”
(Heinrich Heine, “Elemental Spirits,” 1837)
After 1,200 Years
Only a handful of historical figures and legendary heroes remain as vivid today as Widukind, the renowned Saxon leader who resisted Charlemagne. In eastern Westphalia—the “Widukind land” between Enger, Herford, and Minden—memory of this Saxon noble is especially alive. Enger, styling itself the “Widukind City,” keeps a unique tradition with the annual Timpken Festival on 6 January, thought to be the day of the leader’s death.
Yet precisely who Widukind was—where he lived, where he settled after submitting and being baptised, and where he finally died—has never been recorded. All the livelier, therefore, is the myth woven about him since the Middle Ages. Images of Widukind have always mirrored the burning questions and ruling ideals of their age: at times the pagan war-hero dominated, then the converted, fervent Christian; in National-Socialist propaganda in Germany he became the “Nordic racial champion.” Around his figure, religious, dynastic, national, ethnic, and racist ideas and interests have constantly intertwined.
Christianisation and the Saxon Wars
Expansion of the Saxons
From the fourth century onward, Saxons—originally settled in what is now Schleswig-Holstein—pushed south-west across the Elbe and subdued all of north-west Germany. Two centuries later they advanced in three tribal contingents, the so-called Heerschaften, farther south: the Westphalians (first mentioned by name in 775) flanked the Weser to the Lower Rhine; the Ostphalians moved along the Elbe; the Engern held the strip between, on both banks of the Weser. At their greatest extent the Saxons’ territory stretched from the Eider and the North Sea almost to the Rhine, and from the Elbe and Saale across to the IJssel.
Encounter with the Franks
At the Rhine they met the Franks, whose Christian realm in the 8th century covered Hesse and central Germany. Both peoples faced one another as foes, a hostility sharpened by the Saxons’ heathen religion. Border raids and skirmishes flared continually. Frankish policy at first was merely defensive, but with Charlemagne’s accession in 771 it turned into an expansionist war of conquest paired with forced conversion.
Missionary work among the Saxons had begun in the seventh century, led by Anglo-Saxon churchmen—Willibrord from 690, Boniface from 716—but suffered severe setbacks. Only Charlemagne’s “mission by the sword,” launched in 772, brought decisive results. By armed might, brutal punishments, mass killings, and large-scale deportations he compelled the Saxons to embrace Christianity. Baptism became the outward token of submission to Frankish kingship: faith and fealty were one. Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard wrote from the Frankish viewpoint:
“The war against the Saxons was the longest, harshest, and most exhausting the Franks ever waged… The Saxons, wild by nature, idol-worshippers and enemies of our religion, considered it no disgrace to violate divine and human law. Along an open border murders, raids, and arson never ceased… At length the Franks resolved not merely to repay blow for blow but to make open war. That war, begun and waged on both sides with fierce bitterness, lasted thirty-three years.”
First Campaign (772)
Immediately after the imperial assembly at Worms, a Frankish host marched north. Their first target was the stronghold of Eresburg (modern Obermarsberg). Charlemagne destroyed the Irminsul, the Saxon sacred pillar, and plundered its temple grove. The theft of these treasures and the desecration of holy sites sparked fierce Saxon reprisals.
Cycle of Revolt and Conquest
Frankish expeditions repeatedly foundered on stubborn Saxon resistance, which flared anew whenever Frankish troops withdrew. Fortresses were retaken, Charlemagne’s newly built royal court at Paderborn was burned, and a scorched-earth war waged against churches. A second Frankish invasion in 775 recaptured the Syburg on the Ruhr-Lenne valley and forced a Weser crossing near Höxter; the army then pushed east to the Oker. Saxons gave hostages and swore oaths. Between 776 and 777 mass baptisms were held at the sources of the Lippe near modern Lippspringe.
Social Split
Resistance came chiefly from the lower ranks of free Saxons and lati (lesser freemen), whereas most nobles co-operated with the Franks for gain. This rift showed clearly at the imperial diet of Paderborn (777), the first held on Saxon soil: many chiefs accepted baptism there—save one: Widukind. He placed himself at the head of the revolt and orchestrated guerrilla warfare.
Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae (782)
During a second assembly at the Lippe sources, Saxony was formally integrated into the empire through counties (some granted to Saxon lords). At the same time the notorious Capitulatio was issued: a code whose draconian penalties—often death—for “lapsing into paganism” aimed to cement the new order.
The imposition of Frankish county rule and these laws soon ignited another rebellion. In autumn 782 a Saxon force annihilated Frankish troops at the Süntel near Verden on the Aller. Charlemagne’s answer was the grim “Verdener Blood Court.” Royal annals claim he had 4,500 Saxons executed—though modern scholars debate that figure.
Widukind’s Last Resistance
Widukind escaped to the Danes. After returning in 783 he fought two pitched battles near Detmold; both favored the Franks. Conditions stayed so unstable that Charlemagne wintered 784/85 with his army at Herstelle on the Weser. In 785, after further devastation campaigns, he pursued Widukind northward, opened negotiations via baptized Saxons, and offered pardon. Widukind submitted and was baptised at Attigny (Champagne); Charlemagne stood sponsor and showered him with gifts. Pope Hadrian ordered a three-day thanksgiving across Christendom, for Widukind’s baptism opened the way to the Saxons’ wholesale conversion and political binding to the empire. After this event Widukind disappears from the sources into legend.
Aftermath
Even with Widukind gone, fresh uprisings forced more Frankish campaigns. Charlemagne stabilised control by establishing fortified royal estates along the Weser; bishoprics were founded (Minden, Münster, Paderborn, Bremen, Verden) and monasteries and churches proliferated. The imperial abbey of Corvey (815) became an ecclesiastical and cultural hub.
Harsh provisions of 782 were softened in 797. Final reconciliation came with the Lex Saxonum (802), which integrated old Saxon customary law. Einhard sums up:
“Finally, after he had subdued and broken them all… he removed 10,000 of them with wives and children from both banks of the Elbe and settled them in many districts of Gaul and Germany… Under that condition the war ended: that they renounce idolatry and their native rites, accept the Christian sacraments, and become one people with the Franks.”
By 804 the Saxons—decimated by war and deportations—were formally at peace, their political order destroyed yet, through equal integration, fused with the Franks.
Widukind’s After-Image through the Ages
Already in his lifetime a hero-myth likely formed. By 919—when the Saxon duke Henry I supplanted the Franks on Germany’s throne—the legend served royal legitimation: Henry married Matilda, a Widukind descendant, and Widukind’s glory haloed the new Ottonian dynasty. Once Matilda was canonised, the pagan warlord became the vigilant Christian church-builder.
A 12th-century life of Matilda first names Enger as Widukind’s foundation of a “cellula” (little church), launching the town’s enduring tradition. During the Investiture Conflict (late 11th century) Saxons allied with the papacy; a new saga cast Widukind—contrary to history—as moral victor over the emperor. Around the same era the famed Widukind epitaph, a life-size relief still in Enger’s church, likely arrived.
From the 12th to 14th centuries Widukind tales spread across Europe—Jean Bodel’s French Chanson des Saisnes (ca. 1200) is best known. In the Romantic era of the early 19th century he re-emerged as champion of German freedom during the Napoleonic wars; Napoleon styled himself Charlemagne’s heir, so Germans equated French with Franks while Widukind personified resistance. “Turn-father” Jahn’s rallying cry—“Saxons to horse, Karl is in the land!”—captures this spirit.
Hermann Löns joined the cult: his novella Die rote Beeke (c. 1908) paints the Verdener massacre in lurid colors, feeding anti-French feeling after 1918. In the National Socialist period Widukind was fully appropriated: Alfred Rosenberg extolled him as prototype of the “Germanic leader” and racial warrior. For Rosenberg only three figures mattered: Arminius, Widukind, and Adolf Hitler—“Reincarnation of the Saxon Duke.” During the 1934 Niedersachsentag Rosenberg staged a ceremony at Enger’s supposed grave; the church and town were festooned with Hakenkreuz’s, Hitler Youth stood guard, and a descendant presented hedge-roses bearing the ribbon “To the German Duke!”
The New Germany turned many medieval sites into ideological shrines: Henry I’s tomb at Quedlinburg, the Braunschweig cathedral of Henry the Lion, the Externsteine (mistaken as site of the Irminsul), and the Wewelsburg SS “Grail castle.” In Verden a “Thing site” (þing) honored the 4,500 alleged Saxon martyrs; Enger’s church was likewise earmarked but war intervened. Instead, on 8 June 1939, a Widukind Memorial Hall opened under Reichsführer SS Himmler’s patronage site.
After 1945 the hall lingered, scarcely altered, until outside criticism in the 1970s spurred a complete overhaul. In 1983, after major rebuilding, it reopened as the Widukind Museum, rejecting National Socialist scholarship and distancing itself from the nationalism, yet still grappling with the paucity of hard sources. To this day the museum must explain Widukind’s impact largely through the history of his reception.
“Not everything is dead in Westphalia that lies buried.” —the old saying endures, but modern scholarship now sifts legend from fact while keeping vigilant watch over the shifting faces of Widukind, Saxon hero and symbol through eleven centuries of German memory.