Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes

• 1. Introduction

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  The Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes, abbreviated ORL, is a 550-kilometre stretch of the former external frontier of the Roman Empire. It runs between the Rivers Rhine and Danube. It carries the German name Obergermanisch-Raetischer Limes, and since 2005 it has held status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Alongside the Lower Germanic Limes, it forms part of what is known collectively as the Limes Germanicus. Where the land offered no river to mark Roman territory, builders raised an earth bank and dug a ditch. They topped it with a wooden palisade and watchtowers set at intervals. Behind this line stood a system of linked forts. Was this barrier built to stop invaders, or did it serve another purpose? And how did later scholars ever manage to trace its exact route?

• 2. Naming The Frontier

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  In Latin, the word limes, plural limites, originally meant border path or swathe. Its Upper Germanic stretch is named for the Roman province of Germania Superior, and its Rhaetian stretch for the province of Raetia. For the first time in European history, this line drew a sovereign state's borders as something visible on the ground to friend and foe alike. Most of the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes ignored the rivers and mountain ranges that might have served as natural boundaries. Elsewhere in Europe, the Rhine marks the Lower Germanic Limes and the Danube marks the Danube Limes. Here, the frontier cuts straight across open country. It is interrupted for only a few kilometres, where a stretch follows the River Main between Großkrotzenburg and Miltenberg. That routing makes it the longest continuous land border anywhere along the European limes. Whether builders chose it for military or economic reasons is still debated.

• 3. An Economic Boundary

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  Roman-era finds turn up as far away as Jutland and Scandinavia, well beyond the frontier in what Romans called Free Germania. That reach undercuts a purely military reading of the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes. For years, scholars have debated what the frontier actually did. The latest research leans toward a striking conclusion. The limes functioned less as a defensive wall and more as a monitored economic boundary. It was not really built to withstand a large, coordinated attack. Instead, Rome appears to have extended its influence far to the northeast through a shrewd economic policy that stretched well past the physical border. Numerous crossing points let people and goods pass, watched over by Roman soldiers, but they also enabled a brisk trade with the tribes beyond. Rome occasionally tried settling legions on the far side of the limes. Far more often, it recruited auxiliary troops from among the people living there. Through both channels, Roman customs and culture spread into territory the frontier never physically enclosed.

• 4. Renaissance Rediscovery

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  Manuscripts of Tacitus's Germania and Annales resurfaced in monastic libraries during the 15th and early 16th centuries. That rediscovery reignited German interest in the old Roman frontier. The revival coincided with the Renaissance and the movement of Renaissance humanism sweeping through German scholarship. Simon Studion, who lived from 1543 to 1605, combed the ground for inscriptions and located forgotten forts. Studion went on to lead excavations at the Roman camp of Benningen am Neckar, on the Neckar section of the Neckar-Odenwald Limes. Local limes commissions sprang up afterward, but the fractured political map of the time kept their work small. Commissions in the Grand Duchy of Hesse and the Grand Duchy of Baden, for instance, could only cover their own limited territory. In the Eichstätt region, Johann Alexander Döderlein became the first person to record the limes's course on paper. In 1723, he was the first to interpret its meaning correctly, and in 1731 he published the earliest scholarly treatise on the subject.

• 5. Mommsen's Commission

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  In 1892, Berlin hosted the founding of the Imperial Limes Commission, known as the RLK, with the ancient historian Theodor Mommsen placed in charge. Only once the German Empire existed could archaeologists finally study the frontier's route with real precision. Before that, knowledge of its course had stayed rudimentary. The Commission's work is now regarded as pioneering for how it reshaped the history of Rome's provinces. Its first decade proved especially fruitful, working out the frontier's path and giving names to the camps that lined it. Excavation reports appeared steadily from 1894 until the Commission dissolved in 1937. Those reports were published under the title The Upper Rhaetian Limes of the Roman Empire, running to fifteen volumes in total. Seven volumes cover the route itself, and eight cover the individual camps and forts. The Commission also assigned numbers to each section of the route, to every fort, and to the watchtowers, abbreviated Wp. Today, its original documents are held by the Roman-Germanic Commission of the German Archaeological Institute.

• 6. Fifteen Sections

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  Rheinbrohl marks the northern end of the numbered route, where Section 1 begins. From there, the frontier runs to Bad Ems, then through the Taunus hills and the Köpperner Tal, across the Wetterau region, to Großkrotzenburg am Main. The survey divided the whole route into fifteen sections, following the administrative boundaries of 19th-century Germany rather than the borders of ancient Rome. Section 6a alone is labeled the older Main line, running from Hainstadt to Wörth am Main, alongside Section 6b's separate stretch from Trennfurt to Miltenberg. The route shows a similar split further south. Sections 8 and 10 mark a newer and an older Odenwald line, the older one also called the Neckar-Odenwald Limes. Continuing south, the frontier passes through Walldürn, Öhringen, and Welzheim. It reaches Rotenbachtal, near Schwäbisch Gmünd, where the Upper Germanic Limes ends and the Rhaetian Limes begins. From there it passes Aalen, Gunzenhausen, Weißenburg, and Kipfenberg, before reaching its southern terminus at Eining on the Danube. Today, sections of that same route are marked for travelers along the Limes-Wanderweg hiking trail, the Limes-Radweg cycling path, and the Deutsche Limesstraße driving route.