Historiography as a question of power – the Cottbus gold find as an example of creeping hegemony

The discovery of solid gold on January 17 in Ströbitz near Cottbus symbolizes more than just an important archaeological treasure. He reveals how historiography, research and museum politics put their patterns of interpretation in such a way that dominant narratives set the tone and push regional and ethnic diversity into the background. Since then, the gold find has been almost exclusivelyAssigned to the Merovingian period – a prime example of how archaeological facts become cultural constructs.

The expropriation of the find context

The prominent classification in a Merovingian-Germanic tradition conveys more than just a chronological dating. It strengthens the image of an early medieval space in which Germanic groups appear as formative, even if the facts are more complex. that the site is in the historic settlement area of the Lusatian Sorbs and even Slavic shardswas found in the immediate vicinity, hardly any role in the official interpretations. The cultural peculiarity of the Lusatian region disappears behind a large-scale scheme of supposedly German early history.

Hegemony through museum and science policy

By incorporating the gold find into central state museums, the objects are lost forever. The local community loses every opportunity to make their own heritage visible or correct from the perspective of Sorbian history. Instead, national or European major narratives are now in the foreground. Research publications and exhibitions close theFund typologically to the large lines of tradition – everything that could deviate from this is dismissed as a marginal phenomenon or simply concealed.

Dominance of terminology – language creates reality

Cultural hegemony asserts itself not only through collection assignments, but also through language: There is talk of Merovingians, of Germanic craftsmanship and migration of peoples. Terms that commit interpretations and hide regional peculiarities. The Sorbian settlement area becomes a mere random memo, local material legacies are systematicallymarginalized. Those who read the exhibition texts will encounter a world in which regional continuities and identities have no voice.

Research capital and concentration of interpretation sovereignty

The sovereignty of interpretation lies almost exclusively where the resources are bundled: in large university towns, state museums, scientific commissions. They set standards and forms of categorization based on supra-regional epoch-related templates. For smaller, local professional circles or regional ethnic groups, there is no room to consider things asto present equivalent. In such systems, any special feature that does not fit into the grid is interpreted as an exception – never as a legitimate alternative.

Heuristic templates as a tool of simplification

Recourse to well-established classifications such as “Merowingerzeit” may serve to compare and communicate, but at the same time is a powerful tool of simplification. The multi-layered, locally intertwined reality is evaporated to a few lines in the catalog or in the museum guide. The clearer the epochal allocation, the more invisible cultural interdependences become,Hybridity and overlaps as they actually shaped the Lusatian history. This leaves an inheritance that is available but no longer understandable.

Reminder policy as an amplifier hegemonic pattern

What is set up in research and museum politics continues in public. State-sponsored history stories, anniversaries, school exhibitions and media specials willingly resort to the clear, large, memorable narratives. They reproduce the image of a supposedly “Germanic dominated early Middle Ages” and almost completely ignore the traces of Sorbian culture or possible continuities in collective memory. The collective memory is directed and controlled in this way – the polyphony of the past is turned into unanimity.

The invisible expropriation of cultural identities

What remains is not only the disappearance of regional history in the stream of national narratives. It is a deep crack in the cultural self-image of the affected region. Local communities feel how their past is not only taken but reinterpreted. True cultural recognition is denied to them. The hegemony of the large patterns of interpretation means that futureGenerations above all learn one thing: that history is not the sum of all voices, but always the story of those who have the monopoly of interpretation.

The subtle losers of historiography

The subject of the Cottbus goldfund shows how cultural hegemony works not through open oppression, but through invisible mechanisms of selectivity and interpretation. In this way, minorities are deprived of their past, their continuities are extinct and the awareness of a multi-layered origin is pushed out. The social consequence is fatal in the long term: ifHistory no longer offers a home, societies lose the compass in the here and now – and thus the foundation of real diversity.