Charlemagne French or German ?

YOU ARE A MORON.

>proto-french

YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING! YOU ARE STUPID.

Great argument Hans.

WE WUZ CHARLEMAGNE N SHEIT

the most significant argument would be linguistic/ethnic though, wouldn't it?

the franks were a germanic tribe so ethnically you could say he was more german than french (even though both terms are of course anachronisms)

also there is a difference between France and Francia in those languages

German: Frankreich vs Frankenreich/Fränkisches reich
Dutch: Frankrijk vs. Frankische Rijk
Spanish: Francia vs. Reino de los Francos
French: France vs. Royaume des Franc

even if there wasn't though, the succession/nomenclature argument is not really convincing. by that reasoning augustus was greek because the roman empire eventually became dominated by greeks.

>Germans never saw Charlemagne as German, French always saw Charlemagne as French.

I don't see how the views of later generations decide his ethnicity. Anyway, Heinrich Pantaleon's 16th century book about German heros ("Teutscher Nation Warhafften Helden") lists him as a German emperor.

He was king of the Franks, ie king of France. Germany didn't yet exist by any measure.

Germanic isn't the same as German, and has never been incompatible with being French. This sort of ethnic nationalism didn't exist until the 19th century.

The Franks were a Germanic tribe in the 3rd century. By the time of Charlemagne that tribe was long gone, Frank was just an ethnonym for the inhabitants of France, ie French people, as it was throughout the Middle Ages. Also Germanic and German are not at all the same things, most Germanic people are not German. They just happen to sound similar in English.

Francia and France however are the same thing, they're just the same word in Latin and in French. The idea of making a distinction between them is a much later anachronism.

French will try really hard to prove he was french, everybody else knows he was a Germanic king of a Germanic tribe that spoke a Germanic language and just happend to conquer/consolidate large parts of what is today France.

>France was founded by a German.

Not him but Germans historically see Charlemagne kind of like the English see William the Conqueror, as both a foreign invader and the founder of their country.

Not sure if pretending to be retarded or just American. It's literally the other way around.

>WE WUZ VS WE WUZ

holy shit who cares

He didn't exist.

Ah, so the Franken where a french people that just happend to live in today Germany and spoke a German dialect?
>try harder Jacques

Neither existed back then
Also this

Frank and French are synonymous, the Franks lived in a territory roughly covering Gaul and spoke a variety of languages, but primarily Old French. Then after 300 years, Charlemagne, king of the Franks, conquered and Christianised Germany, although that empire didn't last long and broke up again after a few decades.

>holy shit who cares
Jacques does, he cares a lot. The very idea of being of German origin is hard to accept for him.

>the Franks lived in a territory roughly covering Gaul and spoke a variety of languages

>Westgermanic tribal confederation of the migration age
>French

Pick one and only one

Yes you should pick one and only one, those are two completely different things. Charlemagne didn't live in the migration age. There was no "Westgermanic tribal confederation". You're thinking of 500 years earlier. That's when Frank meant that. It stoppsd meaning that after the Frankish tribe dissolved into the Gallo-Roman population and Frank came to refer to all people of France.

>colonized by Germans
>Got a king form the Germanic upper class
>no, we are totally french, I swear

>the french are of german origin
i know it's hard for anglos to understand because in english "germanic" sounds like german, but they're not actually the same thing

Germany didn't exist, and modern day Germany was quite litetally colonised by Franks after it was conquered by Charlemagne. They even left their mark on placenames like Frankfurt or Franconia.

Quality post.

I think the most important aspect of succession is the coronation at Reims. That ritual more than anything defined the French monarchy since Clovis.

Linguistically, the Frankish empire was split in two; in the Western part, people spoke Romance dialects, in the Eastern part they spoke continental West-Germanic dialects. The people who spoke West-Germanic dialects began to refer to themselves as thedodisce (later deutsch/diets/etc.). The frankish dialects (which were spoken were Charlemagne was born) were part of the West-Germanic dialect continuum - Otfrid of Weissenburg, who wrote a bibilical epos in Old-High German, equates the terms francisce (Frankish) and theodisce. So in a sense, Franks can be seen as proto-Germans.

The only Germanic speaking part of France before Charlemagne was the Eastern half of Austrasia, so roughly 1/8 of the realm, maybe a little more if you count Alamania. It's only Charlemagne's conquest of the Saxons that added a huge number of Germanic speakers to the empire.

French.

Franks were Germans.

>as both a foreign invader

No, that view was uncommon, some (not all) Nazis viewed him negatively but they aren't representative in this matter. The text of the book I posted above doesn't present him as a foreigner either, he's referred to as the first German emperor born in German land.

Neither. He was Frankish. Do you know shit about history?

I'd say he was more of a "progenitor" of both the French and Germans

>Neither. He was Frankish. Do you know shit about history?

Buddy, France didn't exist either

Relevance for my post? I know, the Gallo-Romanic areas conquered by the Franks made up the biggest part of the Frankish empire at that time.

>France and Germany have a shared historical background therefore they all where French
Great argument, mate

west of the rhine reporting in

here we see europe wielding africa as a grand sword to scythe the rest on the world island

After the 6th century Frankish means exactly the same thing as French.

What do you think Charlemagne was king of?

Your post made it sound like it was an equal split. Generally speaking people seem to think France was always Charlemagne's empire covering most of Western Europe, when that only lasted about 50 years while it previously only covered Gaul for the first three centuries.

The Westgermanic tribal conglomerate called the Franks who subjugated the Romanized Gauls

He was Frankish, not french or german

Well where do Germans think Charlemagne came from? Did he just pop up from the ground?

It's telling that Germans start their history with Charlemagne and most Germans never even heard of the previous Frankish kings since Clovis.

lmao, yeah and Obama is chieftain of the Apaches.

He technically is

Frankish literally means French.

A large portion of western Europe including areas that would later become France, Germany and Italy?

He was king of France. All the rest is stuff he conquered.

I wonder if one day there'll be hordes of poo in the loos claiming Queen Victoria was Indian because she ruled over India.

>Your post made it sound like it was an equal split.
okay. It wasn't my intention. Although, I'd say Half of Austrasia, Swabia (and Frisia) were a bit more than 1/8.

It's the other way around

...

French literally means Frankish? lol if you like.

"French" emerged from Frankish, or do you believe the Germanic tribes of the French conquered Gaul merged with the native Gallo-Romans and became the Franks?

So what?
Wessex was anglo saxon, not English or German
Lombards were Lombards, not Italian or German

They did "become the Franks".

The confusion is that "Frank" refers to two very different things at different times.

- from the 3rd to the 5th century it refers to a Germanic tribal confederation and foederati of the Roman Empire
- from the 6th to the 13th century it refers to the inhabitants of France, ie the French (unless one wants to claim that France still didn't exist in the late Middle Ages)

So?

>The confusion is that "Frank" refers to two very different things at different times.
That confusion only arises because you're thinking in modern tems of ethnicity. At any given time in the kingdom of Francia, the grand majority of the population wasn't Frankish, yet still referred to by outsiders as Franks. Going by pure ethnic lines, the only Franks are a small minority of Belgians.

What do you want to prove? The ancestors of Germans are West-Germanic tribes (such as the Franks). There's a gradual transition from West-Germanics to Germans, the first Old-High German document comes from the 8th century, and at some point during that time the word theodisc (later deutsch) comes into use for West-Germanic tribes, distinguishing them from Romance and Slavic peoples.

Btw, neither modern German historiography nor modern Germans claim Charlemagne as German, he's just seen as a Frankish emperor.

So he's not fucking french or german, he's frankish, this is literally we wuz

You're the one thinking in 19th century ethnic nationalism. There wasn't a "German elite" ruling over the enslaved Gallo-Roman masses. The "Frankish tribe" didn't continue to exist as a separate entity living in reservations or whatever. Clovis converted to Catholicism and the Franks intermarried with Gallo-Romans. Within two generations it's complete nonsense to make a distinction between "Franks" and "Gallo-Romans", all the people of France were simply Franks.

What does Wessex not being England or the Lombards not being Italy have to do with anything? France is still France.

Charlemagne wasn't a random German who got proclaimed king of the Germans one day. He was the last of a line of 300 years worth of Frankish kings. That it happened outside of Germany doesn't mean it didn't happen.

In case that wasn't clear, my point is there's no way the Germans can see Charlemagne as "the first king of Germany" without also seeing him as a foreign invader.

This is about charlemagne and ethnicity, perceiving him through some modern nationality perspective is just retarded, he was not 'french', he was not 'german' he was ethnically Frankish
Just because the Frankish Kingdom became synonymous with France, does not mean Charlemagne, a Frankish person is 'french'

German see him as the first Holy Roman Emperor and thus as a "forefather" of "Germany" (i.e. Holy Roman Empire)

First relevant king of france was Mérovée

>ITT, Jacques in full denial mode

>just because France is France doesn't mean a Frenchman is a Frenchman
ok...

Let me ask you this, what do you think "French ethnicity" is and why do you think it's incompatible with "Frankish ethnicity"?

That really wasn't France though, Merovech was actually king of the Franks as tribal confederacy, before France was founded by his grandson.

Whatevs, dynasty founder and proofs France's origin is in the semen of a magical sea horse creature.

But he isn't even the oldest known ancestor. His father Chlodio the Longhair was already king of the Salian Franks, and we also know Chlodio's father's father Flavius Richomeres, who was a Roman consul.

yes, the legend says, his mother was impregnated by a quinotaure after she was already pregnant

I don't know where you got the king of Germany phrase from, the 16th century book that was mentioned above describes him as the first German emperor. Aparently people didn't see him as a foreign invader, even if that doesn't appear logical to you. He wasn't seen as foreign because Franks originally came from what is nowadays Germany and the Netherlands, and also because they were a Germanic tribe and Germans themselves are descendants of a number of Germanic tribes (among them the Franks).

>German nationalists in general saw Charlemagne as a French invader who had humiliated the Saxons
There are literally no Germans, nationalists or neo-pagans, or otherwise, that think this way. The ones with the most negative opinions of Charlemagne consider him a traitor.

...

It literally doesn't. They still have "Franken" as a state in modern day germany.

lmao, so? They also have a "New England" in America, does that make Americans the true English?

He's Flemish ;-^)

YES
If that stops this retarded discussion
What does it mean if he's french or german? It's just a massive dick compersion

He was french. He was also a frank. He was also germanic, but not a german.

>but not a german.
Why

Bitch please he was Walloon.

Maybe because there was no such thing as Germany.

This desu. It's a bit sad seeing the frogs go full we wuz when they were clearly subjugated by a germanic invader as shown in

>born in Aachen

American education

Charlemagne was barn at Quierzy-sur-Oise, France like Charles Martel.

And since he was of Frankish descent he was french.
>Since neither france existed

What is Francia ?

>Frankish=French

Stay mad, hans

French are the descendants of the franks unlike you who are the descendants of the Huns, and of pretty much all barbarians who went on your soil.

Even today your women are breeding with the syrians and the turks who are on your land.

ITT : people being tricked by the english language into thinking Germanic and German are the same thing.

He was both and neither. He was Frankish

/thread

After Clovis, Frankish means French.

KISAMA! Are you French or are you German?

I'm Belgian you fucking retard
aka the origin of the Frankish empire