The Medieval Review 02.07.

07
Vukcevich, Ivo. Rex Germanorum Populos Sclavorum: An Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of the Serbs/Slavs of
Sarmatia, Germania, and Illyria. Santa Barbara, CA: University Center Press, 2001. Pp. xviii, 602. $26.95. ISBN: 097093196-4.
Reviewed by:
Sebastian Brather
Institut f|r Ur- und Fr|hgeschichte und Archdologie des Mittelalters
sebastian.brather@ufg.uni-freiburg.de

This volume is an extensive compilation of very different sources. Containing 25 chapters in a mysterious order "[t]his book
[...] is spadework" which "barely scratches the surface". (xvii) The author, whose scientific profession remains unclear, keeps
his aims a secret. The main title is cited on p. 172 without any reference as Hlodowicus rex Germanorum, populos Sclavorum
dated to AD 844. The subtitle makes the aim clear: to inquire into "the origin and early history of the Serbs". To achieve this
goal the author presents mainly place names and personal names (at least several thousands), and short quotations from
literary sources and modern historians, linguists and archaeologists (from the 19th and 20th centuries) ranging from Jan
Kollar to Heinrich Kunstmann. The listings are lacking in any critical approach; they are mixed and put together without any
chronological order.
Vukcevich looks for the very early origins of the Serbs, up to "Indo-european times" using the works of Marija Gimbutas, Luigi
Luca Cavalli-Sforza, and others, presenting an "Indo- Iranian/Serb-Slav glossary" (pp. 34-40). This ignores, as the whole
book does, the fact that linguistics does not have any relevance for the origin of the Serbs as for the "roots" of other "people"
but for language relations only. He gives some vague speculations on Urheimat and ancient migrations, on ancient "records"
of "Pliny's Serbs" and "Cimmerian Serbi" (51), on "identifications" of all Slavs with the Serbs (57) and with the Sarmats (70),
and on the (incorrect) equation of Wends and Vandals (78).
The following 500 pages, I suppose, try to demonstrate the presence of Serbs all over (South) Eastern and Central Europe.
Names and literary sources are given for Poland (as the supposed homeland of the White Serbs; pp. 87-100), the Danube,
Illyria and Dalmatia (pp. 101-131), Bosnia (inscriptions and epitaphs; p. 132-159), Germany (p. 160-553)--Sorbs in Lusatia
(pp. 190-211), the Berlin region (pp. 234-87), Schleswig-Holstein (p. 288-309), Hannoversches Wendland (p. 322-35),
Thuringia and Mitteldeutschland as the territory of the Sorbs = Serbs (p. 336-476)--and in Scandinavia (p. 310-21). There
follows some material on the immigrated Texas Serbs (p. 477-83), and on other Slavic "people" in Central Europe (p. 484544). Finally, the author declares the Ashkenazic Jews Slavic (p. 554-5). The given bibliography contains a lot of (sometimes
interesting) titles in a very unsystematic way (p. 566-602). Some figures are embedded in the text, often strangely
appearing--e. g. the maps of "Medieval Slavia" (p. 163) and the Regnum Soraborum (p. 418) which are administrative maps
(!) from the former GDR (and therefore without any relevance for the middle ages). An index is missing.
Probably the author's unlimited search for the ancient Serbs is due to his own origin, and it is apparently grounded on a
passage from Nestor's chronicle (Povest' vremennykh let: early 12th century) that the Serbs had been one of the oldest (and
therefore greatest) Slavic "peoples" (along with Moravians, Czechs, Croats, and Karantanians). Therefore they had to be
looked for everywhere in Europe-- migrating from somewhere in Eastern Europe (north of the Caucasus or north of the
Carpathians?) through Poland and Eastern Germany to Dalmatia and Illyria. This modern essentialist and primordialist view
has no evidence in the sources. The collected facts given by Vukcevich remain worthless and useless. Of course they show a
dense Slavic settlement and several spoken Slavic languages in eastern Europe, but this is communis opinio and really
nothing new. We do not get any (new) evidence for the presence of Serbs everywhere and for their "great history". The
predominant lack of references and the unexplained or unmotivated selection of data prevent us from any examination and
even from using the volume as a "quarry" for further research. Historiography should ignore this book; this spadework is not
needed.