Spectral, Dancing Hosts of War: German-language Research on Sword Dancing before World War I

This article focuses on four major German and Austrian figures, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the study of the history of sword dancing, and their key approaches to the field: Karl Mullenhoff, Wilhelm Mannhardt, Heinrich Schurtz, and Leopold von Schroeder. Their work drew on classical studies (Tacitus's the Germania has an apparent reference), comparative ethnography, the ideas of secret men's societies and their initiation rituals, and, underlying everything, the concept of Germanic continuity from prehistory to the present.