ABSTRACT
The role of Reinhard Wenskus (especially his Stammesbildung und Verfassung, 1961) in shaping the so-called ethnogenesis model of ethnic and state development in the successor states of Late Antiquity and Early Medieval Europe. Wenskus’ synthesis of scholarship is shown in this account to be notable less for its novelty, originality, and prescience than its remarkable continuity with ideas typified by their conservatism in method and outlook and the author’s sometimes unwholesome preoccupation with German identity.
