The Goths

[netbioserror]

I'm unsure of the narrative that Gothic civilization was the birth of high German and an origin for mongrelization of the German people. My understanding from lots of other sources of ancient history was that the Germanic heartland and the eastern Gothic offshoot evolved quite distinctly, with tenuous connections through Germanic settlements throughout Hungarian, Romanian, and Polish lands (which MAY amount to a language continuum, I'm unsure).

My impression is that High German evolved fairly distinctly in the Bavarian and Austrian heartlands during the age of the Holy Roman Empire, while Gothic populations were assimilated by Slavic, Bulgarian, and Romanian peoples and were eventually absorbed until the Gothic language went extinct.

[avhception]

There is an excellent Goth festival in Germany, I'm visiting every year since about 2012. https://www.wave-gotik-treffen.de/english/

[wildpeaks]

Ah I didn't expect to see Wave Gotik Treffen mentioned on HN, I only went one year but keep a very fond memory of it :)

[eythian]

I went once and it was very fun. It's about time I tried to arrange a group to go again.

[keiferski]

You might also find this interesting: a post I wrote on the topic last year:

From Gothic Invaders to Mall Goths. How an ancient Germanic tribe gave its name to a modern subculture.

https://onthearts.com/p/from-gothic-invaders-to-mall-goths

[defrost]

That's a long arc with a barely addressed tail end.

I read somewhere within the past few months an entertaining take on how Goth culture of Bauhaus and the 80s has little to do with Hot Topic mall rat goth of the 90's and even less with recent naughties Goths of Tik-Tok .. less and less substance, more and more appearence.

In the Venn diagram of Goth|not-Goth there's more than a few lucky trifecta's, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpCyNQ80JoE

[kevinh456]

They say fashion goes in cycles. That cycle is ~ 20 years to start and ~ 30!years to complete, the approximate time it takes for a generation of teenagers to raid their parents old shit. Which just so happen to hit the second hand market around the same time.

1984 -> 2004 -> 2024. Emo and goth cycles.

1964 -> 1984 -> 2004 -> 2024. First, second, third, and… fourth? waves of ska.

[bazoom42]

Doesn’t really connect the dots. For example suggest the Gothic disappers beween Victorianism and The Doors, completely missing the horror movies which was a major influence on the aesthetic.

[kayo_20211030]

> Because Gothic is ancestral to what would become Old High German

That's just wrong. It was connected, but a dead offshoot; a vestigial limb.

[hollowpython]

No wonder goths expanded so much. They have very cheap infantry.

[nickcpainter]

AOE2 ftw :)