German people and German land
Your task in the final writing assignment of this course is this: write an analytical and argumentative essay that answers this question: how can we use everything we have learned about the history of migration involving the German peoples and the German lands to help us understand and put in context the recent migration crisis? There is no particular correct answer here. You could potentially argue, for example, that the role of Germanic migrants in bringing about the end of the Roman Empire in the West shows how disruptive and dangerous migration can be; you could also potentially argue that the transformation of the Roman world, in which the Germanic migrants played a role, was ultimately a good thing. You could look at the history of German immigrants in the US and stress how thoroughly integrated they eventually became; or you could look at various points along their path and stress how unwelcome they were at times and how they fought to retain their German culture and their German language.
