We did it: The Danube Limes became a UNESCO World Heritage Site! ”The Bavarian Minister of Education was relieved and“ proud of this great award ”, which made the cultural heritage of his Lower Bavarian homeland even more visible. After the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes (2005) and the Lower Germanic Limes (2021), a third Limes section has now been added to the coveted list that promotes tourism, despite Orbán's truncheons. Regensburg celebrates twice, because in 2006 the old town with Stadtamhof was ennobled as a world cultural heritage. New motorway signs are due, you already have “a lot of ideas” because the Danube Limes - according to the responsible monument conservator - “requires special methods and special know-how”.
A Roman soldier would have asked (even in Latin) for "Danube Limes", limes Danuvii, certainly shrugged his shoulders and perhaps explained that at best the Roman border could be called limes, while the river border was always called ripa (bank).
The historian Tacitus explained this around 100 AD and, like all his contemporaries, he knew that the Romans were concerned with dominating spaces and that the demarcation lines they established did not define their realm in any way other than dynamic.
Neither Limes nor Ripa are to be understood in the sense of fixed borders of modern territorial states, and they certainly were not part of an “anti-Germanic protective wall”.
The external shape was arbitrary
Our historical maps simulate statics, where in reality they only offer snapshots. Imperium Romanum - literally not the Roman Empire, but Roman rule - was the successful expression of the majesty of the Roman people and later their emperors, willed by the gods. But of course this fundamentally unlimited will to rule was territorially restricted at each specific point in time. The space commanded by Rome, which initially lacked a uniform demarcation from the outside, was given increasingly solid linear contours the more of the Orbis Terrarum obeyed the Romans. The external form in which this consolidation took place was basically arbitrary, depended on the respective terrain, the cultural status of the "external peoples", on the will and possibilities of the current rulers as well as on coincidences.Even gaining and losing territory was nothing unusual, rather a ritual that had been practiced for centuries, and therefore - despite all the fighting of retreat - until late antiquity, as Cicero said, the boundaries of the provinces were ultimately at the top of the Roman swords and lances, so they depended on the military capabilities of Rome.
This is precisely the reason for the linear omnipresence of the military on the Roman borders, which in truth was also the result of the unbundling of military agglomerations during the period of occupation. The military was there, but it was increasingly being supplemented from the rear, and it would be wrong to understand the various Limites and Ripae as rigid systems of fortification and defense. They not only served to ward off enemies (hostes), but also to channel peaceful contacts, especially customs duties, and to prevent small border robberies by robber gangs (latrunculi): That is the real function of this facility.
Kaiser Wilhelm II made Limes research a patriotic duty and steered it in a one-sided direction by overemphasizing the military (Saalburg!). The "Reichslimeskommission" he founded has made the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes accessible in an exemplary manner in its first stages of expansion. This does not hide the fact that the expansion of this section of the Limes fell during the "ebb of barbaric lust for battle" (Arpad Mócsy), and was actually only made possible by this time of peace; that it lasted no longer than earlier 'lines of occupation' in southern Germany and that it demonstrated its military unsuitability as a defense obstacle more clearly than its predecessors and successors.