Your Totally Teutonic Sunday Morning NFL Football Open Thread

Well, here we are in Munich watching the other football. Rather than doing a regular game preview let’s do some historical stuff.

Seahawks/Bucs:

-Julius Caesar hisself named those weirdos living east of the Rhine the Germani and that land Germania. This is a bit curious because it was long before Germ Theory even existed. Coincidence? Yes.

-The Baader-Meinhoff Gang is probably my favorite techno-terrorist group, narrowly edging out Kraftwerk.

-Shoutout to guys like the Visigoths, the Bauhausgoths, the Vandals, the Lombards and the Saxons-they all hastened the decline of the Roman Empire.

-Charlemagne (not just a town in Quebec or a Steely Dan tune) had a wonderful Christmas in 800 AD, as he was crowned by none other than Pope Leo the Third.

-The Hanseatic League-founded by Hans The Magnificent-was a loose coalition of towns allied by commercial interests and the first league to allow corporate ads on their jerseys!

-The city of Cologne was originally called Hai Karate. Their citizens worked 75% of the time, all the time.

–Not wanting the Brits to have all the fun, the Teutonic Knights started the Prussian Crusade. After establishing an independent state they fought with Poland, Lithuania and the Novgorod Republic which was totally not a harbinger of things to come.

–Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”) is the nickname given to the running backs in the Rhein Fire’s backfield.

-In 1819 The Royalist Formerly Known as Prince Metternich issued the repressive Carlsbad Decrees which included building 15 foot high fences and playing ear-splitting music at 3am. His neighbor? You guessed it, Carl Zimmerman.

-In the German language a witty retort is called a Bunsenbrenner or “Bunsen burner”, after Klaus Bunsen, a popular German standup comedian in the ’80’s.

Well, there’s pretty much all there is to German history. If I have missed anything, let me know in the comments. Enjoy.