The Germanic leader did not rule over subjects. His relationship corresponded to an alliance and support pact between freemen with equal rights; it was carried by voluntarism, self-confidence and freedom-pride, by the feeling of personal worth and the mutual ability for respect and responsibility. All rights and duties between leader and following were reciprocal and extended beyond the purely practical, legal, economic and political sides of life into the higher one of morality.
As the leader made the right of his following his own, viewed its distress as his own, so did it view his honor as its own, his glory as its own and perceived its injury or disgrace as that of the whole following. “Going into battle”, writes the Roman historian Tacitus in his Germania, “it is disgraceful for the leader to be excelled in courage, and disgraceful for the following not to match the leader’s courage; to return from battle without the leader, is a dishonor for life, an irremovable disgrace; to defend him, to protect him, even to assign one’s own deeds to his glory, is the most sacred obligation; the leaders fight for victory, the following fights for the leader.”
In the womb of the clan was the spring of life; it was nourished by the hereditary seat, which was inseparably bound to the family. The field crops, the Odal, formed for each full-blooded Germanic person, for the leader as well as for the follower, the life-foundation. Since the folkish community consisted only of peasants, the peasant leaders were at the same time folk leaders. Their peasant nature was just as little lost by the collision with the Roman world and inconstant life of the folk wandering as it could have been uprooted by warrior glory and battle-lust.
Unshakeable, they held firm to their life task, to maintain the freedom of the homeland and home soil, and to protect the agricultural work. When Bojokal, the leader of the Ampsivarier, while seeking land met with the Roman rulers, he utters the following words while looking up at the sun with raised arms: “As heaven is to the gods, so be the earth given to men, and all land that has no master, can be taken into possession by anyone.” The Roman delegate misunderstood the legitimate demand of the Amsivarier; he only wanted to give land to their leader in order to win him as an ally. Bojokal, however, rejected such a demand as “reward for treason” with the words:
“We can lack land to live, but not to die.”
From this attitude speaks the loyalty of the Germanic leader, who feels bound for better or worse to his following and rather chooses death than to accept advantages that his folk must do without.
