The often uncertain peace on the Limes, the border fortifications of the Romans, lasted for about 100 years. In 213 A.D., the Emperor Caracalla was obliged to beat back the attacking Germanic groups in intense battles. Aurelius Victor, a Roman history scribe, named these groups Alemands. Before this time the name Alemand had never appeared in writings; in later words it was either equated with Swabians or used to designate all Germans. From the 3rd century on the Alemand encroachments became more frequent. The great Alemand invasion succeeded in 259-260 A.D. It signaled the end of Roman rule in the southwest between the Rhine and the Danube.
Remaining settlers of Roman origin, those who survived the events of war, were delivered into dependency of the Invader. The Alemands did not live in the stone houses of the Romans, but rather used the already prepared sites to enlarge or build their own houses of clay and wood.
In the middle of the 5th century (map above) the Alemands built more and more cemeteries near their settlements. They used them for several generations, and from that one can see the permanence of their settlements. Since they buried their dead in rows, the places are also known as row-grave cemeteries. They provided an explanation of expansion and density of occupation by the Alemands. Of the settlement sites themselves, no remains are still available. The settlement area of the Alemands around 450 A.D. reached from the Upper Rhine area (north of Basel) up to the Iller [river] in the east, and from High Rhine area (Schaffhausen to Basel) up to the Main [river] in the north. In the north, they came into contact with the Franks, another Germanic tribal group. The Franks had attained sovereignty in the Mid- and Lower Rhine, and also in the west had taken up the legacy of Roman power.
In an important warlike conflict in 496-497 A.D. near Zuelpich, near Bonn, Alemanic troops were defeated by the Franks under King Chlodwig. Although not all Alemanic tribes took part in this war, the Alemands recognized the supremacy of the Franks from then on. Frankish families migrated into heretofore Alemanic settlements.
The Rhine border between Roman and Alemanic territory held until the 5th century. Indeed after the invasion of the Huns ended Roman rule in present-day Alsace, the Alemands crossed the hitherto existing western border and settled there (map below). But even in Alsace they were obliged, after another violent conflict (506-507 A.D.), to bow to Frankish power . The Alemanic settlement area in the left-Rhein Oberrhein level was then interspersed with Frankish settlers.
The region between the Iller and Lech [rivers] had meanwhile come under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Gothic King Theoderich, who had assumed the legacy of Roman rule there. Theoderich himself standed for the oppressed Alemands at the Frankish King Chlodwig. They settled, along with the remains of the Roman population as far as the Lech.
With the exception of a few looting raids, the Alemands overran the Hochrein only about 530 A.D. In the aftermath, the present north Switzerland proved to be that settlement area for the Alemands in which they could expand unhindered. The settlement activities of the Alemands in southwest Germany can also be detected from place names.
Two or three farmsteads stood in the beginning next to one another. They were happy to give their settlement the name of an important kinsman. They said then, "We live by the people of ...," whereat they inserted the name. From that came the so-called "-ingen towns." The oldest Alemanic settlements with the ending "-ingen" are mainly found in the Margrave land, in the Breisgau, in the Hegau, in the regions of Klettau in the south up to the southern border of the Kraichgau, in the north around Pforzheim, in the foothills of the Alb from the Baar to the Ries, partly in the Alb itself, further along the Danube, the Iller and the Lech. Beside the place names with the ending "-ingen" the Alemands, like the Franks, also hung the suffix "-heim" onto a person's name.
In some of the areas settled by Alemands there is today a dialect spoken that we have called since the time of Johann Peter Hebel "Alemannisch," or Alemanic, south of the Oos River, in Northern Switzerland, in Alsace and north of Lake Constance (Bodensee). The Black Forest, still unsettled in the 7th century, divided Alemanic from Swabian, which is also found between the Iller and the Lech. Spoken north of the Alemanic settlement area was Frankish, east of the Lech, Bavarian.
In Breisach, finds on the grounds of the late Roman fort on the Münsterberg, but also in the outskirts of the present city.
Runder Berg by Urach: fortified settlement from the 4th-7th centuries. In the 5th century, identifiable production of jewelry in precious metals.
In Weingarten (Weingarten County): Graveyard with over 800 graves with finds from the 5th and 6th centuries, among which richly decorated grave groupings.
Wittislingen (Dillingen County, Bavaria): early Alemanic settlement, as well as richly decorated graves from the 7th century, especially the grave of a wealthy woman who was a Christian. Later seat of the aristocratic family of the Counts of Dillingen (Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg).
