“The Germans have always been big fans of obedience!”
Nonsense. The Germans started the Reformation, not exactly a study in obedience. For centuries they were known as the most unruleable, chaotic rabble in Europe.
Of course that has changed, but only relatively recently.
Surely you remember those stories about how easily the Romans subdued the Germans.....
Those genes were probably brought in by early migrants. Probably none of those genes left in the population. Much like the viking genes in the Scandinavian countries. They be long gone.
Gentlemen,
in a sense you are both correct. On one side, feuds between nobles were not unheard of, like “infightings” (is that proper English?) between the ruling class, but OTOH:
My countrymen were regarded as “obedient” by one French observer in the Middle Ages, because, more often than not, conflicts between different social classes were usually solved by negotiation and compromise, not bloodshed.
There would have little to be gained from the latter, since in medieval society everybody depended on everybody else:
- the peasants on the nobles who defended them (medieval knights were, in fact, something like a warrior caste),
- the nobles and the Church on the peasants to provide for them,
- and every layman depended on the Church for spiritual guidance and erudition (most teachers and savants of the time were clerics).
This society was not called “Domus Dei”, the house of God, without a reason: the term “society” did not appear until the 1700s, iirc.