Vienna School of History

The Vienna School has been contrasted with the even more radical Toronto School, of whom Walter Goffart is a leading member.[12] Like the Vienna School, members Toronto School have received "a great boost" from the European Science Foundation, arguably for political purposes.[6] While the Vienna School considers to Old Norse literature and works such as Getica by Jordanes to be of some value, this is completely rejected by the Toronto School. They consider these works to be artificial constructions entirely devoid from oral tradition.[12] While neither of the schools are entirely homogeneous in their approach, discussions between the two schools are characterized by an unusually intense passion and highly polemic dialogue.[12]

In 2002, Barbarian Identity, a work by scholars associated with the Toronto School and edited by Andrew Gillett, was published. In this work, the Vienna School was accused of being composed of "crypto-nationalists",[13] and of enforcing "a new historical orthodoxy".[2] These critics deny that the Germanic tribes, neither as a whole nor as individual groups, had core traditions. They consider Old Norse literature, Roman literature and other primary sources unreliable for the study of Germanic history and culture. Previous scholarship on Germanic tribes is to them politically unreliable. In their view, Germanic culture was entirely derived from the Roman Empire.[lower-alpha 4] Wolf Liebeschuetz has criticized these theories as "very strongly ideological, deriving from the rejection of nationalism and the acceptance of multiculturalism", and "flawed because they depend on a dogmatic and selective use of the evidence".[15] Liebeschuetz contends that the proponents of these theories are motivated by a political agenda, which revolves around pan-European identity.[15]

Guy Halsall contends that the Vienna School, although explicitly formed to combat Nazi influence in the study of Germanic peoples, has in fact based its theories upon Nazi theories, although this is not explicitly acknowledged by them.[16]

In recent years, scholars associated with University of Oxford have been leading what Guy Halsall describes as a "counter-revisionist offensive" against the more "subtle ways of thinking" of the Vienna School and Toronto School.[17] This group has been referred to as the Oxford School.[18] Historian Peter Heather is considered the senior figure among them.[17] Heather disagrees with both the core-tradition theory pioneered by the Vienna School, and the theories of the Toronto School.[19] Heather contends that it was the freemen who constituted the backbone of Germanic tribes, and that the ethnic identity of tribes such as the Goths was stable for centuries, being held together by the freemen.[20] He traces the Fall of the Western Roman Empire to external migration triggered by the Huns in the late 4th century. The theory of the barbarians peacefully being absorbed by the Western Roman Empire rather than invading it, as proposed by the Vienna School and the Toronto School, has been described by Heather as one which "smells more of wishful thinking than likely reality".[5] Like Liebeschuetz, Heather describes such theories as being boosted through "huge" support from the European Science Foundation, which, in order to advance a pan-European ideal, has sought to minimize the importance of migration and ethnic identity in the Migration Period. Heather notes that despite such tremendous efforts, these revisionist theories are yet to be generally acceptanced.[5]

Heather has been criticized for his views by Michael Kulikowski, a member of the Toronto School, who accuses him of neo-romanticism and of wishing "to revive a biological approach to ethnicity".[19][21] Halsall has accused Heather and his associates of "bizarre reasoning" and of purveying a "deeply irresponsible history".[17] According to Halsall, the Oxford historians have been responsible for "an academic counter-revolution" of wide importance, and accuses them of carelessly providing assistance to the rise of "far-right extremists".[22]