Männerbund

Uncommon card · No. 166660

The Männerbund (German for 'alliance of men') is a hypothesised Proto-Indo-European institution in which unmarried young males, initiated together as an age-class, served in a band of warriors before their full integration into society. Its members lived outside the community for several years, living by raiding and hunting, and were reintegrated as adult men through a rite of passage. The Proto-Indo-European language includes the reconstructed term *kóryos, meaning 'war-band', but whether this term would have been used to refer to such an institution remains uncertain. Early research on the concept focused on Germanic initiation rites, notably with Otto Höfler, and was extended to ancient India and Iran by Stig Wikander. Because of the circulation of these theories in völkisch and Nazi circles, the concept fell into disrepute after the Second World War. It was revived within Indo-European studies from the 1980s, following works by Harry Falk (1986) and Kim McCone (1987), and has since...

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