German tribes

thumb|Germania Inferior roads and towns thumb|Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which was the most northerly province of the Roman Empire in continental Europe. The original Frankish language was West Germanic. These Frankish tribes lived for centuries under varying degrees of Roman hegemony and influence, but after the collapse of Roman institutions in western Europe, they took control of a large empire including areas that had be

The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian "stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany, between the lower Rhine and Elbe rivers. Many of their neighbours were, like them, speakers of West Germanic dialects, including both the Franks and Thuringians to the south, and the coastal Frisians and Angles to the north who were among the peoples who were originally referred to as "Saxons" in the context of early raiding and settlements in Roman Britain and Gaul. To their east were Obotri

thumb|upright=1.6|Area settled by the Alemanni, and sites of Roman–Alemannic battles, 3rd to 6th centuries

thumbnail|Kingdom of the Burgundians in around 500 The Burgundians ( or less commonly ) were a Germanic people of the Roman imperial era, who established the powerful Kingdom of the Burgundians within the Roman empire in what is now western Switzerland and south-eastern France. The kingdom ended when it was incorporated into the Frankish empire in 534. It is the source of later names related to the region now known as Burgundy, including medieval entities such as the Duchy of Burgundy. In earlier periods, Burgundians were also reported by Roman sources to have lived in regions now within Germa

The Frisians ( ) are an ethnic group indigenous to Northwestern Europe on the coastal regions of northern Netherlands, north-western Germany and southwestern Denmark. They inhabit an area known as Frisia and are concentrated in the Dutch province of Friesland and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia (which was a part of Denmark until 1864).

thumb|upright=1|Reconstruction of the grave of the Kemathen warrior, who is believed to have been a Bavarian The Baiuvarii, Baiovari or early Bavarians were a Germanic people who are first mentioned in contemporary records starting in the 6th century, soon after the end of the Western Roman Empire. They originally lived in what had been the Roman province Raetia, south of the Danube, in what is now southern Bavaria. They became a stem duchy within the Frankish empire, the medieval Duchy of Bavaria, which expanded and eventually stretched to include present day Austria.

thumb|Fibula (brooch)|Fibula found in [[Mühlhausen, 4th/5th century AD]] thumb|Ancient Germanic bone comb, Thuringia The Thuringi, or Thuringians were a Germanic people who lived in their own kingdom in what is now Central Germany. They are first mentioned in written records starting in the fifth century, during a period when the Huns were the most influential force in Central Europe and the Western Roman Empire lost control of this region. The kingdom was not mentioned during the reign of Attila (reigned 434–453), or during the conflicts between the small kingdoms which formed immediately aft