Talk:Kant Russian State University

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Germany Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles related to Germany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
Germany To-do: edit  Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: Erfurt Cathedral, Hans-Ulrich Klose, Manfred Kanther, Die Feuerzangenbowle Copyedit: Kleinstaaterei, Die Räuber, Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst, Neu-Ulm Unreferenced: Franz Josef Jung, Limburger Dom, High German languages, Matthias Erzberger, Christmas pyramid Cleanup: Heidelberg, Bremerhaven, Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, Düsseldorf-Volmerswerth, Frankfurt Book Fair Stubs: Federal Ministry of the Interior (Germany), Heinz Erhardt, Erich Ribbeck, Kronach, Tegernsee (lake), Römisch-Germanisches Museum NPOV: Erich von Manstein, Anti-German sentiment, Willy Brandt, German Visa Affair 2005 Portal maintenance: Update News, Did you know, announcements, and suggest Selected article and picture Other: Help tag Germany-related articles with the project template and assess their quality

University in Kaliningrad is not original Albertina (German, East-Prussian, Old-Prussian academy)!

Its work was suspended for merely 20 years. You should start by splitting the articles on other regional universities, the University of Vilnius and the University of Tartu. These hadn't existed for centuries, and yet they claim continuity with the original instutions. For example, the Russian-language Tartu University was founded in 1802 and then evacuated to Voronezh in 1919, whereas the article states that it succeeded the Swedish-language Academia Gustaviana (1632-1710) and even the previous Jesuit school (1583). --Ghirlandajo 11:16, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I think it is important here if the Kant Russian State University officially considers itself to be the same university as the Koenigsberg University. As if such opinion is not official, then it is original research, but otherwise it is ok (at least for now, when there is not enough information written on the Koenigsberg university yet to merit its own separate article). Burann 16:37, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Königsberg or Królewiec???

The fact that Konigsberg's German rulers were forced to pay hommage to the Polish king for a short spell of its history, doesn't justify the Polonization of the city name. In the 16th century, as well as in the 19th century, the town was known to all the world as Konigsberg. You may use your Polish names in Polish wiki, but don't forget that you are in the international wiki here, so you should stick to generally accepted English names and not to your Polish pecularities. --Ghirlandajo 15:26, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

The rulers of Ducal Prussia didn't just pay hommage but received the land from Poland as a fief. Space Cadet 15:33, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

So what? Warsaw had been a part of Russia for more than a century, but this doesn't justify the Russian spelling Varshava for the period in question. In English, Warsaw and Konigsberg have always been known under these names, no matter which power owned them. Therefore, national pecularities like Krolewiec and Varshava should be avoided. --Ghirlandajo 15:54, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

You've got a great point. But there was never a vote on places that share Polish and Russian history. I originally hated the Gdańsk vote, but was repeatedly warned to obey its outcomes. So there! Space Cadet 16:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

The Gdansk vote does not say: "You must run around Wikipedia and religiously put in Polish or German names everywhere, because that is the law", as you seem to be implying. Instead, it is a mechanism for resolving disputes among editors, if they cannot reach agreement through usual ways. If you both agree that the Polish name Królewiec is not appropriate here, the Gdansk vote does not require you to put it in! The Gdansk vote has not abolished common sense, after all. Balcer 16:04, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry but I see no reason not to list Krolewiec, after it was part of a Polish fief at the time. --Molobo 16:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Ghirlandajo on this. While both Gdansk and Danzig have some English usage, there is no English usage for Królewiec. --Irpen 18:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

That's not the point. The vote talks about double naming of places with "shared history". --Molobo 19:57, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I second that. It might be useful to mention the Polish name in the main Konigsberg article, but it is certainly not justified to force that name into every article which mentions the city. Balcer 18:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

"It might be useful to mention the Polish name in the main Konigsberg article, but it is certainly not justified to force that name into every article which mentions the city. " I am sorry but I have seen that procedure in all articles mentioning Gdansk even when they are in regards to Polish politicians born in 1970 with no contact with German history so why shouldn't we use the same procuder in regards to other cities if admins claim that is what needs to be done ? --Molobo 19:57, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Do you admit then that you fight your edit wars only to demonstrate that the rules set by the Gdansk vote and wrong and unworkable? If so, then I hope you are aware that this practice is not encouraged in Wikipedia, to put it mildly. I hope you are familiar with Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Balcer 20:50, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Krolewiec is a parfect example of shared history Balcer.I do believe however that using double naming in articles that aren't involved with history should be an exemption.Of course the vote is wrong in various ways(manipulation of votes, the fact that according to it Warsaw should be named Warschau).However Krolewiec is quite ok in this.I even got a English reference document as required: http://members.core.com/~mikerose/history.html During the wars of the middle of the 17th century Jewish wholesale trade, both long distance and foreign, came nearly to a standstill. Only in some cities, for example Brody and Leszno, Jewish merchants, thanks to considerable support on the part of the magnates, succeeded in renewing contacts with Gdansk, Wroclaw, Krolewiec, Frankfurt on Oder and to a lesser degree with England. --Molobo 21:26, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but a single webpage is not really much to go by. Instead, let's be more quantitative with Google.

Searching English language webpages for:

• Krolewiec: about 10,000 hits
• Konigsberg: about 422,000 hits
• Krolewiec, no Konigsberg : about 964 hits

Clearly Konigsberg is overwhelmingly more popular (42:1 ratio). In fact, if Krolewiec is mentioned at all, it is only with Konigsberg, hence most likely only as an alternative name. Only 0.25% of English webpages mention Krolewiec by itself.

The evidence seems clear to me: the Polish name Krolewiec is used very rarely, and hence there is no justification to mention it besides Konigsberg every time. It is enough that it is included in the main Kaliningrad article. Balcer 23:34, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually the name Krolewiec is used very often in English articles.I can give more examples. " Only 0.25% of English webpages mention Krolewiec by itself." Please provide this numbers, I am curious. Also it seems the percentage is unimportant, Gdansk is more mentioned then Danzig yet we have to use it, another example is Gdynia where admin has insisted Gdingen (almost non-used) be added. So I see no reason based on examples given by admins no to use Polish versions, if they aren't majority. --Molobo 23:43, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I thought what I wrote is clear enough, but let me restate the result more specifically. As indexed by Google, of all 420,000 or so English webpages that mention the city (under Krolewiec or Konigsberg, or both), only 964 use Krolewiec only with no mention of Konigsberg, i.e. about 0.25%.

Furthermore, I have previously suggested using this "Google" criterion in other cases, involving the use of German names for Polish cities or vice versa. So my approach would actually address the Gdynia/Gdingen problem in a way you would support.

Anyway, I would argue that double naming should be used only in cases where both names are in large scale use, and there might be a large group of people in the English-using world who know the city by one name and not the other. This is clearly not the case with the Konigsberg/Krolewiec pair.

In my view, we should move away from the naming wars fought in the name of competing nationalisms, and ask a simple question: is it reasonable from the standpoint of the Wikipedia reader's convenience to include a double name in a given case? Balcer 01:11, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Notice also that when Krolewiec was lost by Poland I no longer add its Polish name.--Molobo 23:51, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a good illustration of the problem: you see the inclusion of a given name at a given time as a historical right of some sort. I look at the problem from the standpoint of the reader's convenience, which requires that naming follows actual, current usage in English. Balcer 01:11, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Let me make a more general comment. You seem to be pushing the following rule: "In any article concerned with the history of a city, the city name used must be that from the language of the state that held sovereignty over the city at the time". How defensible and practical is this rule, do you think? Consider the interesting consequences of its application, and let me know if you would support them.

• Amost every single historical mention of any Polish city during the 19th century will have to give the German or Russian name first (unless an English name exists, which is the case for only a few cities). This despite the fact that modern historical works about this period tend to use Polish names, at least for areas within the 1772 borders of Poland ( and almost always for cities in the Russian partition).

• When writing about the lands in south-eastern Europe conquered by the Ottoman Empire, Turkish names must be used first (how many historians even know what they were? )

• French names must be used for all cities incorporated into the French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars when writing about the period. Including, for example, cities in today's Slovenia and Croatia.

I could go on but surely you get my drift. I would be happy to read your comments. Balcer 02:08, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Interesting, but even Polish apologist/enthusiasts will have to admit Gdansk/Danzig and Koenigsberg/Krolewiec made their history and legacies as German cities. When was Krolewiec "lost?" For 700 years it was a German city. Its culture was German, not Polish, even under Polish rule. The same could be said for Germans who claim Poznan/Posen and so forth. Breslau..Another dominantly German city within a region of multi-ethnic diversity. When I think of "Poland" traditionally I think of the areas of Poznan and to the center towards Warsaw..Not Prussia or former German Silesia when referring to the history of Poland. I've always regarded the eastern areas of Poland in areas like Kiev, Lvov, Lublin and so on as the cradle of Polish civilization. Like the Germans, the Poles also branched out in Pomerania/Prussia/Silesia, but due to historical happenings the German culture seems to have become the dominant culture in history through these contested areas.

Königsberg certainly had inimate ties for nearly two centuries with the Polish crown during the times when East Prussia (ducal Prussia) was a fief of the Polish crown, but nevertheless it has never been a Polish town in the sense that a significant part of it's citizens were Poles. Poles may call it with it's Polish name in the same way as e.g. French call the German City of Aachen "Aix-la-Chapelle", or the English call the German City of Köln "Cologne" or the Germans call the Italian City Milano "Mailand". But it is ridiculous to claim that articles in the English Wikipedia should use the Polish name for Cities which have never been Polish! In the same way Russians could demand that Polish names should be removed and replaced by their Russian equivalents, because Congress Poland was part of the Russian Empire 1815-1914/17. Wikipedia should not be a romping place for Nationalists who want to want to implement their one-sided view of history! Poles also have to deal with the historical fact that a significant part of their country has been German. They somehow have to deal with the German past of these areas and this cannot simply be done in a way by stating ("has been Polish 700 years ago ..." or: "has been a Polish fief for 200 years ..."). -- Furfur July 14, 2006

[edit] Explaination

"Kroliewec" was never controlled by Poland, it was a fief with a very large autonomy. Polish language never really had power of the official language in it, it was always German speaking. Burann 12:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)