GERMANS WANT TO GERMANIZE KOPERNIK (COPERNICUS)! OUTRAGE!

Off topic, MediaWatch. Stick to the thread, and cease flaming.


Of course there's no real definition. It's artificial, and made up.

I don't expect you to understand such complicated concepts of "Poland was made up of several different tribes that came together, all of different ethnicities". Even today, there's still a hell of a mix of ethnicities in Poland - Ukrainians, Lemkos, Gorale, Kashubians, Silesians, etc. Then add in all the mixing with the Jewish and German communities, along with Lithuanians and Rusyns - and then look at some of the evidence, such as the settling of Scots - and you soon realise that to claim such a thing as "Polish" is just utter idiocy.

Poland, like the rest of the world, is an ethnic melting pot. The *only* way someone could claim to be 100% Polish would be if they could trace clear, unbroken lineage straight back to the beginning of the Polans - and that's obviously not going to happen. Sorry Des, but your fantasy of being some sort of WHITE POLISH POWER NATIONALIST is just that, a fantasy.

So you claim that there is an Ukrainian ethnicity, but there is no Polish ethnicity..... That is really strange.


Sorry Dope, but that is not my fantasy and you are being a moron for claiming it is.

Why don't you take your own advice and do the same? Half of your messages are flames at other people especially at Polish people you disagree with.


Why are you going so crazy about the definition of one's Polish ancestry?

Its obvious you don't care about the proper definition of who is or is not Polish. You are using a false argument just to DIMINISH the Polish ancestry of anybody who has done good things.

If Copernicus was a criminal, you would be the first to say he is 100% Polish and then you wouldn't split hairs as to his ethnic identity.

German nationalists and Neo-Nazis are pushing the notion that he is German. How would they know for sure especially when the nation of Germany didn't even exist when Copernicus lived? Yet I'm sure your on the side of the Nazis on this topic.

Why don't you go back to your Russia forums where you can have more fun openly bashing Polish people there more than here?

Good morning. Copernicus was Polish. That is what I got through my education. And I was raised in one country not belonging anywhere, with tendency not to distort facts if they didn't interfere with its core ideas.

About Germanization:

I heard honest German thoughts about Germanized Poles. Dinner, 3 couples, all older people, above 60, one couple had oddly sounding ski ending of their family name. I asked about their possible Polish roots. It was a rude question it turned out, silence followed it, after they left I was told that ex Poles if they prove loyalty to Germany and forget about that Polish flaw in their surnames can become good Germans. Total germanization of behavior is naturally required.

So, Germans want to germanize all, but Slavs will slavicize, and that is one universal discipline that ends with screaming ;)

Delphiandomine, I have a background that doesn't/didn't disqualify anybody because of his/hers ethnical background. I was taught exactly the opposite, to observe with interest different cultures. My wider family is full of foreigners. Mixed marriages everywhere. It is my Western experience that taught me what am I, that I as a Slav, Serb am something different from them.

My parents were/are (one of them is alive) it seems uninformed people and I hate them for not preparing me for my journeys.

Exactly.The Germans accept you as long as you belong to upper middle class of your native country and are prone to germanization.They test these identities continuously and pass it as a lesson.

Philip Melanchthon, Luther's colleague, said in his letter about Nicolaus Copernicus:

"Some people think that it is a great thing to work out so absurd theory , like ths Sarmatian astronomer , who stops the sun and moves the earth ".

If a German thinker close to Martin Luther calls Nicolaus Copernicus a Sarmatian astronomer , it is just another proof , that Kopernik was not German . Sarmatism was known as virtually Polish trend in life .

"Sarmatism" (also, "Sarmatianism") is a term designating the dominant lifestyle, culture and ideology of the szlachta (nobility) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Together with "Golden Liberty," it formed a central aspect of the Commonwealth's culture. At its core was the belief that Polish nobles were descended from the ancient Sarmatians.

Correct. My accident from the past. After closer scrutiny of my family background and tests of my liquidity during longer period, I finally got incentives to settle there. There was no will on my side.

For sure there was such thing as Polish ethnicity, but it was not necessarily very distinct around AD 966. Yet even at that time there used to exist a common language group which later become known as Polish. The tribe of Polans spoke basically the same language as the Vistulans, so was the language of Mazovians (the Pomeranians however belonged to a different language group). The language of the Silesians could differ a little bit more, but it seems to have been linguistically closer to the Polish group than to the Czech-Slovakian group, although we must bear in mind that in 966 Polish and Czech languages were much more closer to each other than they are today.

The concept of "tribe" itself is very much challenged by scientists today as one which is old-fashioned and not very accurate, so one should not assign such an importance to one tribe or another.

The literaly form of the standard Polish language has been based on the dialect of Vistulans with incursions from the dialect of Polans.

Of course ... I am en expert on Medieval history in the Baltic region :) But as I pointed out, there were still many German Catholics remaining in Prussia well after Luther. I would also add, part of the reason the German towns went Lutherin as soon as it became available is because they hated the Teutonic Order so much. HATED. Not just a little "economic hassle" like some other posters had said. Don't forget the Teutonic Knights killed 10,000 people in Danzig in 1308, and killed most of the City Council in 1412. This is why the towns turned against the Order. After Grunwald Jogaila pardoned all the German burghers who had fought for the Order and let them go home without paying a ransom. This made them more friendly to Poland. Then the Order demanded ransom money from the towns and killed several members of the town council, and also executed the leaders of the Eidechsenbund /Związek Jaszczurczy knightly league which (relevant to Copernicus) was from Chelmnoland, whom they blamed for losing the battle. Thus they alienated both the Burghers and the Gentry of Prussia, even while Jogiala continued to appear both powerful and reasonable, while the Teutonic Knights appeared crazy and bitter. Small wonder the Germans wanted to switch allegiences, it would hardly be the first time that had happened in Europe.

I would also add, for context, there was always strong tension between trading towns, especially the Hanse towns, and the Church went back to the early Middle Ages. Most of those towns were originally owned by the Bishops or Abbots, and they fought wars of independence to be free. Not just in Germany, but all across northern Europe, Belgium, Flanders, Holland, Sweden, Czech. I won't get into the details because you are probably not interested, but there are plenty of records as evidence. So the turn to Lutherinism was hardly surprising. It also echoed the Hussite rebellion and the subsequent purge of Church control from the towns and Estates of Bohemia and Moravia.

Ethnicity was not the same concept in the 15th and 16th Century as it is today. Poland and German were languague groups, cultural identities to some extent. As others have pointed out, Poland included Lithuanians, Samogitians, Ruthenians, Curonians, Masovians, Silesians, Lusatians, Czechs, Slovaks, Swedes, Scots, Mordvins... and plenty of Frisians, Saxons, Franconians, Thuringians, Bavarians and so on. Similarly the Holy Roman Empire included Czechs, Magyars, Walloons, Flemish, Spanish, Italians and French as well as all the various ethnic groups we consider German. There were no clean lines, and no ethnic police to enforce the boundaries.

The horrific legacy of the 20th Century creates a layer of bitterness which is hard to swallow. I understand it, my family were in the French Resistance and I had several family members who werre killed by the Nazi's. I think it is unfortunate however to deny the historical reality that many Germans elected to join Poland voluntarily and rejected the aggressive type of German nationalism represented by the Teutonic Knights, who were an unhappy bunch of men that would have been better suited fighting the Turks.

Not all the Germans were of their ilk, nor were all Poles saints. History is never so clean.

And the truth is, most of the people in that region of what is now northern Poland, including Kopernik, were at least partly of mixed heritage.

G.

You hit the nail on the head there. Sadly some Poles and 'Poles' disagree with you.


How many Poles have you met?

As someone who calls himself an expert you should know that the 10.000 people are propaganda, like the propaganda of the Order who said they killed 16 people. And no, they didn't turn against the Order because of a bunch of killed council men but because the Order raised taxes and because of inner struggles.



So, ethnicity in the modern sense didn't exist, cultural identities only to some extent, yet the order represented "German nationalism". Ahhm, what?

This is true. Not only that but I read that Martin Luther mocked Copernicus by calling him a "foolish Pole" for discovering that the Earth went around the Sun. So even Copernicus' enemies knew he was Polish.


You say there are "many German Catholics remaining in Prussia after Luther". Of course there were still German Catholics in Prussia. Not every single one of them became Lutherans.

But if you mean "many" as in there were more German Catholics then German protestants in Prussia you are wrong.

Do you know what parts of Germany became predominately Lutheran and which parts were Catholic? Take a guess. Central, North and North East Germany became predominately Lutheran. So HELLO......what does that tell you?

Also one of your recent links talked about the SLAVIC background of Copernicus' mother's family.......even though she had a German name. Now I never knew Germans were Slavic?? LOL

Not only that your link said that the cities of Silesia were over half Polish even though economically the Germans were dominate.

Do you want me to show you those things in your own links on Copernicus?

You say Copernicus was of mixed ancestry.

I tell you what, why don't we split the difference here and both agree that Copernicus was mixed but that he was predominately of Polish ancestry?

I said 'expert' with a smiley, I do not seriously consider myself an expert though I am trying to learn. But I am familiar with the basics of the period and subject at hand


I recognize that the exact figure is disputed (usually along nationalistic lines much like the ethnicity of Kopernik / Copernicus), but the number 10,000 is the one which showed up in the contemporaneous Polish lawsuit and in some other period records, and I think it's much closer to the reality than the dramatically lower figures claimed by the Order. It was not the first or the last time a city was put to the sword by a new owner. However many were actually killed, it was sufficient to change many things in the city, including nearly all the rolls of the registered merchants and burghers. And more importantly while yest the disputes were often related to money, this overlapped with the idea of autonomy. The status of a 'Free City'. This is why when the new contract was negotiated with Casimir IV the clause of "Danzigur Wilkur" was put in. The towns wanted the autonomy which they saw as directly linked to their prosperity. But the bottom line was that the Teutonic Knights caused the death of many Burghers of all the Prussian cities, and they eventually started a war for independence against them which lasted 13 years and cost many lives (and a fortune in money) and more wars followed including during Copernicus. And while this can be brushed aside and dismissed, I don't think it was so casual for the people then. Look at people in this forum, World War II was 60 years ago and the bitterness is still palpabale with some folks. I have Irish family who still hate the British from events in the 19th century.


Yes that is right. The Teutonic Order represented a certain type of jingoistic religious - ethnic nationalism which I think was pretty unusual at that time outside of the realm of warrior-monks (the Livonian Order were even worse in this respect) the early form of what later became modern German nationalism. It's no accident that it was Prussia was the State which united Germany into a predatory and aggressive.. and paranoid military State. But even the Order were not as pristine in their racism as people from modern post-industrial States. For example, they absorbed a small Polish* Crusading Order into their ranks, the Zakon Dobrzyński or "Order of Dobrin" in 1235.

Let me make another rather obvious point. It was normal in the Medieval period and the Renaissance for the subjects of a particular region to have a King from a distant land. The British Royal Family, for example, are largely Saxon. The Jageilonian dynasty of Poland was of course, derived of a Lithuanian family. The Czechs alternated between Hungarian, Polish, German, Lithuanian and German rulers through most of their history, until being taken over by the Hapsburgs after the 30 years war. The Germans themselves were often ruled by Spaniards.

As above, so below. The royal families were not the only ones to mix blood. Towns, especially trading towns like the Hanse towns of Poland and Prussia, were particularly and notoriously mixed. Merchants from other places lived in the town for years and brought their families along with them. The Artus Court in Danzig and Torun for example admitted Dutch and Scottish merchants into their ranks by the 16th Century. They had been admitting Poles and Germans since their inception. In the 15th Century Gdansk / Danzig alone had 'factories' from Poland of course, from the Kingdom of Britain, from Lisbon, from Seville, from Bruges, from Amsterdam and from Veliky Novgorod. After this has gone on for a few generations, it gets pretty hard to distinguish who has the pure blood. After all, pretty girls inspire the same sorts of reaction in young men, and money earns the same kinds of reaction in old ones, regrdless who it was tainted with. The only real "ethnic" barriers were across the Catholic / Orthodox religious line (and even there not a complete barrier) and between Muslims and Christians more generally.... but once again even here Poland (Poland -Lithuania) makes an exception by being one of the only nations in Christian Europe to allow Muslims (Tartars) to settle peacefully. At least until the Deluge anyway.

G.

*Naturally, the ethnicity of the knights in this Order are also contested and debated.


Not necessarily. Here in Louisiana we used to call all Americans "Kaintuk" even though we knew most of them didn't actually come from Kentucky. I don't think that really means anything.


Not more, certainly not in the towns, though in some of the Teutonic Knights districts (Ducal Prussia) they remained more Catholic for much longer... but I'm just saying it wasn't an insignificant number. By the 19th Century IN PRUSSIA it looks like Catholics are nearly a third of the population. How many are German Catholics is hard to say though because many were Kashubian and Polish undoubtedly, but there were enough to found a strong German Catholic political party.


See the above.


The Watzenrodes were mixed but probably more German than Slavic, but on the other hand I think his fathers family was the other way around, probably Polish - Silesians.


I agree with that. We know for sure that many cities had mixed Polish - German populations because in some cases theit was mentioned in the town charter and other records. I've seen letters complaining of German and Polish Burghers from a town in Greater Poland near Silesia who were raiding the estates of a Bishop.


You may but I was quite aware of them when I posted them. I was arguing with the guy who claimed that Copernicus / Kopernik was all -German.


I think that is probably accurate. Ethnically, he was mixed, but I would suspect had more Polish blood than German. Culturally he was mixed as well but his alliance was with the Poles politically. Like a lot of the people of mixed and German ancestry at that time!

G.

So he called him Polish , but thought deep down in his heart he was German , that is wrong explanation of yours . BTW If you mention Polish names write them correctly King Władysław Jagiełło not some Jogaila ( don`t mistake him for Yoga , pls )


Also don`t mention other name than Gdańsk here on PH .

Pretty well


Dunno what 'PH' is, but the Baltic's the Baltic. And Gdansk is Danzig. The Polish 'government' may have 'celebrated' International Hanseatic Day several years ago by closing the border with Germany for 12 hours, but you can't just cancel out history just by a) renaming something and b) lying.

Why didn`t he call him simply a foolish astronomer ........ Why did Philip Melanchthon call him sarmatian ........

I know why - he was playing this famous German medieval game by saying instead of " oh those foolish Germans " - " foolish Poles" .

Ahhhha, now I get it . You discovered that unsolved puzzle of all times -" where do the origins of polish jokes come from ". Well done Sherlock .

Source showing Copernicus called himself Polish is?

Sources he called himself German , pls

There is a monument to Polish Kopernik in Serbia

Serbians knows

I'm not claiming he considered himself to be German, so I don't need to provide such.

In fact I'd very much argue against the notion that he considered himself to be German. Just as I'd very much argue against the notion that he considered himself to be Polish.

Where this silly idea of your have taken roots ?
Gdańsk was funded by the Duke of Poland in early 980's.Important center for Piast dynasty, Germans could be there at the time as slaves.

And Copernicus was Polish in the sense that he was loyal subject of the Polish Crown. This quest for his ethnic DNA is not only stupid but also pointless and racist - you lot should be ashamed of yourselves.

I-S (He was Polish in spiritual; and cultural sense of the word.)

Just *why* are you so hung up on the fact that someone might be a little bit Polish? I mean, you're American, not Polish, why do you care?

Thank you Serbians ; it is nice that you don`t want to distort our history unlike some lunatic home spun German historian . Poland has always had to deal with usurpers from behind Odra river . We survived germanization we will survive this next attempt of stealing our identity .

And Poland repays Serbia back by believing all the BS spread in the media about the Serbs being demons. Nice :( :(

Copernicus was not only Polish. Being European, he was of mixed blood. My wife is the same. She is more German by blood but Polish by nationality and upbringing.

Not demons: genocidal rapists. And not BS: facts confirmed by numerous courts of law.

But do feel free to keep blindly chanting "My enemy's enemy is my friend. My enemy's enemy is my friend. My enemy's enemy is my friend. My enemy's enemy is my friend." Right up until they rape your mother and sister and then murder you after you've watched.

PWEI, further discussion of it is not for this thread.

Now, Copernicus. Clearly not 100% Polish.

Clearly not 100% any ethnicity!

I'd argue against anybody who claimed the bloke was 50+% any ethnicity.

And Curie was French ;) ;)

Well, Copernicus was born into Poland as Thorn had changed to Torun by 7 years but that doesn't conclude the matter.

still and always the same crapp coming from you mr pakistani. you dont have ANY clue and start to be boring. sehr!


ok, 1 on 1 on the court. i'll give you 5 in advance. we'll play to 12 and a three counts 2. ok?

It's exactly this kind of nonsense that makes Poland sound like some village backwater.