GERMANS WANT TO GERMANIZE KOPERNIK (COPERNICUS)! OUTRAGE!

Zittau, like the Bohemian towns south of the border, was mostly German too, unlike the other Upper Lusatian towns it was just part of Bohemia proper for some time. Bautzen and Kamenz on the other hand had a large Sorbian population.

You'll soon learn that unless you're 100% behind Polish interests at all times (and never ever commenting on times when Poles have done bad things), certain racist elements of this forum will attack you constantly. It's amusing ;)

Oh , really , why do Germans claim Kopernik to be German if he was born in Poland .

Does it really matter where he was from?

why should i care. he is not part of this topic.


read the following. there is a little clue in there.
history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Copernicus.html

for me, if he was born in Poland then he was Polish. usual exceptions apply.

Because Poland was a multiethnic country maybe? Lucas Watzenrode, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Arthur Schopenhauer and Andreas Schlüter were born in Poland. Are they Poles?

Yes but the point is that it would have taken more than 7 years to change the Prussian character of Thorn to a new Torun. He had German speakers around him.

BY BIRTH THEY ARE . So , they should be called Polish too . The same as Newton is called British. Poland before the WWII was a multinational country , if you don`t know !

Interesting, though not surprising. This area was another melting pot. My sources said Zittau had a lot of Czechs, I suspect four of them did at any rate after being sacked by the Hussites in the 1430s. But I'm interested to learn more, I knew Bautzen was an early center of the Sorbs but I wasn't aware of large numbers of the Sorbs in Bautzen in the late Medieval period? You don't happen to have a source for this do you? I'm interested to learn more.

G

I hope I don't come across as trying to undermine Poland, it's not my intention. I'm sorry for reviving the thread.

G

Galloglaich,

For you to say what you said, I take you at your word that you're not trying to undermine Poland. I'm sure you're a nice guy. Just because you may have some views that are different than mine or some other Polish people here, that doesn't mean that you have bad will towards Poland or anyone else. The problem here is that there are anti-Polish trolls here who will use some of your information.......... against Poland and Polish people. That is what I think is escalating things here.

Thanks,

Yeah I've noticed that. Some really rabid anti-polish regulars on this forum, a few pro-polish forumites who seem to have a lot of agnst as well.

Where do most of these anti-polish posters come from? US? UK? Germany?

Among people I know in the US I think they really just don't know anything about Poland other than Kielbasa and Polka. Lots of people in the US of Polish heritage but we haven't had polish immigration on a large scale in a while, at least not near where I live. I don't think people here have a sense of what Poland or Polish people are like.

I remember when I was in France several years ago there was this controversy about Eastern European immigrants in the French economy and the catch-phrase they used was the "Polish Plumber". Then I remember reading a little while later that Poland had made an ad campaign around a handsome plumber, inviting tourists to come to Poland. It seemed very clever, turned the whole stereotype right on it's head.

When I visited Czech republic for the first time I was shocked by how prosperous and beautiful it was. I think if most Americans had any real idea what North-Eastern Europe was like they would have a very positive view of it. But it really doesn't even exist in our media except in ridiculous films like "hostel".

Anyway, I didn't mean to open a can of worms. I naively thought the somewhat multicultural family history of Kopernik would be inspirational and really (in my opinion) puts Poland in a rather positive light.

G

It would do, were there not a problem with certain Poles claiming that Copernicus was 100% Polish and so demonstrating the problems that some in this country (and more plastic Poles in the US) have with truth in history and racism.

None of the Upper Lusatian towns ever had a larger Czech minority. It doesn't make sense since the settlement history was totally different. Czechs didn't settle in these border forests, and they also didn't settle north of these forests. The Hussites also only plundered these towns. A de-Germanization only happened in regions were the German element was not strong, i.e. parts of Bohemia and Upper Silesia. The latter was partly Czechified, a fact almost forgotten today.

Many Protestant Czechs however fled to Upper Lusatia during the counter-reformation, and Zittau for example had a small Czech community until the late 19th century. Zittau also owns parts of Pragues cathedral treasury, since the canons fled to the town during the Hussite wars.

I only know this because I worked in this region for some time (EU programs) and bought a few books there, mainly German ones. And since you said you read many Czech and Polish historians: I hope you know that history books from Communist times should be avoided?!

Thanks, interesting analysis. I do know some Czechs, specifically the Chodov / Psohlavci did in fact live in some border areas somewhat in thee manner of the Polish Gorali, but that was in the south not in Lusatia. What you mentioned about Czechs fleeing to Zittau during the counter-reformation explains perhaps why the english language Wiki asserts that it was a Czech town. Do you know of evidence that the towns had Sorb populations (living inside the town walls not in the Feldmark around it?) As for the "De-Germanization" I know this did happen to a fairly large extent throughout many towns in Moravia and all over Bohemia as well, even further east in what is now Slovakia, as most of the Germans remained Catholic. Only in some zones like around Pilsen were they strong enough to fight off the Hussite armies at the height of their power. Of course there were also a significant number of Germans who were sympathetic to the Hussite cause, and those remained for the most part, including in Prague.

I actually have read more Czech and Polish novels than histories so far, which is what makes me feel that cultural affinity for them. Most of my history comes from 'primary sources' as much as possible, and to a lesser extent through military history sources like Hans Delbruck and Jacob Burckhardt. Though I have read some Polish historical novels (the Henryk Seinkowicz novels) which I know were propagandish to some extent but also fairly accurate. What has endeared me to slavic / central European culture are the 20th Century writers Jersy Kosinsky, Stanislaw Lem (during the Communist era but I do not think biased toward Communist propaganda!) Jaroslav Hasec, Carel Capek, and Franz Kafka among others. The only Polish historians I have some familiarity with are excerpts of some of the work of the 15th Century Jan Długosz (whose complete works are, very sadly, still unavailable in English) which is also biased and even fantastical in parts, but really, no more than most other source from that time... and quite interesting because the man personally knew most of the power players of his era and participated in several of the key events. And some of the various chronicles from Bohemia at that time, cross referenced with the several sources from the Teutonic Order and a few from Scandinavia, and the Chronicles of Novgorod.

I will say that some of the historical films I've seen from the Communist era in Czechoslovakia and Poland (such as the trilogy of films about Jan Ziska, Alexander Ford's "Krzyzacy", and the With Fire and Sword trilogy), while heavily biased in their point of view, are more accurate on a technical level than any equivalent films set in Medieval times produced by the Americanss or British. And less obviously biased than the post-Communist Russian films I've seen like Taras Bulba or 1612. And to be honest, if you go back and watch American films from the 1950's and 1960's they are pretty sharply slanted toward American Cold War proaganda for that matter.

But I tend to view everything with a grain of salt. You have to try to cross reference sources, history is a tricky puzzle.

G

BB had some interesting things to say though I don't believe he was as German as he painted him. The truth, as ever, lies somewhere inbetween.

Aren't you obsessed with your version of truth in history and seeing racism in every shadow.

He didn't - that is something that was written in 1603 by Christmann (incidentally, a Jewish convert).


No one denies that he wrote in German too and probably had some German blood. Incidentally, Watzenrode is also perhaps a Germanized Slavic name. However, having a Polish grandmother makes him Polish - he is part of our Tribe - whether you also want to include him in yours is your business.

How come most of Poland's great scientists, mathematicians and inventors had either German or Jewish blood? Why are there very Polish scientists that are 100% Polish.

Copernicus had German ancestry.

Marie Currie had a German grandparent.

Stanislaw Ulam was Jewish.

So and so forth.

^I meant to ask why are there very FEW Polish scientists...

That would be because very very few Poles, if any, are 100% Polish.

Define 100% Polish.


How do you know? How many scientists do you know/? you seems more comic books ekspert.

It is clear that you think that Marie it was Currie's German grandparent who taught her the science
not polish education and polish parents . Right, clever Captain ?


How come that Ashkenazi Jews (that made some contribution to the science ) are a mixture of European nations and European cultures and belong to European civilization ( not Jewish civilization ) and used European languages ?

In fact Ashkenazi Jews have little to do with the semitic world . How come that ?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews

In his view this suggested "that Jewish men had arrived from the Middle East, taken wives from the host population and converted them to Judaism, after which there was no further intermarriage with non-Jews."[111]

Gil Atzmon of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, noted that there had been mass conversions to Judaism in the early Roman empire, resulting in some 6 million citizens, or 10 percent of the population, practicing Judaism.

Give us the sources of your ridiculous information, please .

Take for example the Nazis, they labeled the modern physics in Germany as "Jewish science", or take the so called German school of mathematics in Gettingen, Germany almost all were Jews, take Marx etc etc etc.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert

About a year later, Hilbert attended a banquet and was seated next to the new Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust. Rust asked, "How is mathematics in Göttingen now that it has been freed of the Jewish influence?" Hilbert replied, "Mathematics in Göttingen? There is really none any more."[15]

(Jewish Math school in Göttingen was the most important scientific school in Germany)

So it is very easy to distinguish between the Polish and German sciences because unlike Germany, in Polish science it is not possible to find such things as Jewish science and Jewish scientific school . Just remember that, no such thing as Jewish science and Jewish scientific school in Poland . It is easy, OK ?

So, Germans = Nazis?

Kopernik is small loss in comparison to Polish losses in historical context. Germaniztion is process. Think of Poland`s casualties in WWII. Almost 6 million people. Think of unborn Polish children. That every child was one Kopernik.

Undoubtedly, not all Germans were Nazis, but the majority of the Nazis were Germans. It is amazing how this nation let themselves be fooled by a group of criminal ideologists. Unlike the Bolsheviks who seized power through a revolution, Hitler and his clique were freely elected by the Germans, receiving a mandate to build a One-Thousand Year Reich. Yet, they survived only through a fraction of that time and all they achieved was the destruction of Europe, the holocaust of the Jews of Europe and the loss of Pomerania and Silesia (which Prussia conquered on Austria in 1741) to Poland.

Kopernik's ancestry as coming from Silesia may have been Polish-speaking Silesians or germanized Silesians, also they may have been ethinc Germans, ethnic Dutch or ethnic Flemish people. But he himself was a loyal subject of the Polish king defending the country against the Teutonic Order.

At the last free elections they took part in, they didn't get a majority. They took advantage of a crisis to get into office.


More a case of being unable to do anything about it once the fascists had taken power.

Whoever or whatever Copernicus was; that identity doesn't exist today. The concept of nationality was different, citizenship in the modern sense was non-existent, the idea of the nation state was different, the population was tiny compared to today, ideas and information were disseminated differently and people's cultural identity was different.

Pretending that Copernicus was a Pole or a German just because someone happens to be one him/herself is meaningless and laughable. At least he's entitled to have statues of himself in two countries, one of which has far greater scientific achievement both past and present than the other and one of which gets quite passionate about him.

Crow, friend, you're exaggerating dreadfully as usual


No pretending here. You are confusing science and ethnicity .

Nobody in the world outside Germany thinks that Kopernik was German as scientist.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia Americana, The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, The Oxford World Encyclopedia, and World Book Encyclopedia refer to Copernicus as a "Polish astronomer".

The East (Russia, Byelorussia, the Ukraine) thinks the same

AS a scientist Kopernik was Polish there is no doubt about it.


At the time the majority of Germans supported the fascist movements and shared the ideas TIL THE END.
denazification process WAS NEEDED...............
What should I think ?

People like you usually complain about the west and the "wrong" version of history they supposedly teach there. Why make an exception now? :)

Aside from the fact that calling him a scientist is just historically lazy, it seems there's a lot of doubt. The various threads discussing that on here are a tiny and barely relevant part of the wider discussion about his nationality which is a complicated matter since the changes in meaning of that term since the period he lived in.

If you still believe or pretend to believe that


why not do something very simple. Google 'Copernicus German' and see how many things come up. Thousands and thousands. But hey, you say there's


.

I recall reading a study where the hair of Copernicus was analyzed and his Y chromosome signature was found to belong to the r1b haplogroup which is hard evidence that his paternal line was with high certainty German. (Most Polish men belong to the r1a haplogroup.)


How do you know what influence Marie Currie's German grandparent had on her? Maybe her grandparent instilled the strict and efficient German lifestyle on her through her half-German parent which encouraged her to study science?


What do you define as modern physics? The founders of quantum physics were non-Jewish Germans (Heisenberg, Max Planck, Schrodinger, etc.) What the Nazis thought was irrelevant. Most Germans were not Nazis and the overwhelming majority of modern Germans reject such ideology.


Not true. Most of Poland's Nobel Prize winners in science were Jewish. The Polish School of Mathematics was made of mostly people with either Jewish or German admixture.


Well said.