Category talk:Centuries in Germany

Proposal for a clear relationship between Category:Centuries in Germany and Category:Centuries in the Holy Roman Empire
Background information: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_8.

The key notion underlying this proposal is that we should distinct between imperial history and local history. Note that we already categorize local history in current country categories e.g. Category:12th century in Switzerland.
 * Imperial history would also include clashes between duchies and counties if is concerns a struggle for imperial power.
 * Local history would also include clashes between duchies and counties if there is only a local significance.

Proposal - for example for the 12th century:

Category:12th century in the Holy Roman Empire
 * for imperial history only
 * definitely not in a family relationship to Category:12th century in Germany or any other current countries because the borders were entirely different than nowadays (e.g. Holy Roman Empire might become a child category of Poland but a parent category of Switzerland, that's really not what we should want)
 * instead referring to Category:12th century in Germany in the headnote, and also referring to Category:12th century in Switzerland etc.

Category:12th century in Germany
 * for local history only
 * only as a container category (this is key to the proposal! if must be a container category, because it would be too ambiguous for using directly in articles)
 * subdivided by each of the 16 current states, e.g. Category:12th century in Rhine-Westphalia
 * the 16 current states may possibly have a family relationship with historical counties, duchies and prince-bishoprics, e.g. if there would be a Category:12th century in the Prince-Bishopric in Cologne I think it could be parented to Category:12th century in Rhine-Westphalia (I'm not too sure of this)

Same way not only about centuries but also about decades and years. (However, I wouldn't expect a subdivision in decades or years would be useful for the proposed categories of the 16 current states.)

Please note that this proposal does not require any merge, rename or delete action. It would require creating new categories though (namely century categories for the 16 states).

Please share your comments. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:57, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Is this actually an issue? Or are we just anticipating an issue? I realize that we should not consider the HRE and Germany as one and the same; territories were added and deleted over time. But it was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, so....  I suspect defining some categories as "local history" only would confuse people.  I'm an historian of Germany and it would confuse me. How about Central Europe? auntieruth (talk) 20:15, 22 May 2015 (UTC)