Talk:German question

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Why is the "Racist" and "Anti-Semitic" part of Großdeutschland emphasized here?
Großdeutschland, (i.e., Greater Germany) was not conceived on the basis of race, it was conceived on the basis of language (i.e., a Union of German language speaking peoples). Can we de-emphasize the racist thing?

ArmchairVexillologistDonLives! (talk) 02:50, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Fine by me. This article needs a major spruce-up regardless, it barely goes into the politics on both sides or why the "left" in general favored Grossdeutschland, etc.  That text was just copied from the old Grossdeutschland article. SnowFire (talk) 05:58, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Inappropriate use of non-English characters
"ß" is used extensively in this article, but I think it should not be. This German character, pronounced "ss", is not generally well-known to English speakers who may be interested in this article. It is not even used at all in Switzerland. I think it should be changed to 'ss' in the first instance (or at least explained), and then the use of the German term should be reduced throughout the article, in favor of the English translation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with you, and have used "Grossdeutschland" etc. before. Especially odd since that since 1996, Germany doesn't use it so much either.  Alas, WikiProject Germany/Conventions doesn't, so when other editors have changed it to use the ß, I haven't tried to edit war back.


 * I wouldn't complain if the convention on this changed, though that would be a debate for another page. SnowFire (talk) 19:40, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, I raised the issue on the talk page of that Conventions page. My own view is that we are far too liberal in our use of non-English characters, to the detriment of our readership.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:00, 23 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Use of an English translation throughout is not unproblematic. I think the reason that the article follows many scholars in using the German term is that translation involves a degree of interpretation (and thus POV) that may be unacceptable. A rough translation may be OK to give the non-specialist English speaker an idea of the meaning, but the use of parentheses indicates that the translation may be imprecise or slightly misleading. Some of the problems with the translation are:
 * groß in German can represent large (size) or great (power, status) in English.
 * in German großdeutsch is the adjectival equivalent of Großdeutschland; this does not work in English (Great British is not the adjectival equivalent of Great Britain; the same applies to Great German)
 * using the comparative form (greater/lesser) may sound more normal, but introduces a comparative that may distort the meaning.
 * different people supporting the idea of either Großdeutschland or Kleindeutschland may or may not have supported the concepts implied by a particular translation.
 * --Boson (talk) 15:44, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I understand your point about the translation. Would you support using 'Grossdeutschland'?  The key aim is to aid the reader in comprehension.  For English speakers, ß is often virtually unknown. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:50, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I could live with it in this article  but seeing German cultural terms or proper names with an "alternative" spelling still grates. I would at least expect a note explaining the correct spelling of the German term. This article is perhaps an extreme case in that the ß is introduced without explanation. So far, discussions have mainly been about article titles, where the letter can easily be explained to the reader using the Foreignchars hatnote, and the necessary pronunciation guide (IPA or sound file) is easy to find. This would have been simpler here before the articles were merged. I would like to hear more opinions from people who have read several articles containing a ß. This should only be a problem the first time a person encounters the character. I think the correct spelling of German words for German proper names or cultural concepts gives Wikipedia more credibility, perhaps at the expense of intelligibility (for a few minutes) to the more casual reader, and less typographical consistency. In most cases, though, I think we would be better off with a way of quickly explaining the character to the casual reader (e.g. using something like the Foreignchar template or a footnote). --Boson (talk) 22:31, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I disagree. The purpose of the English Wikipedia is not to teach English-speakers the alphabets used in other languages.  (Not that that's not a good thing to learn.  It is good to know other languages.  But English Wikipedia is not the place to learn them.)  The purpose of English Wikipedia is to create an encyclopedia in English.  That means English words, written in the "English" alphabet.  Neutron (talk) 23:37, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * But there are exceptions to the use of English words, where foreign words are used in English prose with good reason. This is usually indicated by using italics, as here. Großdeutsche Lösung is a German term, deliberately used in English prose to express a concept specific to German culture. It is unlikely to be assimilated into the English language like "kindergarten". It is quite appropriate to use the correct original spelling and pronunciation for such such terms, transliteration being necessary in less speciaist works only when a non-Latin alphabet is involved. So this is not a case of using English words written in the English alphabet, but of foreign words written in the English alphabet. Whether the term should be translated is a separate question, which needs to be decided in each case (unless we want to proscribe all use of foreign words). Sometimes it is better to use the original term in italics; sometimes a calque, like "National Assembly" is appropriate (even where the individual words would not be used for a similar American institution); sometimes a "cultural translation" may be considered appropriate (e.g. "prime minister" rather than "minister president"). --Boson (talk) 07:40, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The question to me is, does the German term have to be used throughout the whole article, or could it be sufficient to be used on first appearance with the correct spelling with the appropiate alphabet and a transliteration into the English alphabet. And than subsequently only the English term is used.--Wuselig (talk) 09:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * On reflection, I think that might be the lesser evil.--Boson (talk) 19:36, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Never included all German speaking peoples
I'd just like to point out a slight inaccuracy in the article, the German Question never seems to have included all German speaking peoples, since it neglected Switzerland. The Swiss Germans are not even mentioned in the article, and I don't remember there being any discussion of them in the contest between Prussia and Austria and even Hitler never attempted to include them in his versions of "Greater Germany". I just think that should be noted, for completeness. --Hibernian (talk) 13:25, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There is also no talk about the Netherlands. You can read the reason why here. This topic had been seetled more than 200 years erlier. The Swiss had de facto been independent since 1499. --Wuselig (talk) 23:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, Austria had been pseudo-claiming to be protector of all Germany for some time, back in the days of the HRE. So there was cultural currency that (modern) "Germany" and Austria were connected. SnowFire (talk) 01:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * That's not true at all. Switzerland was very well incorporated into the thoughts of at least some thinkers of German unity. Ludwig I of Bavaria, the poet Ernst Moritz Arndt (see his poem Des Deutschen Vaterland and others clearly favoured a unified Germany including Switzerland. And one shouldn't forget that many Swiss intellectuals of that era, such as Gottfried Keller or Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, shared this sentiment and thought of Switzerland as an (at least partly) ethnically German state that should rejoin the "grander fatherland". -- Orthographicus (talk) 19:21, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Merge with German dualism
The German dualism and German question articles discuss the same topic. As such, German dualism should be merged here. Neelix (talk) 23:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Not... entirely.  de:Deutscher_Dualismus is separate from de:Deutshe Frage, and the dualism article covers the general Austria-Prussia rivalry before the German question debate really existed.  That said, I'm not sure I've ever heard the construction "German dualism" used in English, nor does a friend of mine more knowledgeable about this, so arguably "German dualism" should be moved to "Austria-Prussia rivalry" or something.  It's certainly only a stub at the moment anyway. SnowFire (talk) 19:27, 22 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it seems we need to move "dualism" to "Austria-Prussia rivalry" and added content. So far, it seems like a list of articles. In fact, it could be argued that this question was only a smaller part of the larger rivalry. Cosman246 (talk) 04:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Is it important to specifically call out Hitler's Austrian birth?
Mugwump and 14Adrian appear to think so ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=German_question&diff=455841471&oldid=455294852 ). True, this entire article needs more sources, but I am challenging this as a relevant fact in the "German question" article. (See Verifiability ). For sure, this is mentioned in articles on Hitler himself, and probably the Anschluss as well, but this is hardly a key fact to bring up in a one-paragraph summation of the Anschluss. There are many more facts we could discuss that are actually relevant to it. Hitler was a pan-German nationalist is the main point, but he was a Germany-German nationalist as well and Germany had an overwhelming role in the combined state created after the Anschluss. I'm not sure what exactly is trying to be implied by the reference to Austrian birth - that Austria took over Germany? Because that isn't what actually happened.

If you can find sources that claim that Hitler's Austrian birth was somehow keyly important to the Anschluss, we can talk again. SnowFire (talk) 03:23, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

do you say Austria or Austria-Hungary Empire ? RhineConfederation and Prussia and Hanover make **little** Germany   **Then** to put Austria their to Germany to make great Germany **It is shame to bring but Austria born and homeland on putting to **relevant** **relevant** born place is put on Germany as legitimacy claim on dictatorship **but not Wien born** Wienbarmaid (talk) 17:29, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Redirect to Greater Germany?
This has been tagged as not citing any references or sources sense 2010. Should we redirect it to Greater Germany? Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 17:59, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * No, because the proper splitting of topics is independent of references except when a topic is so minor and unreferenced as to not deserve its own article. Merging all of this in to that article would overwhelm the Pan-Germanism article, and deleting information would also be bad because I don't believe any of it is really contested.  As to if references can be found...  well the answer to that is yes of course.  See the list of books in de:Deutsche_Frage.  It'd be disingenuous to remove the tag here in the English article and paste those references in unless someone actually consults them and/or translates more of the German article, though.  (And it'd be great if someone did actually look 'em over and update this article, of course!) SnowFire (talk) 02:37, 25 October 2012 (UTC)


 * It's been two years, if sources are going to be found why haven't they been found? The point is that section has sources, this article doesn't. I'm not saying merge most of the content of this article into that section, the content isn't sourced, that would defeat the purpose. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 10:40, 25 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I *just linked* you to sources on this topic. They have been "found."  They merely need to be consulted.  At absolute worst, we'd just wholesale translate the article in the German WP, sources & all.  And the barest Google Books search turns up plenty of hits - Metternich and the German Question: States' Rights and Federal Duties, 1820-1834 for example, which reiterates some of the information in this article just in the prologue.  There is information that has not been nicely sourced & referenced yet, but wait somebody sitting down and doing some reading and fixing the article up, and totally unsourced crazy ramblings.  This article is the former and not remotely worthy of deletion, which is what you seem to think.  I added in the above reference.  Anyway, don't get me wrong, somebody eventually needs to sit down and research this article properly and add references with line numbers and all, but this is true of 99.9% of Wikipedia's content that isn't Featured Articles.  This is a real topic and not made-up. SnowFire (talk) 17:45, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Recent edits
I modified your recent additions somewhat. I see you're doing this for a school project. Some of the addition is good, but I think this might be the wrong article for it? All of the "Later influence" section is essentially a long postscript. This article is supposed to be mostly about the German Question when Germany was disunited in the 19th century, with the 20th century being a bit of a footnote (with the Anschluss being the exception, but it only lasts for ~7 years). There's no need to go into the (horrible) persecution of political opponents and Jews after the Anschluss, for example - that's more for the Anschluss article. In the same way, some of your additions seem better for History of Germany, History of Austria, etc. and their sub-articles. Again, this article is really about the debate in the 1800s.

Finally, your additions on Switzerland - Wikipedia is weird in that it prefers secondary sources ( WP:SECONDARY). So just quoting some German or Swiss intellectual directly is not encouraged, because it's very easy to accidentally create nonsense. We'd much rather cite historians who've studied the matter, because otherwise people can easily cite irrelevant or misleading bits of primary sources (like Ardnt & Mayer). I've moved this to a separate section for now; do you have any sources from historians or the like who think that the Swiss side is relevant to cover, specifically as part of The German Question movement / debate, and not "here's a random person who wanted Switzerland to join Germany?" SnowFire (talk) 05:20, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 18 May 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 11:03, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

German Question → German question – More often than not, this term is not consistently capitalized in reliable sources. See naive NGRAMS, filtered for uses in sentences (as opposed to titles or citations) Google Scholar results show it's not consistently capitalized as well: (t · c)  buidhe  18:32, 18 May 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. -- Calidum  00:56, 31 May 2021 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Weak Oppose . I don't think ngrams are going to be very helpful here, because this article is specifically on a 19th century political idea, not a generic question that's German.  The Google Scholar link is relevant... but...  that list clearly shows a lot of other generic German questions that were just problems of the day or related to post-WWII division of Germany or the like.  I think these Google Scholar searches might be more relevant: "german question" kleindeutschland, "german question" grossdeutschland.  Usage seems to favor the capital letter here, although it is still split and some of the capital usage is title case which can be thrown out.  Anyway, I'd say to favor the current title for stability's sake, although the lowercase version clearly does see some use.   SnowFire (talk) 22:02, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I checked the first ten results for the latter of your searches. 7/10 don't capitalize it. (t · c)  buidhe  22:49, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * That's not my reading of the results. The preponderance of the first search seems to show most sources capitalizing it, and the second search - while it does show a few using lowercase - seem to be from sources like "World-Market Strategy and World-Power Politics: German Europeanization and Globalization Projects in the 1990s" or "Poland, the German question, and German unification, 1989–1991" which are unrelated hits (i.e. not related to the 19th century political dispute, the topic of this article).  I will grant that "Nationalism in Germany, 1848–1866: Revolutionary Nation " seems to use lower case though, hence my acknowledgment of at least some mixed usage.  SnowFire (talk) 18:05, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I went a bit deeper into the Google Scholar hits, checking the 2nd /3rd /4th pages. Okay, even restricting it to just articles on the 1800s dispute, the usage is more mixed than the first page let on.  I've struck my vote, no opinion then.  SnowFire (talk) 18:09, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It's not a generic question about Germany, it's the "German Question". Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:51, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This is not a valid rationale according to article capitalization guidelines, so I hope it will be ignored by the closer. As noted above, most reliable sources don't capitalize it. (t · c)  buidhe  23:06, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The closer can take notice of the various viewpoints expressed by editors in good standing and give then the weight they think they deserve. They neither count !votes nor decide mechanically by reference to guidelines, which -- as always -- are not mandatory.  Nor, for that matter, does repetition make a point stronger. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:43, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per our guidance how to decide, in MOS:CAPS. Another look at ngrams reveals a small number of contexts where caps are pretty common, which correspond to oft-cited titles in Title Case, while most contexts make it clear that lowercase dominates. Dicklyon (talk) 01:12, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Support. From my own quick survey of relevant sources, and excluding title case, it seems to be split about 50/50. I would point out, in contrast to the claim that the 19th century topic is the German question, in academic literature "the German question" very frequently refers to the question of German unification after 1945 (currently discussed here under "later influence"). I find, on the first page of Google Books for "the German question", 7 entries (and 1 duplicate) referring to this, 1 referring to a third period (The German Question Since 1919 by Stefan Wolff), and only 1 specifically referring to the 19th century topic. This is also shown in 's Ngrams with the large spike after WW2. So there's no reason to treat the 19th century topic as "the" rightful and inevitably capitalised German Question. It's also noteworthy that among 19th century sources themselves, which naturally refer to the 19th century topic, the usage is almost invariably lower case (again, as shown in the Ngrams, but this can be verified on Google Books with a 19th-century-only search). —Nizolan (talk · c.) 20:40, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: I am confused about the scope of the article. If this article is supposed to be broad and include all the issues of unification and reunification across the centuries that people have called the "German Question"/"question", then it seems to become an article about the phrase "German Question"/"question" itself, i.e. a WP:WORDISSUBJECT "lens" article. On the other hand, if this article is supposed to be about the 19th century ideas, then it may not even be the primary topic for "German Question"/"question", and it should have another title, for example "Kleindeutschland–Großdeutschland debate" as SnowFire once floated at Talk:Großdeutschland (disambiguation). The scope of the article in relation to the title seems to be the real issue running through the discussion so far, while capitalization is just a bike-shed. Adumbrativus (talk) 09:51, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS (esp. MOS:SIGCAPS and MOS:DOCTCAPS), and innumerable prior similar RMs. All we care about is whether the term is near-uniformly capitalized in reliable sources. It is not, so that is the end of the question.  None of the typical Proper name (philosophy) or imporance-based arguments brought by SnowFire or BMK have anything to do with how WP uses capital letters.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:52, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment. For about the billionth time, SMcCandlish, please respond to my actual statement not a straw man of what you think is my position (unless you think I'm inexplicably lying?  For what end?).  My weak oppose above (since struck anyway, although due to buidhe's comment not yours) was based off the usage in the preponderance of the sources (and was struck after I was convinced the preponderance wasn't as strong as my initial investigation).  It was not based on "philosophy" or "importance".  If you can't be bothered to understand another's statements, then don't comment on them.  SnowFire (talk) 18:05, 10 June 2021 (UTC)