Talk:Germans/Archive 4

Error
Mozart was Austrian not German ! German ???? My god --93.147.196.203 (talk) 22:19, 13 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, unfortunately it is some german nationalists who have the say here in wikipedia concerning such articls. In german wikipedia even Joseph Haydn is an "austrian-german". (!) However this is wrong.--80.240.225.83 (talk) 07:55, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Albert einstein's opinion
"If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew." so, Albert Einstein was a Jew, while the Nazi regime decline his German citizen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.229.171.142 (talk) 11:59, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Since his theory of relativity was correct he obviously was a German and the Nazis were wrong. 84.167.26.62 (talk) 21:34, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Complete failure of logic. What happens when a martian comes here from outer space who has a higher intelligence than you, and he claims he is German? Is his argument automatically valid simply because it thinks of itself as German and possesses knowledge that you don't? --78.53.84.145 (talk) 13:39, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Name

 * The German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc (from diot "people"), referring to the Germanic "language of the people. In Old High German, the term was thus not an ethnonym, but an adjective identifying the language of the common people, translating Latin vulgaris.

Hmm. This needs references. There is really no contradiction between being an ethnic endonym and being a common word. Such endonyms frequently have this kind of etymology. The calque suggestion strikes me as problematic too. Who made this suggestion? The linguistic use of vulgaris is a product of a culturally specific dichotomy, namely, high register versus low register use in the world of the Wahla; it is hard to see how this would have made sense in the Germanic world. Also the word is used in England as a word for the English language (8th century I think). This suggests the word was coined before the Anglo-Saxon migrations. It is perfectly plausible that the word spread from Frankish of course, though in a Frankish sense anything calquing vulgaris would be more likely referring to the walhisc language of Gaul than the aristocratic/military Germanic language. Also, the Oaths of Strasbourg contrast the term teudisca with romana when the latter clearly refers to vulgar Latin, suggesting very strongly that in the "Old High German" period the word diutisc was used ethnically. Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk ) 14:38, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The main article is theodiscus. This is indeed a case of an ethnic endonym developing from a common word (adjective). There is a significant difference between France and Germany here: In France, the subject population was Roman (i.e. "Welsh") and the ruling population was Germanic ("theodiscus"). In Germany, there was no Latin-speaking subject population, and Latin was the language of the educated classes (clergy) from the beginning.

I base my claim of the original (8th century) meaning of diutisc on this,
 * "The use of theodisce/deutsch was first attested in 786 in a report to Pope Hadrian I. Texts from a synod held in Corbridge, England were read tam latine quam theodisce "both in Latin and in the vernacular".

I do think that the summary I presented can still be improved. What I have done so far is, I have fixed the completely garbled "Etymology" section. The points I wanted to express are Yes this is the result of a gradual process, and who knows to what extent the teudisca of the 8th or 9th century had "ethnic" overtones, but the transition to an ethnic endonym is only complete once you have a name (a noun) referring to people, not just their language. This was the case around 1200. I don't know if it can be shown for earlier times, and would be interested in pointers if it can.
 * etymologically, diutisc is an adjective, translating to "[in the language] of the people"
 * use as a noun, as in "a German", "ein Deutscher", appears from about 1200.

And no, this is not just the regular case of the development of an ethnonym. Most other nations of western Europes take their endonyms from tribal or geographical names, and the term for the languages are adjectives derived from those: French: Franks, English: Angli, Scots: Scoti, Irish: Eire, Austrian: March of Austria, Swiss: Schwyz. Spanish: Hispania, Italian: Italy. Swedes: Sviar. Danish: Dani, Serbs: Serboi. The Germans (Deutsche) are really quite the exception in this list, comparable perhaps only with the Shqiptar, and perhaps with the Slovaks/Slovenes and the Hellenes. --dab (𒁳) 10:34, 12 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's definitely an improvement, certainly didn't mean to imply otherwise. :) I think just needs a little tweak. The Corbridge passage in question is definitely referring to a specific language, not common speech in general, and offers no reason to believe it is connected with Latin vulgaris [note that the passage is in Latin and that is not the word used]. The best translation would be something like "Germanic" or "English" (c/f the Oaths of Strasbourg from the same era where the word teudisca distinguishes Germanic from common Romance [Romana], and is best translated "German" or "Frankish"). When it comes to borrowings medieval Latin is usually just a high-register version of Romance rather than an independent language, and its use probably means that the Walha had already borrowed the Germanic term to designate the Germanic language (c/f the Italian word for Germans).
 * And there really is no contradiction between denoting "Germanic" and denoting "tribal". The groups you are using are mostly European and derived from political or geographical entities. Around the world, such ambiguity is the norm, the product of using kinship metaphors to make language differences comprehensible in the few cases it's necessary. "Yanomamo" for instance is an endonym meaning both "human being" and "Yanomamo". The Welsh word for Welsh means something like "fellow citizens". The word ancestral to Deutsch probably meant something like "home people" (one's tribe being home); c/f Zhutwasi, the !Kung endonym, which is very similar in derivation and meaning. Teudisca is like these, signifying linguistic distinctiveness visible to outsiders, and small number of insiders with intensive outside contact.

I'll make an edit to the page and you can tell me what you think.Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk ) 16:53, 14 August 2011 (UTC) Regards,

Gisele Bündchen is indeed of German origin, but she was born in Brazil and Her nationality is Brazil, and Her parents were born in Brazil, so it's no more place her in category: Germans? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.64.82.171 (talk) 15:14, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Famous people pictures
2 women out of 25?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:55, 21 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Well if you ever read history women historically did not have so much notability, not even in the present78.129.196.69 (talk) 09:30, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

too few german-ukrainians
0 out of 25 german-ukrainians ?!?! is this some kind of joke ?!?! germans who live in ukraine should be included Jackssonklock (talk) 11:15, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

There don´t live many famous Germans in Ukraine.77.13.134.190 (talk) 21:09, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Hitler
Can we have Adolf Hitler as one of the famous Germans?? He was bad yes, but still he had huge impact in the worlds history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.81.72.11 (talk) 09:42, 23 September 2011 (UTC) he was Austrian. Top811 my talk —Preceding undated comment added 18:28, 12 May 2012 (UTC).

>>Uh, let's face it...Hitler's the MOST famous German to have ever lived. But you're not allowed to give him any credit for anything and you must spit on the ground after mentioning his name. This is what we've been conditioned to do.

It's a joke. Intellectual dishonesty runs rampant in the West. Fame is no longer assigned by how many people know of you, it's now assigned, or denied, by those prone to sentimentality and emotional outbursts.

Hitler has become the new Satan. Meet the new Satan, same as the old Satan, except now with utopian ideology, a stupid haircut and a funny little mustache! 67.1.63.198 (talk) 15:18, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

German Argentines
According to this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-Argentine and the sources listed in there (http://www.hospitalaleman.com.ar/hospital/hist_anios_2_ha.htm | http://www.cacw.com.ar/sitio/notas_detalle.php?id=NTk= )there are about 3 million German-Argentines. Why are here only listed fewer? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.50.166.134 (talk) 02:22, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I know that this may be an edgy point to bring up, but Einstein was an ethnically Jewish German citizen but not an ethnic German.
I've brought up this point since the Wikipedia article on Einstein says that his ethnicity was Jewish. This article states it is about Germans as a Germanic ethnic group, not German citizens. I know that this comment may be viewed with suspicion, I am not some anti-Semitic neo-Nazi trying to deny that Einstein was a member of German society, what I am saying is that although he was a German citizen he is not an ethnic German that is the topic of this article. With these important points of clarification this brings me to the point that his image should not be included in a group of ethnic Germans, such a photo can be put on the article about German citizens to represent Einstein as an important historical German citizen.--R-41 (talk) 04:06, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it is pretty horrible that you would even argue this. While you may not think of yourself as "some anti-semitic neo_nazi" you are in effect doing their job by perpetuating an understanding of ethnicity and belonging to an ethnic group that belongs to that period. Today nobody except for nationalist politicians understands ethncity to be exclusive and based on heritage. Ethnicity is based on identity and it is possible to hold multiple "hyphenated" identities. Jewish Germans are every bit as german as any other kind of German, like Turkish-Germans, African-Germans or Polish-Germans.  You really need to rethink your thinking about ethnicity and nation - it is that kind of thinking that drew the genocides of the 20th century.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 12:31, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This article says that it is about Germans as a "Germanic ethnic group", not Germans as citizens. I am a left-wing social democrat, I am not a neo-Nazi, I despise racism. I myself am a Canadian of English-Irish-Italian background who has an Ojibwe Native American girlfriend. I am extremely sympathetic to Jews who suffered during the Holocaust - I met a Holocaust survivor from Poland and heard personal accounts of the beatings, killings, slave labour, and other horrors of the concentration camps, I find it highly insulting that you accuse me of having "genocidal thinking" involving ethnicity, thus associating me with racism - considering that I am a white person in a romantic relationship with a non-white person associated with a group that was and is persecuted by white-dominated society, that is an extreme personal attack against me without warrant and I will consider reporting you for that if you continue'. I said that Einstein can and should be included in an article about Germans as citizens. "Today nobody except for nationalist politicians understands ethncity to be exclusive and based on heritage" - no that's nationality that is beyond merely ethnicity - ethnicity is largely based on heritage - for instance Grey Owl may have adopted the Ojibwe national culture but he is not an ethnic Ojibwe, he was English. The point is that the article itself says "Germanic ethnic group" - Einstein is not ethnically German, he was a German as a citizen - on an ethnic dimension he was a German Jew - an ethnically Jewish person with German citizenship, on a citizenship dimension he was a Jewish German - a German citizen with Jewish ethnic heritage.--R-41 (talk) 13:59, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't care who you are or what you believe or who you are dating, and I am nor making any personal attacks. I am not saying that you are not a nice person or that you are a racist, I am saying that your view of ethnicity is flawed and outdated. And it clearly is. You don't get to decide who is or isn't ethnically German or ethnically canadian or any other ethnicity. The fact that you believe that ethnicity is exclusive and about heritage only leads you to draw a conclusion that was also drawn by a certain German regime some sixty years ago and which the world has tried to get rid of ever since. That is sad and tragic. There is no distinction between ethnic Germans and German citizens that can be used to exclude people in the way that you argue. You are not getting this through I am sorry to say. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:13, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * @Maunus: Regardless of what one may think of the whole concept of ethnicity, I don't think it is helpful to dismiss as "pretty horrible" an opinion that can also be found in several mainstream sources. Examples: "Einstein began to identify more strongly with his ethnicity."; "...that Einstein's ethnicity might have also played a part in his many rejections. Einstein was Jewish."; "Other factors that influenced his life were his family background and values and his ethnicity"; "(quoting Einstein): "We are not Jews because we say so, but because the world says so." ; "This is extremely important for Einstein's emerging ethnic self-concept as a Jew"; "His parents, Hermann and Pauline Einstein, were ethnic Jews.". I doubt whether all of these sources, which don't seem to refer to a 'hyphenated' ethnicity, were written by "nationalist politicians". Iblardi (talk) 14:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * None of your sources say that it is impossible to be an ethnic jew and an ethnic german at the same time. And the quote you provide basically says that Einstein was forced to BECOME a jew because the Nazis were arguing for the same concept of ethnicity that R41 is arguing for. The fact that he began to "identify more strongly with his ethnicity" presupposes that he was not identifying as such previously. If any of you knew a bit about German history you would know that in the 18th century when the German ethnic identity was being formed Jews participated fully in German ethnic culture and often identified strongly as Ethnic Germans. It was only with the rise of Anti-Semitism and Pan-Germanism that this was made difficult. Still many famous Germans of Jewish heritage identified only as Germans and not as Jews - e.g. Franz Boas. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:13, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This article is currently about Germans as a "Germanic ethnic group". Maunus, you claim that I cannot ascribe who is a member of German ethnicity or not, that is true and neither can you ascribe who is - it is geneology that ascribes it - is Einstein geneologically related to the German ethnicity that originated as Germanic tribes in Northern and North-Eastern Europe? No. Is Einstein a member of German nationality based on cultural identity and citizenship to Germany? Yes. If users disagree that this article titled "Germans" should be referring to the Germanic ethnic group and instead wish that the article refer to Germans as the cultural nationality then a vote should be held on that issue: if the article were referring to Germans as the cultural nationality of Germany - then Einstein and Karl Marx can be included in the infobox as Germans. But as the article currently stands, it is about the Germanic ethnic group. I will again bring up the precedent of Grey Owl, a person of mostly English ethnic heritage who assimilated into Ojibwe culture - he is not ethnically related to the Ojibwe ethnicity but is culturally connected as a member of the Ojibwe society. In the case of Einstein and Marx, they were not related to the Germanic ethnicity of Germans but were culturally connected as assimilated members of German society, thus Germans as in citizens of Germany and as a cultural nationality. Currently articles on groups such as Germans, Ojibwe, etc. that I mentioned are focused on ethnicity - that is the current precedent, if this article remains about the ethnic group then an article titled Germans (nationality) could be created to be about Germans as citizens of Germany that could include an infobox picture depicting German citizens of any ethnic heritage - including Einstein and Marx.--R-41 (talk) 17:42, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * No, Genealogy does not decide ethnicity. That is exactly what I am trying to tell you is an antiquated understanding of what ethnicity is, that leads itself to racism and ethnic essentialism. Ethnicity is not about genealogy at all but about identity. There is not a single person in Germany today who can trace his ancestry to any Germanic tribe. There is also not a single person in Germany who does not have ancestry from all over Europe (and most likely further abroad). You are also wrong on your ideas abouit nationality and ethnicity being distinct - There was no german ethnicity before the creation of Germany as a nation. The two were developed as part of the same process in the 18th and 19th century. For the better part of that process many Jews were considered fully German and participated with full rights in the creation of the German ethnic identity (just as they did in Denmark) - then Anti-Semitism grew and in combination with an essentialist racialist understanding of ethnicity they were sought to be excluded from being full status as Germans. Just like you are trying to do now. I am sorry but there really is no way of describing the problem with what you are suggesting in a way that does not recall the past. I am sure that you think you are right, and I also fully believe that you are not in fact racist or a nazi sympathizer. You just happen to shre a common misconception about the nature of ethnicity that has been very effectively disspelled by social science since 1950. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:48, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * According to your definition ethnicity and nationality are the same thing. General characteristics of different peoples can be categorized - some historically have been false and accurate ones have been used abusively by racists and xenophobes - but judgements of those characteristics do not affect the facts of empirical examinations and theories of them, provided that they can be proven. Ethnicity is exactly about heritage and geneology, not necessarily race and despite of the abuses by racialists and xenophobes of the concept of genealogy it still used. For instance, I cannot will myself to be an ethnic member of the Zulu tribe of southern Africa, I can adopt their culture and hope to be assimilated as a part of their national culture but it is my heritage that determines ethnic association. I am not saying that the concept of ethnicity is flawless, the article itself says that the concept of the German ethnicity links to heritage to Germanic peoples, that does not mean that they have to be purely Germanic but that they have some heritage. Perhaps I've made a mistake in not being clear in showing what I view ethnicity as meaning: what I mean by "ethnicity" is an identity based on genealogy and origin that may also include complementary cultural and other distinctions to form a cohesive category of group identity: here are sources that describe geneology as involving these, see here:,  and . You say that ethnicity is completely outside these categories of definition, what is your evidence of their exclusion?--R-41 (talk) 03:29, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * NO, ethnicity and nation is not the same thing. They just happen to align very closely in a nation state. That is in fact the defintion of a nation state as opposed to multiethnic states. I am also not saying that genealogy or heritage does not play a role, it often does, but not in a way so that it is possible to say that x is or isn't member of an ethnic group because of his forebears. It is also correct that it is not just self identification but mutual identification to be a Zulu you need to identify yourself as a zulu and other zulu's need to identify you as a zulu.  That is of course why many German Jews did not feel German after WWII, but chose to affiliate with other nations. This however does not exclude the possibility that Einstein identified as both such as many other German-American-Jews. Ethnicity is a very complex topic that anthropologists and social scientists have studied for the past 60 years - you are replacing all that with your own commonsense view of ethnicity as a natural grouping of people with similar ancestry. That sucks. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 11:43, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I provided several sources by modern-day scholars that hold this view - I did not create this view.--R-41 (talk) 13:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

The problem, R-41, is that you misrepresnted three sources. Olzak says that genealogy is only one of four possible criteria for ethnic identification &mdash; which supports Maunus's point. Wade first defines ethnicity as "tracing relatedness through common history and culture" which does not support your view, and then says that ethnicity frequently invokes notions of genealogy and origins (the operative word being frequently which does not mean always) (and another operative word being "invokes;" he is not describing what an ethnic group really is, but rather a particular ideology of ethnicity. Did you actually read Wade's book?  Do you really understand his argument?  Because it looks like you are cherry-picking.  Anyone who reads the book will see that Wade's argument is that discourses of nature and culture draw on one another in complex ways, and his discussion of discourses of ethnicity that invoke genealogy is part of a larger deconstruction of the opposition between race and ethnicity, in which his real argument is that (just as ethnic discourses are not always just about culture), racial discourses are not always about biology. He is relativizing both concepts. Do you not understand this argument, or did you just not read the book? Finally, Rata is arguing that in a capitalist globalized world Samoans turn to genealogies as a way to construct historicized understandings of their own culture. She is making a very specific argument about Samoan culture in the 20th century and she is not making any global claims about ethnicity. None of the links you provide are about Germans or Jews, but all of them make it explicitly clear that the meaning, form, and definition of ethnicity varies over time and space and that any particular group of people's understanding of ethnicity must be understood in its cultural and historical context. Which, again, supports Maunus's point. Slrubenstein  |  Talk


 * He should be included into both sections. As defined by webster, ethnicity can refer to religion, culture, race along with others. Therefore the fact that he was born in germany makes him german. just because he was also jewish does not dispualify him as being german. P0PP4B34R732 (talk) 03:47, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If the Websters Dictionary definition is deemed to be accurate then that could be so. I have provided several scholarly sources that stress the role of genealogy in ethnicity.--R-41 (talk) 03:51, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In a response to an earlier statement by Maunus "...then Anti-Semitism grew and in combination with an essentialist racialist understanding of ethnicity they were sought to be excluded from being full status as Germans. Just like you are trying to do now. " I am not denying that Einstein was a member of German nationality, he was assimilated into German culture and language. This article is about Germans as an ethnicity and the ethnic dimension based on geneaology that I provided sources for a few comments above this one, does not qualify for Einstein, thus he is a member of German nationality but not German ethnicity - that does not make him any less of a member of the German nation - if you interpret it as such that is your perception of the ethnic-genealogical/national-cultural dimension that I have described. Einstein can be included in an article about Germans as a nationality. As for Marx who is also included in the infobox - I am not aware of his full geneological background so I will leave him out of the picture until it is confirmed whether he did or did not have German ethnic ancestry.--R-41 (talk) 04:04, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You mean that you are aware of Einstein's full genealogical background? Of course you aren't. By the way can Jews be ethnically American? Can they be ethnically French? Your line of thinking is so full of holes that its amazing. The best solution for any article is to simply not have a gallery of type specimens for ethnic groups. The only thing it leads to is unproductive bickering like this.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 12:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I am not fully aware of Einstein's background but Jews who associate with the religious faith of Judaism practice endogamy (marrying within an ethnic group and not outside it), Jewish ethnic lineage is typically very strong because of endogamy. There is no such thing as ethnic American unless you are referring to Native American ethnicities. My argument is not full of holes, Jews can be by nationality American - Jewish American, French - Jewish French, etc: nationality involves national culture, language, and citizenship rather than genealogy. My argument says that people can adopt or change nationalities - Einstein became American, but ethnicity derives from genealogy - as I mentioned earlier Grey Owl was a person of English descent who adopted Ojibwe nationality as in their culture but is not an ethnic Ojibwe because he did not have Ojibwe ancestry. I have provided several sources to back up my claim that ethnicity is an identity based on genealogy, Maunus you need to provide sources to back up your claim. This is not unproductive bickering - that is your opinion, this is resolving misconceptions about ethnicity being confused with nationality.--R-41 (talk) 13:08, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You make strong claims backed with few sources. There is a large literature about the existence of a separate American ethnicity. You make arguments based in stereotypes about typical Jewish behavior rather than in knowledge about facts. And yes it is pointless bickering for me to discuss this with someone who is unwilling to try to understand the concept of ethnicity. But willing to base arguments about who should be considered part of an ethnic group based on his own stereotypes.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:35, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You are accusing me of bad faith and incompetence. I am not basing my arguments on "stereotypes" - it is a common practice for Jewish people to practice endogamic marriages, that's a fact - you are judging it as a stereotype.
 * Would you say that Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews are the same ethnically?  What is the source for "In the case of Einstein and Marx, they were not related to the Germanic ethnicity of Germans but were culturally connected as assimilated members of German society, thus Germans as in citizens of Germany and as a cultural nationality"? Ethnicity is not cut and dried, and a single person can belong to multiple ethnic groups, and issues other than genealogy plan an important role, such as self-identification. If Einstein rejected the notion that he was ethnically German, that would be an import point. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:38, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There are Northern and Southern Germans, there are different tribes and factions of Arabs - Sephardics and Ashkenazis would be regarded as sub-groups within the Jewish ethnicity. I am not saying that ethnicity is a monolithic identity - it has components. Einstein changed his cultural identity repeatedly - he was German, became Swiss, and lastly became American.--184.145.70.222 (talk) 03:29, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I happen to agree with user:Maunus, who was commenting on the claim, not on the person saying it. This is the essential point: there is no single definition of ethnicity.  Personally, I define an ethnic group as a nation that doesn't have its own state - thus, "ethnic Germans" can reply to Germans who are not citizens of Germany.  Franz Boas, while living in the US, considered himself a German in this way (just as he was a proud German while living in Germany) and, by the way, was considered this way by some of the American anthropologists who hated him (one called him a "hun").  By the way, Boas's parents were of Jewish background, and one reason he left Germany was because of a rise in anti-semitism after Bismarck and the rise of conservative nationalism.


 * Now, my definition of ethnicity is not shared by every social scientist, but plenty of social scientists do hold this view (or, rather, I happen to take the view held by certain social scientists who have written on ethnicity). There are many other definitions of "ethnic group" and "ethnicity besides the one I favor, which would still apply to Germany's Jews. User:R-41 says that the belief that ethnicity is genealogical is "my theory" which is practically a confession of violating NOR.  That many social scientists say that it is not genealogical, or that genealogy may be a deictic of ethnicity, but that there are other deictics (and by the way that there are many Amerindian groups that do not define their identity in terms of beliefs about blood relationships) is not my theory, it is something I have learned from published studies.


 * Even social scientists care about what the people they study think. And Boas was not alone.  A great many German Jews &mdash; which before the Holocaust was also a great many Jews &mdash; spoke German exclusively, ate German foods, listened to German music, read German literature, and believed Judaism to be a religion but not a national or ethnic identity.  These people at least considered Jews to be ethnically German.  And from what I have read, liberal (by which I mean, not conservative in the Bismark/Junker sense) Germans believed their Jewish friends and neighbors to be ethnic Germans, just as Catholic Germans accepted Catholics as equally German and Catholics (eventually) accepted Protestant Germans as Germans too.


 * This does not mean that there are no Germans who reject Jewish claims to German ethnicity. The anti-Semitic nationalists &mdash; not Nazis &mdash; who prompted Boas to pursue a career in the US seem to be an example.  I think Maunus's original poiont was that when looking at the views of Germans, regardless of religion, as well as the views of Jews, regardless of nationality (or, comparing Zionist Jews to non-Zionist Jews ... and it may surpise some people but before the Holocaust large numbers of Jews were opposed to Zionism on various grounds, one of them being the fact that they were proud of their French, German, etc. nationality/ethnicity) and discovering that some Jews consider Jewishness a nationality and some do not, and some Germans consider Jews German and some do not, these are political differences, these differences exemplify the ways in which the cultural is political (to steal and refashion a feminist slogan).  By this I mean they reflect passionate beliefs about the relationship between one's personal identity and one's identification with some at the exclusion of others, rather than debates among social theorists.  Before the rise of nationalism following the Enlightenment, most people did not identify themselves primarily as Europeans or as Germans; historical sources especially from the Middle Ages show that "Christendom" was the primary collective identity (even if some Christians called other Christians barbarians).  This identity certainly excludes Jews.  But one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment was the creation of new European identities that demanded that Jews leave the ghetto, but that did not demand that they abandon their religion, to belong to the nation.


 * This issue can be resolved quite easily by applying NPOV. There are among social scientists different aproaches to ethnicity and we might expect social scientists writing about Germany and German Jews to take different views and if so we better represent all the major views.  Germans and Jews are also divided in their beliefs about this and we should include all significant views.  I am pretty sure that any good sociological study will note that there are Germans as well as Jews who do not consider Jews to be ethnically German, but from everything I read these Germans and Jews hold this view because of their political commitments.  NOT because Jews "cannot" be ethnic Germans.  I think this was Maunus's main point.  If I am wrong about Maunus, then consider it my point.


 * It is a historical fact that Nazis did not consider Einstein a Jew, which is why Maunus's reference to Nazis was appropriate - he was being specific. But I would definitely not limit ourselves to the Nazi view without also seeing what published research reports about how Einstein himself identified ethnically. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 15:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That is a fair, and more eloquent, reformulation my viewpoint. I have supplied sources supporting it below. My point is that there can be formulated no strict rule by which it can be decided who is or who isn't ethnically German. Whether or not to include a person as a German has to be based on a case by case evaluation of that persons identity. Heritage alone can may sometimes make someone a member of an ethnic group (a sufficient), but not having the heritage can never ecxlude anyone from an ethnic group (necessary). ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:21, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

On the complications of Ethnicity: On the ways in which Jewish ethnicity were differentiated at the turn of the 20th century: On the complex ways in which Jewish and German ethnic identities interact in Germany today read: On the ways in which being ethnically German is complicated: And then we can talk. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Nationalism and Ethnicity, Craig Calhoun, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 19, (1993), pp. 211-239
 * Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1993) Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, London: Pluto Press
 * Smith, Anthony D. (1987). The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Blackwell
 * Marketing identities: the invention of Jewish ethnicity in Ost und West By David A. Brenner
 * Yehuda Cohen. 2010. The Germans: absent nationality and the Holocaust. Sussex Academic Press, 2010
 * Jeffrey M. Peck. 2006. Being Jewish in the new Germany
 * Lynn Rapaport. 1997. Jews in Germany after the Holocaust: memory, identity and Jewish-German relations. Cambridge cultural social studies. Cambridge University Press, 1997
 * Y. Michal Bodemann. 1996. Jews, Germans, memory: reconstructions of Jewish life in Germany. University of Michigan Press, 1996
 * Afro-German Cultural Identity and the Politics of Positionality: Contests and Contexts in the Formation of a German Ethnic Identity, Tina M. Campt, New German Critique, No. 58 (Winter, 1993), pp. 109-126
 * Dünnhaupt, Gerhard, "The Bewildering German Boundaries", in: Festschrift for P. M. Mitchell (Heidelberg: Winter 1989)
 * Györgyi Bindorffer. 1997. Double identity: Being German and Hungarian at the same time. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Volume 23, Issue 3


 * Thanks for compiling this list, Magnus. It is good to see Wikipedians doing actual scholarly research to edit an article.  Anthropologist John Borneman has done extensive ethnographic research in Germany - I remember him writing about some of the contradictions that played out of Germany's own "right to return" back in the 1990s.  I don't have any citations but his first two or three books definitely deal with meanings of German ethnonational identities. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 18:31, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Alright I will retract my argument. I don't have time to examine all the sources, but it is clear that the issue is complicated and many users are frustrated with what I brought up - I did not mean to agitate some anti-Semitic revisionism on German identity, I thought that ethnicity was primarily about geneaology - if it is not primarily about that, then the premise of my argument was mistaken.--R-41 (talk) 03:39, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I want to apologize for being agitated and confrontational, I really do not think that you have any remotely nazi tendencies at all, but I was frustrated with the way that these misunderstandings of how ethnicity relates to ancestry are still so common even among people who are socially and culturally aware. I could have handled the disagreement better. I am sorry for that. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:45, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I want to thank editors for their long explanations and lists of a paper titles showing that their is debate on the nature of ethnicity. But sadly I feel i may be irrelevant to the point under discussion. Whether Einstein thought of himself as a German is pretty much nailed by this source:

"This conclusion remains true even though Einstein, the leading figure among Jewish physicists, was a strongly motivated Zionist (Fölsing 1997, 494–505), opposed assimilation as a contemptible form of “mimicry” (p. 490), preferred to mix with other Jews whom he referred to as his “tribal companions” (p. 489), embraced the uncritical support for the Bolshevik regime in Russia typical of so many Jews during the 1920s and 1930s, including persistent apology for the Moscow show trials in the 1930s (pp. 644–5), and switched from a high-minded pacifism during World War I, when Jewish interests were not at stake, to advocating the building of atomic bombs to defeat Hitler. From his teenage years he disliked the Germans and in later life criticized Jewish colleagues for converting to Christianity and acting like Prussians. He especially disliked Prussians, who were the elite ethnic group in Germany. Reviewing his life at age 73, Einstein declared his ethnic affiliation in no uncertain terms: “My relationship with Jewry had become my strongest human tie once I achieved complete clarity about our precarious position among the nations” (in Fölsing 1997, 488). According to Fölsing, Einstein had begun developing this clarity from an early age, but did not acknowledge it until much later, a form of self-deception: “As a young man with bourgeois-liberal views and a belief in enlightenment, he had refused to acknowledge [his Jewish identity]” (in Fölsing 1997, 488). " — Preceding unsigned comment added by Table Lamp 47 (talk • contribs) 15:23, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that if this is a mainstream source it pretty much nails the issue in favor of removing Einstein.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:42, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I can find nothing to suggest that Fölsing's book is not a reliable mainstream source. I think that settles the issue. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:46, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I replaced Einstein in the collage with David Hilbert if anyone wants to edit it in. Table Lamp 47 (talk) 12:22, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

O my goodness, what a discussion. Firstly, Einstein did never regard himself a German. He disliked the Germans (even long before the rise of the Nazi regime) and would be quite offended if he knew that you call him "German". Secondly, a German national identity did not evolve in the 18th. Its development startet in the 11th century and ended in the 16th century. Thirdly, the concept of ethnicity has always been about heritage -- at least in Germany. This wasn't a Nazi or anti-Semitic invention of the 19th/20th century but existed since the first person called himself German. Today, a lot of people may find this racist but that doesn't change the historic facts. Einstein didn't think of himself as an ethnic German, nor would any other person during his lifetime would have thought of him as such. -- Orthographicus (talk) 15:50, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

This argument is stupid. Ethnicity is clearly defined in the dictionary. Einstein was an ethnic Jew. How can Einstein be an ethnic German if he was in fact an ethnic Jew? What I hear is the hypersensitive ramblings of what I suspect to be either a German or some leftist. Listen, if you are a German you don't have to feel bad about the holocaust anymore. Now, step aside and let grown folks talk. Ethnicity is solely based on genealogy, end of discussion. Ask any anthropologist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.217.43.217 (talk) 22:43, 4 May 2012 (UTC)


 * ...old chestnut!--IIIraute (talk) 23:18, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

>>"I hate racism!" "Nu uh, I hate racism more!" You do realize that if this were Nazi Germany you'd most likely be it's staunchest supporters, right? You're some of the most easily conditioned fools on the planet. Talk about a bunch of parrots. But at least one of the parrots still has at least a toe on the ground of reality. No amount of indoctrination can make the original definition of Ethnicity "flawed and outdated." The Germanic people are a distinct Ethnicity as are certain groups of Jews like Sephardic and Ashkenazi. If it became politically correct to call a rock a pillow, face it, you'd do it. Because Paulie wants a cracker. BAWWWK!

And I'm not a Neo-Nazi, either. I am a racist, sorry, because I see where the world's headed with you morons in charge. You guys puff your chest out and thump it by saying "I'm so hardcore a fanatic I even change the definitions of words to fit into my political world view! Beat that typical, white guilt suffering Canadian with an indian girlfriend!" Hell, one day Green may be Pink. And what do you guys call this? Progress? It'd be funny if it weren't so terrifying. 67.1.63.198 (talk) 16:27, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

What a laughable joke this discussion is.

I can't believe that time after time facts are brushed aside for personal preference.

Jewish is an ethnicity

Germanic is an ethnicity

you can be both, IE part Jewish, part Germanic.

but Einstein was not.

he was Jewish, Semitic, and eventually American.

Far leftists without even a basic understanding of anthropology have taken over wikipedia

--99.231.215.49 (talk) 01:42, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * please do not promote nazi-propaganda (like Jewish Germans are not German) it is offencive and anti-semetic to claim otherwise85.195.69.112 (talk) 18:42, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

It's not Nazi propaganda. German ethnicity is distinct and separate from that of Jewish Ethnicity. Otherwise, you deny the existence of either the Jewish or German ethnicity. Which is racist. If you are an ethnic jew, you can not be an ethnic german. Otherwise one of the two does not exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.217.83.170 (talk) 15:49, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * This entire thread is filled with guilt-mongering and emotional denial of facts. The people advocating the inclusion of Einstein and other Jews into the category of "ethnic German," an open contradiction, are arguing from a completely emotional standpoint that is inherently self-contradicting and illogical. The emotional argument being conveyed is either A. Jewish and German are not separate and distinct ethnic groups (complete aberration of fact); or B. Jewish and German ARE distinct and separate ethnic groups, BUT we must include ethnic Jews in an article about ethnic Germans because Wikipedia is conveying a political message about the importance of including ethnic minorities.
 * If anyone protests against this political agenda, they are beaten over the head with the EMOTIONAL club of the Holocaust and World War 2. Just because we recognize the very real and universally-perceived distinction between ethnic German and ethnic Jewish, does NOT mean we condone the Holocaust or are a racist Nazi. That kind of arguing is puerile. Let's get real, act like adults, and REMOVE EINSTEIN AND MARX FROM WIKIPEDIA'S PAGE ON ETHNIC GERMANS.
 * If anyone protests against this political agenda, they are beaten over the head with the EMOTIONAL club of the Holocaust and World War 2. Just because we recognize the very real and universally-perceived distinction between ethnic German and ethnic Jewish, does NOT mean we condone the Holocaust or are a racist Nazi. That kind of arguing is puerile. Let's get real, act like adults, and REMOVE EINSTEIN AND MARX FROM WIKIPEDIA'S PAGE ON ETHNIC GERMANS.

What a hissy fit by a bigot - yes you are a bigot despite your denial above - you are the same user who posted here earlier after the discussion had ended and been resolved by pouring out bigoted statements about me having a Native American partner - I mentioned that because I was being accused of being a racist for bringing up this matter. But okay, let's take you at your word for a moment - you say that you aren't proposing this out Einstein assimilated to become American - fine REMOVE Einstein on the grounds that he became American - NOT because he was Jewish, Marx was German - DON'T remove him. And yes German Jews have identified as Germans, Eduard Lasker was a GERMAN NATIONALIST AND HE WAS JEWISH. Source: The Making of a German Nationalist: Eduard Lasker's Early Years, 1829-1847.--R-41 (talk) 13:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Switzerland etc.
In the archive I found a discussion about the Germanness of Switzerland and other German-speaking territories, and I must say: all German-speaking territories regarded themselves as German until the 20th century. Liechtenstein sang of his Germanness in its national anthem until 1963. You'll find the text here on Wikipedia. I found a speech Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Vetter from Bern gave in Nuremberg in 1902 when the Germanisches Nationalmuseum celebrated its 50th anniversary. In his speech, Vetter says that Switzerland remained German in ethnic and cultural terms although it had been separated from the political Germany since 1648. I can present you the speech if you're interested. Luxembourg was member of the German Confederation until 1866 and sent representatives to the National Assembly in Francfort in 1848/49. Even the Netherlands did not deny their common heritage with Germany which is why they spoke about Nederduytschers (Lower Germans) and Overlenders, a distinction also made in the English language until the 18th century. No one denies that all those nations have an own identity nowadays and do not regard themselves as German anymore. But 100 years ago, things were different, and we can't just ignore that in an article about the German people. This information must at least be mentioned properly. -- Orthographicus (talk) 08:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Except giant chunks of what you just said is wrong. Dutch comes from Frankish, while German comes from High German. Frankish was spoken in the middle of Germany in ancient times, while High German was spoken in Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland. Mountain areas. Why do you Germans not understand that your ancestors were not involved in the Great Germanic Migration? You were a bunch of goat herders who got lucky that everyone else left Germany, leaving you free to take over. 96.241.155.90 (talk) 10:42, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

UK
I've added a key point of clarification to the figures quoted for Geographical distribution for the UK. The figure of 266,000 quoted includes anyone born in Germany. The peculiarity always noted with this figure is that it includes children born to British Military personnel serving in UK Military bases in Germany (a large number of personnel during the Cold War). It does not mean that there are actually 266,000 people self-identifying as 'German' in the UK. A more detailed breakdown is not available. Indisciplined (talk) 11:42, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In fact, the citation provided http://www.migrationinformation.org/datahub/countrydata/data.cfm does not actually contain this figure, or any figure for Germans in the UK. It therefore doesn't actually function as a citation. I'm adding a source which does actually contain that figure - an extrapolation the BBC ran from UK Office of National Statistics Data http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/05/born_abroad/countries/html/germany.stm  This also includes a note in the text on the UK Military personnel issue.  Indisciplined (talk) 12:15, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Early Modern Period altering
"In 1866, because Austria and Prussia could not decide on what was the right solution on how a unified Germany was to happen caused several problems inside the German Confederation between the two top German states. The main reasons behind this war was because the Austrian Empire was not willing to give up any of the German lands it owned and was hoping to unify and lead Germany as "Greater Germany" and therefore did not want to take second place to Prussia. On the other hand Prussia was wanting to unify Germany as "Little Germany" and exclude Austria from it. This consequently seen the Prussians successfully defeat the Austrians and thus Austria now was no longer part of the German Confederation and no longer took part in German politics and the "Little Germany" was prevailed.[14]"

I did this myself anyways and I think this should be changed to this as it comes across as more understanding and better to read -

"In 1866, the long ending feud between Austria and Prussia finally came to an end. There was a few reasons what was behind this war. As German nationalism grew inside of the German Confederation and neither of them could decide on how Germany was going to be unified into a nation-state, the Austrians were favouring the Greater Germany unification but were not willing to give up any of the German-speaking land inside of the Austrian Empire and take second place to Prussia, the Prussians on the other hand were wanting to unify Germany as Little Germany primarily by the Kingdom of Prussia whilst excluding Austria. In the final battle of the German war (Battle of Königgrätz) the Prussians successfully defeated the Austrians and succeeded in creating the North German Confederation.[14]"

What's the problem with that Dr.K.?--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 01:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Didn't you see my message on your talk and the example I gave you? Please do not keep adding the same edit on the page. It really contains very bad grammar and does not even make sense in some segments. Example: In 1866, the long ending feud between Austria and Prussia finally came to an end. There was a few reasons what was behind this war.... What does the long ending feud .. mean? Can you not see that the sentence There was a few reasons what was behind this war.. is so grammatically bad that it borders on being meaningless? Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις  01:10, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

How does it not make sense and no what is the problem with it, you rephrase it then? This part of the article does need sorting out.--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 04:17, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Ok, let's start from the first problem. What exactly is a "long ending feud"? A feud either ends or it does not. Is there a "short ending feud"? Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 04:29, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

The feud had been going on a long time and it had now came to an end?--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 05:39, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok. We can call it the "long-lasting" feud then. In the second sentence: There was a few reasons what was behind this war..., "few reasons" is in plural form but the verb: "was" is singular, so there is a mismatch of tenses. We should say "There were a few reasons" or "There were multiple reasons" and skip "what was" which is grammatically incorrect to rephrase to: "There were multiple causes for this war...". Does that make sense to you? Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 14:59, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay what about "The feud between Austria and Prussia finally came to an end"

It needs changing this bit of the EMP to be better read and understood.--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 14:56, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I was replying to your point above but you replied again so we had an . Are you ok with my reply above? Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 15:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay yes it does make more sense so which would be better "There were a few reasons" or 2There were multiple reasons"?

What else in the edited version doesn't make sense?--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 16:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The rest looks ok, although I would rephrase the Prussians on the other hand were wanting to unify Germany as Little Germany... by changing "were wanting" to just "wanted". Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 17:21, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

So is it alright to change it to "In 1866, The feud between Austria and Prussia finally came to an end. There were a few reasons behind this war. As German nationalism grew inside of the German Confederation and neither of them could decide on how Germany was going to be unified into a nation-state, the Austrians were favouring the Greater Germany unification but were not willing to give up any of the German-speaking land inside of the Austrian Empire and take second place to Prussia, the Prussians on the other hand wanted to unify Germany as Little Germany primarily by the Kingdom of Prussia whilst excluding Austria. In the final battle of the German war (Battle of Königgrätz) the Prussians successfully defeated the Austrians and succeeded in creating the North German Confederation."--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 00:05, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. This looks great to me. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 01:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Changed, looks great.--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 01:19, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Excellent. Thank you. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 01:24, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Why has Catgut reverted it?--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 16:35, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * In their edit summary they mentioned "POV insertions". It would be best to ask them what they mean by that. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 01:37, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Well Catgut can clearly see we've debated this for the last couple of days and both of us were happy and he/she did not even comment here yet reverted it, I've reverted it back.--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 02:53, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * That's fine. Per WP:BRD you were bold and reverted. Now it is up to the other editor to explain their intent. Sorry for not helping more but I am not an expert on German history. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις 02:57, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Well if Catgut wants to discuss why it should be reverted back then he is more than open to via here otherwise I see no reason in changing it when me and you have discussed the changes and both gave it a go ahead.--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 15:56, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree. They have to discuss and explain before reverting again. Taking part in the discussion is a necessary component of the WP:BRD cycle. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις 17:43, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Twentieth century altering a little bit
"The dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire after World War I led to a strong desire of the population of the new Republic of German Austria to be integrated into Germany or Switzerland.[16] This was, however, prevented by the Treaty of Versailles."

Do you not think the Germany should be linked to Germany - my reason being is because "Germany" has changed quite a bit and it will make people understand that only then the Weimar Republic was created after the end of WWI and the falling of the German Empire and many Austrians were thriving for the Greater Germany idea.

"The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, attempted to unite all people they claimed Germans"

Would it not be - all the people they claimed were Germans?

The Czechoslovakia should also be changed just to Sudetenland as that is not all of Czechoslovakia.

Would this be acceptable to change?--Vincentnufcr1 (talk) 03:29, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

The Iron Curtain unofficially fell in 1989 -- not 1987. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ScaryTruth (talk • contribs) 07:48, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Recent edits on Early Modern period
Since I have been asked to comment on my recent reverts I will do so. There are two issues here — one, the edits by Vincentnufcr1 have made a section that is already not in very good shape, markedly worse. For example, this user composed the sentence "As German nationalism grew strongly inside of the German Confederation and neither of them could decide on how Germany was going to be unified into a nation-state, the Austrians were favouring the Greater Germany unification but were not willing to give up any of the German-speaking land inside of the Austrian Empire and take second place to Prussia, the Prussians on the other hand wanted to unify Germany as Little Germany primarily by the Kingdom of Prussia whilst excluding Austria." The length and convoluted wording of this sentence not only challenges comprehension, but is also ungrammatical (the subjects in this sentence are obscure, and it finishes with a run-on sentence). In addition, there is some very awkward wording elsewhere, for instance, "successfully defeated", "succeeded in creating", and the reference at the end of the section in question remained unchanged despite extensive changes to this section. This leaves one to wonder whether any of the new content is properly sourced. The lone source at the end actually turns out to be an obscure website rather than a scholarly article or book. In short, this is very poor content.

Which brings me to my second point, which is my contention that the user Vincentnufcr1 is a new account of a blocked user who had made a number of tendentious and similarly poorly worded edits to entries dealing with German and Austrian history and persons, including this entry (for example, as 14Adrian). Cleaning up the edits of this individual took an inordinate amount of effort, and while perusing the edit history of this entry, I noticed that some of these low-quality edits may still be present in the section in question, which is why I endeavoured to repair some of it. I will refrain for now from making any suggestions as to how this section can be restored with properly worded and sourced content, until the editing conflicts due to the recent insertions by Vincentnufcr1 are independently resolved. Thanks. Malljaja (talk) 18:49, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

German Argentines
600 000 German Argentines is an estimation, the embassy gives an estimation of 1 000 000 germans argentines, plus 2 000 000 volga germans  — Preceding unsigned comment added by User60092678 (talk • contribs) 20:43, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 19 February 2012
can someone REMOVE "Germanic ethnic group" from the main introduction lede, rationale : how are the germans any diffrent from any other germanic speaking peoples, for example the swedes , norweigians and dutch austrians , those articles does not mention "Germanic ethnic group" in the lead so goes the same for germans so am asking some established editor a request to removing "Germanic ethnic group" from the germans , i mean wikipedia should not contradict itself , as said why arent the people above count as germanic if the germans do

95.199.19.4 (talk) 19:20, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Not done: I'm not following your argument. This article deals with "Germans as an ethnic group" not as the residents of Germany or as german speaking people. Celestra (talk) 21:19, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * if you wonder why i use diffrent ip that because its how my network system works, i cannot change it so yes now you all know


 * so does the following articles (also about ethnic group and NOT "as the residents of the given country or as german speaking people"

1.swedes 2.Norwegians 3.danes 4.austrians 5.english people 6.dutch people 7.scots

repeat all theese articles is solely about ethnic groups not About the citizens of the given countries (see citezenship in XX, articles) neither pure demographic articles (which already exist ofcourse) the germans are not even some kind of a "Germanic core area" as the germanic peoples originated in northern germany and scandinavia, so are you following my logic now ? no other ethnic groups article use "Germanic ethnic group" so why should the germans ethnic group article be any diffrent so please remove it now 95.199.28.115 (talk) 21:42, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Not done: The text appears valid. The fact that other articles use other text is not a reason to change this article. If there is something incorrect about the text, please simply state what is wrong and provide a reliable source which supports the change. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 23:21, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * ok, i want somebody else to answer the request because just because celestra does not represent the entire wikipedia and the wikipedia consensus , the thing which is wrong that it contradicts other article see WP:Contradiction and anyway celestra is not using common sense 95.199.24.27 (talk) 23:54, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Please refrain from making personal attacks. There is no contradiction here. You are not disputing that the Germans are a germanic ethnic group, you seem to want to have this removed because other ethnic groups which might be called germanic are not. That is not a valid reason for making the change. Do you have any other reason? Thanks, Celestra (talk) 00:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

MOST AUSTRIANS ARE ETHNICALLY GERMAN Saying that Austrians are a "related ethnic group" is ridiculous. The author shouldn´t use politics in wikipedia. Austrians are ethnically German obviously.--95.120.205.218 (talk) 05:11, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, of course they are ethnic Germans. Austrians are NOT an own Ethnic-group. An ethnic group (or ethnicity) is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture (often including a shared religion) and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy.


 * Since the 6th Century Austria has been inhabited mainly by the Bavarii which were a Germanic tribe whose name emerged late in Teutonic tribal times. The full name originally was the Germanic "baio-warioz". The Bavarians themselves came under the overlordship of the Carolingian Franks and subsequently became a duchy of the Holy Roman Empire. It was overrun by the Hungarians in 909, and after their defeat by Emperor Otto the Great (Holy Roman Emperor) in the Battle of Lechfeld (955), new marches were established in what is today Austria. For the next 851 years Austria was part of the Holy Roman Empire.


 * Germans – the biggest Ethnic group of the Germanic peoples, with its heartland in Central and Eastern Europe, speaking German (Standard German, Austrian or Swiss varieties of German or other High or Low German dialects), are the largest ethnic group of Germany, as well as Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland, a majority of the population of the now Italian Alpine province of South Tyrol and an autochthonous minority in Belgium (Eupen-Malmedy), France (Alsace), Hungary (e.g. Danube Swabians), Poland (e.g. Silesians) and Romania (e.g. Transylvanian Saxons). Also found in the American continent (especially in the United States, where they are the largest ethnic group, and in some Latin American countries)) and in other parts of Europe (e.g. Czech Republic, Slovakia, the former Yugoslavia, i.e. some of the former eastern territories of Germany as well as the territories of historic Austria-Hungary), Asia (e.g. Kazakhstan) and elsewhere (e.g. Australia).


 * Genetics: The predominant Y-chromosome haplogroup among Germans (incl. Austrians) is I1 and R1a followed by R1b; the predominant mitochondrial haplogroup is H, followed by U and T.


 * Is anyone here really trying to claim that Austrians are not ethnic Germans?--IIIraute (talk) 05:58, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Is Hitler a representative Austrian?
There's an ongoing discussion about thet question on Talk:Austrians. You might want to join in.--Glorfindel Goldscheitel (talk) 08:21, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Spelling error
"Albrect Durer" should "Albrecht Dürer". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.2.64.113 (talk) 10:52, 29 March 2012 (UTC)


 * ✅. Danke. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις 11:07, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Germans should be deleted or modified
The given source does not represent the genetic make up of the present day german population, but tries to reconstruct a situation around 1500 which ist, as the source itself mentions "guesswork". As far as I am concerned the section should be deleted, as it does not represent any information about germans as they are. Alternatively (that is if recent data can be presented) the sections genetics and ethnicity should be restructured as "3. anthropology", "3.1 Ethnicity" (or cultural anthropology) and "3.2 genetics". The "genetics" section should be modified to represent the fact, that notions of germanness does not correspond to the german genetic make up. A discussion of the racial (and racist) untertones of many (past and present) concepts of germanness could be includet in the ethnicity section. Furthermore the racialy stereotyped pictures of recent germans (all (!) of them feature blond persons in the center. Actually only less then half of germans are!) should be reviewed. Wikipedia should not become a place of racial stereotyping, nor a playground for racists, to impose their scewed views on a (compared to germany) less sensitized audience/wikipedia community. Regards 193.175.103.57 (talk) 12:29, 31 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Ageed, if it is from a source based on info from 1500 that is unacceptable, and I agree that this article should not tolerate neo-Nazi attempts to promote Aryan race theory, nor similar Nordic "purity" politics - which any serious anthropologist knows is false. As this is about Germans as an ethnicity, a section about their ethnic origins should be here. And yes of course that old Nordic stereotype nonsense of blonde-haired blue-eyed people should be removed, many have brown hair and brown eyes. I have added material on the known history of ethnic influences on Germans, and note ethnicity does not only involve heredity - it also involves linguistic and cultural influences - some Germans in areas like Austria intermixed with the Roman Latin people, while Germans as a whole were influenced by Roman culture - the Roman Latin alphabet with a few minor changes is used by Germans - this shows the nonsense of Germanic "purity" claims; plus the Huns - an East Asian people - under Attila and his Hunnic Empire ruled over Germany for almost 100 years and the Huns intermixed with the Germans and the Huns in Europe adopted an Eastern Germanic language as their lingua franca; Huns and Germans served side by side in Attila's army. The Germans assimilated the Old Prussians who were an ethnic group similar to the Baltic Latvian and Lithuanian peoples. There have been many Jews who intermarried with Germans of Germanic descent - so much so that the Nazis had to effectively admit that Germans were "un-pure" and had to investigate the origins of Germans' backgrounds - even some Nazis had the ironic misfortune of finding out that they themselves were part Jewish! In summary the Roman Latin, Hunnic, Baltic, and Jewish ethnic influence upon Germans throws the racist conception of a "pure" German ethnicity out the window.--R-41 (talk) 15:25, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Error (2)
Nicolaus Copernicus was Polish, not German! Top811 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 18:24, 12 May 2012 (UTC).
 * Copernicus was an ethnic German who was a subject of the Polish crown. --IIIraute (talk) 18:34, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm from Poland. In Polish schools teach that Kopernik (Copernicus) was a Polish.I was in Toruń (the home of Nicholas), it was fun. I live in Gniezno. Sorry for the blah, I was sure that he was of Poland. Greetings from Polish :) Top811 (talk)

The actual problem here is that there was a previous image on Commons but it was deleted by [Fastily] (sigh!) because it "had no source". Then another version of the image was restored, but the problem here is that this new version was uploaded by a user who is indef banned on Wikipedia for sock puppeting, copyright violations and nationalist edit warring. I have changed that.


 * What a nonsense. The file was originally uploaded by User:Magnus Manske.--IIIraute (talk) 02:34, 13 May 2012 (UTC) ...apart from that you haven't changed anything regarding the issue mentionend above - you only removed Copernicus from the collage. what is your argument?--IIIraute (talk) 12:56, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

As an aside, in terms of pure aesthetics, the present image is way to cluttered and has way too many people in it. We actually had a similar issue over at Poles, where some editors just think it wonderful to try and cram in as many individuals into that collage as possible (apparently "more people in infobox collage = national greatness!").
 * ...because most of them, are virtually unknown outside of Poland.--IIIraute (talk) 12:07, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

But once you get past a certain number, the picture looks like shit. And you can see that in the present image - most of those individual pics are cropped in weird ways, Marx doesn't have a forehead, Hahn doesn't have a chin, etc. and the whole thing looks like a huge mess. It would probably be a good idea to just a get a simplified, "less is more" kind of thing going on (though I gotta say, where the hell is David Hilbert???) Volunteer Marek 01:44, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Also, there's other hijinks in the present collage, like putting Catherine the Great in it. I mean, yeah, sure, she was German, sort of - but is she really a good illustration of "Germans"? There are also images in the collage which are not captioned, and which are not particularly relevant. I'm guessing Mr. Banned User Alphasinus was just being his usual wacky self or is subtly trolling here. Volunteer Marek 01:53, 13 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The article is about "Germans as an ethnic group" - so, yes - Catherine the Great, being born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg - belonging to the ruling family of Anhalt - was of German ethnicity. What else would she have been?--IIIraute (talk) 02:07, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, she's in there now. You reverted me for adding the CAPTION that she is in there (?).
 * I did not revert you - I did amend the caption → per WP:COMMONNAME --IIIraute (talk) 03:28, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
 * But there is the question of whether she should or should not be included. Why not Rilke (my favorite German language poet) or Schiele? Makes about as much sense. Volunteer Marek 02:26, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Why not Rilke or Schiele? ...because Catherine the Great is of greater notability, (and Schiele was Austrian)--IIIraute (talk) 02:52, 13 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The file was originally uploaded by User:Magnus Manske. The nationality issue of Copernicus is well documented in the article ⇒ . If he doesn't belong to the "Germans" article, he also should be removed from the "Poles" one - because he isn't a good example for either of them.--IIIraute (talk) 02:32, 13 May 2012 (UTC)


 * "The file was originally uploaded by User:Magnus Manske" - no it wasn't. Check the history a bit more carefully. Volunteer Marek 02:51, 13 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, it was - who cares about the author. Please also note: there is nothing wrong with the image, as all the people displayed are of ethnic German origin. If Copernicus was not - can we please now also delete him from the "Poles" collage .--IIIraute (talk) 02:58, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

manipulation of File:Germans collage.jpg
There was no consensus on the changes User:Volunteer Marek did to the File:Germans collage.jpg - now the file description does not match the people displayed anymore! --IIIraute (talk) 12:38, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Gisele
It makes no sense having gisele bundchen in this article she´s brazilian and just like north americans (usa) has a large population of german descendents so does brazil now she considers herself brazilian and not german. She´s just a famous brazilian model that by accident has german ancestry. Someone remove her. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.92.71.18 (talk) 19:40, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

latest edits
Could you please provide some academic references on why Ashkenazi Jews are to be regarded as ethnic Germans (other than linguistic ones), as well as references to your latest changes on "Related ethnic groups".--IIIraute (talk) 16:26, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

RfC: Should German Jewish people assimilated into German culture, be considered part of the German ethnicity?
An issue has been raised on whether assimilated German Jewish people can be considered part of the German ethnicity. There are different arguments for and against.

The argument in favour of including German Jewish people as part of the German ethnicity is the claim that ethnicity is not exclusively based on geneaology as has commonly been assumed, but can be based on geneaology and/or culture and language. This argument claims that German Jewish people have become deeply assimilated and interconnected with Germans, in addition there have been a substantial number of German Jewish people who have intermarried with German non-Jewish people, or who adopted Christianity and German identity. In addition this argument notes that previous discussions on German ethnicity on this article have supported the inclusion of German Jewish people such as Karl Marx in the infobox.

The argument opposed to the inclusion of German Jewish people claims that while Jewish and German culture has intermixed, that on a numerical scale, most Ashkenazi Jews did not intermarry with German non-Jewish people and that Ashkenazi marriage and religious custom amongst other Jewish religious cultural issues remained homogeneous and autonomous from German culture; as such on a numerical level, Ashkenazi Jews have not influenced the development of the German ethnicity on a large scale, noting that the number of Jews in Germany is an extremely small minority of the total population of Germany. In addition this argument notes that the article on Ashkenazi Jews, does not mention that they are related to Germans.

Notes (please read before posting):
 * (1) Please put the word "Yes" if you support the inclusion of German Jewish people at the beginning of your comment, put the word "No" if you oppose the inclusion, put "Unsure" if you are unsure about inclusion. If you change your stance, please cross out your earlier stance and post your new stance.
 * (2) Please post your reasons for your position. Use reliable secondary sources for any potentially controversial point you may make.
 * (3) Anti-Semitic, anti-German, and/or other xenophobic, racist, or derogatory remarks about either Germans or Jews will be regarded as uncivil remarks and will not be recognized as serious contributions to this discussion.

Please post your comments below.--R-41 (talk) 22:38, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

'''Note: The discussion will end on 1 August 2012. If there is a consensus for inclusion or exclusion, that will be done. If there is no majority in favour of either side, but a substantial number of people who have declared themselves "unsure", then other options here will have to be undertaken, such as WP:EXPERT.'''--R-41 (talk) 04:15, 7 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Unsure, as I would like to see some academic sources on Ashkenazi Jews being part of the German ethnicity. I never heard of Albert Einstein being an ethnic German.--IIIraute (talk) 23:05, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Unsure I am tempted to say "Yes", but there is some debate, as I understand, about precisely what it means to be Jewish, ethnically speaking. It's certainly true that German Jews are quite different than, say, Polish or French Jews because they were German and the latter Polish or French.  This makes the alternative seem to be equally a stretch, as it requires lumping together Jews from different cultures and language groups.  The claim that "Jews have not substantially influenced the development of the German ethnicity as a whole" seems to be a bit of a canard, though, as it could be plausibly held for any subgroup of Germans (e.g., Swabians, Saxons, etc.).  siafu (talk) 23:16, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The issue is assimilation - this is about people with Jewish cultural heritage who identified as Germans, but this would not include Jewish people who have lived in Germany who did not identify as Germans. For instance there were German nationalists who were Jewish, such as Eduard Lasker - who identified himself as a German - and prior to the state of Germany existing (after 1871). Secondly, there were substantial numbers of German Jewish people who intermarried with German non-Jewish people, adopted Christianity, and had children. This book: How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin (2007) by Deborah Sadie Hertz, describes in detail of the substantial numbers of German Jewish people who assimilated into German culture and identified as Germans, including prior to the creation of the state of Germany in 1871.--R-41 (talk) 00:28, 9 June 2012 (UTC


 * Could you describe "substantial numbers" more closely (numbers); also please note that your source neither deals with ethnicity per se, nor the whole of Germany or Germans (meaning ethnic Germans from various different countries). Regarding assimilation: For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have identified genetic variations that have high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population. This is true for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes) as well as for matrilineal markers (mitotypes). --IIIraute (talk) 00:43, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Forgive me, but I'm not sure how either of these responses actually relate to my original comment. Perhaps this was meant to be a separate discussion? siafu (talk) 04:02, 9 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Include The ancestors of modern German Jews came to what is now Germany over 1000 years ago, when they adopted the German language and developed Yiddish. Modern Jews have ancestors who were converts, which is why Jewish people more closely resemble people in the counties where they live than Jews in other countries.  On the other hand, non-Jewish Germans have mixed ancestry including, in the East, Slavs.  There are similar examples in other countries.  Cornwall is part of England, although many consider it to be a separate country.  Descendants of Irish orphans in Quebec are considered French Canadian.  TFD (talk) 18:40, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Include/Exclude. For those who were born upon or after the 18th January, 1871, well, yes; but for those who were born before the 18th January, 1871, well, no, probably not. Germany, in the current and present form as we know it, after all, did not come to exist until that date. I don't see how a person could had been accepted (by his wider society) as a (full) German in those days without also being either a Roman Catholic or a Protestant, either a Lutheran or a Calvinist, and it is obviously not up to us to change history; but obviously, we must have a cut-off point, for attempting to exclude 20th-Century Jews as being "non-Germans" would be far too problematic for all sorts of reasons. The concept of ethnicity being also defined by religion is nothing new or novel in Europe, and in many other other parts of the World, even if this concept horrifies most in North America. — KC9TV 08:51, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
 * This is about German ethnicity, this is not about German citizenship to the state of Germany that was created in 1871. If sources are needed to clarify this, then sources can be sought for. I provided a source above that says that there were Jews who assimilated into being Germans since the 1820s and that there were Jews who intermarried with Germans, I need to find the numbers of it, but there are ethnic Germans with Jewish heritage. Furthemore not all Jewish people in Germany after 1871 considered themselves ethnic Germans even if they were German citizens, for instance there were Zionist Jews in Germany who identified themselves as a ethnicity and did not consider themselves ethnic Germans. The issue is the numbers of Jews identifying as ethnic Germans, and the issue of should such people not be included if the numbers are miniscule, as opponents of inclusion have claimed.--R-41 (talk) 13:37, 13 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, and why limit this to assimilated people? I don't see why Jewish Germans couldn't be considered ethnically German if that is what they are. In other words, I'm at a loss as to what Judaism has to do with ethnicity. Ethnic Germans in Munich are Catholics, while ethnic Germans in Hamburg are Protestants. Many ethnic Germans have converted to Buddhism, and doubtless some to Judaism too, while other ethnic Germans are descended from families that have been Jewish for generations. BTW, a few sources would spice up this RFC quite nicely. Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 19:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, in agreement with Dailycare above. I don't know just what this RfC is about. All the best,  Miniapolis  ( talk ) 15:30, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, per TFD's comment that Jewish people have been deeply integrated and assimilated into German culture for centuries. The RfC has technically expired, I tried to get the back so that it could continue until August 1, but the bloody RfC Bot shut it down. Anyway I addressed this issue in the first place and didn't vote yet, so this is my vote. I will wait until August 1 to allow more imput before a decision.--R-41 (talk) 23:53, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * No, this is an anti-Semitic attempt by Muslims and leftist Europeans to deny us our Jewish heritage by associating us with Europeans ethnicities, just like how many Muslims and right-wing Europeans say we are Khazars instead of real Jews. The truth is, we are not even Euopeans; we are a Semitic people directly descended from the ancient Israelites. Saying we are German is offensive, racist, negationist, and absurd, and Wikipedia should be ashamed of itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.65.46.71 (talk) 07:33, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Wikipedia has been overrun with airhead leftists trying to alter history and science to suit the sensibilities of political correctness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.217.83.170 (talk) 15:52, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately for the world there are people like you who believe that your ethnicity is pure and reject science that demonstrates that homo sapiens (humans) descended from Africa, but because you are a chauvinist bigot who will believe this to be a "leftist conspiracy", you are stuck in your screwed up delusional world where your ethnic group is "pure", sent from God, blah, blah, blah. Go pick up a book on the biological origins of homo sapiens, bigot.--R-41 (talk) 19:58, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

People or peoples?
I am a German reader of this article. After stumbling upon the plural "peoples" several times in an excellently written text like this, I'm unsure as a non-native English speaker. Shouldn't it be "people" instead? Or does the word "people+s" exist? Sounds like a bad German accent in an English context to me. Hope you can resolve the issue for me as I didn't want to monkey with an article by correcting expressions I'm not sure wether they exist or not. Thank you --78.42.243.203 (talk) 00:45, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello, Germans, English and Americans are peoples. You and I are people. That's a whole different meaning. Ich901 (talk) 09:45, 20 July 2012 (UTC)


 * It is grammatically correct. People and peoples are translated into German as Volk and Völker.  Although people is a plural noun, it is here treated as a collective one.  TFD (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

NPOV
Where's Hitler? Almost every non-German know him... (better than Otto Hahn) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.196.225.223 (talk) 01:12, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * he was Austrian85.195.69.112 (talk) 18:40, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Hitler was German ethnic, i can get you his own quotes on his ethnicity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.136.205.176 (talk) 14:48, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Why is Karl Marx listed as German ethnicity?
he was not Germanic....

I understand he was a German national, but there are Turkish/Arab/African German nationals as well..

this article is supposed to be about the Germanic ethnic group in Germany. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.231.215.49 (talk) 01:37, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Reason for ethnic Jews being included in this article?
????

Marx? Einstein?

is there a reason for this obvious inconsistency?

--Savakk (talk) 14:35, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree. As a Jew, I am offended that we are being included in this article as Germans. Our greatest enemies and murderers are a completely different ethnicity than us. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.65.46.71 (talk) 07:27, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree; Claiming German Jews are not German is Nazi-propaganda (because that was one of the core principals of the Nazis). So, to not deny German Jew their Germanhood IS anti-semitic (btw I'm a German Jew)85.195.69.112 (talk) 18:39, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * and by the way (@95.65.46.71) calling whole ethnic groups, nations, religions,... the "enemy" is something very problematic and nazi-like18:59, 4 September 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.195.69.112 (talk)
 * I see the Germans have brainwashed you. I bet you are not even a real Jew. You are a self-hater and a traitor. Germans are the most evil people in the world and are murderous barbarians and scum. I wish for them to be exterminated for killing my family.
 * 85.195.69.112, you are probably a Muslim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.44.168.147 (talk) 02:15, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

first of all, no, it's not "Nazi propaganda" it's a basic understanding of linguistic and ethnic history.

you may be a German Jew, but that is with regards to nationality and perhaps culture, your ethnic origins lie in Western Asia, whereas the Germanic Germans are indigenous to Europe.

that is a serious distinction.

besides that clear and glaring fact, Einstein and Marx did not consider themselves German.

and the fact that you choose to accuse someone with a dissenting opinion of "being a Muslim" as if that is an insult shows you have no place moderating this page or any other.

--Savakk (talk) 18:44, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The anonymous user 96.44.168.147 is just some hotheaded chauvinist bigot who has either been blocked or banned from Wikipedia, or is too cowardly to register with a user name, because they would be blocked a lot faster. And I mean that that anon user is literally hotheaded, as in intermittent explosive disorder, he has launched vicious attacks on multiple users who agreed to a decision above this, and he has already wished death upon all Germans as a revenge genocide for the Holocaust. I am sorry for his family who died in the Holocaust, but that doesn't justify eye for an eye justice. Otherwise there is no point listening to this person who has certifiable psychotic levels of violent rage, I mean I wouldn't be surprised if user 96.44.168.147 violently assaults or murders someone with that level of psychotic rage.--R-41 (talk) 02:27, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Please correct the following sentence!
"The Old Prussians were an ethnic group related to the Latvian and Lithuanian Baltic peoples who mutually spoke languages of Finno-Ugric origins." Honestly, Latvian and Lithuanian are not languages of Finno-Ugric origin. They are Indo-European languages of the Baltic group (by extension, Balto-Slavic group). This is an epitome of ignorance! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lanny2012 (talk • contribs) 21:16, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No need to be insulting. I have removed the language reference.  TFD (talk) 19:16, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Austrians
why are south tyroleans counted as german while the austrians are not? either the population of austria is counted as german or the population of south tyrol must be removed. at the moment the article doesn't make really sense and lack coerence: in the lauguage section are numbered 250,000 native speakers in italy while in ancestry the number is doubled.

lastly in related ethnic groups the romansh are counted but that's a little arbitrary; the romansh since the middle ages have been subjected to assimilation\germanization that reduced their number to more or less irrelevance in switzerland, and while many swiss-germans are probably descendents of assimilated people the romansh are not germanic.

alex — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.25.100.128 (talk) 22:47, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Infobox issue: Einstein later identified as American, suggestion of a person to replace Einstein on the infobox
Out of some rant by a soapboxing anti-Semitic bigot who had the manipulative nerve to deny bigotry while still promoting it by basically saying in a summarized form: "I'm not a bigot, but I'm repulsed by Jewish people being in the infobox, there is a vast left-wing conspiracy on Wikipedia to make Jews German, Einstein became American, Jews cannot ever be Germans, remove them all, blah, blah, blah". Though I will admit that one issue was raised by that bigoted user that is worth discussing. Einstein did become American and identified as American from that point on. Now of course American identity is not ethnic, but if Einstein did not identify as German after becoming American, that may be a ground for removing Einstein, as he did not identify as being of German identity. There are obviously going to be anti-Semitic users going to arrive here and if we do remove Einstein because he later identified as American, I don't want this to become a concession to the anti-Semitic bigot users who come here from time to time. Therefore I recommend replacing Einstein with German nationalist Eduard Lasker who was a self-identified German, was Jewish, and proponent of German identity, he did not renounce German identity for another identity like Einstein appears to have done. Source for Lasker affiliating with German identity: The Making of a German Nationalist: Eduard Lasker's Early Years, 1829-1847.--R-41 (talk) 13:40, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

P.S. As someone mentioned to me before, and I now regularly note: ethnicity is not exclusively based on geneaology, and there is no such thing as a "pure" ethnic group derived from one lineage alone, ethnicities evolve - they assimilate and absorb other ethnicities, Germans have predominantly Germanic roots but also have significant historical Latin heritage from Roman rule, and Slavic heritage from expanding eastward into Slavic populated lands - as said in the article, the former German state of Prussia itself adopted the name of the Balto-Slavic Old Prussians who spoke their own Balto-Slavic language prior to being assimilated into Germans, and famous northern German military strategist Karl von Clausewitz had Slavic heritage. Therefore claims of ethnic "purity" of Germans as exclusively Germanic people is Nordicist pseudoscience.--R-41 (talk) 14:21, 10 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, that's exactly what this article is: pseudo-science! It's somebody's opinion of what should be presented as "German". Technically, German is the name for anybody who, at present, has German citizenship. A piece of paper. So nearly anybody in Germany could be used in the infobox as long as they have that paper.


 * But it's obvious that we're looking for more than that. Because, historically, Germans are people from a long line of people in the German-speaking realm of Central Europe since the rise of German-speaking civilization, as well as descendants of that same group. And the same is true today. Just visit any land that isn't Germany where people who call themselves Germans are. Yet these people did not necessarily come from Germany - there was no Germany, only German-speaking Europe! Austria, Bavaria, Brandenburg, Switzerland, etc. Should they be excluded from the infobox for the same reason Hitler is excluded? I understand there are people who serve as better examples of "German" than others, simply because they have the least hangups. But you'd have to be an idiot not to see how this is going to create a very homogenous sample. Ok, Hitler is out, he can also be described as Austrian. But these people can also be described as Brandenburgers or Bavarians, too. Or is Austria only special because, unlike Prussia, Bavaria and Hessen, it did not become a part of Germany for long? But really, how long was Prussia a part of Germany? And was it not a very mixed sample of Germans and Slavs? For example, you have Copernicus, who is rightfully excluded from the infobox, because part of his background is Slav. But wait a minute: there are lots of Germans with part Slav backgrounds; IN FACT, the very leaders of the German and Slavic nations were probably the most mixed of all. Czech princes marrying German princesses marrying Danish royals marrying Polan-descended dukes marrying Bohemian princesses marrying Austrian whatevers. But if we exclude Copernicus because of mixed background, then why are we including Marx and Einstein? Above all else, in modern BRD-Germany speak, Einstein could no longer even be considered "German" simply because he no longer had citizenship in Germany. Or what, we include Marx and Einstein simply because we do not want "Nazi propaganda"? That's dumb, to use an example just to be a negationist. Where is, then, the negation of the German purist platform that argued that Slavs could not be German? We should have Copernicus then, after all. No, we shouldn't. We shouldn't be making exceptions, we should be defining based on those who most closely fit all definitions of German, right? I mean, if we include Einstein, Marx, Hitler and Copernicus, then why not include Barack Obama, who also has German roots?--78.53.84.145 (talk) 13:16, 12 November 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.53.84.145 (talk) 12:46, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't see why Jewish Germans couldn't be considered ethnically German if that is what they are. In other words, I'm at a loss as to what Judaism has to do with ethnicity. Ethnic Germans in Munich are Catholics That's because you don't understand that Judaism is not a confession you just adopt. Although today, some Jews, but fewer than you'd think, would say it is. But the racial origins of the classification are not as important as the fact that we are including a people who came from another land and, in varying degrees, retained their old beliefs. Ok, the same thing could be said of the Huguenauts...which is why this classification of "German" is pure pseudoscience and nothing more than a political statement and an opinion about how many years it takes to assimilate into an ethnicity.


 * Yes, per TFD's comment that Jewish people have been deeply integrated and assimilated into German culture for centuries. See above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.53.84.145 (talk) 13:33, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The consensus determined above is that Jewish Germans do exist, contrary to anti-Semitic and anti-German rhetoric of chauvinist bigots, and that Eduard Lasker, a prominent German nationalist figure who was Jewish, is an example of a Jewish person self-identifying as German - and he identified as German before German citizenship was introduced in 1871. This article is about an identity, and yes the term "German" is a category that certain people have identified themselves as, we can discuss until we are blue in the face that ethnicities are socially-constructed, but it doesn't change the fact that the identity exists. If you believe this article should be about German citizenship alone and not about ethnic identity, you will need to seek consensus for such a proposal as it will reorganize the article. The problem is that the ethnic identity issue has not been confined to Germany's borders, in history there have been many people who have identified as Germans who have not lived in Germany.--R-41 (talk) 22:35, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Deep ancestry and genetics
should interesting information like this not be in the article?

http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf

Pipo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.203.72 (talk) 15:16, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

This page couldn't be anymore bias & Anglocentric. I like how under ethnicity there is absolutely no mention of Angles or Saxons (they DID NOT all leave Germany). No mention of Vikings either despite Germany sharing a border with a Scandinavian country. Despite Germany having more Haplogroup I1 than England does. Despite the North of Germany looking more Germanic on average than ALL of England. Yet on England's page, whats the first thing they mention? Vikings. When the reality is the majority of Brits are Celts, and don't look Germanic at all.

The page goes even further to try an insinuate that Germans are more mixed than they are. Even going as far as to name Jews....Seriously? Both France & England have had higher populations of Jews than Germany. Infact France has more immigrants in their country than the whole of Europe (half their football team is black), and if you go to Paris, there is nothing but people from the 3rd world. No mention of this on France's page? yet they mention "Gauls" as if the french are anything similar to Gauls today.

Jews should not have even been listed anywhere on a topic about German ethnicity, they have remained a small number, and they generally have entirely different Haplogroups, and genetic markers than ethnic Germans and Europeans for the matter. They have nothing to do with modern German genetic make up. If you want to link Jews to someone in Europe, try Sicilians, thats who they cluster with, not Germans. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:C4EA:CA0:FDE4:FA3E:2BE4:137F (talk) 15:28, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Why exactly do you take so much offense to the idea that most Jews are of German ancestry and that likewise there are likely Germans who had ancestors in the Jewish faith? I find it strange you seem to mention things like purity, "Germanicness" (protip- finland is blonder and more blue eyed than any "Germanic" country except Sweden)and Jews.96.231.17.247 (talk) 15:52, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I also find very weird the comments by the former user. Just for the record, since he mentions it, according to the Genetic Map above, England does have a higher Haplogroup I ratio than Germany. Besides, Germany, from a Haplogroup or "genetic lines" point of view, is quite diverse, as the Haplogroup map above shows. The Myth of Germanic "purity" is, as we know, linked to National Socialist propaganda, and modern genetic science kicks it in the ass. Actually, if we want to speak about "purity" from the point of view of genetic lines or "genetic families", we have to look at Eskimos, Amerindians or some African groups as examples, but certainly not at Europeans, let alone at Germans. Pipo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.203.72 (talk) 04:44, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Removing Einstein picture from the infobox
Per the thread above there is no reason to keep Einstein in the infobox mosaic. Ethnicity is defined by the historical line one belongs to. Einstein didn't see himself German by ethnicity or by much else and his ethnicity was not German. The argument Jewish people do not consist ethnicity is not a legitimate nor valid one and of bad form, to say the least. Also, the mosaic includes several high profile antisemitic people, like Wagner- a composer and the godfather of Nazi ideology-there is much absurdity in the idea of having Einstein in the same mosaic with Martin Luther (who called Christians to show "painful mercy" to the Jewish people) and Wagner and arguing they are of the same ethnicity. Lets close this thread fast and remove Einstein from the infobox. As for Marx, while ethnically he wasn't German (actually both his grandparents were Rabbis) -I will not argue for his removal for the purpose of saving all of us time.--Gilisa (talk) 13:43, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * "Before Hitler raise to power 40% of professors in German universities were Jews-more than 40 times their ratio in the German population, this just emphasize that aside for their self-definition, history and etc -their Jewish ethnicity played unique part in their academic achievements." - so it was their race/genetics, is it that what you are saying? P.S. do you have a reference on that 40 per cent?? --IIIraute (talk) 16:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your sanity. I suggest replacing him with Max von Laue. He's a physisist, won a Nobel prize, opposed the Nazis, and knew Einstein personally. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 14:39, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Good suggestion! Popular figure with a positive image and big contribution. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 15:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Hermann Hesse or Hildegard von Bingen, would be a better, i.e. more prominent choice.--IIIraute (talk) 15:39, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I think Hildegard von Bingen would be the best choice, as there are hardly any medieval people in the current line-up, and only 13% women (of which 50% are models). I am a bit surprised that Angela Merkel is not in there, and one might also consider for instance Käthe Kollwitz, Herta Müller and Magdalena Neuner. It appears to me that male writers are already well represented; if one more should be added, I would have suggested Berthold Brecht, as to cover the DDR period. I wonder more generally, if it is intentionally to exclude the "bad guys", like Nazi leaders, Erich Honnecker? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iselilja (talk • contribs) 20:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree about Einstein, though I do think Marx to should be removed, simply because he wasn't German by ethnicity. Conversion did not making him German, just Christian, and even that he declined as an atheist. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 15:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Here we go again - your ethnicity equals genetics racial theory! --IIIraute (talk) 15:47, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You are the top expert here on racial theories trying to make an ethnicity dissapear. That's where your logic got twisted in the quest to get redemption for the deeds of your ancestors, saying that someone is not a German because they are not of German ethnicity is not racism and not a racial theory, saying that someone is better then someone else because of their race is racism. Different ethnicities have the right to exist and to express themselves. I understand you are trying to proove how far you are from the Nazis by trying to proove Jews are Germans, but don't you get you are fighting for the same cause as them, deleting the Jewish race? The fact is, Jews exist as an ethnic group and I don't see how saying that fact is racism. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 16:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Deborah Sadie Hertz, How Jews Became Germans, Yale University, 2007. --IIIraute (talk) 16:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * IIIraute, my source is the great historical book "The Pity of It All: A Portrait of Jews In Germany 1743 - 1933 " by Amos Elon -and I can't find how this fact is surprising given the large number of Jewish people among German Nobelists. In any case my point was to demonstrate the cultural differences even when they apparently assimilated among Germans still there were occupations more affiliated with Jews, I have no racist meanings. Anyway, some Jews tried to become Germans (thanks to centuries of persecutions and oppression) but it doesn't change their ethnicity. --Gilisa (talk) 16:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * ...meaning - ethnicity equals genetics/race? -- Regarding your 40 per cent reference - page?? Maybe the success also had to do with the German scholarly ethic? Z. Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel: Zionist icon or iconoclast?, Princeton, 2011: "His relationship to his own German identity was also fraught with ambivalence; in the end ... he felt a great deal of allegiance to German culture, and even more to the German scholarly ethic" (p. 255-56). --IIIraute (talk) 16:53, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Guitar hero on the roof, the opposite is right: Saying Jews are not ethnic group is racist. It's very much to deny the Jewish people as a nation. Enemies of the Jewish people once argued Jews are inferior race and today they argue that they don't have the right for self-identification. It's also very historical practice, from the historical point of view Jewish people are one of worlds oldest nations.--Gilisa (talk) 17:12, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * IIIraute, again- I said nothing about the genetic issue the whole point was to demonstrate difference and perhaps it wasn't the best way to do that so just drop the pen. The page? Again, this remark is not very important and I don't have the book at hand reach right now-if you insist I will tell you in several days. I doubt the success had anything with German ethic given that Jews gained similar level of achievements in Spain-many centuries earlier, and even before, given that they enjoy the same level of achievements in the US and in many other places today. BTW, at least in science-in Israel as well. You could say it's the German ethic if their performances were equal to their percent in the population but given it isn't I refer it to very very long history of putting education in high esteem- starting from the days before exile Jews preferred to marry their daughters to Talmid Chacham certainly if he's Illui than to rich or influential men and vice versa,  Talmid Chacham would chose his women by the righteousness of her parents. So, this is really long history of culture which admire knowledge just for the purpose of knowledge and also free thinking (infact, in famous remark Einstein praise his Jewish heritage for this exactly).--Gilisa (talk) 17:12, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Look, guys, please don't start this again. Everyone here knows and accepts that Jews are an ethnic group and that Einstein was a part of it. He did not see himself as an ethnic German. Conversion to Christianity and his later loss of faith obviously didn't make Marx German, but he and the German people around him considered himself as such, and that suffices and should be accepted. It does not erase his Jewish ancestry, but unlike Jewish ethnicity German ethnicity does not put a strong emphasis on genetics and ancestry, so there is no contradiction. I am sure that there are some people out there who think that Jewishness is a religion, but this is mostly out of ignorance. Let's just stick with Einstein out, Marx in. Also, let's not make this about whether Einstein was successful in what he did because of Jewish or German attributes. He was shaped by both, so Jews and Germans can both rightly claim a connection with him, regardless of his ethnicity, just as the French and the Poles both do with Marie Curie. As for the alternatives for Einstein, I still think replacing a physicist with a physicist is the way forward. I would also contend that Hildegard of Bingen and Herrmann Hesse are less well known internationally than Max von Laue, but perhaps that is only my impression. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 17:35, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I should avoid mentioning a fact that would lead to discussion about attributes (though my idea was only to mention cultural differences but I could do that by pointing to Einstein childhood which had strong secular and also religious Jewish aspects and is not typical to Germans) -anyway, it appear that I made unnecessary remark. Rainbowwrasse, I agree with most of what you wrote-lets put Einstein out of here. BTW, I don't agree with what you wrote about the way ethnicity is viewed by Germans vs. Jews.
 * This was not aimed at you, I think your comments were valid. As to the different views, let's agree to disagree and leave it at that. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 19:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Right. I just checked, and this article originally also covered Germans as a nation before references to nation were removed in an unexplained edit. Also, a separate article on Ethnic Germans exists. You'll be happy to know that the illustrative picture that goes with that features neither Einstein nor Marx, but some drunk Argentinians. I reinstated the word 'nation' to the 'Germans' article, which is more appropiate anyway because the article not only deals with ethnicity. I trust that resolves the issue to everyone's satisfaction. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 19:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Ok, thanks-in any case it would be appropriate to remove the picture (Einsteins' only) from this article. In case one argue it's now about Germans as nation (meaning citizens or past citizens of Germany that grew and/or are/were immersed into German society) and by that want Einstein picture to stay here then I think we must include Turks and black Germans as well-otherwise it implies that the article mean to something else. Anyhow, given that Einstein renounced his German citizenship and stated many times he have no intention to return to Germany it would be of bad taste even to include him in article about German citizens (in case this is all about and I doubt it), IMO.--Gilisa (talk) 20:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The thing is, it still says in the opening origination from central Europe, while the Jews originated in the Middle East. I still think Einstein should be removed from here. Besides, he wasn't a German citizen at the end of his life and wasn't a big fan of Germany either. Einstein should still be removed. The article Ethnic Germans doesnt cover the German ethnicity in general but only the German diaspora so it has nothing to do with the case. I don't agree with keeping Marx but accept it as a concensus (though still don't get the logic of it but whatever). Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 20:19, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Guitar hero on the roof ,There is not much logic in keeping Marx in an article that readers at least think to be about Germans as ethnic group. If Marks was perceived only as individual then it's ok, but it's not the case. The case is that every one in the info box represent the entire German people, meaning the German ethnicity-and if that so, then it means that Marx representing the Germans as ethnicity and then it's not longer Marx, it's German Jews who are now represented as part of ethnicity different of their real one -and then every German Jew is ethnic German. This is bad encyclopedic standard. As for Marks by himself, I don't care much - he didn't identify himself with Jewish people and even flame against them and expressed no feeling through Jewish people, at least not publicly -and I guess that not even privately (though interestingly enough his non-Jewish daughter did see herself as part of the Jewish people) so just to solve the issue fast I agree that his picture stay in the infobox. Footnote, though Marx thought about himself as German and his closer circle friends considered him one-I believe he experienced antisemitism against himself many times. --Gilisa (talk) 20:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I also think Marx should be removed. It doesn't matter that he assimilated and disavowed his Jewish heritage, he was still an ethnic Jew for all intents and purposes. If I move to China and assimilate into their culture, I'm still an Arab-Jew at the end of the day.Evildoer187 (talk) 23:39, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh for pity's sake, will you stop already? The article now clearly says nation as well. Take out Einstein if the guy didn't want to be associated with the country in any way, but this is starting (STARTING?) to get ridiculous. The French people collage is riddled with people from all over the place (Curie, Polish; Napoleon, Italian,... hey, isn't Sarkozy part Jewish? Better kick him out of there asap!) and nobody is getting their knickers in a twist about that. And just an info, 'China' is not an ethnicity. Why are people here constantly trying to claim that the Manchu (Hui, Miao,...) aren't an ethnicity? I better get all my Manchu mates together to rant on about how that's a flipping disgrace...! Rainbowwrasse (talk) 00:23, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I made this point quite early in this discussion: ""This article is about Germans as a nation and an ethnic group." Problem solved. see: Austrians → (Freud), Dutch People → (Spinoza), for example. Einstein and Marx were German nationals →→ see: Albert Einstein, Karl Marx." --IIIraute (talk) 00:59, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * You are right, Napoleon and Curie do not belong on there as they are not ethnic French. Sarkozy is half Greek-Jewish and half Hungarian, so he shouldn't be there either. Your point about the Manchu doesn't even make any sense, given that they are a native Chinese people. Jews, on the other hand, did not even originate in Germany, and the two groups have very little in common with each other. To count them as ethnic Germans is ludicrous.


 * And including "nationality" in the lead unnecessarily widens the scope of the article. The entire page would have to be re-written from scratch if we were to include that.Evildoer187 (talk) 01:10, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, interesting... The Miao ... is an ethnic group ... whose members may not necessarily be either linguistically or culturally related. For this reason, many Miao peoples cannot communicate with each other, and have different histories and cultures. Whoa! An ethnic group whose members aren't linguistically or culturally related? Let me just go scrape my brain off the wall! Rainbowwrasse (talk) 17:32, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Not true. The article was written about Germans as a national and ethnic group. Why would there otherwise be a separate article on "Ethnic Germans". Please note that the article also includes Slavic people, for example. Karl von Clausewitz is a famous German whose surname is of Slavic origin. --IIIraute (talk) 01:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You are so funny :-) JUsut 2 days ago you were claming Einstein and Marx are ethnic Germans, no you change the whole mantra :-) ? The article was just changed to "ethnicity and nation", but the fact is, Einstein didn't want to be associated with this nation. Another point is "originating in central Europe", while the Jews didn't originate in central Europe due to the fact they came from the middle east. Weather you define the article by ethnicity or nationality Einstein should be removed. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 08:16, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * This article states ethnic group and a nation, not or, it doesnt just say "nation". In other words this article is a history of Germans in Germany, therefore people of non German ethnicity should not be in the collage. Otherwise the article would be called Germany and not Germans. The fact is, in articles like Russians, English people, Belarusians, Tatar people, Assyrians, Han Chinese, Native Americans, etc, they have only people of their own ethnicity, simply because they know the difference between nationality and ethnicity. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 08:26, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Er, no. It says 'nation or ethnic group'. Anyway 'Lord of the Rings' is also a book and a movie. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 11:00, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Einstein was Jewish both by his ancestry and by his feelings. He was not ethnically German.--Tritomex (talk) 19:25, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Canvassing
I find it very problematic to continue the discussion with several of the editors involved, for the fact that they were "recruitet" through canvassing! →→, , , , -- I also find several of the comments here more than problematic: "IIIraute...maybe it's in your genes to want to wipe the Jewish race, I don't know..."; "...so I am saying that if anything, he should check what his great-grandfather was doing in 1941..."; "Only in Germans a few German guys feel the need to proove that Jews are in fact Germans, which is a result of the guilt feelings."; "I understand your position which is guilt after World War 2 so going from one extreme to the other..."; "It's so funny to see a German blaming Jews of doing what the Nazis did."; "I don't know what your great-grandfather did in 1941 ... so watch out who you are blaming in what."; "...you can argue as much as you want that Einstein was ethnically German- a side for being disrespectful for Einstein and motivated by nationalistic need to prove that German people are superior..."; "You are the top expert here on racial theories trying to make an ethnicity dissapear. That's where your logic got twisted in the quest to get redemption for the deeds of your ancestors..."; "I understand you are trying to proove how far you are from the Nazis by trying to proove Jews are Germans..."; " I guess Germans have a thing for trying to make the Jewish ethnicity not exist." --IIIraute (talk) 03:59, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * What I find problematic is that you have mothing to say so you start playing with other things :-) It's not canvassing for a simple reason. People who I asked to participate are not reverting anything and not edit-warring, they were brought here for a simple reason. Due to the nature of the page it has mostly German editors, while in this specific case it’s important that Jews would take part and give quotes regarding the topic, which involves them. You were brought quotes proving Einstein saw himself as a Jew and didn’t see himself as a German at all. Those stuff proved you wring so now you are dealing with things which have nothing to do with the topic. The joke is, everyone reached a compromise, but you are still not settled because you feel humiliated. Grow up and reply to the facts. The quotes you brought are hilarious, compared to your racist quotes I gave on this page calming Jews are not an ethnicity and calming the Jews here are bringing out “racial theories” simply because they state that Jews are an ethnic group. Most of the quotes you brought were an answer to other rude statements. For example a guy blaming the Jews of doing what the Nazis did... it's true, his great-grandfather was probably wearing a Nazi uniform in 1941 so he should be careful who he blames of what. Add this quote to. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 08:13, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * ...yes, maybe his great-grandfather did wear a Nazi uniform, though quite unlikely - more likely it was a Wehrmacht uniform, and maybe it was that of a baker, or firefighter - or maybe he belonged to the ca. 100,000 German citizens who were killed for one or another form of resistance... the problem is, you don't know, but you apply some collective "guilt-scheme" on all Germans, by race. Also approx. 7-9 million Germans died during WWII - were they all guilty and therefore deserved to die? What does this have to do with the discussion anyway?? No one ever said that Jews are not an ethnicity, or could you please point out where exactly this was said? Instead it was argued, that ethnicity implies several factors and can not only be decided through genetics/race.


 * NO compromise has been reached - the only one I can see was to reinstate the notion that this article was about Germans as nation and ethnic group.


 * The editors were clearly recruited, only to influence the outcome of this discussion therefore making their contribution strongly biased. Some of the comments are very offensive, racist and this undertone of anti-German sentiment is not acceptable, and should not be tolerated.


 * There only has been no edit warring, because the images cannot be removed without deleting the whole mosaic display - however, the edit warring did already happen at Austrians, trying to remove Freud. --IIIraute (talk) 15:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * In everyone's defence, I must say that it is very laudable that there has been no edit warring at all going on, even if Guitar hero on the roof's notification on user's talk pages wasn't particularly neutral and a bit anti-German and (in my view at least) somewhat inappropriately done. Still, this isn't getting any closer to a resolution. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 11:08, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I thought we reached a compromise that Einstein is gone and Marx stays (though I still think both should be taken out). Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 13:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It´s canvassing to contact people on "your side" to come to the talk page and influence the outcome of a discussion, even if they don´t start an edit war. The important point here is contacting "people on your side". If one wants to invite more people to a discussion it must be done in a neutral manner on a neutral site; like for instance a project site. And some of the sentences quoted by IIIraute are of course totally unacceptable. With regards, Iselilja (talk) 14:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * True, but I didn't know they will be on my side. I knew they were editing pages regarding Jews so assumed they were Jewish, but I didn't know what opinion they will have on the topic. The reason I invited those specific people was because I saw that when they did edits they were always well referenced so as far as I was concered I was inviting people with knowledge. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 14:25, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * ...yes, right, you invite/canvass editors you "assumed they were Jewish ... to join the discussion and help explain ... to a bunch of Germans ... that Jews are an ethnic group and Einstein (who identified as a Jew) and Marx are Jewish." ...because, you "guess Germans have a thing for trying to make the Jewish ethnicity not exist." But surely you did this with the best of intentions, not following some POV-pushing agenda... You better believe it! --IIIraute (talk) 21:51, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Choices for the infobox
Those are some weird choices in the infobox. Eduard Lasker, Emma Ihrer, Christine Teusch, Walter Ulbricht, Christa Wolf and Nena? Not to say those aren't somehow important but there would be much more notable people to pick for this. Kant, Siemens, Gutenberg, Planck, Röntgen, Mozart, Adenauer, Marx just to name a few that would fit a lot better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.204.153.64 (talk) 15:28, 30 November 2012 (UTC)


 * restore original images - clearly no consensus for change - see talk archive. --IIIraute (talk) 16:54, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * There were barely any women in that montage, and the montage is not easily editable should such certain images within that montage be deleted. German identity has become more and more ambiguous over the years, especially with post-WWII Austrians not identifying as ethnic Germans. Did Marx identify as a German? He became a British citizen, did he assimilate into British culture? Sigh, just wait until the anti-Semitic and anti-German chauvinist bigots arrive here to discuss this, then we will have to hear all the barely-restrained murderous-mindset rages by such chauvinist bigots about Germans and Jews all over again.--R-41 (talk) 18:29, 1 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I thought we had consensus to include assimilated Jews? I don't think anyone would really argue that Marx was British? He is known as a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, etc.. Same goes for Einstein - he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, being a German laureate. Both were born, raised and educated in Germany - both are of converted, assimilated (German)-Jewish background - and both of them did write all their major works in German. So either we do include assimilated Jews - or we don't. Mozart did describe himself as being German - was born in Salzburg, which until after his death did not become part of Austria. The city was founded by the Bavarians and had always been part of Bavaria. His father was from Augsburg, Bavaria - his mother also from Salzburg. Please have a look at a map - some parts of the city of Salzburg are basically still within the modern boundaries of Germany. We are not talking about Vienna. Maybe we could add Merkel, Steffi Graf or Hildegard von Bingen to have more women? --IIIraute (talk) 01:37, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If they are significant historical examples of German women, then that is acceptable. Due to the constant mentioning and accusations of POV for his exclusion, I think Hitler will need to be added to the infobox. Hitler is a very well-known ethnic German, exclusion based on arguments of political correctness will only encourage the matter to come up again and again - I say put the picture in, and let the issue die down. Inclusion of controversial historically significant people has been done on other infoboxes. The Georgians infobox for instance includes Stalin in it.--R-41 (talk) 03:14, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Although I can't see the need to alter the picture gallery, nor can I find any recent edit requests to add Hitler (a serious non-IP request), I have no problem with adding him to the gallery. If you feel one has to add Hitler, do it - but please do not remove the current file! You could exchange Brandt for Hitler, or otherwise add another five pictures below the existing file, for example: Angela Merkel, Hermann Hesse, Hildegard von Bingen, Adolf Hitler, Steffi Graf.--IIIraute (talk) 01:20, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * P.S. Helmut Kohl is definitely missing! Much more important than Brandt. --IIIraute (talk) 01:30, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of few of my comments without authority from the
Someone remove few of my comments (with very strong arguments for the exclusion of Einstein from the infobox) without having any permission -here is one example for comment by me that was deleted. I understand that you been left without any good answer, but this way of action by itself is sufficient for AN/I case-which I prefer to avoid. Before going to that, I'm calling the one who did it to restore my comments on the TP and avoid further attempts to sabotage the discussion.--Gilisa (talk) 16:14, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It was your own canvassing-"Brethren" Guitar hero on the roof → So watch your tongue!, before you accuse other editors of "sabotage"! --IIIraute (talk) 16:20, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Mind your language and don't tell me to watch my tongue-if you need documented instructions and training please go to WP:CIVIL. Btw, I already understand it was him and even written to him on this TP in this issue here-I accused no one for something he didn't do so just chill.--Gilisa (talk) 16:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You clearly adressed and accused me of "removing all your posts" → . So I am telling you again: Guard your tongue! You have clearly been recruited/canvassed into this discussion →, making remarks like "...you can argue as much as you want...motivated by nationalistic need to prove that German people are superior..." but surely you did this with the best of intentions, not following some POV-pushing agenda... You better believe it! --IIIraute (talk) 16:57, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * What is left if not trying to flame with "Guard you tongue" and etc -listen, chill and just keep this discussion encyclopedic please. I stand behind my remarks, surly I do-and your aggressive attitude only strength my mind. I could suspect you because of your repeated accusations with canvassing-but I didn't do that-I was thinking it was either one of what you call your "brethrened" (interesting word picking btw) or that it was him, I addressed aka GHOR and it's clearly seen in the diff. Though only later it become clear it was truly him. Now, please avoid drama. Thanks. --Gilisa (talk) 17:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Don't fool yourself. You accused me of removing your posts at 16:05(UTC) →, I did let you know about your "mistake" at 16:20(UTC) → , and you adressed Guitar hero on the roof about one hour later, at 17:19(UTC) → .--IIIraute (talk) 17:39, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * You have been canvassed into this discussion - that's not an accusation - it is a fact → . --IIIraute (talk) 17:27, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think that's what WP guidelines consider as canvassing -canvassing refer more to stealth actions. In fact, as much as I recall it's allowed to notify one about discussion in subject related to his past edits on Wikipedia. But even if I was canvassed into this discussion, I'm not canvassing for myself so find better arguments that actually have to do with the discussion.--Gilisa (talk) 17:36, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Being part of this↓↓↓, yes, it's a fact that you were "recruitet" through canvassing! →→, , , , . --IIIraute (talk) 17:43, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Look, I truly careless. I got notified on my TP by user I don't know-that's all. He didn't tell me what opinion to express. I was involved by my own in numerous discussions about Jewish ethnicity and specifically on Einsteins identity much before here on Wikipedia. So, again-if you try to disqualify me from this discussion use arguments and not WP policy because it just not sticks. As said before, I'm not canvassing. --Gilisa (talk) 17:49, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I now see he did tell me what to do. Still, I express here my opinion as can be proven easily and not because he asked me.--Gilisa (talk) 17:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * IIIraute, you really have issues to deal with. People here are already coming to a concensus, replacing Einstein with someone Turkish, and you are still in a delay about that issue. The people who came to the page didn't edit war or do anything rather then give quotes and references YOU had nothing to answer to. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 18:43, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Issues to deal with?? may I quote you: "IIIraute...maybe it's in your genes to want to wipe the Jewish race..."; "You are the top expert here on racial theories trying to make an ethnicity dissapear. That's where your logic got twisted in the quest to get redemption for the deeds of your ancestors..."; "I guess Germans have a thing for trying to make the Jewish ethnicity not exist." ...what an intellectual bog, YUK! --IIIraute (talk) 19:13, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The first quote was said after you insisted Jews are a religion and not an ethnicity, the second one after you blamed me of having a racial theory, so I don't see how I was wrong. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 19:38, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I never said that ... contrary to you, I do understand the concept of ethnicity! please point out the relevant bit of text on this! or stop your false accusations!! --IIIraute (talk) 19:42, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You did. “Look, I think it is great that Einstein suddenly discovered "that he was a Jew" in his late thirties, but this article is about Germans as an ethnic group, and not Einstein's religio-moral identity crises.” Did you say that or no? And there’s that one: “In his youth, Einstein did not identify strongly with Jewish culture and religion.” There were more. You keep on refering to Jews as a religion ignoring the fact it's also an ethnicity. I highly doubt you understand what ethnicity is due to the fact you keep confusing it with nationality. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 21:16, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You are paranoid! This only did refer to Einstein, him being a fully assimilated eighth (or more) generation German citizen of converted, non-observant (German)-Jewish background, with a Germanic given name, a German surname, born, raised and educated in Germany, who attended a Catholic elementary school... etc.. Please let me quote user "Rainbowwrasse" on this: "Look, maybe I'm missing this, but can anyone give me the exact quotes (by Illraute or whoever) to show that anyone claimed that Jews are not an ethnic group? I can't see that anywhere. If it's there and I missed it, boo and hiss. If it's not there, y'all keep your pantyhose on and stop fantasizing about some German supremacy plot to suppress the Jewish ethnic identity. So Einstein was Jewish and not German, Marx was of Jewish ancestry and German. Big deal. It’s their business alone....OK, lets break this down then: Illraute said that in his youth Einstein did not identify strongly with with Jewish culture and religion. Someone may convert to Judaism and identify with Jewish culture and religion. According to you, that does not make him an ethnic Jew (Jews suggests otherwise, but let's assume your POV for the time being). Therefore, as per Illraute's and your OWN arguments, identifying with Jewish culture and religion 'is' a matter of of religion and culture, not of ethnicity. Einstein's ancestry is irrelevant for whether or not he identified with Jewish culture and religion. Illraute's second comment is about how he came to identify himself as Jewish in later life. He (re-)discovered and cultivated his Jewishness, if you will. This cultivation of an common identity by individuals is crucial to maintaining a coherent ethnic group. To quote from the article: Ethnic identity is constantly reinforced through common characteristics which set the group apart from other groups. Illraute has not said that ethnic Jews don't exist."--IIIraute (talk) 21:49, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry for that, I didn't know I deleted it until I saw this discussion. I think I deleted it without noticing when I was trying to delete and rewrite the ending of my own sentene. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 18:35, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You did. “Look, I think it is great that Einstein suddenly discovered "that he was a Jew" in his late thirties, but this article is about Germans as an ethnic group, and not Einstein's religio-moral identity crises.” Did you say that or no? And there’s that one: “In his youth, Einstein did not identify strongly with Jewish culture and religion.” There were more. You keep on refering to Jews as a religion ignoring the fact it's also an ethnicity. I highly doubt you understand what ethnicity is due to the fact you keep confusing it with nationality. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 21:16, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Restored it! I apologise again. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 19:07, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

This entire page has become a clusterfuck. I have already expressed my sentiments, so there is no reason for me to be here anymore.Evildoer187 (talk) 23:13, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Einstein is out, who do we replace him with? (and discussion on article scope)
We need to make some progress. Me, User:Reanimated X, User:Gilisa, User:Rainbowwrasse, User:Tritomex, User:StevenJ81, User:Iblardi and User:Evildoer187 all gave arguments why Einstein should be out, the guy is defenitely out. Einstein wasn't ethnically German and though he was German citizenship he gave up on it and he stated numerous time he doesnt want anything to do with the German nation or people. You can't ignore those quotes and insist to count a person as German when he wouldn't want it. I don't think there's place for discussion anymore simply due to the fact it was already discussed a lot and it's obviously what the majority supports and why!

There is no similar concensus regarding Marx and though I don't agree with it at least for now Marx has to stay.

Who should be put in instead of Einstein? Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 07:14, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Helmut Kohl. His 16-year tenure was the longest of any German chancellor since Otto von Bismarck and oversaw the end of the Cold War and the German reunification. Kohl is regarded as the main architect of the German reunification and the European Union (the latter, with Mitterrand). He has been described as "the greatest European leader of the second half of the 20th century" by former U.S. Presidents George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. --IIIraute (talk) 07:21, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * P.S. Schiffer & Klum could be exchanged for Hildegard of Bingen and Angela Merkel. -- Max von Laue, Adolf Hitler, or Hermann Hesse are also good candidates that should be included, in exchange for Brandt, for example - preferably, Hermann Hesse.--IIIraute (talk) 08:15, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If it's ok, lets try and keep other suggestions for the next discussion. Just so we could focus on Einstein now and in the next discussion we could talk about other changes. I'll comment anyway though. Schiffer and Klum are good because it's important to give women representatives, though I do think Mergel is a good idea. I definitely think Hitler should not be in the image. It's like putting a famous serial killer or a maniac in an image. If you want you can, don't care, I just think many Germans themselves will find it embarassing. Hermann Hesse is a really good idea, he would look good in the image! His influence on German literature is bigger then it seems. He wasn't just a good poet, he also aided other writers like Mann. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 09:25, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I have two people I would like to suggest, I don't know which one is better. One if Fatih Akın, he is a very popular director and could give representation to the Turks in Germany. The second one is Max von Laue who was suggested by User:Rainbowwrasse and I think would be quite a popular suggestion. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 07:30, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Who are the greatest Germans?" What do Germans themselves say ? lets look ....see Unsere Besten.Moxy (talk) 11:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Otto von Bismarck is a good candidate in my opinion! Michael Schumacher is very famous! Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 11:36, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Einstein is in the top 10 of Unsere Besten. Perhaps he should be kept. After all the Germans themselves consider him among the best 10 Germans of all time. How can anyone ignore that? Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις 01:03, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Replacement for Einstein: As I indicated above I believe Hildegard of Bingen would be an excellent addition to the collage. As I can see there isn´t currently any person representing the medieval age in the current one. And in addition she is a woman and I would like to see a womanadded since they currently only make up 13%. Other suggestions may be Angela Merkel, Herta Müller or Steffi Graf. [Other replacements: Discussing this now may make the discussion too messy, but here is my thoughts: I believe one of the two models should be replaced by another woman, to represent a wider range of female accomplishment. Heidi Klum might for instance be replaced with Steffi Graf as there is currently nobody representing German athleets. I am against changing Willy Brandt (a Nobel prize winner) for Hermut Kohl. If he were to be replaced it should rather be with Angela Merkel, who will be another female addition (and has several times been named the most powerful woman in the world); having grown up in the DDR Merkel also represents the unification of Germany.] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iselilja (talk • contribs) 22:00, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Angela Merkel would be a good female choice, and I would prefer her over my own suggestion of Max von Laue. I find Hildegard of Bingen a bit obscure, but if others think she is suitable I suppose she's fine too. I agree with Iselilja that it's a bit weird that the women (except Catherine the Great) are mainly known for their looks. Having a bit of variety in female achievement would be nice. I would also be much in favour of someone of Turkish ancestry like Fatih Akın (although I don't know enough about him to be able to judge if he qualifies), but in that case we definitely need to re-instate the 'nation' bit to preempt the same sort of discussion about what constitutes Turkishness in a couple of weeks. I think Hitler would be unnecessary and inappropiate. Incidentally, the person currently labelled as Otto Hahn in the collage appears to be some sort of footballer. That picture should be changed too or at least labelled properly, but I don't know who he is. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 00:39, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The man in the picture is Otto Hahn, and not Klinsmann. Potential candidates should be taken from the list Unsere Besten - and I recommend that they are not just chosen at random, but rather by reason. Merkel and von Bingen are a good choice. Fatih Akın, certainly does not qualify. There are much more famous filmmakers one could choose from, such as Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, or Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Kohl already has a picture in the "1990-present" section, so that's done. I only added Hitler to the choices, because there have been several request in the past to add him - but I agree that we can do without him. --IIIraute (talk) 01:17, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Well recognized! I assume you meant to say "The man in the picture is Jurgen Klinsmann, and not Hahn". Maybe having a footballer in the collage is appropriate as it is very popular with Germans (Well, more popular than Hahn's nuclear fission anyway!). I've change the description to direct to [Jurgen Klinsmann]]. As to the film directors, I'm no film buff, but I've never/hardly even heard of Fritz Lang (who apparently was Austrian), Josef von Sternberg (also Austrian, and Jewish!), Volker Schlondorff, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, or Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Maybe they are famous in Germany, but I looked at their articles, but hardly recognized any of their movies. I have at least heard of Fathi Akin before. Roland Emmerich is a well-known director, but I think the point was to include someone of Turkish origin, not a film director. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 09:15, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * The man in the picture is NOT Jürgen Klinsmann - the man in the picture IS Otto Hahn. -- They are the "Art House" film kind of directors. To film-connoisseurs they are well known. And yes, Bernd Eichinger or Roland Emmerich are much more famous blockbuster movie makers.--IIIraute (talk) 17:41, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree! When talking about a nation, the trick is not just achievments but achievments+giving representation to all groups. I think Akin and Merkel are probably the strongest candidates! Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 14:59, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * ⇒⇒⇒⇒ newsflash ⇒⇒ Let's not prolong the process ⇒ Remove Marx → the Ethnic Germans article does not include Germans from Germany, but is about the ethnic German diaspora. And the Germans article infobox states → Regions with significant populations → Germany: 66 million, (population of Germany: 82 million). The lead also says that "Of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, about 66–75 million consider themselves Germans", and that will include "Germans" from Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark, Italy, Belgium, France, Russia, etc. → again, population of Germany: 82 million. It looks like the article isn't about Germans as a "nation", but as an ethnic Group. If Marx really cannot be considered an ethnic German, he should be removed. ⇐⇐⇐⇐ --IIIraute (talk) 02:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You are confusing citizenship, nationality, ethnicity, and nationhood. You can for example be an ethnic Swazi member of the Swazi nation, but be a citizen and national of South Africa or Mozambique. Like Swaziland, Germany is largely a nation state, but it does not follow that the entire German nation lives within Germany, was born in Germany, or holds German citizenship. Most of the Swazi nation lives outside of Swaziland and does not hold a Swazi passport. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 08:56, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, that's exactly what I am saying. I think I have not been taken seriously! --IIIraute (talk) 17:13, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Exactly! For example some censuses there is a question about ethnicity. Those who state Jewish, German or Polish while living in Germany are not ethnically German even if they speak only German, know only the German culture and have only German citizenship. Like me, as a British Jew I speak English, listen only to English music, don't feel connection to Jewish culture, I don't consider myself relegiously Jewish, but ethnically I am Jewish and I can't change that, it's a fact. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 14:59, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't know, just put in someone who has at least some native German descent in them. Einstein and Marx should never have been there in the first place, as they were Germans by residence only.Evildoer187 (talk) 07:06, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Not sure were people still get theses antiquated ideas (read books - educate yourselves) - but never the less those here have made a decision (be it wrong or right) to change some images. I would suggest that the quality of the article(s) to be linked should also be a consideration - meaning  the article Hildegard of Bingen is not as informative as say Otto von Bismarck. Since the plan is to unlink someone like Karl Marx  a GA article with 18000+ views in the last 30 days.Moxy (talk) 07:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * The article is about ethnic Germans i.e. the indigenous population of Germany. Albert Einstein and Karl Marx were ethnic Jews, who are not indigenous to any European country. The only reason people get so bent out of shape over this fact is because the Nazis used it as a pretext for massacring them. However, none of this changes the reality that Jews in Germany and ethnic Germans are not the same people, and to pretend that they are is tantamount to historical revisionism.Evildoer187 (talk) 10:16, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * See comment below - have read the article and disagree with your assessment.--Moxy (talk) 10:31, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I think Evildoer187 is right. The Ethnic Germans article does not include Germans from Germany, but is about the ethnic German diaspora. On the contrary, the Germans article infobox states → Regions with significant populations → Germany: 66 million Since the current population of Germany is 82 million, it can only mean that the "Germans" article is about "indigenous" Germans. The article isn't about Germans as a "nation", but as an ethnic Group.

Expansion of discussion to broader issues of article scope/title

 * Both these articles are confused in terms of what they are about. The Ethnic Germans article does not solely concern itself with the German diaspora, but if it did, a better title would be that: German diaspora. "Ethnic Germans" is a poor title for an article which supposedly doesn't cover Germans living in Germany. I suggest that, rather than arguing about what these articles are already about (which isn't possible to say - they're a mess), is instead deciding what articles should exist, and under what titles. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 17:41, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * No, they are actually not. The Ethnic Germans article only deals with the German diaspora, or can you see a Germany section in it? It makes it very clear by saying: "Deutschstämmige, historically also Volksdeutsche, also collectively referred to as the German diaspora". On the contrary the Germans article, deals with Germans, native to Germany, the history, etc. making it clear by saying: " Germans (German: Deutsche) are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe.". There is a third article that includes all people living in Germany - that would be the "Germany" article. The three articles are fine - they are not messed up - the only messed up thing here, are "we", the editors who triggerd this shitstorm.--IIIraute (talk) 17:49, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I support the notion, though I believe we should invite more participators. - Reanimated X (talk) 17:50, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The Ethnic Germans article states in its introduction: "Ethnic Germans (German: Deutschstämmige, historically also Volksdeutsche), also collectively referred to as the German diaspora, refers to people who are of German ethnicity." It then goes on to only discuss such people who don't live in Germany. The phrase "people who are of German ethnicity" includes people living within Germany, but the article does not: that's one reason why I stated that these articles are a mess; the titles and introductions and content do not add up. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 17:58, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * No, they are fine: Germans, Ethnic Germans, Germany, Demographics of Germany, Germans Abroad they correlate with each other - please, please do not mess with them. That's not what this discussion was originally about! Can we please try to stop this pyroclastic shitstorm - it's man-made!! --IIIraute (talk) 18:03, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * They are absolutely not fine; how can it be considered acceptable to have an article titled "Ethnic Xs", where ethnicity is defined by groups with historical residence within land X, yet the article doesn't discuss "ethnic Xs" who actually live within land X? It makes no sense. These articles need to be properly defined and retitled if necessary. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:13, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Because the article starts with: "The Germans (German: Deutsche) are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe." For Germans as a nation → see Germany, Demographics of Germany. --IIIraute (talk) 18:22, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

If "The Germans" are a "Germanic ethnic group native to central Europe", then logically "Ethnic Germans" must be "an ethnic Germanic ethnic group native to central Europe", which is of course nonsensical - but that's my point. These articles need properly defining and retitling from first principles. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * No, because "Ethnic Germans" is a term commonly used for the German diaspora → -- please also see → English people, for example.--IIIraute (talk) 18:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * (e/c) It isn't advisable to use Wikipedia articles as examples of course, but even so the English people article is not synonymous with an English diaspora, so I'm not sure what your point is there. The English diaspora is merely a section within the article, which makes more sense than the situation here. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:47, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * ...but that's Princeton, and not the wiki ⇒⇒⇒ ⇐⇐⇐ --IIIraute (talk) 18:52, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * No, that link uses text from Wikipedia - scroll down its page to the bottom and you will see (if it isn't actually apparent from the familiar language), so it is a useless source in this context. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:55, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Why is this so f@&%$ difficult. The "Germans" article equals the "English People" article. And then there is an article about the German diaspora, called "Ethnic Germans", as this is a commonly used term → for the German diaspora.--IIIraute (talk) 19:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * (e/c) I am not trying to be difficult, I am trying to get some clarity. Maybe you are concerned that I am proposing that all the articles will have to be rewritten, but that is not necessarily the case; it is quite possible that the content of the articles just requires some minor tweaking/transferring, and then the introductions and titles are changed. Please do not see me as an adversary, as I do not see you as an adversary. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:11, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Don't make a problem where there is none. There is no need to mess with the articles, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the original discussion. "Ethnic Germans" is a term used to describe people of the German diaspora, period → . What's there to change - where is the problem? --IIIraute (talk) 19:15, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It has everything to do with the original discussion because until it is decided what the articles are about, it isn't possible to discuss which pictures of people can go in them. Neither of the two links you have just provided support your argument that the term "Ethnic Germans" is synonymous with "German diaspora", instead what they support is the fact that some of the German diaspora are ethnic Germans. The situation is like a Venn diagram where one circle (the German diaspora) intersects with another (people of Germanic ethnicity) - but the two circles are not coterminous. "Ethnic Germans" is a term which covers all people of Germanic ethnicity, regardless of whether they are a part of a diaspora or not; a lot of "ethnic Germans" live in Germany, but the current "Ethnic Germans" article excludes them. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with PaleCloudedWhite; it is nonsensical to reserve 'ethnic Germans' for the diaspora, and that isn't how the term is commonly used. Also, it is illogical to argue that the ethnic Germans article says that the term only refers to the diaspora, therefore it must be true. If the article onion said that onions are mythical beings from the planet Zog, it would just show that the article is poorly researched, not that it is true. The references given by Illraute either simply demonstrate that ethnic Germans exist in countries other than Germany (but not that the term is used only to describe this diaspora), . or just seem to be a copy of the wikipedia article itself . Rainbowwrasse (talk) 19:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

The Ethnic Germans article clearly states: "This article is about the ethnic German diaspora." and therfore correlates perfectly with its German WP equivalent "Deutschstämmige" →. The Ethnic Germans article starts with: "Ethnic Germans (German: Deutschstämmige, historically also Volksdeutsche) also collectively referred to as the German diaspora".

The Germans article clearly states: "The Germans (German: Deutsche) are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe.", and the infobox states → "Regions with significant populations" → Germany: 66 million. So the article cleary only refers to "Germans" as a Germanic ethnic group that is native to Central Europe, as the current population of Germany is 82 million. The Germans article correlates perfectly with its German WP equivalent "Deutsche" →. --IIIraute (talk) 20:03, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * It is a circular argument (and therefore not valid) to use the existing Wikipedia article (either English or German) as a basis of what is right, as Rainbowwrasse illustrates above with the "onion" example. As it currently stands, the Ethnic Germans article should be renamed to "German diaspora", which is still a bit vague but far more reflective of its content than the current title. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 20:26, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I am fine with that - or "Ethnic Germans(diaspora)". --IIIraute (talk) 20:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Outcome: Replacing Einstein with Angela Merkel
Few people mentioned Angela Merkel and I think she got the most positive responses. Does everybody agree that the person to replace Einstein should be Angela Merkel? Any objection to her?

Note: It was already agreed in a previous discussion that Einstein should not be infobox due to the fact he himself considered himself a Jew and spoke few times against Germans as a result of World War 2 so please don't try to start the discussion on the topic again. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 18:06, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, please put in Merkel and let us close Pandora's box. --IIIraute (talk) 18:13, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you know who is the person who we should turn to? I don't know how to upload the image in one file. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 18:47, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * No, unfortunately I don't - but I am sure someone will offer to help. --IIIraute (talk) 19:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I asked User:Volunteer Marek because I saw that he did some change in the past there so hopefuly he wouldn't mind doing it again. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 19:37, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Otto Klinsmann
Another problem seems to have cropped up with this article; the person that I see in the collage between Willy Brandt and Wernher von Braun on my computer is Jurgen Klinsmann, while Illraute gets Otto Hahn. When I downloaded the file a few days ago in anticipation of exchanging Einstein for someone else, I also got Otto Hahn, but now I get Klinsmann. I have no clue why this would be happening, and am I the only person who gets Klinsmann? Illraute, you recognized Klinsmann when I said it shows "some footballer", so presumably you see him under some circumstances. Can you shed some light on this? Thanks. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 20:15, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The "file" → shows a colour picture of Klinsmann - the Germans article-gallery page, a black and white picture of Otto Hahn. That's what I see. But as I have already stated: This whole page/talk-page has become a madhouse. --IIIraute (talk) 20:39, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I see Klinsmann in both the file and the page. Is it still Hahn when you wipe your browser cache? Who changed that when and why, anyway? Rainbowwrasse (talk) 21:08, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I just looked on my mobile - and there it's Klinsmann. Many apologies. Thanks for the hint with the browser cache. Klinsmann certainly should not be there - and I have no idea when this was changed.--IIIraute (talk) 21:13, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree! I don't see sportspeople as a group which needs to be represented (it can, I just don't think they are notable enough). Good name though would be Michael Schumacher and Franz Beckenbauer. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 21:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Just figured out that someone changed the file last night and uploaded it under the same name as the previous one, that's why it didn't show up in the history. I have no objections to having sportpeople on it, but can also do without it. Someone suggested Steffi Graf earlier, might be a good female example. But to be honest, I don't think we need to restructure the whole thing, let's just get rid of Einstein and Marx and that's it, otherwise this will never end. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 22:01, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * ...and Heidi Klum. Why have two models?? I think we should take Merkel, Benedict, and Bingen - then we also have one additional women in it. --IIIraute (talk) 22:16, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Who should we put instead of Marx?
After agreeing on Angela Merkel instead of Einstein, a progress was made and it seems we have a concensus regarding removing Marx. Me, User:IIIraute, User:Tritomex, User:Evildoer187 supported the idea.

The question is, who should be used intead of him? Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 20:52, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I think Helmut Kohl is a great suggestion, proposed earlier by User:User:IIIraute. First of all, it's a political figure replaced for a political figure. Second, he was the head of Germany at a time of unification and re-formation. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 20:52, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Kohl is undoubtably a very important figure for Germany, however I did see that he already has a big colour picture later in the article. I think Hildegard of Bingen, Pope Benedict, or Hermann Hesse would be a good choice. --IIIraute (talk) 20:57, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I forgot the Pope is German! That's a great suggestion! The other two are great two but I think the Pope would be good because Martin Luther represents the reformation in Germany, and the Pope will represent the Catholic south. Hildegard of Bingen could give representation to women but from what I saw the paintings of her are not to good. Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 21:22, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Bingen could be added in exchange for Heidi Klum. --IIIraute (talk) 21:42, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Alas, poor Marx, I knew him well... The Pope is an excellent suggestion! Rainbowwrasse (talk) 21:11, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That's a great idea! Literally forgot about him. By the way, do you happen to know how to edit those images? Guitar hero on the roof (talk) 21:22, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I know how to edit it, but I'm not sure about how to attribute the copyright correctly. I would probably just need to reference the original WP files, but I want to make sure before I change anything. I've enquired at the helpdesk regarding a collage for a different article and am awaiting the answer. Rainbowwrasse (talk) 21:54, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion to replace one of the supermodels
Since it appears the photo photo collage is going to be rearranged, I would suggest one more substition which can be done at the same time. As I have mentioned before I don´t really think it´s necessary to include two models - Claudia Schiffer and Heidi Klum - in the collage, so one of them could be replaced by another women, showing a wider range of female accomplishment. I would then suggest to replace Heidi Klum with either Steffi Graf or Magdalena Neuner, both of the latter have good, long articles. Germany has a proud tradition in sports which I think would be fine to see represented in the collage.With regards, Iselilja (talk) 22:15, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Bingen for Heidi Klum, Merkel for Einstein, and Benedict for Marx....and Steffi Graf for Schiffer?--IIIraute (talk) 22:18, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If it had already been decided to change Klum for Bingen, I had missed that. Sorry. Excellent choices. I won´t insist on more changes then (nor oppose). Glad this has been sorted out in a way that people hopefully are satisfied with. Kind regards, Iselilja (talk) 22:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, but I agree with Guitar hero that the medieval painting of Hildegard of Bingen in her article is a bit weird. I know that's how they painted back then, but to be honest that could be anyone... She seems a popular choice though, so why not. Is there a better image somewher? Also, how about Schiffer stays, and Graf for Klinsmann? Rainbowwrasse (talk) 22:37, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Article title and scope
In order to arrange this suite of articles (concerning certain subjects associated with Germany) so that it is clear what their scope is, I propose renaming and refining as follows:

1) Ethnic Germans is renamed as German diaspora (currently a redirect), as it currently only deals with the diaspora population.

2) This article, currently titled Germans, is either subsumed into a section of the existing Germanic peoples article, or is retitled as Germanic people (Germany), and should be shaped so that it only deals with ethnically Germanic people of central Europe - their history etc.

3) Any other information dealing with other aspects of being part of a German national population should be dealt with within the Demography/Population section of the Germany article, or within the Demographics of Germany article.

I am proposing this to try and achieve clarity regarding the scope of these articles, since at the moment there is confusion and disagreement. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 22:38, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * We really need more contributors to achieve anything, Pale, is there anywhere we could ask for more contributions? Reanimated X (talk) 22:49, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The geography wikiproject springs to mind; geography isn't just about longshore drift and oxbow lakes etc. - there is such a thing as ethnogeography (which I briefly studied 25 years ago). I'll pop a note on their project talk page, although it's not an enormously active WikiProject. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:04, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I've informed the Geography WikiProject of this proposal/discussion. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:26, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * some historians wouldn't be bad, huh? --IIIraute (talk) 23:29, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Almost all of the articles of this type deal with both ethnicity and the modern interpretation of nationality and include people simply based on that (including from times when this concept was not established). (See for example the articles on British, French and Spanish people) Why should this article become an exception? Both the demographics article and the Germanic peoples article clearly have a very different intent. And how exactly would you define German ethnicity? Because the criteria given here by people who argue about Marx, Einstein, etc. can become both very fuzzy or very picky depending on whose side you are on. Personally I think that the article should resemble the other articles of this type. Be liberal with who to include (I don't see a problem with someone being both German/Jewish, French/British, etc) and focus on the modern/current use of the term.Kliipaa (talk) 23:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I confess I am suspicious that within one hour of making this proposal, a new user pops up and makes a comment here as the very first edit on their user account. I will proceed doing the Wiki thing of assuming good faith, but please be aware of the existence of the checkuser function. I am glad however that someone is seeking to discuss what the article(s) should be about, rather than arguing about pictures. I do not think it is being too controversial to state that Germany's history has a bearing on why there is such volatility of feeling concerning articles touching on the ethnicity of German people (and the related subject of what it actually means to be German), and it might be the case that Germany can't be treated quite the same as Britain, France etc. My aim above was/is to narrow the scope of the article and hence achieve some clarity about what the article is about, so that editors aren't continually arguing about it. It could however be possible to structure an article that deals with different definitions of what it means to be "German" (not just focussing on an "ethnic" element), but it would need to be clearly laid out, and possibly have a different title, as "Germans" obviously means different things to different people. Identity is a complex issue invoking strong emotions, as demonstrated above. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:54, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Just in the same way how it was made clear that the Jewish people are an own ethic group - maybe we could also respect that Germans are also an own ethnic group.--IIIraute (talk) 00:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think any of the other nationalities' articles are without debate about how to define their nationalities but they all seem to have a more sensible approach than this one. Every one of those nationalities has a different and complicated history but they mostly manage to be relatively thorough and alike in how they treat this topic, so I thought it would be best to shape this article in a similar way. Couldn't the important issues about German ethnicity just be made into a part of this article? Something like "German ethnicity and identity through history" Most of it is already mentioned somewhere in the article.  Kliipaa (talk) 00:30, 15 January 2013 (UTC)


 * we have been discussing this for almost two weeks - great to have a contribution from a new account with one edit. --IIIraute (talk) 23:57, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it will be useful to have contributions from editors who are less close to the subject. Hopefully some geographers will have a look at this, and as IIIraute suggested, I will post a note on the History WikiProject talk page. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 00:06, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I've informed the History WikiProject. (PS I hadn't read the whole of this page so I didn't realise you'd been discussing this for 2 weeks; some outside comments are sorely needed.) PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 00:14, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * or WikiProject Germany?? --IIIraute (talk) 00:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I've notified them. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 00:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I was interested in the topic, read the discussion and thought I could give my opinion. You could just ignore me if you don't think this contribution has any value/weight Kliipaa (talk) 00:30, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I haven't ignored you, I conceded your point has validity. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 00:34, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, that reply wasn't directed at you, I should probably read up on the talk-page guidelines. Kliipaa (talk) 00:39, 15 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Germans are people who have German citizenship or who otherwise identify as Germans. There is no legal, historical or scientific basis for excluding any individuals or groups from the scope of this article based on someone's subjective judgments about who is or isn't a "real ethnic German", or on Nurenberg-law style criteria for how many Generations of true German ancestry one has. Suggesting to do so is both ignorant and morally repugnant.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:34, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * where were all of you during the last two weeks, when it was "made clear" that Jews cannot be ethnic Germans? Also, what "true German ancestry" are you talking about - so it does exist? --IIIraute (talk) 00:41, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no such thing as "ethnic Germans" or "true German ancestry" except in the minds of people whose minds are still in the 1930s.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:42, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * @Maunus In a way, that's what my proposal tries to address. One way of interpreting my proposal is that I proposed effectively abolishing this article and splitting it between Germanic peoples (which already exists as a historical article) and either Germany or Demographics of Germany. Putting information about German citizens into an article about Germany seems to me eminently inclusive. I hope you've been able to read at least some of the discussion which preceeded my proposal. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 00:48, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I thought Jews are an own ethnicity? and Germans have none? --IIIraute (talk) 00:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That is what happens when one forms a democratic nation state instead of a tribal society. Ethnicity is not exclusive one can be both Jewish and German, and Jewishness can be a religion as well as an ethnicity.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:51, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * No one is saying that, Illraute. People can't be everywhere, and to be honest, I don't believe we've seen enough opinions on here to warrant a consensus the likes Guitar hero believes we have reached. Not to mention that the opinions we have currently received, mainly one-sided too, have worryingly and quite ironically echoed the 1930s ideas of ethnicity. - Reanimated X (talk) 00:49, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Germanic peoples are peoples who speak a Germanic language. Many, perhaps most, Jews speak a Germanic language - Yiddish and English for example. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:51, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * For the last two weeks we were told by several Jewish editors that Jews cannot belong to the article: "Germans as an ethnic group". This really is quite confusing. --IIIraute (talk) 00:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * So what happens if an "ethnic German" converts to Judaism? What happens if a person has an "ethnically Jewish" mother and an "ethnic" German father? Your naive theory of ethnic identity fails in practice even under the most simple conditions. And reality is a thousand times more complex than that. You can not make the world fit into the tiny square boxes that your worldview seems to be composed of. And it is not wikipedia's job to try to do that either.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:00, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You shouldn't really be attacking me, since I was the one who defended "your" perspective for almost two weeks. You've made a comment quite early in the discussion, then you were silent for the rest of the time - and suddely "He thinks he knows it all". What a smart-arse.--IIIraute (talk) 01:09, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Then you were smarter last week than you are now. And yes, I left the discussion because it makes me sick to my stomach. And I will do that now again. I have participated in these discussions almost every year for the last couple of years - because they tend to restart periodically when ever some bigoted nationalist sees JEWS in the infobox. So yes, I have been around this block a couple of times. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:14, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I taught History for several years at some of the finest universities in the UK and in Germany. There, usually I would decide the curriculum. Wikipedia articles are created through majority consensus. I did not have that majority - because individuals like you decided to fall quiet. But thanks for your craftily advice, weenie! No offence meant!! --IIIraute (talk) 01:28, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Please, try and discuss this matter calmly, it doesn't help to throw insults around. Maunus, I would be interested in any proposal you may have for how to take the situation forward. My proposal above was an attempt to get a clear idea of what this and the Ethnic Germans article should be about and what they should be called, though I unwittingly appear to have made myself look like a Wiki-neoNazi as a result, which was not my intention at all. Positive suggestions and ideas are what's needed. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 01:17, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I saw this on a noticeboard and looked very briefly at the three articles. Germanic people is about tribes that no longer exist, Ethnic Germans is about people who emigrated from Germany to another country; this page is about the people who live in the country called Germany. I can't see a reason to rename. Were a compelling reason given to rename it couldn't be done without an RfC and even then would be very difficult to move a page such as this because presumably it has an extensive history and talk page history. Anyway my 2 cents. Truthkeeper (talk) 01:24, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * My words. --IIIraute (talk) 01:31, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

What happens if one is a German who converted to Judaism? Simple, we put them in the German box. We would do the same for someone who is half Jewish, half German, or even someone who is part German and mostly Jewish. For the latter two cases we would put them in both the Jewish and German boxes. That's quite different from what the Nazis did i.e. one drop of Jewish blood and you're out.Evildoer187 (talk) 01:25, 15 January 2013 (UTC)