Talk:Reichsdeutsche

Why the use of "Imperial Germans" instead of "Reichsdeutsche"?
I'm not sure that Imperial Germans is really an appropriate translation of Reichsdeutsche. The term may be used on occasion, but I have never seen it in historical writing; like Volksdeutsche, it really isn't normally translated in my experience. Imperial Germans also has the problem that, in English, it suggests "those Germans who are citizens of the Empire" &mdash; which could very well mean the Holy Roman Empire. In that sense, Austrians or South Tyrolians would be "Imperial", while Prussians would not.

The translation of Reichsdeutsch into "Imperial German" is nonsense. Reichsdeutsch essentially means Germans of the Realm, in this case the German political realm. A better translation of the designation of Germans from Germany would be "Homeland Germans." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.143.173.178 (talk) 23:05, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Translation of the term Reich into English is in general problematic, which is why the Third Reich is never referred to as the "Third (German) Empire". One could not translate Königsreich as "king's empire"; going the other way, imperialism is Imperialismus in German, not *Reichismus or *Kaiserismus. &mdash;Tkinias 00:56, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * We had this discussion before in the Baltic context, which is how I hit on the current matter anyway. At least in this context, Imperial German actually is the used translation of reichsdeutsch in English-language scientific articles, at least to a large extent.  So, appropriateness is not really the issue there, usage is - and as the text makes clear, the Empire here does not refer to the Alte Reich that existed until Napoleon.  That the same words gets translated differently in different contexts and combinations is normal.  The third reason to use Imperial German was that there is a number of people on wiki who apparently have a problem with any non-English word and even suggest articles for deletion because they have a non-English title, even if there is no English word for it; the entire subject matter is sensitive enough that I wanted to place the general discussion under an at least in this sense inoffensive heading. Clossius 06:47, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm curious where you have seen Imperial German used to translate reichsdeutsch. You mention "scientific" literature, which is not where I would expect to find discussion of German history &#8212; unless you are using "scientific" in a broader sense (wissenschaftlich?) than its customary English sense.


 * I don't think it is not customary to use "scientific" in this sense - I indeed mean "scientific" in the sense of wissenschaftlich, i.e. it could be substituted by "scholarly", and as a juxtaposition, say, to "popular" or "journalistic" or "political". In that sense, "scientific" is surely used in the US as well as in the UK to describe books and articles even in such areas as history or the social sciences.


 * Well, it is customary at US universities (and in popular usage) to distinguish the Arts (including literature and history) from the Sciences (biology, physics, etc.) Without qualification, "scientific" is normally understood to refer to the physical sciences.  (Also, when one says "scientific history" one sounds very Marxist, which is not always a good thing!) I suppose Geisteswissenschaften is not considered the "opposite" of Wissenschanften in the way the the Arts and the Sciences are considered something of a binary here? (I would always use scholarly [or maybe academic] to contrast with popular.) &#8212;Tkinias 19:26, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * More on that on your user page! Clossius 06:07, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Can you provide any citations? (Obviously imperial is a way to translate Reichs, so it is a possible, literal translation, but in English historical writing I have always seen it Reichsdeutsche, without translation.)


 * As I said, I am coming from the history, and history of science (Wissenschaft), of the Baltics, where you had a particularly strong clash of Imperial Germans and Baltic Germans at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu). Most of the recent English literature that topicalizes this theme now uses the word "Imperial German", such as that on Karl Bücher.  If you want concrete article citations, no problem either, although I should say right away that I'm really not up for any fights on issues such as these on wiki; if "Imperial Germans" gets removed and the gist of the article placed under Reichsdeutsche, that's nothing I could manage to get particularly upset about. Clossius 09:38, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not interested in fighting either! &#8212; I am just very curious. (I a working on my doctorate in modern European history at the moment, so this is an issue which is of professional interest as well.  I am in particular interested in issues of ethnicity and citizenship.)  I apologize if I sounded combative; I am not demanding proof of anything, just requesting that you educate me. &#8212;Tkinias 19:26, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Okay. :-) Clossius 06:07, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * As far as any Anglophone bigotry that you may have encountered: that needs to be fought, not surrendered to, in my opinion. (And I say this as an American.) &#8212;Tkinias 08:33, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not with wikipedia long enough to judge whether fights against people with such biases can really be won. Clossius 09:38, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree with those who say that the translation of Reich as empire and reichsdeutsch as "Imperial German" is wrong. As an analogy, consider that the German name for France is Frankreich. To be consistent, when translating from German we should call France the French Empire and French citizens Imperial French. The proper word for empire in German is not Reich but Weltreich. Is there a way to change the title of this article? It's really wrong. HaddingtheGreat (talk) 19:43, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Can we please move this article to "Reichsdeutsche"? "Reich" is a multifaceted word that can be translated by realm, state, empire, nation, land, region, country, commonwealth, domain, and more. I have never seen the term "Imperial Germans" except now in Wikipedia, and WP should stay clear of making up new terms. I am not aware that the term is used by any historians.Ekem (talk) 14:29, 16 December 2013 (UTC)


 * "Imperial German" also sounds a bit awkward to me. The term "Reich" is not easily translatable to English. "Reich" has not only the meaning of "Empire" but also of "realm". I would even say that there is a kind of mythical or religious undertone (the Nazis very well knew this and exploited this aura around the term, see also de:Reichsidee). In the German version of the Lord's Prayer there are the words "... Dein Reich komme ..." and obviously this should not be translated as "... Your Empire come ...". And the Christian term "Reich Gottes" also does not mean "God's Empire". "Deutsches Reich" may be translated with "German Empire" (although you could also say "German Reich") but in other contexts I would just leave it untranslated, e.g., "Chancellor of the Reich/the Reich's chancellor" instead of "Imperial chancellor", "the Reich's government/government of the Reich" instead of "Imperial government", etc. Likewise "Reich's citizens" or "Reich's Germans" instead of "Imperial Germans". The English "Empire/imperial" would often more suitably be translated to German with "Imperium/imperial". --Furfur (talk) 00:13, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

modern use
I could never EVER picture a contemporary German refer to himself as "reichsdeutsch" or Imperial German, for that matter. So I'm quite startled with this sentence:

Today, when referring to the present, Germans from Germany usually only employ the term Imperial German within such a discourse (Germans working in Latvia talking to a Baltic German visiting there might, for example, refer to themselves as Imperial Germans).

Xxmchxx (talk) 17:07, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

They would probably say bundesdeutsch these days, since the current name of the German state is Bundesrepublik Deutschland rather than Deutsches Reich. HaddingtheGreat (talk) 19:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Really?
Hi! Is this article really necessary? I think it should (maximum) be inserted into the German Reich article in a separate paragraph, e.g. Population, People, ....etc. All the best Wikirictor  20:54, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 1 February 2022

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

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Lennart97 (talk) 11:04, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Imperial Germans → Reichsdeutsche – This does not seem a very common, idiomatic translation. Rather, as for Volksdeutsche, the original term Reichsdeutsche should be applied here instead. Cf. this corresponding thread. Hildeoc (talk) 01:57, 1 February 2022 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support per nom. I would actually interpret the current title as meaning Germans who lived under the Holy Roman Empire. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:47, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. Srnec (talk) 20:45, 6 February 2022 (UTC)