Talk:Saul Wahl

Untitled
That this story is a fictional legend ought to be made clear. It is not as though 1587 is some time lost in the mists of history where we can't tell if this story is true or not. Furthermore, there seems to be clearly false context about Poland provided in the article. Firstly, is the Prince Radziwill of the story meant to be Mikołaj VII Radziwiłł? If so, our article on him contends he was a protestant, who would thus be rather unlikely to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. Beyond that, the claim that the Polish throne could not be empty is obvious nonsense - as an elective monarchy, there were always lengthy interregna between reigns - there was even a three year interregnum from 1444 to 1447. At the time in question, there was an interregnum between the death of King Stephen on 12 December 1586 and the election of Sigismund III on 18 September 1587 - nearly an entire year. During this time the standard procedure was to make the archbishop "interrex". According to our articles, again, the interrex in this period was Stanisław Karnkowski, the archbishop of Gniezno.

At any rate, obviously the story about this guy being king is nonsense. But was he a real person at all? This doesn't seem at all clear from the article. john k (talk) 05:23, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The prince in this story is as far as I can tell is Mikołaj "the Black" Radziwiłł. The story is sourced in numerous books and is obviously not nonsense at all. Shlomke (talk) 12:34, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I can't say that the story about being a king for a day is true. Encyclopedia Judaica says it's a "tradition" and "belief" not supported by historical data. ), but the person clearly existed and was somewhat influential in upper echelons of the government at that time.-- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 01:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I am Polish, born and raised in Poland and this is the first time that I am hearing about this. Norum 05:41, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Request for deletion
This article makes no sense and has nothing to prove it. I am born and raised in Poland, but i have never heard this story before. I believe it should be deleted. Norum 05:43, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Demurral
The entry was poorly written and I have revised it broadly.

I am a direct descendant of Saul Wahl and thus have a particular interest in explaining his appearance in Wikipedia, a site at which I've spent countless hours in recent years revising and occasionally writing entries.

Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen (his last name really ought to be included, as it always is elsewhere) was a historical personage, a wealthy trader in salt and philanthropist, builder of two large synagogues, who would be included in Wikipedia even if he hadn't been king for a day or a week or a month, because he was the father of the Maharash, Meir Wahl Katzenellenbogen, the most renowned rabbi of his age. The story that Saul took the helm of Lithuania for a brief time is probably as true as it is impossible to prove. How would a people ostracized by a court gain access to written records of such an event? Why would a Lithuanian king keep a written record of the fact that he appointed a member of a universally despised race to his throne (!) while he was ill?

Such stories from the oral history are too fabulous to be without grounds in fact. Saul has been called "le roi du jour" for four centuries now, and I submit that four centuries from NOW, no greater number of people will know that Richard Nixon was acting president of the US for two weeks in 1956 when Ike had his first heart attack than who now know that Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen was king of Lithuania for a similarly brief period. He probably was king for longer than a day if he was able to push through laws normalizing conditions for Jews in Lithuania, though.

I will divulge one more fact that will illuminate my position: my younger brother and I were each elected (that's what "Wahl" means in German--"election") president of our respective student bodies in the late 1960s---I was actually elected president four times--and my brother's younger son has since been elected president of his class three years running. We have not known about Saul Wahl until very recently. (My parents were nicknamed "the parents of presidents" in that Year of Our Lord 1969 AD.) Such events are rarely happenstantial and are instead the result of what psychiatrists call "plans" made on behalf of the US and the wider world that involve specific families and specific peoples---in our case, Jews. At this point, whether or not Saul Wahl was actually king is irrelevant; as the story has survived four centuries as Jewish folklore, it is "true" in a human sense, much as the Bible is "true".

Assessment comment
Substituted at 05:30, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Error in the article
There is a bug in this article. This is a legendary character, so he cannot be considered a provisional ruler. I propose to correct this error or delete the article. PolishBoy123 Furaffinity (talk) 14:35, 27 January 2021 (UTC)