Template:Did you know nominations/Edda Göring

Edda Göring

 * ... that in an orchard at Carinhall (gates pictured) the Luftwaffe built Edda Goering a fifty-metre-long copy of Frederick the Great's palace of Sans Souci?
 * Reviewed: 1943 B-24 crash in Gibraltar

Created/expanded by Moonraker (talk). Self nom at 02:42, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Symbol confirmed.svg Suitable length, 7016 characters according to DYKcheck. Expanded from a redirect. (If it counts, the article was approximately 600 characters long before it was redirected in 2008). Well-sourced. Well-written. The hook checks out. --Moscow Connection (talk) 00:25, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Could someone experienced with the BLP policy who reads German take a look at this. There are many controversial statements in the article which need a careful check, particularly as the subject is still living. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:38, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Symbol question.svg Given the gravity of Espresso Addict's request, I'm putting this on hold until someone knowledgeable can weigh in. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:39, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I was asked to look at the German, but don't have the time to do a full review. Please point out specifically which statements you find in question. I know Moonraker as a quality editor. I would word the hook the other way round, and would like to know why the preference for Goering over Göring, Sans Souci vs. Sanssouci:
 * ALT1: ... that the Luftwaffe built a fifty-metre-long copy of Frederick the Great's Sanssouci palace in an orchard at Carinhall (gates pictured) for Edda Göring?
 * ALT2: ... that Edda Göring played in a fifty-metre-long replica of Frederick the Great's Sanssouci palace, built by the Luftwaffe in an orchard at Carinhall (gates pictured)?
 * ALT3: ... that Adolf Hitler was Edda Göring godfather, and she received paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder as christening gifts? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:22, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I like Alt2, apart from the spelling of the names. Alt3 is more eye-catching, but Edda Goering is a living person, and if she has any wish to be connected with Hitler I am not aware of it.
 * On the spellings of names, I have used Göring in the title of the article for consistency with all of our other articles on members of the family, but rather unhappily, as the usual spelling of the name used in the English language is Goering, and I think that would be more recognizable in the hook when it is on the main page. On Sanssouci/Sans Souci, I know the Germans mostly use Sanssouci, but I thought Sans Souci was more usual in English and French? I may be wrong.
 * Espresso Addict says "there are many controversial statements in the article which need a careful check", but I can't find any. There are some politically sensitive statements, which is very different. Most are in quotations and in my view they are all well-cited so should not need further verification. As Gerda says, can we please see the detail of the "controversial statements" which Espresso Addict would like someone to check? Moonraker (talk) 03:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Moonraker, I trust you (excellent idiomatic translator) without looking, so I will wait for more precise questions. I see your point about the names, but think a living person might want to have her name spelt as she signs, not as the English literature has it (that also says "Friedrich der Grosse", looking gross to a German) ;) Germans only use Sanssouci (again: the article name), never saw the other before, but I won't mind that as much, the building doesn't live. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:43, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * On these spellings, Gerda, I think there just needs to be respect on both sides for different ways of spelling names. I should not write "Friedrich der Grosse" in English, but Frederick the Great. I expect you would write Rudolf Heß, as I should myself when writing in German, but in English I should certainly use Rudolf Hess, which is what looks normal in a British context. Moonraker (talk) 03:20, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "Friedrich der Grosse" is the name of two ships with articles. Needless to say, the letters on the ship are all capital, GROSSE is ok. But in lower case it looks disrespectful to a German. - The lady: how does she spell her name? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:32, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't have any information on that, as I have found a lot written about Edda G, but nothing written by her. We don't know for sure that she is still using her maiden name. If she is, I imagine she would use "Göring" in Germany, might conceivably switch to Goering in South Africa, but that isn't the point. Many names are spelt differently in different languages. If English uses and understands Hess, Goering, Cologne, &c., then there's an advantage in using what is recognized. On "Friedrich der Grosse", Gerda, I didn't know you had in mind ships' names, which are almost never translated, and in that case I support "Friedrich der Grosse". It may look dreadful to a German speaker in Germany (though not, I believe, to one in Switzerland) but it has the advantage of being legible to English speakers who have learnt no German. Moonraker (talk) 06:15, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd agree sensitive more than controversial, and on closer review, I appreciate the care Moonraker has gone to in writing the article, and to make the sources available. Nevertheless, I think this article warrants special care because the subject is living, has never been convicted of wrongdoing, and is largely famous for her parentage. The name alone is likely to generate high traffic when this appears on the main page. In fact, the mere existence of an article is itself something that might need reviewing, though I believe her involvement in the Cranach Madonna case might be sufficient for independent notability. I've given the refs a careful check and clicked on all the ones where the content is available. Ref 10 does not cover the paragraph it references (probably just a page number error). I found the Hitler's Children website (Ref 24) very sensationalist; is there an alternative source for this material?
 * There are a few instances where the reference is not available online which could do with verifying, if possible:
 * Ref 7 to cover "In the 1990s she said of her father in an interview / My only memories of him are such loving ones, I cannot see him any other way. I actually expect that most everybody has a favorable opinion of my father, except maybe in America. He was a good father to me."
 * Ref 21 to cover "Göring was a regular guest of Hitler's patron Winifred Wagner, whose grandson Gottfried Wagner later recalled that "My aunt Friedelind was outraged when my grandmother again slowly blossomed as the first lady of right-wing groups and received political friends such as Edda Goering, Ilse Hess, the former Nazi Party chairman Adolf von Thadden, Gerdy Troost, the wife of the Nazi architect and friend of Hitler Paul Ludwig Troost, the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, the Nazi film director Karl Ritter and the racist author and former Senator of the Reich Hans Severus Ziegler.""
 * Ref 30 to cover the fact that Göring contested the return of the Cranach Madonna. Espresso Addict (talk) 17:07, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't agree that the existence of the page might need reviewing, because Edda Goering has been written about so much for so long that she is plainly notable. To offer a point of comparison, I should say she is more notable than Pippa Middleton, another short biography I created here. In the early days of that page, Pippa came under heavy fire for being lightweight and trivial, but the acid test of WP:N is simply coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject, however little the subject may seem to "deserve" notability.
 * I am sympathetic to the rest of what you say, Espresso Addict. The page tries to comply with BLP policy and also aims to be kind to Edda Goering. "...yet he that can endure to follow with allegiance a fall'n lord does conquer him that did his master conquer and earns a place i' the story". Anyway, I have done some more work to improve the referencing, see what you think. Moonraker (talk) 22:24, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the cases are rather different. Philippa Middleton might or might not only be notable in the context of her sister, but her article is not doing her any harm, as long as it is watched to prevent vandalism. If she does something unwise in future it will be widely covered in newspapers with online editions, and interested parties will not need to look to Wikipedia to find the material. Edda Göring's article is inevitably going to contain material that is widely perceived as negative, and therefore needs to be held to a significantly higher standard of independent notability. A Wikipedia article will greatly increase the Googleability of the material about her, which is predominantly located in books.
 * On the detailed points, the ref to the artificial insemination claim now seems correct; thanks. Also the Googlebooks link for Women of the Third Reich is helpful. Are you able to scan the relevant pages of the other two references? ETA is the Der Spiegel article you reference? Espresso Addict (talk) 00:42, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You may be right about "inevitably going to contain material that is widely perceived as negative", but if so, that problem goes much more widely. The world is what it is, we aim to report on it accurately, and (as you recognize) it would be misleading to sanitize it. Verifiability is the main issue. When it comes to harm, a living person can always contact Wikipedia to ask for an article to be deleted.
 * Yes, that's the article from Der Spiegel, I've now linked it in the footnote. I have improved the citations you mentioned and linked some texts already online, but I don't like the idea of scanning copyrighted material. In general, where sources are offline they just have to be accepted AGF. Moonraker (talk) 02:33, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting keep.svg With the removal of the link to the Hitler's Children website, I'm comfortable with good-faithing the remaining two offline references. Thanks for all your work on this, Moonraker. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:32, 24 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The only problem I saw with the article is that half of it seemed to be written using the German Wikipedia article rather than the original sources, which was supported by the fact that one third to one half of the references were completely the same. I checked what was available in Google Books, and though my German is very limited, I did compare the English article to the German article. Since I assumed the German article was written in good faith, I should have used the DYKtickAGF template. --Moscow Connection (talk) 04:16, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Now when I read the discussion, I see that I missed the reference to the artificial insemination while checking the article. Also, as I can remember, one or two books in Google Books said the page wasn't available for preview. As for the Hitler's Children website, it referenced a couple of completely innocent statements, so I thought it was okay. I didn't read the complete article on the Hitler's Children site at that time, and now when I did, I think the site should not be used as a source. --Moscow Connection (talk) 05:29, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments, Moscow Connection. The German Wikipedia article is now less advanced than ours here. Yes, there is often a problem with Google books page links, I add them because they seem to work more often than not. Even when the link doesn't work, the citation from a printed source can still be relied on AGF. I have looked again at the Hitler's Children web site, and I can agree that we are better not relying on it, so I have replaced it. Moonraker (talk) 06:28, 24 December 2012 (UTC)