Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Agnes of Anhalt-Dessau


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. (non-admin closure) Timotheus Canens (talk) 19:58, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Agnes of Anhalt-Dessau

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Delete is a duchess inherently notable? I don't think so. She was born, married, procreated, and died, but alas didn't accomplish anything notable. WP is not the repository of all things and people royal who trudged through their pampered lives and did nothing notable. WP:BIO Carlossuarez46 (talk) 22:19, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. I added some material from the German Wikipedia, and I think that she is notable as an author. - Eastmain (talk) 01:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions.
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions.


 * Keep somewhat to my surprise, she seems to have published a book in a genuine academic series (I added the details), though that is not enough for notability  as an author.  Traditional social notability, irrelevant as it may be today, was not irrelevant in her lifetime. Prejudice against royalty & upper nobility of earlier periods is cultural bias, more precisely, recentism.  There's a very hard to find reference book listed as a source for her, so I suppose there's more to say. But more important, she was the wife of the chief executive (head of state as well as head of government) of what was a quasi-independent dukedom at the period--see Anhalt. we have normally considered such people notable in any period. This by itself is sufficient. Additionally, Eastmain found that a city was named after her. It's wise to check the deWP for German people.     DGG ( talk ) 01:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep due to the fact that she was a consort of reigning Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg. She was a first lady of sorts of Saxe-Altenburg. --Caponer (talk) 06:38, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. I am generally against nobility cruft and the article consists almost exclusively of that and needs to be rewritten completely. But nobility plus having written a book when that was still quite unusual for women plus a church still being named after her is enough for me to make me !vote "keep". That's not to say it might not be better to merge her with her husband. Hans Adler 22:37, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. Here are some thoughts on the broader issue of articles on members of the nobility in general. Outside of situations where the holder of a title of notability was automatically included in their country's parliament (as was historically true for members of the peerage of the United Kingdom and its predecessor countries), I agree that notability is not inherent in a noble title. But WP:NOTINHERITED can be misleading. People with the advantages that come with being born into a country's nobility (education, wealth, connections, sometimes high military rank) are likelier than most to do things that will make them notable. Finding the evidence of that notability for someone who died a long time ago can be difficult, though, particularly for people outside the English-speaking world. I found out about Agnes of Anhalt-Dessau's book from a brief reference in the Los Angeles Times, for example, and at first I couldn't find it in a library catalog because I was looking under the English-language title (the book was published in German and later in Italian, but apparently not in English). Still, because members of the nobility historically received the kind of attention that movie stars do today, there is still some chance of establishing notability for them.

Many articles on people like Agnes of Anhalt-Dessau start out as if they were copied from a genealogy book. This fact shouldn't distract us from the possibility that notability by Wikipedia standards can be established, and should probably discourage us from tagging such an article for deletion without a careful search.

I would also say that someone who is created a noble, rather than acquiring a title by birth or marriage, is almost certainly notable both for other accomplishments and from the media coverage that the title's creation would have caused. - Eastmain (talk) 04:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep Sufficient sources to establish notability. Edward321 (talk) 17:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.