Talk:Johannes Hevelius

message: In 1611 Gdansk was a Part of Poland not Germany and its name was Gdansk not Danzig. It wasnt Danzig till after the Partitons of Poland, So will some of you people stop renaming it. And Jan Heweliusz was Polish and dedicated his first book to Sobieski and the Polish Crown.
See:http://www.ampolinstitute.org/people/heweliusz.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kommiec (talk • contribs) 04:41, 2 October 2003
We use current names on Wikipedia.Vancouverguy 03:42, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk of 2003 

message: And the Current name is Gdansk so stop renaming it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kommiec (talk • contribs) 04:44, 2 October 2003
The Britannica lists Gdansk:
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=41189
12.243.94.55 04:31, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: As I said, it is best to give reasons for making a change when you make it, at least in the edit summary. That's what it's there for. By the way, you can sign your comments with four tildes ~~~~: they'll be converted to your username and the date when you save the page. Someone else 04:02, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current Name 

message: Discuss Danzig/Gdańsk issues on pages covering the history of the city, not in biographies like this here. -- Matthead discuß!     O       23:38, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stop edit-warring about Danzig/Gdańsk issues here and let Johannes Hevelius rest in peace!  

message: 'A Halophänonem was observed by many in Danzig...'  : May I enquire what, precisely, a 'halophänonem' is? --Nalco 17:21, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Halophänonem

message: The following is written on Tycho Brahe's page:
:"Tycho was the last major astronomer to work without the aid of a telescope, soon to be turned toward the sky by Galileo."
while this article states:
:"He (Hevelius) is thus considered the last astronomer to do major work without lenses."
I think that this should be resolved.  Since Hevelius clearly did his work after Tycho's death, it would appear that the claim for T. is a bit of an exaggeration.  H. did use telescopes, but not for his positional observations. Michael Daly 20:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it is no contradiction. Hevelius did a large part of his works without lenses. The lenses from which his telescopes were constructed, were probably bad, so despite comstructing large lens telescopes, he had to measure up star positions with lensless instruments. BTW: The Tycho sentence is unclear: he was the last major astronomer that didn't use telescopes, ever! (?). ... said: Rursus (mbork³) 13:09, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bit of a contradiction? 

message: Dear Poeticbent,
I was neither involved nor knew that Hevelius had been put into the see-also section at :Category:German astronomers until today. I'd disapprove of that in that the same should have been done with the :Category:Polish astronomers and approve in that it is a better idea than asserting him into that group as really a German (Polish). Since you have now done the same with the Polish astronomer cat, meaning there is absolutely no current double standard in that regard, you needn't have solely put in that cat again to point out in the edit summary that there had been a double standard, thus also creating one. See the old talk on his nationality (above) and couple it with the thought that "Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Categories that are not self-evident, or are shown through reliable sources to be controversial, should not be included on the article; a list might be a better option." (Wikipedia:Categorization#Some_general_guidelines). That said, I undid the undiscussed introduction of the category again. Sciurinæ (talk) 19:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems he actually was a German speaking citizen of a Hanseatic city under the Polish king. What was he then? A Polish German or a German Polish? Seems that there's some foundation for both opinions. Equal share maybe? ... said: Rursus (mbork³) 13:19, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, it depends upon your definition of "German". There's probably some arguments for both sides. It might be easier just to say he was a German-Polish astronomer or a Danzig astronomer. We've got plenty of articles on prominent astronomers who have multiple nationalities.—RJH (talk) 20:47, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cats 

message: Uh, ok, look, it's not that hard.  (and I'm not talking about the Tin Drum). Since HM put in 5 "he was German sources" I could go in and put in 6 or more "he was Polish sources". Then HM could come back and add a few more. And I could add a few more. Then Matthead and others would revert etc. etc. etc. And it would be a complete waste of time.
So how about 1 source per nationality, noting that he is referred to one way in some and another in others, and maybe even note that some sources use both . Otherwise this is just gonna become another silly episode in an already silly story.radek (talk) 00:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. It should be possible to mention, "some call him German and some Polish" instead of removing the "German astronomer" cat and adding "he was a Polish (and only Polish) astronomer". I don't care about the number of sources as long as both views are mentioned, which seems to be a problem. HerkusMonte (talk) 07:49, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: By policies it should be avoided in the intro. It is OK, as it is now, mentioning his name in German and Polish, but these modern exercises of nationality, expecially these foolish German vs. Polish antagonism is very off-topic, since it was not an important issue in the 17th and 18th centuries! His works were published in Latin, does it make him Roman citizen? Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 12:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

text: Another reflection: it seems to me that there are citations in German that in a way tries to indicate that he was of German nationality. Now, if he was a polyglot of many languages, perhaps addressing a German friend, what language would he use? He was a Beerbrewish Astronomian from the Gdanzig, by High Jove! Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 12:57, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is the crap that never ends 

message: The former section Career renamed to Astronomy is a little too fragmented by small paragraphs. Is it maybe possible to merge some of them? Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 12:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: "Career" = Astronomy

message: I've looked around but can find no indication that a plaque with the inscription as previously given in the article actually exists, though I guess it might have at one point in time. For example, here's a relevant google image search: .
On the other hand, there are plaques like this and this.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:31, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  plaque 

message: The problem with this  is that it's not entirely correct. Yes, obviously, "Hevelius" is a Latinization of ... some variant of the guy's name. But it's simply very dubious as to what is actually latnizing. I dunno, is there a record of his father's name? Back in those days there were no such things as birth certificates (and if there were, they were in Latin), no national ids (and if there had been, it would've been in Polish) and no standardized single names that somebody went by. Basically, he went under all these names so "Hevelius" is a latinization of all of them.
The way the section is written it also seems to marginalize the "Polish" name presenting it apart from others and labeling it as in Polish - no such thing is done for "in German known as Johann" or "in German known as Höfelcke". That needs to be changed also.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's just what sources say about him, and yes, Moore explicitely says it's a latinisation of "Hewelcke" (with a "c"). If you know other sources claiming other variations of his name you might add them. HerkusMonte (talk) 17:49, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  latinization 

message: What is this JPG File doing?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gda%C5%84sk_Hotel_Mercure-Hevelius.JPG Dadofsam (talk) 04:15, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Influence 

message: This issue was settled nine years ago, as follows:
::Results on VOTE: Period from 1466 to 1793 —
:::Votes for Danzig: 46 (excluding 1 vote due to low edit count of the voter)
:::Votes for Gdańsk: 36 (excluding 12 votes due to low edit count of the voters or anonymous voting)
:::The name used in Wikipedia to refer to the city between 1466 to 1793 is Danzig....
::*See: Talk:Gdansk/Vote
Alas, since then we've been a resurgence in changing all mentions of Danzig to Gdańsk — ostensibly on the basis of the city's political alignment with the Polish Crown after 1466 — without reference to the city's ethnic and linguistic character at the time in question. 
It's evident from reading details of Hevelius's life that German was his first language, and that, like any good 17th century intellectual, he used Latin professionally. One American source, the Galileo Project  identifies his nationality as "German (as Danzig was)," but adds that after graduation from the Danzig Gymnasium in 1624, he was "sent to a school ... near Bromberg (now Bydgoszcz, Poland), to acquire fluency in Polish" (my emphasis).  From these and other factors we see that Hevelius was a typical upper-class citizen of 17th century Danzig, a city of predominantly German (and Lutheran) character situated in a region controlled politically and heavily influenced by (Catholic) Poland.
We must bear in mind that in Hevelius's day nationality, particularly in northeastern Europe, was sometimes nebulous — but in the Vistula Delta area there were definite differences in language and culture, the history of which should not be obscured by simplistic modern ethnocentrism. Sca (talk) 15:49, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, the Gdansk vote is pretty unambiguous, however continuously ignored. HerkusMonte (talk) 08:16, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

text: I don't know what kind of calendar you use, mine still shows July 2015 and NO, the Gdansk vote was not discussed "freakin' fifteen years ago". I'm not going to answer your further polemics and personal attacks, the Gdansk vote is an established procedure to avoid such lame editwars you just started over several of my latest edits. To deliberately ignore WP:CONSENSUS is certainly not a good idea. However, I'll leave your beloved "Gdansk" in the infobox, in correct chronology for that era, off course.HerkusMonte (talk) 05:20, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It isn't nor ever was policy. It's outdated like hell. It's irrelevant. And its abuse, like we have here, only sparks edit wars, rather than prevents them.Volunteer Marek (talk) 01:09, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Danzig (Gdańsk)

message: As you can read in the article:
"His observatory, instruments and books were destroyed by fire on September 26, 1679. The catastrophe is described in the preface to his Annus climactericus (1685). He promptly repaired the damage enough to enable him to observe the great comet of December 1680. He named the constellation Sextans in memory of these lost instruments.
His health had suffered from the shock of the 1679 fire, and he died on his 76th birthday, January 28, 1687."
Well, we can compare dates with the article on the sextant:
"(...) a glazier in Philadelphia. John Bird made the first sextant in 1757."
I'm trying to understand this inconsistency, but also take the opportunity to leave the question here, where I think clarification may be useful.
85.247.92.144 (talk) 20:49, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: There would be less confusion if a sentence like the following one had been used: "The modern sextant was invented by John Hadley and Thomas Godfrey independently". JmCor (talk) 23:55, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  How can Hevelius have used a sextant before it was invented? ... 

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