Talk:Nicolaus Copernicus/Nationality/Archive 1

message: — JIP | Talk 07:50, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  AfD result for article titled "Copernicus' nationality" 

message: I see this is quite an old discussion, and one that descended into inanity at times.
I think Copernicus's reaction would be, in modern American terms, "Good grief!"  In other words, what a waste of energy, space, thought, etc.
It's evident from reading the article and the discussion that Copernicus, like many other Europeans of the pre-modern era, did not fit anyone's concept of a discrete ethnic nationality. In his mentality, he probably was more what later generations would call a Renaissance man. It would be a mistake for both Poles and Germans to view him as "belonging" exclusively to one or the other nation.
If we must assign a nationality to this person, whose mother evidently was ethnically German, and who "spoke German as his native tongue" – but who lived in what was politically part of Poland and apparently sided with Poland in the political disputes of his day – let us call  him German-Polish or Polish-German.
The widespread notion that every ethnic group must have its own homogenous nation-state is a relatively new one, and the horrors produced by such ideas when they're taken to extremes are matters of living memory. Let us not project such stupidities back centuries to people who would have had a much broader outlook on ethnicity.
When Lincoln died, someone said:  "Now he belongs to the ages," or something to that effect. Copernicus belongs to  humankind, not to one country alone.
Sca 20:58, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Good grief!

message: Yes, I know he's commonly referred to as a Polish astronomer. The fact that this simplification is widespread doesn't necessarily make it accurate, however. What about his "native tongue" – isn't that the most commonly used criterion for ethnic identity? Linguistic minorities formerly existed in many European countries, and still exist in some, where the dread hand of ethnic cleansing hasn't swept them out.
In the U.S. we have had lots of hyphenated Americans – Italian-American, Irish-American, Polish-American, etc. In our case, part of what the hyphenated national label denotes is that the person typically spoke some other language than English as his or her "mother tongue" (except for the Irish). Why would it be so offensive from the Polish (nationalist?) point of view to call Copernicus a German-Polish astronomer? I think it's because many Poles tend to view everything "German" through the lens of the Nazi experience. But Copernicus lived long before the Nazis.
Here's a question for Molobo, Space Cadet, Halibutt:  Suppose the Nazis and WWII had never happened – wouldn't Poland be a more interesting country if it still had large minorities of Jews, Belarussians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and, yes, Germans?
But back to Copernicus:  At the very least, the article should spell out his ethnic duality and include, parenthetically, the German names of the towns associated with him that were generally used during his time. (See: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Copernicus.html.) Otherwise, it presents a misleading picture, which of course is what half-truths are designed to do.
Sca 19:29, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Through the ethnic lens