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It’s difficult to tell how pervasive this problem is in the Croatian edition as opposed to others (even this narrative may be “partisan”, but I don’t know how t

It’s difficult to tell how pervasive this problem is in the Croatian edition as opposed to others (even this narrative may be “partisan”, but I don’t know how the cited sources lean or who owns those media outlets). In any case, there are some rather blatant examples in the English language version that demonstrate the phenomenon, or at least half-assed solutions to neo-Nazi distortions via special pleading (the article on Copernicus is a nice piece of revisionism; in every historical reference I have ever come across, Copernicus is referred to as a Polish astronomer, but because the editors where either too foolish, cowardly in the face of German nationalism, or count neo-Nazis among their ranks, they decided to remove the national adjective altogether. Most articles do not conform to this practice which is why it’s a piece of special pleading and a pernicious concession. Shame on them.)

Udik 7y ago
I've checked that page and it seems pretty balanced to me- though I don't know the subject and might be mistaken. As far as I understand, Copernicus was born in a mixed German and Polish speaking area that had joined the Kingdom of Poland only seven years before his birth. He was fluent in both German and Polish. So I'd say that calling him either German or Polish would be inappropriate.
- acqq 7y ago
  > joined the Kingdom of Poland only seven years before his birth. > I'd say that calling him either German or Polish would be inappropriate. By the same logic, for Thomas Jefferson, born 1743 in a British colony, it would be even more inappropriate to call him American, as that country didn't exist until 1776. What's true however is that, historically, the ideologies of current nation states didn't exist in 1473, and that some categorizations used today are really ahistorical. Still, people knew which language their ancestors and family spoke, and there is some information about that in Wikipedia regarding Copernicus. That's something that means something even to us today, where we could live in one country and mostly speak one language but still don't deny that our family speaks another, or that we don't speak the language of our ancestors. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans "With an estimated size of approximately 44 million in 2016, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the US Census Bureau in its American Community Survey."

Udik 7y ago

I've checked that page and it seems pretty balanced to me- though I don't know the subject and might be mistaken. As far as I understand, Copernicus was born in a mixed German and Polish speaking area that had joined the Kingdom of Poland only seven years before his birth. He was fluent in both German and Polish. So I'd say that calling him either German or Polish would be inappropriate.

acqq 7y ago
> joined the Kingdom of Poland only seven years before his birth. > I'd say that calling him either German or Polish would be inappropriate. By the same logic, for Thomas Jefferson, born 1743 in a British colony, it would be even more inappropriate to call him American, as that country didn't exist until 1776. What's true however is that, historically, the ideologies of current nation states didn't exist in 1473, and that some categorizations used today are really ahistorical. Still, people knew which language their ancestors and family spoke, and there is some information about that in Wikipedia regarding Copernicus. That's something that means something even to us today, where we could live in one country and mostly speak one language but still don't deny that our family speaks another, or that we don't speak the language of our ancestors. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans "With an estimated size of approximately 44 million in 2016, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the US Census Bureau in its American Community Survey."