5 ms·
Three Hapsburgs and a Reporter Walk into a Canadian Vault
- gnatman 11mo agoI didn’t understand the angle of this article until I realized it was “Times Insider”, a sort of behind the scenes. The actual story is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/arts/design/florentine-diamond-resurfaces-hapsburg.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/arts/design/florentine-di...
- gsf_emergency_6 11mo agohttps://archive.ph/V2Ehj https://archive.ph/V2Ehj
- throwup238 11mo agohttps://archive.ph/dCcMq https://archive.ph/dCcMq
- gsf_emergency_6 11mo agoMore details here (playable video of the "pale-yellow" Florentine diamond) https://highjewellerydream.com/the-unveiling-of-the-habsburg-jewels-and-the-centenary-mystery-of-the-florentine-diamond/ https://highjewellerydream.com/the-unveiling-of-the-habsburg...
- steve1977 11mo agoHow can a paper like the New York Times not even get the name of dynasty right and this across multiple articles? It's the House of Habsburg, not Hapsburg.
- sweettea 11mo agoAlready addressed: "While the family spells its last name with a B, the New York Times stylebook spells Hapsburg with a P, which brought no shortage of scolding emails upon publication."
- snthpy 11mo agoHow can the New Iork Tymes just choose how they spell things? That's messed up.
- renewiltord 11mo agoThese idiosyncrasies are amusing but they do have a habit of dominating the conversation. E.g. the New Yorker (I think) uses diaeresis to represent distinct syllables resulting in words like “Cooperate” being decorated. Or that chap here who insists on using 5 digit years. But some go missed. My personal favourite is that I prefer to fully close clauses within quotations. > The President said, “I will never bomb the moon!”.
- monerozcash 11mo agoThe same way they just choose to anglicize Владимир Путин and בִּנְיָמִין נְתַנְיָהוּ, although there are certainly a plenty of much better examples.
- hurfdurf 11mo agoThe Habsburg Family never used a different writing system, though.
- tanseydavid 11mo agoBut I bet they used the metric system!
- steve1977 11mo agoProbably, but only since the 19th century ;)
- monerozcash 11mo agoThey did use a different language with different pronunciation rules, though. I'm not convinced that sticking with the original spelling is obviously better. Bibis’s first name certainly doesn't accurately transliterate to Benjamin, and that's probably fine.
- gsf_emergency_6 11mo agoGerman usage https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hapsburg%2CHabsburg&year_start=1800&year_end=2025&corpus=20&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CHapsburg%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CHabsburg%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hapsburg%2CHab... Vs https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hapsburg%2CHabsburg&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en-US&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hapsburg%2CHab... US (In my head NYT is an anachronism from the 60s but I've a feeling the editors would be more than fine with that characterization)
- steve1977 11mo agoThat’s interesting, but since the Habsburg is an actual castle (burg) here in German speaking Switzerland, there is only one right way of spelling it.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- gsf_emergency_6 11mo agoAh right, here's the Schloss Habsburg page for those interested https://www.museumaargau.ch/en/habsburg-castle https://www.museumaargau.ch/en/habsburg-castle (Winter hours apply?) There's a middle German word hap (ford) which could make the NYT correct in 1100 :) It's on par with spelling Koeln Cologne imho pity those guys
- steve1977 11mo agoHap seems to be an old word for Hafen (i.e. port). Now the Habsburg is on a mountain and no ports in sight ;) Also, according to historians, the name probably stems from "Habesburg" (haben = have in English). There's also a myth that it stems from Habicht (Eurasian goshawk), but that is likely just that, a myth. In either case, the castle was never spelled with a p, even in the middle ages. So there's no way to spin this spelling into something that makes sense. It's just wrong. Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_(Burg)#Geschichte https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_(Burg)#Geschichte
- s1mplicissimus 11mo agoI think it's a pretty strong indicator of the low level of care the authors put into this, so I'll upvote the grey parent. Imo it's embarassing, but at the same time the NYT hasn't been what I would consider "quality journalism" for quiet a while, so I guess it's par for the course
- ggm 11mo agoThe initial reportage couldn't resist the "lost jewellery" tag when they were never lost, just not openly discussed.
- lIl-IIIl 11mo agoI think it's correct. They were lost to the general public and were considered missing. When a smaller yellow diamond surfaced there was speculation that it's the Florentine diamond that was cut.
- ggm 11mo agoI'm not in the jewellery business but I would be very surprised if the diamond industry didn't have a pretty good idea where things lay. That kind of multi-caret stone has a premium. You need to know provenance. The risk it's a blood diamond or stolen is very high. Lost to wider society? Yea, I can buy that but it's a stretch. It's not "lost" the way a medieval triptych hanging in an alms house for centuries and found to be worth millions is a "lost masterpiece" or works coming out of safe deposit boxes where some GI has hoarded loot after ww2. The titular holders decided to put a time lock on their deposit box but had clear title to the assets.
- renewiltord 11mo agoDoes anyone look at all these jewels and feel a bit dismissive? I get the idea for why they used to be valuable but they look incredibly gaudy and seem very much like trading beads to the Native Americans or whatever. I get the historical significance but they don’t look good to me. Like Sue the T Rex looks cool from a distance but up close she’s got all these holes in her skull from parasites. Awful! I appreciate the beast’s skeleton for its significance but her skull is a horrid thing close up aesthetically.
- Barry-Perkins 11mo ago[flagged]
- rurban 11mo agoThey are called Habsburg-Lothringen actually. In the passport