Talk:Germanic peoples

Ethnic groups?

Germanic peoples are recognized as a collection of ethnic groups throughout Wikipedia: https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Europe, https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Category:Germanic_ethnic_groups. The recent edit that replaces "Germanic ethnic group" with "Germanic tribe" is biased and politically motivated. -- 13:23, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

In the intro paragraph the first sentence states: "The historical Germanic peoples are a category of Northern European ethnic groups...", I don't think historians view the Germanic peoples in terms of ethnicity, but rather tribes. Perhaps, the sentence should read: "The historical Germanic peoples are a category of ancient Northern European tribes..." --E-960 (talk) 16:49, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm fine with "tribes", but capitalized "Northern Europe" did not exist in antiquity, so I suggest "northern Europe" and remove the link to Northern Europe. The link makes it look more thingish than it actually is. –Austronesier (talk) 16:55, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. --E-960 (talk) 11:51, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

I have no personal issue, but I know in the past some editors have expressed concerns about the term tribes.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Tribal societies, than? --E-960 (talk) 12:16, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

"Tribes" comes with a bunch of problems: Namely, the ancient Germanic peoples were organized in groups that need not necessarily fall within the parameters of "tribes". The term has broadly fallen out of favor in anthropology since the 1970s. See Tribe#Controversy_and_usage_depreciation. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:49, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Does it give you a hard-on to transform European history? To adapt it to your ideology? Sonnenrage (talk) 14:38, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Ethnic group: A group of people who share a number of civilisational characteristics, including language and culture.

The Germanic tribes do not share a common language, culture, religious rhythms, practices, customs and beliefs ? Sonnenrage (talk) 15:07, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

The change from ethnicity to tribe has only one objective: to adapt reality to its ideology. Sonnenrage (talk) 15:08, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Could you give further explanation of your problems with the usage of "ethnic group" in this context? Do any academics disagree with classifying Germanic peoples as ethnic groups? Looking at the past edits, it seems that reference to Germanic peoples as "ethnic groups" in the opening paragraph was only removed immediately following this edit: https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Germanic_peoples&diff=prev&oldid=1017816564 I mention this because I was also going to ask why the article isn't titled "Ancient Germanic peoples" or something similar, given the article is specifically focused on ancient Germanic history. 188.141.88.155 (talk) 15:45, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Maybe the article should be re-named, but OTOH indeed it is quite simply a fact that there was never a single ethnic group which we could call "Germanic" in any straightforward way, with the possible exception of whoever spoke proto-Germanic. Putting aside that linguistic definition, the historical Germanic peoples, who are the most obvious real "Germanic peoples", were discussed by Roman and Greeks and quite a concrete topic but they were never described as anything like what we would now call an ethnic group. Writers such as Tacitus went out of their way to say the name was a new invention, and that the Germani were not a single collective entity.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:50, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

That's why it was written in plural, 'ethnic groups'? Avilich (talk) 02:18, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

The Germanic peoples are an ethnic group

blocked editor

I think that the question of the choice of the term tribe instead of ethnicity should be discussed again. The Germanic peoples are part of the same ethnic group. Ethnicity is the feeling of sharing a common ancestry, whether because of language, customs, physical similarities or lived history (objective or mythological). This notion is the foundation of the notion of identity. from the Greek ethnos, group of beings of common origin or condition, nation, people. An ethnic group is a group of people who share the same culture, language, traditions and customs, which are passed on from generation to generation. The Germanic peoples fit the description perfectly. Sonnenrage (talk) 15:36, 5 July 2021 (UTC) That is the crux of the issue; the very first sentence of the lede says: "The historical Germanic peoples are a category of ancient northern European tribes." They did not share culture, language, traditions and customs. After a vast amount of discussion by many different editors, this is the consensus now, as I understand it. Carlstak (talk) 15:50, 5 July 2021 (UTC) They did not share culture ? Traditions ? Language ? Is that bad faith ? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_culture Perhaps we should change the whole of Wikipedia so that we can modulate European cultures and history as we see fit? Sonnenrage (talk) 16:53, 5 July 2021 (UTC) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Germanic_culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages Sonnenrage (talk) 16:56, 5 July 2021 (UTC) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_paganism Sonnenrage (talk) 16:57, 5 July 2021 (UTC) If Germans are not an ethnicity, then Wikipedia might as well assume its unbiased IDEOLOGY and say: ethnicities do not exist. Sonnenrage (talk) 16:59, 5 July 2021 (UTC) Putting aside several problems in what you say, and trying to focus on the main issue, the challenge is simple, in a way. The problem is that in careful scholarly writing, which we try to follow, because that's what we do here, there are several different definitions of who were Germanic peoples. Example number 1, Goths living in what is now the Ukraine spoke a language in the Germanic family, and are therefore sometimes called Germanic (but not by everyone). However, there is no evidence that anyone realized that this language was more closely related to the Langobardic than to say Gaulish. In terms of everything other than language (eg material culture) they were apparently like their neighbours who were speaking all types of languages. Example number 2, the Germani cisrhenani were probably the first true Germanic peoples, and yet they were not geographically Germanic, and probably not linguistically Germanic. 3. The simplest way to feel like there is a solution to the problem is to declare that you'll stick to a linguistic definition, but then you have the problem that we have almost zero evidence for a lot of the peoples considered to be Germanic. You would basically be turning the term into something completely artificial. The big languages which we have evidence for (Gothic, Old English etc) were clearly new standard languages in a new social situation where people were living in multi-ethnic situations connected to the Roman empire, so we know nothing about the older diversity. I've just been looking at a recent collection of articles by scholars from several disciplines called "Interrogating the Germanic" which helped remind me of reality of this issue. If we were not finding this article a little difficult to work on, we would have been doing something wrong.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:56, 5 July 2021 (UTC) Firstly, what are the problems with what I am saying? It would be nice to talk about it. What I am doing is showing you the academic definition of ethnicity, and simply showing you that yes, Germans are an ethnicity. Taking me as a particular case to justify your choices is not serious. Because if you play this game, you can discredit almost all the historical ethnic groups around the world. The Germanic tribes shared a similar culture, religious beliefs, customs and language. Which is the perfect definition of an ethnic group. You mention the Goths, but Germanic history did not begin with the fall of the Roman Empire. That there are Goths in Ukraine, that they have evolved their culture and de facto their language, is normal. This is in no way a valid argument for doubting the ethnic existence of the Germans. The Germanic languages all derive from proto-Indo-European, giving rise to almost all the languages present in Europe. It is normal to find strong similarities between Celtic and Germanic languages, especially if one adds to that the strong geographical proximity. Can we stop beating about the bush? What I want is neutrality from Wikipedia. Sonnenrage (talk) 18:54, 5 July 2021 (UTC) This isn't a forum for chatting. We are trying to work together to summarize what experts have published. If you have published sources which show changes that should be made to articles, then bring those. Concerning Germanic languages, there are lots of articles including this one which explain what they are.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:04, 5 July 2021 (UTC) "I want to believe". You are not honest. Again, the definition of ethnicity is clear and academic. At no point can you deny to me that the Germanic peoples are not an ethnic group. You have no argument. Only ideology, and a distorted view of reality. The first person who came along said: "Germans are not an ethnic group, I read it in a book. Everyone applauded in unison. Pathetic. You want sources? Which sources suit you best? Ancient sources? Modern sources? The writings of the Romans? Tell me. So that I don't waste my time for nothing. Wikipedia does not respect Sonnenrage (talk) 19:42, 5 July 2021 (UTC) Actually, Sonnenrage, you are not respecting the policies of the Wikipedia project, and you are personally attacking other editors, for which you can be blocked. This isn't how disagreements are settled on WP, and you can't bully us to get your way. Simply as a practical matter, one would think that if you truly want to see the article changed, you would behave in a way here that might have a chance to bring that about, but you seem to prefer to vent your rage, calling other editors names and accusing them of sinister motives. What is truly pathetic is your telling another editor "You are not honest", then fabricating a quote: "Germans are not an ethnic group, I read it in a book", and then saying in your own words: "Everyone applauded in unison", which everyone can clearly see is not true. Carlstak (talk) 20:36, 5 July 2021 (UTC) My culture is under attack. Clearly. Which is annoying, because Wikipedia is the authority for most people. Yes, I am clearly annoyed that none of my arguments are taken into account, even though they are clearly valid. Now, I'll make a quote. Here's the argument that got the article changed: "I don't think historians view the Germanic peoples in terms of ethnicity, but rather tribes. ". No one has objected to this. Is this a valid argument for the modification of an article? My simple arguments are not being heard. There is a different treatment. This is why I believe it is motivated by politics rather than the simple search for truth and impartiality. I do not want to impose my ideas. I simply like truth and neutrality. When you say that I am in the attack. I am. It is perhaps not wise to proceed as I do. If some people are offended, I apologize. Once again, I have demonstrated in a simple and concise way that the academic definition of the word ethnicity corresponds very clearly to Germanic peoples. I am not in the "a peu près" business. I do not wish to go to war. I like Wikipedia, I like neutrality and truth. I wish to keep it that way. Sonnenrage (talk) 21:02, 5 July 2021 (UTC) What is a tribe? From a historical point of view, a tribe is a social formation existing before the formation of the state. Some ethnologists use this word to designate societies organised on the basis of kinship ties, especially families with the same ancestry. Thus, several family clans living on the same territory may constitute a tribe, and several tribes an ethnic group. To say that there is no Germanic ethnicity is nonsense. There is a Germanic ethnic group, and this ethnic group is made up of several tribes. In the article, it is explained that the Germans are a category of northern European tribes. This is not factually correct. Sonnenrage (talk) 21:39, 5 July 2021 (UTC) Thank you for taking these arguments into consideration. I do not spin them, I do not manipulate them. I am not acting in bad faith. I explain very clearly and without any ambiguity. The Germanic peoples, or Germans, are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group originating in Northern Europe, whose members are identified by their use of Germanic languages. Their history extends from the 2nd millennium BC to the present day. They share a common identity. Common religious practices. A common social organisation. Common customs. These are facts. Not an assumption. Sonnenrage (talk) 21:50, 5 July 2021 (UTC) And there's where you go astray. Look at the hatnote at the top of the page. It says: "Not to be confused with Germans, Teutons, Theodiscus, or Germanic-speaking Europe." The nub of what I'm saying is that this article is not about the Germans. Do you see your mistake? The inhabitants of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and England are mostly the descendants of Germanic peoples, but they are not Germans. Carlstak (talk) 22:25, 5 July 2021 (UTC) The historical Germanic peoples. The article does speak of the ancient Germanic peoples. There are no mistakes. I am talking about Germanic peoples. Saxons, Franks, Swabians, Goths etc. I do not mention the Germans. Sonnenrage (talk) 22:47, 5 July 2021 (UTC) You're contradicting yourself. You say directly above, "The Germanic peoples, or Germans, are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group..." You'll never get anywhere addressing others this way; it's a waste of time. Carlstak (talk) 23:12, 5 July 2021 (UTC) My arguments have so far not been refuted. It is a deaf discussion. I have the distinct feeling that you don't want to read what I write. But the decisions are not final? I don't think so. The point of the debate is: is there a Germanic ethnic group or not? Yes. And I explained why, just above. Sonnenrage (talk) 22:50, 5 July 2021 (UTC) English is not my native language, but I think I express myself well enough, even if there are mistakes, to make it understandable and simple Sonnenrage (talk) 22:51, 5 July 2021 (UTC) I have given the academic definition of the word tribes, and the word ethnicity. I did not invent it. The facts are there. I am really starting to believe that you don't want to hear what I have to say. Impartiality, neutrality. Take the facts without putting your personal opinion or resentment into them. That is Wikipedia's duty. Sonnenrage (talk) 22:54, 5 July 2021 (UTC) It is indeed not our duty to prove you wrong, or hear what you have to say. If you are here to contribute to Wikipedia then you need to learn to work in a different way. This is not a forum for debate about what we have to say. However: There is no clear evidence that ALL the historical peoples now designated in different discussions as Germanic all shared one language or set of traditions, which is not surprising, because there is no single definition which all scholars can agree on. The first version of this concept was invented by Julius Caesar, who was not looking at languages and traditions except in the sense of what these peoples were NOT (they were not like those closer-to-Rome Gauls who'd been softened by mediterranean culture, they did not have druids, they did not drink wine or use money, etc). Caesar still influences the way we write today. While sharing a language is sometimes connected to feelings of shared ethnicity, Germanic is NOT a language. It is a family of languages. Already in historical times scholars believe it won't have been obvious to speakers of these languages, for example Goths and Franks, that their languages were closer to each other than to other Indo-European languages. There is no historical record of them recognizing this (or caring). Classical writers called the early Goths "Scythians", like their neighbours, and never associated them with Germanic peoples. Archaeologists can't tell the difference between Goths and their neighbours either. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:56, 6 July 2021 (UTC) Once again you are taking particular cases to theorise your ideas. A special case is de facto a special case, there is no need to make it an example to build on. This is far from the scientific work and impartiality you think you are. ▪︎ there is no clear evidence and there may never be. This is the case for all ancient peoples. If you apply your reasoning to the Germanic peoples, you must apply it to the remnants of the ancient ethnicities. But you won't, because it is simple to tackle European history. ▪︎ That Rome would consider Celtic or hybrid peoples living along the Rhine to be Germanic is not proof that there is no Germanic ethnicity. It makes no sense. Especially since Cesar is not the only ancient source dealing with the case of Germanic peoples. ▪︎ Language is not the only thing they share. You want to be so right, that you don't take into account the rest. The social system? Religion, myth and custom? That too is to be taken into consideration when you want to do a serious job. You're obsessed with Goth. It's unbelievable. The Germanic ethnic group developed in the south of Scandinavia and then developed in the north of Germany today. All the so-called Germanic peoples come from this common stock. They share a language, customs, religion and social system. I could amuse myself by naming Germanic tribes and asking you for the differences, but you will be hard pressed to find any. Archaeologists speak of a civilization that existed long before the wars with Rome. I invite you to read Rudolf Fellmann if you are interested in the subject. I also invite you to read what is a tribe and an ethnic group. Maybe we should rewrite the dictionary, as you do with history. ▪︎Is it not your duty to read what I write? This is the best one. Once again, the first person who comes along asks for a change without any preamble, and you accept. I've been posting valid arguments for a day now, and you haven't contradicted any of them. You're just running me around in circles, trying to make me lose my patience. You have one objective, to remove the term ethnicity, and there was never any question of going back on it. ▪︎Your friends who call me a liar when I caricature a quote, but I'm reposting the quote that got the article changed: "I don't think historians view the Germanic peoples in terms of ethnicity, but rather tribes. Perhaps, the sentence should read: "The historical Germanic peoples are a category of ancient Northern European tribes... "wow. What a profound work of scientific research. Wonderful. Sonnenrage (talk) 14:13, 6 July 2021 (UTC) There is indeed lots more evidence and discussion possible, but the comments you are making are, unfortunately for us, who don't know you, only statements being made by an anonymous person on the internet. This is a very large but useless discussion so far. I propose that you should first read the article beyond the opening lines, and examine the extensive list of sources. It is not just Caesar. It is not just the Goths. It is not just language.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:44, 6 July 2021 (UTC) Once again, you are acting in bad faith. Your reasoning applies only to the European people, and in this case to Northern Europeans, who are merely an agglomeration of tribes, not ethnic, a shapeless mass of individuals. You are doing politics, not historical research. There was no debate, there was no exchange, because what I say goes against your ideological bias. None of my arguments have been accepted. When I see how easy it was to remove the word ethnicity, and to remove the ethnic character of the Germanic people, it is simply unbelievable, unfair and infuriating. You answer in the wrong way, for the simple reason that it is not acceptable to put the word ethnicity back in, it is not possible in your world view. It is easy to destroy European history and identity, to have a pseudo position of strength, in your little comfort. It will not always be like this, be sure. Sonnenrage (talk) 17:25, 6 July 2021 (UTC) Yes I also noted your reply to Serols [1]. You are too worked up and I think this discussion is going nowhere.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:54, 6 July 2021 (UTC) To be honest, you should say that she never started. Sonnenrage (talk) 19:50, 6 July 2021 (UTC) There are two solutions, either I accept your ideas. Or I accept your ideas. Sonnenrage (talk) 19:50, 6 July 2021 (UTC) You fundamentally misunderstand not only me personally, but also how WP works. We are here to summarize the ideas of others.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

do we need a roll-back?

To avoid continuing the editing back-and-forth, I post here. Here is a comparison of the current article to one from about a day ago before the current round of edits by what I take to be less experienced editors. [2]. I don't think we are going anywhere? But differences we now seem to be stuck with include:

• The article title in the opening line is now italic instead of bold.
• Northern European is now capitalized.
• These words are being insisted upon, although they clearly do not parse logically: "the inhabitants of modern day Germany, including the modern German people and language".
• Repeated removal of the word "historical", and insertion of the word ethnic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:05, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I've undone these changes made without consensus. Carlstak (talk) 11:46, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Proto-Germanic folklore

Several of us recently developed Proto-Germanic folklore, which should have a substantial presence somewhere on this article. But where? :bloodofox: (talk) 22:30, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

What would a substantial presence look like? It seems difficult to summarize, because list-like? Also consider Early Germanic culture, which seems more directly relevant, but seems to need a lot of work. [Just musing. I suppose it depends how we define the main focus of this article. I still think it the logical core topic, which all other disciplines are implicitly claiming to also connect to somehow, is the Roman-era Germanic peoples as such, rather than their predecessors or successors, or the language family now known as Germanic. Sometimes I wonder whether we need to re-name this article.] --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:50, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Considering folklore—myth, legend, ritual, foodways, folktale and so forth—play such a crucial role in every aspect of any group of peoples eveyday life, the topic deserves substantial attention. And it's pretty remarkable how much of this is reconstructable in early Germanic society, all things conisdered. However, what this would look like in the article's present state is a good question.

I do think this article should be split and renamed. Modern era academics—who wield tools alien to the Romans—don't use the exonym Germanic at all as the Romans did, of course, and right now the article is really talking about two different things. I think we'd be doing readers a service by way of splitting the article into something like Ancient Germanic peoples (linguistic and ethnic group) and Germani (Roman exonym). (For that matter, I think figures like Goffart making essentialy fringe claims are still receiving way too much attention in this article.) :bloodofox: (talk) 23:17, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

My apologies for a long answer but I think there are a lot of topics connected...

• FWIW, I've learned this while working on this set of Wikipedia articles for several years, but did not realize it before, and it did not match any previous ideas or preferences I had: while Goffart's style of argumentation is controversial he is certainly not seen as a fringe writer by historians, and many of his positions are now widely accepted. WP policy tells us what to do. In any case, we can look at specific concerns. I don't really know which bits you think are controversial. Honestly it seems his name triggers people, but in most/all cases we could quote multiple historians.
• I think your specific article name proposals raise confusing issues (even for scholars) involved with the way philologists and linguists continue to not only use the name of a real "Roman exonym" for a specific reconstructed language, but also to make implicit/explicit claims that they are in fact writing about those historically attested Roman-era peoples. Scholars clearly don't agree about whether the two concepts should be seen as two ways of studying one topic, or just two related topics with confusing names. Lay readers of those scholars are even more confused, and generally think they are 100% talking about the same topic. So we agree we need to try to unentangle them it seems, but it is going to be interesting to see how we can do that.
• In your proposal you demote the real historically-attested Germanic peoples to be a side topic which does not even have the normal English term in its title. I find that problematic, because even the linguists seem to believe that they are writing about those historically-attested people, and lay readers clearly think they are writing about them. So the historically attested peoples (Ambiorix, Arminius and Marobodus etc) are the "real" Germanic peoples, surely? They are the physical "things" everything is really thinking of. Looking at other similar topics on WP, we often have both an article on the proto language reconstructions, and sometimes a separate one concerning proposals for the "Urheimat". Currently most of that is jammed here, and that is a problem, because it is anchored to language studies. My own thinking about how to possibly re-name and split the content currently in this article has been changing over time but I am starting to think that we need (1) article about the concept "Germanic", which is a big scholarly topic that connects to debates about ethnicity and other types of "identity", plus an article (2) about the historically attested Germanic peoples (and that is their English name). (1) and (2) are both have their main article here for now. (3) I also continue to feel that we need to move the massive discussion about Germanic languages out to several language articles, and (4) potentially an Urheimat/"early culture" article, and replace it with shorter summaries in this article.
• Anyway, sorry for bringing that bigger topic into your call for feedback on this new work you've done. We should perhaps come back to it in another section, unless we find that there is no way to handle your proposals without a complete rearrangement of articles? But can you please explain your proposal though? What would "substantial attention" look like? The new article is itself not a normal running text but a list of linguistic reconstructions, so clearly we can't just insert it, and it is difficult to imagine a summary. Perhaps it would look at bit like the types of commentary Dennis H Green made? I think in the past it was foreseen that such attempts to reconstruct an original pre-Roman and/or Proto-Germanic-speaking culture was what Early Germanic culture was for? Maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. FWIW I am unsure of what that article should really cover, and IMHO much of it probably needs to be scrapped. I had been thinking that something like Dennis Green's work might be a good thing to have there, so it would be an article about attempts to reconstruct a very early shared culture connected to speakers of the earliest and proto Germanic language(s). Maybe others do not agree, but honestly I've not seen any clear vision for what it should be about.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:14, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Alright, I've wondered what has been wrong with this mess of an article for a while now, and I think I see what the issue is now. Andrew, do you have a formal background in Germanic studies? As in, academic? As, in, perhaps, from any of the world's many Germanic studies departments? Given your frankly strange and impenetrably long-winded comments all over this talk page and given very poor state this article is in, I have to suspect that the answer is no and that you, unlike the field that handles this topic, have some kind of particular fixation on the works of Walter Goffart. If you did, you'd be very well aware that Germanic studies departments continue to exist all over the world, despite Goffart's complaints. In fact, term Germanic remains quite widely used throughout academia, including in the historically high volume of papers produced by scholars active in the field of ancient Germanic studies. Repeatedly highlighting Goffart's generally ignored and often polemic opinions—which have to date had next to no influence—in the lead is definitely WP:UNDUE.

Before today, I had no idea Goffart was so extensively highlighted in this article. Before my recent round of edits, I note that Goffart—ultimately a comparatively minor scholar who is best known in this field for his extreme minority opinions, if he's mentioned at all—was cited no less than 15 times in this article and was directly quoted, by name, throughout (even after the several particularly obvious examples I've removed). Meanwhile, well-known and highly influential scholars in the field, like Rudolf Simek, receive not a single mention, the field's historically most influential scholar, Jacob Grimm, gets mentioned only a couple times, and the tremendous amount of comparative discussion from Indo-Europeanists goes almost entirely ignored. Red flags everywhere. Given the numerous individuals who have procuced and continue to produce scholarship on this topic, Goffart's essentially fringe takes deserve maybe a single mention in the article, if that, yet the article reads like the field rotates around Goffart's complaints about, as he calls it, "the g-word". No wonder this article is in such a confused, garbled, and rambling state.

Next, I'm going to have to ask you to keep your responses concise. Flooding this talk page with essay after essay is not helping the state of this disastrous article. At the end of the day, this article needs to be a central point for the numerous ancient Germanic peoples-related topics all over Wikipedia and for me to even have to explain to you why an article like Proto-Germanic folklore is crucial for an article like this is mind-boggling. Any reasonable individual can describe how academics use this term today, particularly philologists (who have produced and continue to produce the vast amount of academic discussion on this topic), and how the Romans used it in the past—this is not difficult. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:52, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@Alcaios:, @Berig:, @Ermenrich:, @Haukurth:, @Yngvadottir: — what is your take on the state of this article? Is all this fixation on controversial historian Walter Goffart—whose opinion has historically been inserted into every nook and cranny of this article and directly quoted wherever and whenever possible—solely coming from @Andrew Lancaster:? :bloodofox: (talk) 00:21, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bloodofox: Just recently noticed this thread and your similar misgivings (which I share as a student of Wolfram)) with the attempt to un-Germanize the Germanic people from their very existence ala Goffart. Your contention to create an Ancient Germanic peoples (linguistic and ethnic group) and a separate Germani (Roman exonym) page is spot on and very much akin to what I suggested some time back. Unfortunately, the extensive dialogue and bickering between a couple of editors on the Talk Page made it near impossible to maintain interest in pursuing that goal and so I made an exodus therefrom. Some of that same dialogue spilled over into the Goths page as well, something you've likely noticed. Nonetheless, I want to commend you for very accurately summing up what has been bothering me for some time about this page. Not sure who has the time or inclination to take the entire article to task, since most of us academics have professional lives that keep us very busy. --Obenritter (talk) 01:14, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Speaking as a mere layman on this subject, who's been trying to follow the various arguments (without much success) on the talk page, made previously by various editors who know more than I about it, may I say again that the habitual excessively long comments made by certain editors over the last year are distracting and confusing to say the least. The discussions here have led nowhere, so may I suggest that someone forgo the endless discussion and start making some bold edits. The article badly needs a jolt of new energy. Carlstak (talk) 01:54, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Since I was pinged, I agree that the article is extremely convoluted and hedging, with far too much attention given to the position that the only justifiable use of the term would be a reconstruction of or even more circumscribed than the usage of Classical authors. And in particular that Goffart's views should be presented as his alone. I bowed out of the discussion at Talk:Goths after repeatedly requesting that Andrew Lancaster provide citations in support of his assertions regarding scholarly consensus, and I believe that is the way forward here, too: it may well be that Andrew Lancaster is not alone in his view that Goffart's position is broadly accepted, it may well be that there is division over the matter among scholars (perhaps regional, perhaps a matter of schools, who knows); let's see evidence. Otherwise I concur with Bloodofox that while there are skeptics in multiple areas of Indo-European and Germanic studies, in my experience they do not dominate the field and the skeptical viewpoints should be summarized in their own section of this article as minority positions. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:48, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster's general strategy is bludgeoning and other editors give up after a while. I have given up trying to reason with him, because I have a private life.--Berig (talk) 04:19, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Wow, I suppose the basic principle of writing about the content and not about editors is out the window? While there was a burst of editing by me in early 2020, I agree with Carlstak that it would be better for people to just edit, and then we can discuss CONTENT. I thought the proposal to discuss future changes to the way the articles were divided was promising. I can see a lot of the focus is upon how to balance the Goffart positions which is fine by me. But one topic we need to come back to is clearly the topic of whether this article is about linguistics, and can ignore what historians write. I think it is clearly a HISTORY article and NOT a linguistics article? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:22, 8 July 2021 (UTC) Secondly, are the speakers of PROTO Germanic, the same as the "Germanic peoples" of history? Despite what you say Bloodofox I did not question the relevance of proto Germanic to this topic. I asked what you were envisioning, after you asked for feedback.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:26, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bloodofox: in answer to more specific points.

• I suppose Simek is relevant to discussions of mythology etc which have not been worked on by me. Based on past discussion I honestly think that this has been seen as a topic for Early Germanic culture. At least two editors have mentioned their intention to work on that article and I understood this was among the topics.
• I do not understand why this particular article would need more than a couple of mentions of Grimm, whose is part of the history of ideas especially concerning languages, but no longer taken as a serious source for the historical Germanic peoples? However, if we find a way to divide this article in the future it sounds like there might be one which focuses more on the concept, and therefore also probably on the history of ideas?
• Please also remember that on WP we are all volunteers and as long as each of our edits is an improvement that is considered good. We don't have to answer to other editors about things which we have NOT worked on, and we don't have to explain our qualifications and private lives.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:50, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
• Maybe I should also respond to another point. I don't think anyone is denying that many people disagree with Goffart and that many of the ideas about the concept Germanic are still present in academia. As WP writers the relevant point is that in any case we may not report a consensus among scholars if there is none. I am personally happy if more editors will help now to get the balance right (and not just complain on the talk page) - unless it goes in an extreme direction. I agree with Obenritter that both the article and talk page have been discouraging, after an awkward period. (We are both participants in that history.) I would however add that it is not that surprising that we've needed to digest the situation and decide on further restructuring ideas etc. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:39, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Goffart

Given the emphasis placed by other editors upon balancing how we handle Goffart I'll try to make quick notes on recent deletions. If nothing else, we at least then have a record of what is removed,[3] and other editors can see if they have any concerns:

• Lead. Attributed remark mentioning Goffart's famous (IMHO) proposal that we stop using the word Germanic, apart from in the linguistic sense, for discussions about real peoples in the "late antiquity" period (roughly between 3rd and 8th century). (Note those qualifications, which Wikipedians frequently seem to ignore.) However this remains: "the tradition of describing late Roman Germanic language speakers as a single collective enemy of Rome has been criticized by some modern scholars, because it implies a single coordinated group." But we are not mentioning the person who is one of the main people associated with that idea.
• Lead. Removal of Goffart from a footnote about the Traditionskern approach associated with Vienna. Again, this is maybe not a major thing but IMHO this is removing something quite often discussed. Walter Pohl, who is arguably the current main representative of that school of thought, has addressed Goffart's criticism of the approach in articles specifically about that criticism at least twice now, and other scholars have written about the disagreement between the Toronto (associated with Goffart) and Vienna schools on this matter. There are several volumes of articles which have it as a major theme.

ADDED:

• Note. The online version of the Reallexikon gives 140 hits for "Goffart", 39 for "Gillett", 52 for Kulikowski.
• Pohl, Walter (2020), "Gotische Identitäten", in Wiemer, Hans-Ulrich (ed.), Theoderich der Große und das gotische Königreich in Italien, pp. 315–340. 19 mentions of Goffart. Also Toronto associated: 10 mentions of Andrew Gillett, 4 of Kulikowski, 1 of Callandar, etc. The book this essay is part of contains many more such citations.
• Pohl, Walter (2002), "Ethnicity, theory, and tradition: a response", On barbarian identity. Critical approaches to ethnicity in the early middle ages, pp. 221–239, doi:10.1484/M.SEM-EB.3.4490 (Also see all the OTHER articles in this volume.)
• Pohl, Walter (2007), "Review of Walter Goffart. Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire.", The American Historical Review, 112 (3): 912–913, doi:10.1086/ahr.112.3.912-a Complains that Goffart is WRONG to say that he and "a host" of other scholars are "committed to the existence of his subject, a coherent ‘Germanic’ people foreshadowing the ‘Deutsche’ of today" or defenders of the Germanic paradigm. This is "the exact opposite of my real position".

Examples of other works focusing upon the debate between Goffart and Pohl, and the whole related debate about the Germanic etc:

• Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Interrogating the ‘Germanic’, edited by Matthias Friedrich and James M. Harland, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2021, https://doi-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9783110701623-003 . Example from Intro: The blistering criticisms of such scholars as Walter Goffart or Alexander Murray highlight the absurdity of believing that scant traces in later literary sources give us windows into a broader, late antique pan-Germanic ethos for which the late antique source material provides decidedly no evidence, yet in studies ranging from philology to archaeology, such assumptions remain, as we have seen, firmly embedded in contemporary scholarship.
• Halsall, Guy (2018), "Transformations of Romanness: The northern Gallic case", in Pohl, Walter; Gantner, Clemens; Grifoni, Cinzia; Pollheimer-Mohaupt, Marianne (eds.), Transformations of Romanness, De Gruyter

• Deletion from Later Roman Germanic peoples section. At least we keep a quote by Edward James saying the same thing. According to a quick google books search, James mentions Goffart 20 times in that book though so why are pretending Goffart is not a major cited source of such ideas? It almost seems fraudulent?
• Deletion from Jordanes section. Removal of a sentence citing Goffart which mentions criticism of the way modern scholars have leaned on Jordanes. This one does concern me, and I think something needs to be put back here. This type of criticism is certainly mainstream and not restricted to Goffart, but Jordanes is a topic Goffart gets cited for, so it seems petty to remove his name. OTOH maybe Kulikowski's oft-cited remark about a "text-hindered fantasy" is better? (I can give two well-known authors who cite it with some approval: Peter Heather and Florin Curta. [4]) I have placed some citations about this topic here. (Still, Kulikowski is thought of as influenced Goffart's "Toronto school" and here we are arguing that a person with his own "school" is not well-known etc which seems a bit fake?)
• Deletion of summary of Goffart's position from "Modern debates". Personally I find this troubling. Presumably this is part of the position being taken by Wikipedians that Goffart is not notable? That really seems quite incorrect to me. His notability might require another post.
• Deletion of what I think was non-controversial information from the Invasions of 401–411 section, apparently only because Goffart was being quoted. ("four distinct groups of barbarians – different from Alaric's Goths – invaded Roman territory, all apparently on one-way journeys" etc) Personally I find this troubling. The information fitted usefully in the narrative. What is the justification for this?
• Deletion of paragraph citing Goffart from the Invasions of 401–411 section. ("warriors could improve their condition by forcing their existence on the attention of the Empire" etc) Personally I find this troubling. Again a non-controversial part of the narrative is being broken but not repaired. We can find other historians like perhaps Kulikowski or Halsall or Heather saying similar things, but normally we should do that first rather than deleting significant parts of a narrative. (I recall reading Pohl claim that Wolfram is one of the originators of such ideas.)

ADDED:

• In Pohl's 2002 "response" to Toronto critics of his and Wolfram's Vienna school he complained that they are criticizing old versions of their position and stated It was precisely Herwig Wolfram [Vienna school] who underlined the Roman foundations of the Gothic kingdoms, contrary to the views held by Hofler, Schlesinger, and Wenskus. Patrick Geary’s [Vienna school] ‘mantra’ that ‘the Germanic world was perhaps the greatest and most enduring creation of Roman political and military genius’ sketches a new paradigm that is contrary to all that Hofler ever believed.

So I hope other editors will examine the above and make adjustments where appropriate. Where I have note already cited something, I'll have a look to see if I can suggest more sources relating to the parts where I feel something needs to be put back in.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:19, 8 July 2021 (UTC) P.S. If desired I can provide a wide range of sources describing the Vienna school as the current leaders concerning the topic Germanic ethnicity. This is also reflected in Germanic studies, not only in works by historians. There are minorities who find they don't go far enough yet (e.g. Goffart), or that they go too far now (e.g. Liebeschuetz).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:29, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Nope, and I asked you above to stop with the essays and to keep it concise. We're not inserting Goffart into every nook and cranny of this article. Seriously, knock it off—get a blog or something where you can produce these lengthy essays lawyering for why this discussion should rotate around Goffart. It's truly bizarre to see. :bloodofox: (talk) 12:58, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Please don't give orders, because that is also not going to go anywhere. It was suggested above by another Wikipedian that I should explain the sourcing available. You also made a large number of pointy-seeming deletions very quickly, and these SHOULD be examined. I am happy to be discussing this, but obviously you have no right to write long personal attack posts (which frankly show ignorance of the field), and then declare that no one is allowed to respond or explain the sources. Can we try to work together please? I am honestly happy to have someone looking at this. Much of what you are saying is quite right, but not all of it. The sources provided above prove this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:19, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Also BTW, the above summary is not a revert request. There are different ways to respond to the concerns I've explained, and in any case you should feel some responsibility to tidy up after a big deletion. Please don't insult what I write unless you actually read it. That is exactly how discussions like this get worse.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:27, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Structure ideas again

Bloodofox, Obenritter can you explain what the boundaries and differences would be between the two articles you propose: Ancient Germanic peoples (linguistic and ethnic group) and Germani (Roman exonym). The titles seem to imply that WP would be insisting absolutely upon a linguistic definition of Germanic peoples, and completely ignoring historians writing about real historical peoples? Am I wrong? What about: Germanic peoples (Roman era) for the historical subject, and Proto-Germanic Urheimat for the linguistic topic? I also honestly think we need an article for The concept of Germanic, for its evolution and debates including discussions about ethnicity etc. Of course these would be interlinked articles. BTW, speaking of good interlinking, regarding the new folklore article, apart from Early Germanic culture I also notice we have older articles such as Common Germanic deities and Germanic folklore.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:59, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

If you can't be concise, you're not going to be taken seriously here. The article badly needs to be improved and your obstructionist essays and pet fondness for Goffart's theories have wasted enough time. It's time to move forward. :bloodofox: (talk) 13:01, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I am trying to take your proposal seriously, and the post is short and does not mention Goffart (who seems to be your obsession, not mine). Please answer in good faith, and do not distort what I write. I do agree with you on the need to break old circles, but that means not making them worse.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:14, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Straw poll: Split article into two: (a) Ancient Germanic peoples (linguistic and ethnic group) and (b) Germani (Roman exonym)

Judging by the comments on this talk page, there seems to be broad consensus here that this article has serious problems, highlighted in particular by the several editors here who have a formal background in Germanic studies. To resolve these problems, I propose that we split this article into two:

• Ancient Germanic peoples (linguistic and ethnic group), which covers the subject by way of academic handling of this topic in the modern era, with an emphasis on modern tools, like once-revolutionary tools from philology such as the comparative method, and the development of the modern science of archaeology, including discussion from scholars active in Indo-European studies. I recommend we have dedicated sections on each.
• Germani (Roman exonym), handling the matter of how this term was used by the Romans, which differs considerably from how the term is used by scholars active in Germanic studies today.

So we can get an idea of consensus here, please respond with yes or no followed by your reasoning, if you'd like to include it.

The exact titles of these two articles can of course be calibrated as necessary but you get the idea. This I believe would solve most of the issues this article curently faces and allow for logical expansion as necessary. We've also had an issue on the talk page where some users seem tempted to produce expansive essays, so please keep your responses concise.

Pinging: @Alcaios:, @Berig:, @Carlstak:, @Ermenrich:, @Haukurth:, @Obenritter:, @Yngvadottir:. :bloodofox: (talk) 13:29, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Srnec:, @Austronesier:--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:31, 8 July 2021 (UTC) @Dimadick:, @E-960:, @Calthinus:, @Florian Blaschke:, @Joshua Jonathan:--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:01, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Krakkos:, @Thomas.W:, @Dynasteria: :bloodofox: (talk) 14:34, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

• Opposed to this exact split, but open to splitting. The current article is already about the Ancient Germanic peoples, and there is not much point separating out discussion of the Roman definition because it needs to be discussed in any discussion of modern debates. After a year of discussions and thought on this, and a lot of reading, I believe a more logical split is: (1) An article about the concept "Germanic" (ethnicity, identity etc) as debated in academia (e.g. Vienna school); and (2) A history-oriented article about the historical Roman-era peoples known in historiography as the Germanic (both then and now). (3) I see linguistic topics as separate to BOTH of these but of course related, so there are more articles needed for those. [I also wish to express my opposition to the unpleasant "qualified people" theme. For better or worse that's not how we work on WP, so stop it. Pulling rank when you are an anonymous person on the internet is not very practical. The best approach is to demonstrate that you've read the sources, and that you are trying to understand what other editors are saying.]--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:53, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Of course, anyone who has followed this talk page will find Lancaster's response and his constant and intense fixation on the theories of Walter Goffart as no surprise. In reality, scholars in Germanic studies don't sit around all day and discuss Goffart's polemics about what he calls "the g-word" any more than they sit around and discuss the theories of Theo Vennemann. Lancaster's repeated attempt to downplay historical linguistics, philology, Indo-European studies, and folklore studies in favor of injecting Goffart into every nook and cranny of this article points to ideological editing far outside of the reality of the field—it's time to move on. :bloodofox: (talk) 14:13, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

If you want to keep things concise, then do not write about other editors and other topics? (Goffart not relevant to this section at all.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:19, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

By the way, I think this topic is a history topic, not historical linguistics, philology, Indo-European studies, and folklore studies. There HAVE been Rfc's on that. Maybe that is something other editors should also comment upon. Is this not a history article?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:23, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

This is unquestionably a Germanic studies topic, which includes all these fields. Enough with the lawyering. :bloodofox: (talk) 14:28, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Looking at the way you've been writing over the last day or so, apparently you see yourself as someone executing a planned slander attack on me? Please back off and calm down. Life is too short for this BS. Can you please just direct me to the article about the history topic? That's where I thought I was. Apparently you plan to turn this into a sort of Wiktionary article, and that does not sound fun.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:55, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

• SUPPORT. The present state is in violation of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section, as I have tried to point out before. The introduction must present a modern and most widely used definition of Germanic, and not the views of a Roman who lived more than 2000 years ago. Moreover, the present state of this article gives too much room to the ideas, agenda and ideology of a single scholar, which is in violation of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and WP:DUE.--Berig (talk) 14:52, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

For better or worse the author who influenced my rewrite more than a year ago the most was Walter Pohl, and Walter Goffart and Wolf Liebeschuetz were treated as opponents from two sides in order to show controversies. Is Walter Pohl not a good representative of the mainstream on these topics in your honest opinion?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:29, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

• Opposed. The terms "Ancient Germans", "Ancient Germanic peoples" and "Germani" are inextricable. There are several reasons why the modern and the ancient definitions do not overlap perfectly, which should be discussed in this article. That includes errors from ill-informed ancient writers who only had 2nd or 3rd-hand accounts of the peoples and regions they were writing about (e.g. Tacitus never went to Germania), exonyms born out of political and military ambitions (e.g. Caesar), biased accounts of "barbaric" peoples by Romans and Greeks (e.g. Caesar again), complex clusters of tribes with influences from both the Celtic and Germanic spheres (e.g. Gallia Belgica), and so on. The "correct" definition of what an Ancient "German" is should be reached by carefully balancing philological, archeological, genetic and linguistic evidence, with the help of analytical and critical (rather than hyper-critical) methods. Alcaios (talk) 15:19, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I am not against having a discussion about that, but does it have to be in the intro?--Berig (talk) 15:26, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, the intro should not go further than summarizing how contemporary encyclopaedias and textbooks (Oxford Classical Dictionary, New Pauly, Reallexikon, etc.) define Ancient Germanic peoples. Alcaios (talk) 15:42, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Then we are in agreement.--Berig (talk) 15:43, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Seems an extreme and arbitrary demand. MS:LEDE says that "The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies." WP:TERTIARY sources, especially ones with short entries by "big names" (who are normally people involved in the controversies) are not suitable for that when depended upon in isolation. The idea that we must ignore good sources when writing a lead seems to make no sense to me, and not to match the policies of WP, to be honest.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:41, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

• SUPPORT. For the reasons mentioned by Berig and the reductionist view of Germanic peoples used throughout the current version. This article spends far more effort telling the reader about the Germani exonym and informing them what the Germanic people were not than explaining the general concept of Germanic peoples from an encyclopedic perspective. Look at Germanic peoples/tribes in other encyclopedias as an example to follow, and you'll note that this article (much like the Goths page) reads like a scholarly journal article, which unjustifiably spends far too much effort representing a particular school of thought and de-ligetimizing the term Germanic altogether. While Alcaios's points are well made here, they still indicate the need for a Germani exonym page in my estimation than they do to a general article about Germanic peoples.--Obenritter (talk) 15:53, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not against a short article about the term Germani per se; however, based on the discussions held on this talk page over the last years, I'm quite sure that we're going to quickly face WP:POVFORK. Perhaps a dedicated article about the definitional debate (like Who is a Jew?) would be better suited. Alcaios (talk) 16:10, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes "Germani exonym" would be a doomed to be become a POVFORK. The explanations give already show this. The rationale seems to be that the Roman definition is a distinct topic that is only of interest as a "history of ideas topic" (whereas Grimm is not, tellingly). That is clearly a very controversial position coming not from good 21st sources, but from WP editors with an opinion that they know is controversial, as betrayed by their attacking posts. The idea that linguists can still correct the classical writers about ethnicity (as they did in the 19th and early 20th century) is maybe popular with Wikipedian enthusiasts, but to say the least it is not a scholarly consensus. The mainstream ideas about Germanic ethnicity now revolve around people like Walter Pohl. I gave some useful sources above in the Goffart sub-section.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:03, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose I do not relish involving myself in these debates yet again. However, I must oppose this split for the simple reason that if you search for "Germanen" at Germanische Altertumskunde Online, you'll find this sentence: Der im 19. Jh. entwickelte moderne Germ.-Begriff beruht also auf dem ant. (caesarischen), der seinerseits Ausweitung eines als Selbstbenennung gebrauchten Einzelnamens zu einem ethnographischen Ordnungsbegriff durch Subsumtion vor allem sueb. Gruppen und Stämme (aus nicht völlig klaren Motiven und auf nicht ganz durchsichtigen Wegen) darstellt. In English, roughly, this means that the modern term derives from the ancient term, with all its problems. For this reason, I do not think splitting the articles would be beneficial.

Some further thoughts:

1. while the current article perhaps goes overboard, it is not true that Goffart represents a fringe position. While he may be somewhat extreme, many scholars now question the usefulness or appropriateness of the label "Germanic" in at least some instances, as you can see by getting an account at the Wikimedia library, going to the Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, and searching Germanen. The one area where everyone agrees it is appropriate is linguistics. In other areas, there is considerable disagreement.
2. at the same time many scholars, including those who find the term problematic in various ways, continue to use the term Germanic, and find it useful for various things.

Whether the article is split or not, we need to cover this disagreement in some way (including to some extent, in summary style, in the lead). The Reallexikon's article "Germanen, Germania, Germanisch" discusses this at some length, for instance - others have suggested we follow what other encyclopedia's we do, and the Reallexikon does this and cites Goffart in some instances (though he's not mentioned by name), although it defends the continued use of the term. The article "Nachbarvölker der Germanen" even begins Der Name „Germanen“ steht eher für eine Sprachgemeinschaft und ist weniger ethnisch oder kulturell zu verstehen. (The name "Germani" stands rather for a language community and is less to be understood ethnically or culturally).--Ermenrich (talk) 16:42, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: If you are concerned that there is an automatic conflation of terms between Germani and the various Germanic people, this can be dealt with in a new article but in abbreviated form (unlike presently), but I cannot help but see the ancient references, at least from a linguistic perspective, as being nothing more than a hereditary tool for describing people from North of the Rhine etc. We do not have to separate them entirely from one another, when the archaeological evidence suggests their material cultures were shared. That's why the Reallexicon defends the use of the term, as you know. (I know this brings to mind Tacitus's Most Dangerous Book and all, but we have to use some term for these people in a general sense.) Whatever fear bifurcation might generate, while understandable, can be dealt with in the text. The problem is that undue weight has been given to the Toronto school, to the degree that the page is now burdened down in academic disputation, making it nearly unusable for a general reader. Parsing it would make it easier for the target audience. --Obenritter (talk) 18:03, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Ermenrich. We have to try to find a good rationale and consensus, and try to understand each other and not caricuture either editors or sources. If an idea is forced through aggressively, then these discussions just go on forever and we'll end up with POV forking and 19th century ideas. Obenritter, many of the ideas being portrayed here in WP as "fringe" are consistent with current Vienna school thinking, which is constantly being described as the leading school of thought concerning Germanic ethnicity. See the sources I've mentioned in the Goffart sub-section above. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:26, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Gee, I wonder who is "constantly" doing this "describing". Could it be you? Otherwise the vast majority of scholars working in the field of Germanic studies, ancient or otherwise, generally use the term without reservation. No attempt to invoke Goffart over and over and over alters this reality. A simple search on JSTOR, for example, offers a glimpse of how things work in the real world. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:44, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Am I allowed to cite sources now? LOL.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:06, 8 July 2021 (UTC) See the Goffart section above for several citations. The Vienna school, whose current leading light is Walter Pohl, are described this way by Peter Heather, Walter Goffart, Michael Kulikowski, Liebeschuetz, and various 21st century articles and books about Germanic ethnicity - both by their critics and by those who agree with them. Incredible that I need to explain this to someone claiming (anonymously on the internet) to be an extremely knowledge expert on this topic. Where are you hoping to go with this approach?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:20, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose splitting or renaming. I agree with Alcaios and Ermenrich: the various uses of the term "Germanic" need to be placed in context in a single article. The changes in how it has been used should be explained to the reader, but with emphasis on the modern use of the term, which is primarily tied to the linguistic. Not only is it ridiculous to base our encyclopedic use of the term "Germanic" primarily on "the real names from written history", by which Andrew Lancaster means (a reconstruction of) what Classical authors (should have) used (note the immediate hedging that Tacitus never set foot in Germania; nor did Caesar except to command a military force), the evidence of Caesar and Tacitus are part of the story, and so is what we now know of and the Romans didn't, such as the Scandinavians and the differences between Germanic and Celtic languages. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:25, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir: I once thought it might be like you say, but after looking around a lot, I honestly don't believe we can say there is a scholarly consensus that the primary modern use of the term "Germanic peoples" is linguistic. I know that some linguists think this way, but when many people, including many historians, talk about Germanic peoples they are talking about those "real peoples". You are right that scholars are now very careful about trusting Caesar and Tacitus on ethnic and linguistic information, but I do NOT think, as you seem to imply, that scholars doubt the existence of the Marcomanni, the Tungri, the Usipetes, and so on, or whether they were called Germanic (even if that was primarily a geographical or even geopolitical term). Some types of information are more speculative than others. In practice, linguists also anchor themselves to those solid facts too, because there is no reason to call a language family "Germanic" unless you think there were people who were called Germanic by someone. This is where the linguistic use of the term becomes, in effect, a claim to know what really happened. It is very confusing. People don't separate the two definitions in their mind. The two competing definitions of Germanic can sometimes be easily distinguished by using language such as "Germanic-speaking" or "inhabitants of Germania" instead of just "Germanic". Does that make sense to you? One of the challenges in practice then is that I believe people expect a historical section in this article, that deals with the Marcomanni, etc. But which definition is being used there? We don't know the languages of many of these peoples, like say the Batavians, whereas for other peoples like the Goths we have no reason to call them Germanic without linguistics. In some ways, I regret that we have to have the narrative history section. It is all handled in other articles. I hope that by explaining why problems I found and tried to resolve, others will find a better way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:11, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't believe I am implying that "the primary modern use of the term 'Germanic peoples' is linguistic". Rather, that historical linguistics has given us a much broader sense of who the Germanic peoples were and have been than Romans had. I disagree that "there is no reason to call a language family 'Germanic' unless you think there were people who were called Germanic by someone". There is no such primacy of the descriptions published by others. We know more now. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:20, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I certainly agree with the first two sentences. Possibly we aren't quite getting each other's point after that, but I guess you will agree that to begin with the word "Germanic" was chosen by linguists because they thought they were talking about those real named people from narrative history (Ariovistus, Ambiorix, etc). The word is not a randomly-chosen scientifically-neutral term, but more like a subtle exclamation of "eureka". Perhaps we agree that many scholars now say that this was incautious and methodologically problematic, and the claim of certainty implied in the use of that historically important term (Germanic) has led to confusion? So you see some scholars now saying that Germanic has two meanings, which we should separate, while others point out that actually no, the claim is still implied in the way many scholars write, so we can't just separate the two topics. To define one, requires explaining the other at the same time. (I won't post sources here. But if you want more details let me know.) The confusion is avoided by individual scholars when writing carefully, but they all use different solutions (explanatory pre-ambles and footnotes, use of Latin "Germani" in certain contexts, use of "Germanic-speaking" etc), and set the boundaries differently (for example whether to call Goths, or medieval politics, Germanic). We've experienced that it is a challenge for us as a tertiary source working "as a committee" to imitate what the scholars do.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:22, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose splitting or renaming. Neither will solve the actual issue (over-reliance on the views of a singular scholar; undue elaborations in the lede about the scope: every term borrowed from ancient sources has a certain degree of fuzziness—primary historical information is finite). The Germani of historical sources are an essential building block for the scholarly concept of Germanic peoples (in the sense of Germanen, Germains etc.), so this is an essential part of this article and ideally not split out. As for "Ancient...", I consider this an unnecessary addition, since the tenuous concept "Modern Germanic peoples" (who have little in common to the exclusion of other European peoples save their linguistic affiliation) is not reified here in WP (as an outcome of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Germanic peoples (modern) (2nd nomination)). –Austronesier (talk) 10:28, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier:, Maybe it is useful to remark that I find this rationale very reasonable, except that I might misunderstand the "single scholar". I assume it refers to Walter Pohl, who I leaned on to get us to where we are so far. If it is about Goffart then honestly I think you could delete every reference, and you would not really be changing the article much. Some of the references to Goffart, Heather and Liebeschuetz represent the start of an effort to NOT rely too much on one school or scholar. So why did I stop working in that direction? One issue going forward is how we rely less on one scholar or school without making this a very academic article that loses the narrative history part, which I think editors like Obenritter feel have been swamped by academic debate already. (I shortened it, restricted the narrative to Germanic themes, and moved it down.) I guess Obenritter has a point but I think most proposals will push us further in the direction I started, making this article more about a scholarly topic? I think this of whether this article is about narrative history, and if so how much, is one of the questions we don't have a clear vision about yet. The size of the article is relevant to this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:57, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Rename article: Ancient Germanic peoples?

If I may ask a related though apparently more consensual question, would you agree to rename the article to Ancient Germanic peoples until the current debate is settled? Alcaios (talk) 17:59, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I see Alcaios wrote the above. Sorry for not fixing it, but I need to run. I have also been thinking in this direction. However "Ancient" is apparently intended to be fuzzy, and looks like it is going to lead to circular debates about whether linguists know more about this topic than historians. So indeed it does not look like a the long term solution. If this article will be allowed to continue to be the one about history, then maybe "Roman era" would be better?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:48, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew, "Roman-era Germanic peoples" and "Ancient Germanic peoples" mean the same thing. The end of ancient history is traditionally dated to the fall of Rome (476 AD) in the Western world. Alcaios (talk) 18:03, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

True. Maybe my proposal is not the right one, but my concern is that this idea seems to be leading to a linguistic takeover whereby the Proto Germanic LANGUAGE topic takes over the HISTORY topics, involving the peoples who were REALLY known as Germani during the early imperial period. Approximately 50 BCE - 200 CE. Those are still the basis of the Germanic concept, for experts and others. All other fields are only trying to anchor their speculations to the real names from written history. Obviously I am opposed to the idea that this becomes a 19th century style article where linguistics magically explains why the Romans were wrong and the historians are wrong. in reality, linguistics, like archaeology, is slowly learning to be more careful about claiming to know who the people are that the are digging up. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:11, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

"Linguistic take over", lol. And I thought I had seen everything on Wikipedia. The barely contained resentment toward experts in the field appears to be boiling over. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:48, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

No Bloodofox in the context of this topic the concern I mentioned has specific historical precedent. I have no problem with linguistics, but scholars now realize that it was wrong to be seen as the discipline which could over-rule historical evidence of historical peoples. That led to well-known problems. But as a great scholar surely you know that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:05, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Alcaios, that sounds like a good idea. I was actually about to suggest the same thing.--Berig (talk) 17:52, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Alcaios -- I can get aboard that name change for sure, at least for the time being. Let's see what others think. --Obenritter (talk) 18:05, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

One should note that this renaming would de facto exclude the Viking Age Norsemen as a medieval Germanic people. The Proto-Norse language and Scandinavian archeology would continue be discussed in this framework though. Alcaios (talk) 18:14, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Alcaios, the way I see it, the "Germanic period" in Scandinavian history ended with the Christianization of the Continental Germanics by the 8th c. and the huge linguistic changes that resulted in Old Norse. I believe the Norse art and other expressions of Scandinavian identity were a result of this linguistic and religious separation. So, I have no problem with that.--Berig (talk) 19:08, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

If the article is going to guided by linguistics then none of these titles are appropriate. Such an article would need to be entitled in such a way to make it clear it is about reconstructed languages. But obviously the current article is not structured in this way, because it is primarily anchored to an historical topic, involving a whole range of different peoples who were named in historical records that were not written in their own languages. I also believe WP deserves an article about that historical topic, using historians as sources. That's one I want to work one. (Of course linguistics, like archaeology makes many useful proposals about historical peoples, and historical information helps guide linguistics and archaeology.) I'd also be happy to work on an article about the scholarly debates about the Germanic concept and the idea of Germanic ethnicity (which would be a "history of ideas" article).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:38, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Lol, this guy ranting about linguists and going to lengths to try to insert Goffart into every nook and cranny of this article while excluding philologists, the latter producing the vast majority of scholarship in this field. What a bizarre thing to see. In the real world, anthropologists, archaeologists, linguists, folklorists, and other interdisciplinary scholars operate side-by-side in Germanic studies. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:41, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Bloodofox, I call bullshit. Stop making things up about me. This is disruptive. And why do you never mention historians?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

• Support rename to Ancient Germanic peoples. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:42, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
• Concern. From responses so far it is clear that support for the idea is mostly connected to an assumption that this proposal will involve aggressively converting this article from being a history article into a linguists article, which will not only avoid historians as sources, but even scholars who currently define the mainstream regarding the concept of Germanic ethnicity, such as Walter Pohl. That gives me the impression that this name change is going to go in a way I can't agree with, and which many editors will find completely unacceptable. I think any reasonable solution HAS TO take these basic things into account: (1) linguistics articles are fine but they should have titles and text which reflect the fact that they are about linguistics (2) there is an important history topic in this article that deserves to remain in WP as a history topic, and there is a history of ideas topic covered here which also deserves to remain in WP; neither of these are primarily linguistics topics. If the real aim of editors here is to change this article to a linguistics article then you should be asking if other editors agree with THAT aim. I for one do not. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:22, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew, nobody here wants to "avoid historians as sources". Archaeology, history, linguistics, genetics, and philology work together. Alcaios (talk) 20:41, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

That has been the more-or-less agreed approach, and there has been a good logic to it. But I don't think everyone agrees with you in practice, and I'm sure you can read the posts above just as well as I can. I accept the article is a compromise that makes no one happy, and that's why we keep hovering around these ideas of splitting the article. It seems to remain intrinsically difficult to blend the ideas of the different fields on this article, unless we get clear principles like the above more clearly confirmed. So: Is this primarily a history topic or not a history topic at all? Are the Vienna school seen as defining the mainstream concerning Germanic ethnicity in recent decades or are they no-ones? It is especially difficult to see how this can go anywhere good when attempts to discuss real sources are being attacked by editors who simply keep pointing to each other's own unverifiable and undefined scholarly knowledge as their source of authority. I am sure you have good intentions, but how does this really work? The answer is that it can't. We need a better show of good will and collegiality. If there are better sources than Pohl and the like, for example, who? And what do they say? We can't use Wikipedia editors as sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:32, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. See above. This article should set in context the articles we have on individual ancient Germanic peoples, but should not be just about the "ancient world". Historical linguistics, archaeology, the study of literary and religious motifs, and the evaluation of ethnological and historical reports all contribute to the study of the past of the Germanic peoples, and there are also varying schools of thought among scholars; thank you, Andrew Davidson Lancaster, for substantiating one of my good faith suppositions, that it's such a division that molded your rewriting of the article. But the ethnographic and linguistic studies among modern peoples since the 19th century are also a context for this article; origins are not the entire story, and some of the German- and English-language criticisms of Germanic and especially Indo-European studies grow out of engagement with the Nazi-era conceptualization of "Germanic" and redefinition of "Nordic"; the reader needs that background explaining, too. It's not all "This term is no longer being used as Caesar used it!!1" or even "Tacitus probably invented all this because he was a polemicist". The ancient peoples did not all die out, they continued to act, to think, and to leave their own physical and written records, and even the positions regarding Tacitus, and regarding Caesar's statements about Celtic and Germanic religion, and how far Celtic and Germanic were distinct back then, have a context in things we have since discovered (archaeological, comparative linguistic) and become aware of (literary, historical from other sources than Classical historians), as well as in the history of the scholarly theories. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:25, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir: I presume I am the Andrew you mention? Anyway I think your reasoning makes a lot of sense. I absolutely agree that ethnographic and linguistic (and indeed many other types) of evidence are relevant to this article. Despite being quite large, the article is incomplete in some ways. One of the frustrating things going on here is that I am being portrayed as opposed to any type of information I did not place in the reorganized article. I had two main aims: shortening the article so that it mainly handled topics not better handled in separate articles, and giving it a new section at the top which explained why there are different visions of Germanic . The old version was expanding incredibly quickly in late 2019 and early 2020, and the expansions were literally like separate articles, because people were writing in parallel based on different understandings of the topic's basic definition. This is why the top of the article now explains why there are several understandings. But to use clear language it is obvious that this makes some editors literally angry. They hate it. They can't have a friendly discussion about it, because they are absolutely sure their own vision is the correct one. My idea of trying to unify this article by making the controversy about the concept a central organizing principle just doesn't seem to have worked. That's why my splitting idea is quite different to the one proposed above: I was thinking we have to find a way to remove the main discussion of the uncertainties and controversies about the basic concept to a distinct article. But if we do that, then how do we avoid returning to the old problem of having different parts of the article describing a totally different definition of Germanic to other parts, with no explanation about why? I honestly don't have a good answer. But I suspect it will involve splitting into more than two articles. Your comments are helpful. Any more ideas based on what I've just explained?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:52, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: Sorry about misnaming you, I am terrible at names and have now edited my comment above. I'm afraid I think that focusing the article on the conflict between two definitions was a bad idea; it's confusing and loses the big picture. I haven't looked at the history, but if that was your intentional organizing principle, then it may be easiest to rewrite it from either where you started, or from prior to the expansion that you found to be confusing. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:20, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir: "organizing principle" might be the wrong term, but it did (and does) seem to be something we can't avoid handling up front and reminding the readers of where necessary. Or: I think there is a scholarly topic and a narrative topic here, but it is hard to untwine them, partly because different schools of thought connect them so differently. But for better or worse, switching to 19th-century assumptions, where language evolution is more or less totally equated to peoples/ethnicities, just won't work IMHO. I really tried to see how that would work. Too much of the recent literature is totally opposed to the fundamental assumptions of that old approach. Even though yes, language studies give insight, and it is still the basic background assumption of some academics working in specific areas, it is the scholars who are most cited as experts on the concept of Germanic ethnicity who have especially rejected it as a guiding principle. And as a WP writer trying to construct a narrative, there is actually almost no overlap. Our large language section in this article can't be connected to Arminius or Marobod. It is clearly a completely different topic to the rest of the article. That makes sense because just as the historical Germanic peoples disappear from the written record, new configurations and names of peoples appear (new ethnicities, as many scholars now describe it) and we start to get the first detailed linguistic evidence which gives more than a few insights. None of that linguistic evidence can however tell us much about Arminius or Marobod or their followers. We can only make guesses about their languages. The big theme among the scholars of this is "ethnogenesis". In other words they emphasize how these things are not simply continuous, and cultures can't therefore be assumed to evolve in family trees anymore. (Indeed, even though the assumption that languages work this way is increasingly questioned, and even in biology the assumption that speciation works in family trees is now questioned, though this model still seems to be the implicit assumption for many.) Peoples are constantly re-mixed, re-booted, and ethnicities, and more generally the ways people identify with groups, can change in all kinds of non-linear ways. This includes deliberate manipulation. One famous debating point which the Vienna school agrees with is for example that the big "new" ethnicities on the Roman frontier (Goths, Franks etc) can be understood as Roman creations. (I just give it as an example.) No one is saying that Germanic languages don't have some connection with each other somehow back at the proto-language stage, but the assumption that studying the languages equals defining ethnicities is problematic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:04, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

From unapproachable low-rent Walter Goffart Festschrift essay to ?

Everyone seems to agree that the current state of the article is horrendous yet I'm seeing no agreement on what should be done about it. We need some more suggestions.

A few things to consider: First of all, this article is huge—too huge—and it is certainly unapproachable for new readers. Second, Germanic studies is quite an interdisciplinary field, with the vast bulk of material relevant to the topic produced by philologists (which has always been the case), and while this should certainly be reflected in the article, we need some kind of history of research section that addresses archeaology and comparative studies more broadly. Third, rather than scholastic reception injected throughout the article that makes it read like soemeone's personal essay half the time, I think we need to make sure we're taking an objective approach that reflects how the topic is treated throughout Germanic studies today.

Whatever the case, let's try to figure out what to do with all this in the space below. I'd like to see some proposals. If we can't come to agreement, then someone needs to just go ahead and start getting very WP:BOLD, if only for readers. We can't keep seeing the same defense of the status quo here. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:37, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

No that is another misunderstanding or distortion. No one is defending the status quo. What is happening, as in the past, is that people are understandably worried about the proposals of others. I shortened the article, and eventually stopped going any further because I could see we needed more time to process. People are not convincing each other, and perhaps more to the point none of us have a really detailed vision to propose. Anyway,

• I personally agree the article is too big. That seems to imply the article needs splitting, but I accept the difficulties many people see in that.
• I also think it has always been the idea that there should be more about archaeology but no-one seems interested to do it, and with the article already being big... So this is not an area of actual disagreement either. Just work to do.
• The "second" and "third" points you make are unclear to me.
• Concerning bold editing, to some extent I agree but I hope we all edit in a way which is thoughtful of the range of positions both on this talk page and also among scholars.
• Perhaps it is also worth mentioning an old idea I keep repeating which is that I believe it might help this article if people worked first on satellite articles, instead of working here in this over-sized article first. For example: languages, and archaeology, and anything which could obviously be better handled in a distinct main article. And what is going to happen to that Early Germanic culture article?
• From the discussion above, I noticed this question for other editors: what do we think about the historical narrative sections? Is it an essential element of this article? My understanding is that some editors feel that it is.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:55, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I suspect this editor's constant fondness for lawyering and apparent inability to make a concise point is why this article is such a mess in the first place. Looking forward to suggestions from other editors. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:07, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

This talk page is not the place for posting suspicions about other editors. Please work on this talk page according to WP's policies and guidelines.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:40, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Anyway, if you want to bring us beyond our past failings you should note that the third point is unclear, and concerning the second point, it continues a vague theme since your first posts, implying that there is a body of work out there where Walter Pohl and the Vienna school are nobodies. How can this be serious unless you name at least ONE authority on Germanic ethnicity from this field you want to rebuild the article around? We can't use Wikipedia editors as sources. So far you mentioned Jakob Grimm, and the philological tradition that has "always" dominated. Anyone more recent? (Based on your remarks so far, your sources are mainly relatively old ones, and/or perhaps you rely on asides in works which are not primarily about the question of Germanic ethnicity.) I think people commenting on your ideas should be given an honest explanation of what you really mean.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:01, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

• Simple: back to structure of the "Obenritter"-version. Wolfram and Pohl represent the mainstream, or better: the necessary "healthy" middle ground of scholarship about the Germanic peoples. This includes the Traditionskern, and therefore also a critical review of things subsumed under "Germanic culture" etc. Very important information has been lost since early 2020, which is a shame. –Austronesier (talk) 10:40, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier:, Can you point to a date when you think the article had this structure? (Or perhaps point to the good bits within a version.) By the time I intervened, the article (and lead) had rapidly doubled and had lost its coherence. Anyway, even if it is not easy to find such a reference point I think I see what you mean. To me it makes sense to build more around the so-called Vienna direction. They are criticized from several directions, but they are a reference point for other authors, and they have engaged with their critics. That is where I think I was headed when I stopped. OTOH Bloodofox claimed above that I am the only person who thinks they are a reference point, so I'm not sure what other people think of this.[5] (Maybe it was a misunderstanding?) It also still raises Obenritter's other concern about whether this article should be so much about scholarly debates. My memory of events is that Obenritter was mainly expanding the narrative history sections, and was annoyed at my shortening of them. (Personally I think one way or another we are going to an article primarily about those scholarly debates concerning "Germanic". Then we can link other articles to that?) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:13, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

This is my rough pick for a reference point (before things became "crufty"). NB, structurally. There are many redundancies with other articles in that version, but as far as I can see, much information is completely gone without being merged into specialized pages. And splitting out content means that the subtopic should at least leave a significant trace (summary section + hatnote) in the main article. For many subtopics, I don't see this. This is clearly a result of the "Torontoan" approach. A corollary of this is that many subpages (being deattached from the main page) become more Heather-ish in turn. –Austronesier (talk) 14:06, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

While I do think we need to discuss the definitional problem, and in enough detail that our readers understand that the idea that many things are "Germanic"/can be derived from an earlier pan-Germanic culture (the ordeal, "Germanic" kingship, etc.) has come into question in the latter half of the twentieth century (which seems to be missing in the old version), I think Austronesier's suggestion is a good one to start off.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:12, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Putting my comment here for convenience. I concur that rolling back the article and rebuilding it with the challenges of the late 20th century as a subtopic in its own section is the way to go. There it can be related to the argument that Indo-European studies is tainted by German nationalism. And the varying usage of "Teuton" in English, where it long served as a noun for the adjective "Germanic" but has been deprecated, should also be explained and related to these criticisms.

I mentioned above that Andrew Lancaster was saying (my paraphrase) that Germanic peoples should only be regarded as real if they had been described by Roman authors, or as Germanic if classical authors had used that term for them. For me this is a key point of difference, and strikes me as an unwarranted extension of Wikipedia's reliable sources policy back to the time of the Roman Empire. It's presumably the root of his apparent deprecation of usage of "Germanic" by "linguists". It amounts to rolling back everything scholars have learned since, and from my point of view it denies the existence of any group that (preserved) classical writings did not happen to mention. There were many things beyond the ken of Roman and even Greek historians/ethnographers/generals. In particular, it obviously excludes the Scandinavians. A further point related to this is the contrast he draws between language and ethnicity. Ethnicity is a whole scholarly kettle of fish, and rightly so. Of course we should not equate speaking a Germanic language with being of "pure Germanic blood", at any period. The amalgamation of tribes, including in at least one case including a Celtic group, has been established as something that happened (and this is why I personally prefer to continue to use "tribes" for such political/military/cooperative groupings, to distinguish from the primarily ethnic meaning of "peoples", since "nations" has anachronistic implications, not the least of them being size). But while Andrew Lancaster has averred that he is not seeking to deny the reality of peoples/tribes, by representing as problematic identification of groups as Germanic peoples on the basis of information other than statements by Classical writers, and equating such identification with a statement of ethnicity, he is in fact denying their generally accepted Germanic identity, as well as displacing the locus of disagreement among scholars (and is of course excuding the entire realm of medieval and later Germanic culture). I hope this clarifies my position. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:02, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I promised to shut up, but as I am addressed (sort of), a very short answer only: the question in the end is whether there is a modern consensus or not, on each of these issues. Enjoying the discussion, so I'll post on your talk page? BTW I don't think a full rollback is proposed, only the use of that article structure.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:18, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment I concur with Bloodofox that this article has serious issues when it comes to neutrality, reliability and readability. Fixing those issues will require quite a lot of work. I agree with Austronesier, User:Yngvadottir and Srnec that restoring Obenritter's version would put the article on a more solid footing for future improvement. Germanic peoples is the common name for the topic of this article and should in my opinion be kept as the title. I think Bloodofox's proposal to create an article for the name Germani is a good proposal, since that topic is distinct and notable. As usual, discussions at this talk page have become long, repetitive and convoluted. I think the time has come for capable editors to cut through the case and get down to business with making the necessary article changes. Krakkos (talk) 09:52, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in, Krakkos. Perhaps I am wrong to fear that a separate Germani article would become a POV fork, and it would instead be useful as an introduction to the usages of that term by classical Latin authors, but we need this article to provide the big picture, which is not only terminological debate and not only about the earliest periods. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:29, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

• Question and reminder. If we go back to the July 2019 structure what happens to Early Germanic culture? That is one of the articles split out of this one in the months after the preferred version of Austronesier. The other was a Germani article. This was very controversial, and it was merged back in, eventually more-or-less ending a dispute which had gone some years. According to everything discussed then, the main topic of this article is the Germani. (I became heavily involved only after the second split when their needed to be a new merge to bring us back to a holding position that was not totally structured on the rejected proposals. Someone had to do it.) NOTE: The current emphasis on defining the article's scope very clearly, and the lack of emphasis on claims of shared culture, stems from that history. It is difficult for me to judge how big that Early Germanic culture article should really be, because it currently remains rather unfinished work. But likely eventually size is presumably one thing to consider if the idea is to merge it back into here. As a practical proposal, it could maybe be an option to work on it in that article first?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:15, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

A request

After rereading all the conversations on this page, I've come to the conclusion that the well meaning Andrew Lancaster is presently an obstacle to progress on the article, mainly because of his rather obsessive attempts to micromanage every aspect of its composition. I respectfully request that he take a break from this talk page for a few days and let invested editors (you know who you are), a very capable set of scholars, discuss the matter without his voluminous input, and let us see what happens. What say ye? Carlstak (talk) 12:56, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

See here.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:58, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but rather than just limiting the number and length of his comments, which he's never been inclined to do, I think Andrew should take a vacation from this page. I'm not a psychiatrist, but I believe it would be good for him, emotionally and spiritually.;-) Carlstak (talk) 13:06, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks guys, for your concern. LOL. I don't say I would trust you as a psychiatrist but I have no problem with that idea - at all. I have also been avoiding the article itself. It needs more people working on it, and trying to really grapple properly with it instead of just dropping by for a whinge. There were a lot of aggressive comments making assertions about the history of the article, and me personally, which I felt were sufficiently misleading to need attention. It would be helpful to this article, and everyone interested in it, if that fantasizing stopped. I then found the comments of Austronesier and Yngvadottir very interesting, and I really wanted to comment on those before backing off to a more minimal participation. Of course if the topic of discussion continues to a fictional version of me, then that makes it difficult. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:30, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm glad you feel that way, Andrew. I'll send you a bill for services rendered, Venmo is good. I found those editors' comments to be very interesting also; I agree that editors here should not personalize their criticisms and should not discuss personalities. Carlstak (talk) 13:40, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Cheers. People should feel free to ask me stuff, within reason. I like the research. I collected a fair bit of stuff over time, so if anyone is looking for sources on something (e.g. Pohl) I can post information somewhere else if needed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:52, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Late 20th c. Academia, Migrationism and Immobilism (diffusionism)

Like any period academia, late 20th c. scholarship has to be presented within within the ideological framework it belongs to, and in this case, it is the post WWII-era and the Cold War with the immobilist agendas that appeared. Immobilism/diffusionism is basically the idea that before the advent of modern mass media, and without any movement of larger groups of people, large areas of Europe could change languages like people change any kind of cultural expression. It is a belief in the successful and peaceful transmission over large geographical areas of languages that had incredibly complex patterns of conjugations and declinations, new and unfamiliar pronunciations, complex semantic fields, etc. Moreover, this article is about so much more: linguistics, culture, religion, archaeogenetics, etc. I suggest that there is a section where "immobilism vs. migrationism" is presented and discussed, and that late 20th c. scholars are presented within that framework.--Berig (talk) 07:49, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I feel this could give a wrong impression. Who would be a scholar that is an "immobilist" relevant to this topic? Is the term "immobilist" one which scholars really use? If I understand correctly, aren't you just parodying all critics of the "language = material culture = ethnicity" methodology of Gustaf Kossinna, and treating his position as the neutral modern one without "agenda"? To the extent that this article might be about the history of debate then something about this could be relevant, but I think critics of Kossinna and extreme "migrationism" (the method were all change has to be explained by a mass migration) are mainly writing about archaeological cultures, not language, and their position is NOT that no migration happens. I can't think of any scholar who has ever had that position. Instead positions include (1) that small movements of people can make big changes and (2) that Rome could influence the way people moved around and how they identified themselves. Those would both be typical Vienna school positions for example and are very much 21st century mainstream. One of the most massive ways people moved around was because Rome forced them to, or because they were in the recruiting zone for the Roman military, which was a culture unto itself that clearly came to have its own distinct barbarian languages and fashions that were (so the scholars say) very influential on the material cultures of the recruiting zone. In short: this is a bigger more complex topic than the summary above would indicate. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:04, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not familiar enough with the archaeological debates to comment on that, but I wanted to say that I think that the main reason for the questioning of Germanic nowadays is not directly connected to that, but rather to the ascription of various things to a common Germanic culture that has since been questioned. This is mostly the work of historians rather than archaeologists. Compare introduction to a new work on Theodoric the Great:

• pages 24-28 discusses the history of scholarship on Gothic identity (and by extension, Germanic) identity. It discusses how "older scholarship" thought of the Goths as Germanic peoples with a fixed identity, how the Vienna school challenged that after WW2, and how they were in turn attacked by Anglo-Americans in the late 1990s for "having placed the old ideology of Germanic in new clothes" die alte Germanen-Ideologie in neue Kleider gehüllt zu haben. (p. 26). It then introduces Pohl as providing "the current position of the Vienna school":

"The proposition is defended that ethnicity and ethnic identity are necessary terms if one wishes to understand how social groups in the early middle ages were constituted and reproduced. Pohl rejects the accusation that the modal of ethnogenesis is basically only a new version of the theory of Germanic continuity from Caesar into the late time of the Hohenstaufens." Verteidigt wird […] die Auffassung, dass Ethnizität und ethnische Identität unverzichtbare Begriffe sind, wenn man verstehen möchte, wie sich soziale Gruppen im „Frühmittelalter“ konstituierten und reproduzierten. Pohl weist den Vorwurf zurück, dass das Modell der Ethnogenese im Grunde nur eine Neuauflage der Theorie einer germanischen Kontinuität von Caesar bis in die hohe Stauferzeit sei… (p. 26)

What should be clear from these quotations is that there is virtually no support for the old idea of "Germanic continuity" or that there was some idea of "Germanic identity" at the time. There is no mention of archaeology in any of these considerations. A look at Pohl's actually essay would no doubt make this even more clear and go into more detail.

• There is also a section discussion heroic poetry, wherein it is stated:

"The emphatic affirmation of "Germanicness" has not been any less frowned upon in German(ic) [literary] studies than in historiography since the 1970s." Das emphatische Bekenntnis zum Germanentum ist in der Germanistik nicht anders als in Geschichtswissenschaft seit den 1970-er Jahren verpönt. (p. 35)

The essay goes on to discuss the idea that heroic poetry spread because of mutual intelligibility of Germanic languages, but seems not to have had any role in creating an identity.

My point is, I don't think diffusionism vs. migrationism is necessarily all that relevant to the debate.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:39, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

The main difference here may be that we are talking about such long periods of time. What you are saying is very relevant for Medieval Germanic cultures, but this article also covers periods where archaeology and linguistics are the main source of information. When I studied North European archaeology, I had a professor who was a fervent immobilist. Even in a late publication from 2010, he maintains that languages were not spread by speech communities but by people just meeting each other. He was specifically talking about the appearance of the probably Indo-European Corded Ware Culture, and said that linguists have come with some "interesting arguments" against him, but he still did not believe in any c. 3000 B.C. migrations from the Yamna culture into Northern Europe. Since then archaeogenetics have proven that there was indeed a major migration of Yamna people into Northern Europe. Archaeogenetics are bolstering the Migrationist viewpoint, and showing that we are all of mixed origin. I do indeed think that the migrationist vs. diffusionist debate is relevant, at least for the earliest periods.--Berig (talk) 14:36, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree that different time periods (and hence different types of evidence) are part of the problem. But also different disciplines (and hence different types of evidence). Linguists are bound to put language front and centre, just as archaeologists will front material culture and historians written records. There is no doubt that communities of native speakers of Germanic languages have existed ever since Germanic languages existed. But what does that mean for speaking about Germanic peoples? Of course, if you define Germanic peoples as "communities of native speakers of Germanic languages", then you have a very clear answer. But that is precisely what, e.g., Goffart et al. are arguing against doing, at least for so late a period as Late Antiquity. I don't really think the "Torontonians" have anything to say about the Proto-Germanic period. Their argument has to do with the modern application of the category "Germanic" well after Caesar and Tacitus. DeGruyter released a volume this year entitled Interrogating the ‘Germanic’: A Category and its Use in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The editors are, I think, archaeologists. Note the subtitle. So it is not a coincidence that a Wikipedia who worked heavily on Proto-Germanic folklore and another who works on the early medieval Low Countries would come at this topic from completely different angles.

I do think this article is in bad shape. Austronesier's suggestion about rolling back to a version by Obenritter seems like a good start to me. The current version has too much Goffart, but I'm not sure why some Wikipedians have such an aversion to him. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, but Google Scholar thinks his Narrators of Barbarian History is more cited than Peter Brown's The Making of Late Antiquity. Srnec (talk) 19:25, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

That volume is available at DeGruyter online through the Wikimedia library. It's introduction is quite enlightening. It actually points out that the introduction to the Reallexikon already says that the editors did not believe the term Germanic was useful for archaeology or history. It also discusses Walter Goffart by name, saying The blistering criticisms of such scholars as Walter Goffart or Alexander Murray highlight the absurdity of believing that scant traces in later literary sources gives us windows into a broader, late antique pan-Germanic ethos for which the late antique source material provides decidedly no evidence, yet in studies ranging from philology to archaeology, such assumptions remain, as we have seen, firmly embedded in contemporary scholarship (p. 6). Not coincidentally it also goes on to discuss the incredible rancor between the Vienna and Toronto schools - which is reflected here in our current debates on this article. Andrew Lancaster is not wrong, however, when he points out that both the Vienna and Toronto schools are now both committed to dismantling the notion of a pan-Germanic ethos or identity, both seeing Germanic as a linguistic term - as the introduction states on the same page I just quoted.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:46, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

So then this article will be superfluous, and will best serve as a redirect to Germanic languages. I actually think that would be the best solution overall, considering the controversial nature of the topic.--Berig (talk) 21:15, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Well, some scholars continue to want to use the term in various ways (as is also detailed in that article), while others wish to dispense with it entirely. It’s also still commonly encountered. So I think we just need to acknowledge the controversy and problematic history of the term and then we can still have an article here.—-Ermenrich (talk) 21:27, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Then we'll also need a short overview of the Toronto, Vienna and Oxford schools as well. Not everyone is familiar with the influence of modern politics, ideologies and movements such as postmodernism.--Berig (talk) 07:10, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

For the most part, I'll let Ermenrich's posts above speak for me. But another point: I think treating mainstream scholars such as the Walter Pohl, Patrick Geary and Michael Kulikowski as political ideologists, and constantly claiming that DNA evidence is about to show them all wrong, or even hinting that they've already been shown wrong, isn't going to be something most people (or WP policy) can work with. We don't have sources for that, and we can't use Wikipedia editors as sources. Also, just deleting the name Goffart and switching it to "some scholars" clearly won't help us find the way. Moving SOME things to language-related articles might indeed be a good idea though.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:07, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

"Attempt" to define

The opening paragraph sets the tone for the article. Here the second sentence calls into doubt the entire premise of an article titled "Germanic peoples." I invite you to consider the implications of this:

They are also associated with Germanic languages, which originated and dispersed among them, and are one of several criteria used to attempt to define the historical Germanic peoples.

So unlike any other group, the Germanic peoples defy definition. What difference would it make to remove the phrase "attempt to"? Well, for one it would give the article a positive tone and, further, it might require some intellectual rigour and honesty throughout the rest of the article.

Another point is the word "they" which in any other context would likely be regarded as a distancing tactic. It reminds me of Ronald Reagan's use of "they" to refer to African Americans. He was rightly condemned for that. How about as an unbiased purveyor of information we clean up this little ethnic slight? Dynasteria (talk) 20:38, 11 July 2021 (UTC) And given the general discourse displayed on this page over quite a long period of time, I feel compelled to state that if no one objects to removing the phrase "attempt to" (within several days) I will feel free to do it myself without fear of being reverted. If it is reverted, the burden to justify will then be on that person, not me. Thank you. Dynasteria (talk) 21:54, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I object, and the sourcing for the problems defining Germanic has been explained many times. See the posts of Ermenrich above for example. The sourcing against this is only Wikipedians. The debate is described in print by people on all sides of it. No serious scholar denies that there is such a debate.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:07, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Are you or are you not going to take a break from attempting to micromanage every attempt any individual makes to improve this mess of an article? Enough with the constant obstruction and constant bludgeoning with wall after wall of long-winded text. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:23, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster: I accept that your personal opinion is against my suggestion. However you have not given a logical argument why the "debate" should be in the lede. The article is not titled "Debate on the concept of a Germanic people." Whether or not multiple academics are engaged in debate is completely irrelevant to anything here. Your position really becomes a straw man argument the more you present it. Dynasteria (talk) 07:51, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

What did you think of Ermenrich's explanations? Also see my citation of MOS:LEDE above [6]. I'm keeping an open mind about how much of this article should be about the debate you mention, but that seems a different question. You are talking about tweaking wording to remove all implication of debate and uncertainty. Wouldn't it be a deliberate distortion of the academics to imply certainty and consensus? Why is it important to imply certainty and no debate? Maybe I am missing something in your explanations.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:55, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Commenting first on the initially raised question in this section. "They" is the third person plural pronoun (per default—it has acquired an extended range of meaning in the last 20 yrs). It references an aforementioned plural noun, and is preferably used to avoid verbatim repetition of the same phrase in consecutive clauses. Such repetition is generally considered bad style, unless for disambiguation purposes. "Ethnic slight"? I don't see it. Ambiguity? I don't think readers will likely interpret it as referencing to "Graeco-Roman authors".

"...several criteria used to attempt to define..." is awfully clumsy. And yes, it might even bear the connotation of the "attempt" being unsuccessful. What about "...several approaches to define..."?

The debate is important, and should be covered in the article. It also has its place in the lede, which summarizes the article. But the lede-mention should stay in proportion with other aspects of the page topic "Germanic peoples", a terminological concept which—in spite of a significant minority(?) opinion—has not become obsolete.

Finally, it is odd to read the accusation of "bludgeoning" right below a post of 417 bytes. Per WP policies, ad hominem attacks are a no-go; text-walling is bad, but not per se a breach of policies if the editor has a genuine message to convey. –Austronesier (talk) 09:07, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Once again Andrew Lancaster, this article is not about academicians or their debates. It is about a people who once existed and whose descendants regard them as ancestors. I simply don't want to get into the weeds of the debate. I am capable of it; I refuse to do so. The "debate" dominates the article injudiciously, as numerous contributors have pointed out. It should be a secondary consideration in the lede and elsewhere. Dynasteria (talk) 12:35, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Austronesier: I can go along with your suggestion. Dynasteria (talk) 12:38, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Austronesier, after investigating it a bit, my own conclusion is that at this point it is a majority of scholars who questions the (usefulness of the) concept of Germanic peoples, at least for Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The best way to solve this problem, however, would be to assemble recent statements on the academic consensus/the positions of the Vienna and Toronto schools, etc. and see what they say. I've already seen several at De Gruyter online, including in the Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde itself, that indicate that the idea of Germanic peoples with a shared Germanic culture beyond language is no longer the majority view of scholars working in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

If we come back to the question raised by Dynasteria why this is only the case for Germanic peoples, it obviously has a political dimension, but it also just reflects the much greater amount of scholarship that's been invested into this question than, say, Slavic peoples or Turkic peoples. These have had similarly negative nationalist connotations but are not as large of fields in Western academia.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:52, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

"It obviously has a political dimension." Let's all agree on this. Dynasteria (talk) 13:01, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Everything has a political dimension, including the original idea that there are Germanic peoples in the first place.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:13, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

If and when the call to action comes, may each of us find his or her own right path.Dynasteria (talk) 13:34, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: Or maybe someone simply assumes that a language has a "speech community" and calls that "speech community" a "people".

Berig, Oh sure, but the idea that a Swede and a German or a Dutch person and an English person have something in common because they speak Germanic languages (the original implication of the idea "Germanic peoples"), more so than because they are Europeans or (formerly) mostly Christians, is a political idea, and was intended as such. In the same way that the original idea allowed Grimm and others to appropriate the actions of the Ostrogoths and Vandals for the "Germans". We shouldn't forget that the Grimms and many other pioneers of the field actually used the word "Deutsch" to refer to the Germanic peoples, not "germanisch". That came later.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:21, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich:, @Austronesier:, Srnec made a point which might be important above: there are different debates and uncertainties for different periods and regions, e.g. late antiquity. (But it is only in late antiquity that we can start mapping the Germanic language family onto real named peoples in any meaningful way, and using the linguistic definition of Germanic.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:37, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: My impression is similar, but yet differs in one point. After skimming through Interrogating the ‘Germanic’, I agree that the majority of scholars who are actively engaged in the theoretical debate do indeed question the usefulness of the concept of Germanic peoples. But does this also hold e.g. for the field archeologists who need to present their research results in a recognizable framework? In their introductory chapter, Harland & Friedrich point out (and implicitly deplore) the very fact that "the general tendency in humanities scholarship is, arguably, still simply to assume that the ‘Germanic’ is a self-explanatory label". Paradoxically as it may seem, and probably not in the full intent of Harland & Friedrich, but this is a secondary-source statement about 21th century research, which we cannot ignore if we want built encyclopedic content that simply reflects both field research and theoretical debates.

Just a practical example: I have taken a look at some articles in the RGA which still adhere to the traditional framework. E.g. "Elbgermanen" by Mildenberger & Beck (in the 1989 edition, the entry probably was last updated around 1980). They categorize manifest differences in burial practices along demarcations that were set up by linguists. Their maps illustrate this vividly. My question is: how do archeologist of the 2010s and 2020s contextualize their finds from the same area? Has the majority of them completely discarded the label Germanic? I simply lack the insight into the topic to answer, but I think details like these are crucial for our discussion here. –Austronesier (talk) 14:31, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Keeping track: I've received one "No" vote and one "Yes" vote so as it stands it's 2 to 1 in favor of removing "attempt to." I'll wait a couple of days for further votes. Dynasteria (talk) 16:40, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

The text has already been rewritten by Austronesier, so I would say the original proposal is moot? In any case, I support his wording, not any further rewording for the moment.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:52, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't notice. I would remove the second comma (after "them"). Otherwise, the following verb "are" refers to the subject of the sentence "they" rather than to "languages":

They are also associated with Germanic languages, which originated and dispersed among them and are one of several approaches to defining the historical Germanic peoples. Dynasteria (talk) 18:51, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't see how that comma changes the subject. "Them" can not be the subject? Anyway, technically the sentence is also wrong because languages can not be approaches. (Languages are a type of evidence used as the basis of "approaches". But there has to be a neater way to say it.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:32, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I've boldly changed the wording to "They are also associated with Germanic languages, which originated and dispersed among them and which inform one of the several approaches to defining the historical Germanic peoples." Still a little unwieldy, but better, I think. Carlstak (talk) 11:41, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Two things occur to me. One is that rewriting the introduction right now is a good idea, because mobile readers only see the introduction, and it's overly long and convoluted, but that it can only be a stop-gap, because the introduction should be a summary of the major points in the article, so it needs to be rewritten pretty much last, after the article is recast and refocused. The second came to me after thinking about an exchange I've had with Andrew Lancaster at my talk, and that is that one reason there is so much disagreement on this talk page is that we're using the term "Germanic peoples" differently. In the anglosphere, it maps pretty well to "Germanic studies", encompassing a group of cultures studied right through the Middle Ages and in some spheres (such as folklore and those that use folklore evidence such as rural practices and traditional songs) the 19th and even the early 20th centuries. It's used to distinguish some areas of medieval studies from others (including Germanic from Celtic), and while it depends in part on location where modern Scandinavian studies are classed, "Germanic" is the commonly used term for the over-arching field and the human groups within it. However, many editors in this conversation are using it for what are still often termed "Germanic tribes" in English: the peoples of "antiquity". Hence the focus on what classical writers wrote about people. I looked at the history of this article, half expecting it to have been moved from Germanic tribes or even the antiquated Ancient Germans (and found instead an early article creation, October 2001, that is indeed all about relations with the Romans except that it jumps ahead to conversion to Christianity). This article, since it is in the English-language Wikipedia, needs to be about more than the classical reports and what scholars have said about them; it needs to include later periods as well as people who speak Germanic languages who didn't get reported on by classical authors, and it should not imply either that the Germanic peoples faded away long ago, or that the only interesting things about them are their origins and the Urzeit in general. Articles about many aspects of Germanic studies link here; readers reading about, for example, Dumézil's theory and the Nazi "Nordic" concept, need an exposition here (as well as the readers who learn here for the first time that "Germanic" doesn't mean the same as "German", which is why writers used to use "Teutonic"). Yngvadottir (talk) 09:19, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Your perspective is very helpful. People use these terms differently, and that is very important to what people the community decides to do with this article. Complications: (a) This problem is also in academia, so I am not sure there is an easily identifiable single "correct" academic usage? (b) The way the term "Germanic peoples" is used traditionally within Germanic studies represents strong knowledge claims about the historical topic you refer to as the "Germanic tribes", and not only about medieval Germanic-speakers. Today, not all scholars agree with those strong knowledge claims which were once built within the old terminology choices of Germanic studies (even scholars from that background). So IMHO that all seems to make what you call the "Germanic tribes" the topic which the others have to be structured around.

To put it another way: I think what you call the "Germanic tribes" is the one topic which has to be in this article? It is the only topic I can't imagine being farmed out to another article or given a different name to this one? (This is based not only on the above reasoning but also a few years watching what people think this article is about.) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:16, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Germanic studies

BTW, because Germanic studies have been mentioned so often, I notice on WP it redirects to Germanic philology and this has no German WP equivalent, although the article explains the field originated in 19th century Germany. Our article implies that in practice it is not normally a distinct field in university curricula. German WP "Germanistiek" is linked to English "German studies". In practice this seems relevant to questions of how various fields influence terminology in English. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:21, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

The issue of "Germanic studies" is a bit of a red herring. "Germanic studies" is a mostly just another name for a Department of "Germanic languages and literatures," not the study of the "Germanic peoples" and their cultures in a way useful to this article. It does not focus on the history and culture of barbarian peoples, and often has no medieval component at all. Just look at these programs in "Germanic studies" I've found:

1. University of Illinois - focus on modern German or Scandinavian. Classes in Middle High German available. Nothing about the Germani.
2. University of Chicago - the department is subtitled "German Department" and offers nothing but modern German, Norwegian, and Yiddish. No medieval languages, no Germani. Yet it says The Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago is a national and international leader in the field of Germanic Studies.. This isn't the type of "Germanic studies" that's being discussed here there.
3. University of Indiana - offers modern German, Dutch, Norwegian, and Yiddish, also Middle High German and Old Icelandic. This comes the closest so far, but still, no Germani, and I'm willing to bet most students never touch anything medieval (I speak from experience).
4. University of Victoria Germanic and Slavic Studies. Offers degrees in "Germanic Studies", but the intro course is explained thus: GMST 100 introduces students to the cultural symbols, spaces and events which have not only shaped German-speaking identity but also the discipline of Germanic Studies itself. By examining architecture, literature, film, myths, visual art and graphic novels, students will acquire cultural literacy in “things German” and essential skills in reading a broad spectrum of media. Our required text will be Nora Krug’s graphic memoir Belonging. There's also "Germanic Cultural Studies" Provides case studies in the cultural history of German-speaking countries in which students analyze texts, films, media, as well as visual and material objects and spaces from a variety of approaches and perspectives. Clearly not what is being discussed here.
5. University of Minnesota - Department of German, Nordic, Slavic, and Dutch. Again, Germanic studies basically means "Philology", but this probably comes the closest: (Students have the option of electing an emphasis (German or Germanic Medieval Studies or Scandinavian), though this is not required. The requirements for an emphasis are: five of the six electives and the Plan B topic must be in the emphasis.)
6. University of Sheffield - used to mean "German": Germanic Studies has a long tradition of distinguished research in German, but we are also a leading department for Dutch Studies. And we house the world’s only Centre for Luxembourg Studies, too.
7. University of Sidney The Department of Germanic Studies teaches language from beginners to advanced levels and offers study options in German literature, film, history, thought, and society from the 18th century to the present.

I could go on, but I invite you to search "Germanic Studies" in Google for yourself and see what comes up. My point is, this term is not being used in a way that supports using "Germanic" in a sense that it is not mostly about philology - language and literature.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:12, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I've split this out, because I feel guilty now for potentially making a big point of a small housekeeping issue. Perhaps I should make clear that I had always thought of the type of Germanic research which went beyond language and literature to be especially strong in Germany, but apparently the presuppositions of that way of grouping topics are now questioned in Germany itself (and I think also in Holland and Belgium). I've come to understand more recently that perhaps something similar, which still has a foot in topics that go beyond language and literature, has survived more in Scandinavian countries? I do not mean to make any strong points about this, but only address a point I was honestly uncertain about. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:44, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: It's taken me so long to respond, I'm pinging you in case you stopped looking :-)

I didn't realise Germanic studies was a redirect; I see that happened in March 2012 after a proposal was made in 2009 and received no discussion. The last version is here and is pretty sad; it was created as a disambiguation page.

I'm not sure what your background is ... and it's none of my business, and I similarly hope no one will dox me based on what I write here :-) But what your search has yielded is a partial glimpse of the results of decades of cutbacks; in the US and possibly elsewhere, starting with the First World War, not the Second. There is little student demand for these subjects, so there are few faculty positions, and it's a vicious spiral. However, many reading here may be more familiar with the German system of tertiary education where a student is expected to proceed all the way to a doctorate; the norm elsewhere is a bachelor's degree, with only certain fields having high numbers of master's degrees (business, teaching) and only medical and legal students being expected to get doctorates. In the anglosphere, large parts of Germanic studies and Scandinavian studies are graduate fields in most institutions, and this plus consolidation into interdisciplinary programs (particularly medieval studies and folklore) makes it hard to track down what's actually available to a student. There are so few people that often the best clue is who's published on things requiring knowledge of more than one part of the field, and where they are employed. Germanic studies, based historically on Germanistik but including much of Nordistik, remains the term used for the entire field by scholars, but departments tend to be named for what the undergraduates study. With Scandinavian this has always been the case. For example, University College London is known for language teaching, and has separate German Studies and Scandinavian Studies departments; the latter offers a BA in Viking and Old Norse Studies and the institution is the home base of the Viking Society. The University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are top American institutions for studying modern Scandinavian languages: Washington has Scandinavian Studies and has renamed Germanics to German Studies to match, but the University of Wisconsin-Madison instead has an amalgamation: German, Nordic, and Slavic. Because of Anglo-Saxon (which may not yet have been mentioned on this page, but was very important in the early development of Germanic Studies as a field of study in the UK and thus in other English-speaking countries), Old Norse was often tucked into English departments; both Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse have since often been placed within Medieval Studies. The pioneers are probably Oxford, where Old Norse is within the Faculty of English and there are two Germanic studies majors in all but name: English Course II and the joint course in English and Modern Languages, and Cambridge, which uses a tripos system (effectively students are required to have a related minor) and the department is Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic. (I know there are also important departments/scholars elsewhere in the UK and in Ireland). At Cornell, which has the Fiske Icelandic library collection, Old Norse was tucked into German, but is now in Medieval Studies, which for undergraduates offers only minors, including an alternate Viking Studies minor: German Studies (undergraduate), Medieval Studies (undergraduate minor). You looked at Sydney above; judging by Margaret Clunies Ross's appointments, they also cover some of the field within English and some within Medieval Studies. In contrast, the University of Texas at Austin retains a Department of Germanic Studies, including a Germanic Civilization undergraduate track that avoids requiring language study. (This is a wealthy state university, and does not have a history of specialising in training in modern languages.) At the University of California, Berkeley has a separate Department of German and Department of Scandinavian, and John Lindow, now emeritus, was in Scandinavian and Folklore, while Los Angeles (UCLA) retains its Program in Indo-European Studies, but it's graduate-only and almost entirely linguistic in focus; the program in Comparative Folklore and Mythology that formerly granted undergraduate and graduate degrees merged into World Arts and Cultures in 2001.

However, I believe the emphases on the modern countries, their languages and literatures supports my point: in the Anglosphere, the Germani are not the core of the field; as you found, they're barely mentioned. (Ancient history and classics probably cover them more than even the medieval studies programmes.) ... which needless to say does not mean I do not think they should be mentioned in this article. I don't believe anyone has suggested leaving them out, or even leaving out the scholarly controversies. Yngvadottir (talk) 09:15, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Germanic studies is definitely a notable topic that deserves an article of its own. Krakkos has created literally dozens of great pages about scholars in the field, so it's quite an imbalance that the field itself is not covered beyond a pitiful stub.

But I don't think that the topic range of Germanic studies defines Germanic peoples. This kind of reification of various things (languages, mythology, folklore, settlement types, burial traditions etc.) traditionally labelled as Germanic into the people(s) who display such features is not what scholars of the field usually do, except for a period that ranges from Jastorf to the Early Medieval. After that period, scholars contiune to speak about "Germanic languages" (which is uncontested), and also about other things "Germanic", but rarely reified into a ethnic concept (at least in modern scholarship). So looking at Germanic studies alone gives little guidance about the scope of Germanic peoples. I also disagree that English-speaking scholarship defines Germanic peoples in a different way from non-English scholars when the latter talk about Germanen etc. US/UK scholars are in constant interaction which continental European scholars, and I don't think Toronto, Oxford and Vienna are lost in translation. –Austronesier (talk) 09:48, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I've personally taken courses on Germania in a Germanic studies department, as well as a variety of medieval-oriented courses, as well as studied Gothic, Old Norse, and Old High German in said department. Old English is frequently handled by English departments but, like Gothic, might also be encountered in historical linguistics programs, frequently with overlapping departments. Russian, Old Church Slavonic, and other Slavic topics often gets mashed into these departments as the humanities budgets continue to contract. As @Yngvadottir: highlights, these departments (and programs) vary by institution, and are frequently impacted by budgets and by faculty members. If there's a medievalist or philologist in the department, one can expect related courses, often English-language and frequently aimed at undergraduates by way of alluring titles and low requirements. As for the phrase Germanic studies, we would very much benefit from a built-out article on it, I agree. @Krakkos: and @Yngvadottir:, maybe you want to lead the charge there? My time is super limited for Wikipedia lately, unfortunately. :bloodofox: (talk) 19:43, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Can you cite any such department or program that calls itself "Germanic Studies" and is devoted to all things "Germanic"? I've cited actual existing departments, can you cite one? There isn't one at any Ivy League School, nor at the University of Chicago, at Stanford, at Berkeley, at Oxford or Cambridge. The closest thing I've seen is Minnesota or Wisconsin, and there the focus is clearly on literature and linguistics, when Germania and the Germani are clearly a topic discussed primarily by historians. The only journal I've found that says it's devoted to "Germanic Studies" is appears to be devoted solely to modern Germany, namely The New German Review. There's also the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, but it's focus is, as the name says, philological/literary.

While I don't doubt you've taken such classes, you must be aware that Wikipedia cannot rely on the word of its contributors for how it presents things. We need actual sources. And when actual sources, such as the Germanische Altertumskunde Online, say the following, it's hard to argue with them without producing sources ourselves:

The question of “what we may describe as ‘Germanic’”had already become a problem for the editors by the second edition. Today the concept remains important for linguistics, but is no longer useful for archaeology or history. It is thus difficult at present to speak of an interdisciplinary germanische Altertumskunde. In any case, the temporal, geographical and content-related boundaries of this encyclopaedia are not defined by the notion of “Germans” as the bearers of a particular culture. English translation from here.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:09, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Ermenrich, I think you may have missed my mention above of UT Austin, which has a redoubtable Department of Germanic Studies. In making my points about medieval studies and about Germanic Studies often being graduate-only in the US, I also mentioned Cornell, which is of course Ivy League and should probably be regarded as the best in the field in the Ivy League. (Of course I would say that.) I had linked to the undergraduate program (in this response I'm switching to US spellings since I'm talking only about the US, and the closest British equivalent so far as I know is "course") in German Studies (and to the undergraduate Medieval Studies program, since they have moved Old Norse under that umbrella). The graduate program is now also called German Studies but note "Germanic studies" in the characterization of the library holdings and that the grad school page is still headed "Germanic Studies Ph.D." (the grad program was formerly Germanic Languages and Literatures since it was a joint program of the Department of German Literature and the Department of German(ic) Language (I forget the official name), which were bureaucratically distinct; see the eulogy for Frans Van Coetsem here, which uses afdeling germanistiek and afdeling Germanic Languages and Literatures. Since we're talking Ivies, Harvard has also had some respected scholars in the field (like Texas, it can afford to largely ignore market forces) and still calls its department Germanic Languages and Literatures; note the statement there, "Thus, the program is designed not only for students who wish to pursue graduate study in Germanic studies ..."; Germanic studies is overwhelmingly a PhD field in the US. I'm also going to ping EEng here in case he wishes to defend the honor of his alma mater. However, you yourself mentioned that the Indiana U, U of Illinois, and Chicago departments are still Germanic Studies, and it would be dangerous to underrate Indiana (historically the powerhouse of folklore studies in the US) or Chicago (the first "research university" on the German model in the US, and I wouldn't class many Ivies above it. Chicago is weak in Scandinavian, but it's not so much that their undergrad page is subtitled "German" as that they use that as the URL and the selling point for undergrads. Their PhD program page is more representative; they specialize in modern stuff, is what it is. I'm going to repeat my point that these programs demonstrate that the Germani are far from central to Germanic studies in the Anglosphere; they may be studied in other departments, such as classics or linguistics, or there may simply not be a faculty member interested in the Germanic Urzeit; most US universities with German programs don't even offer free-standing courses in Middle High German, just covering the literature in a survey course, and of course Latin is not widely taught either in the US. The Germani need to be in this article, but whether there are courses about them is the wrong criterion for judging the breadth of a Germanic studies program, let alone what anglophone scholars in the field draw on in their publications. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:25, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

We cool; Harvard's Germanic Lang & Lit department has plenty to answer for. I should point out, though, that the page you link is to a description (advertisement, more like) of the undergrad German program; you'd probably do better to look at [7] [8] [9] and [10], which describe the grad program. EEng 00:02, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

You're going to need to look at course offerings. As you know, some of these departments have changed their names over the years, including Wisconsin-Madison—which Yngvadottir highlights above. However, they still lump "Nordic" and "German" together there, and you can take plenty of folklore courses as part of the department's curriculum (like I did once upon a time—nowadays mentioned here: [11]). Most of the courses these departments offer will be introductory language courses, as that's where the demand is due to undergraduate degree requirements and humanities department shrink. For example, while I can't find the old course I once took (the program appartently ceased to exist after the program head died and the school saw this as an opportunity to axe another humanities program), a quick general search tells me that, for example, the Department of Germanic and Slavic studies at UGA offers a regular course on Germania ([12]), and units that discuss Germanic languages in historical linguistics programs frequently discuss the peoples speaking these languages alongside paradigm-memorization and syntax-hammering. Whatever they're called and whether Slavic studies has been merged in by an administrative decision or whatever, such departments are obviously not restricted to language courses and might not even offer courses on linguistics as a field. Linguistics programs and certainly linguistics departments are not terribly common. Generally speaking, departments can indeed be quite interdisciplinary—there's significant overlap in these departments with linguistics, history, folklore studies, film studies, art history, and a variety of other programs and departments, particulary at those not starved for funds. As another example, Seiichi Suzuki is "professor of Old Germanic studies" at Kansai Gaidai University. There's plenty more one can dig up on this. Whether are not they're calling it Germanic studies in their department name is another question but linguistically related groups are frequently bundled together—and that includes courses on much more than language acquisition. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:21, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir:, I can't find any "Germanic civilization" track at UT Autsin, nor anything suggesting it isn't primarily a modern language department. In fact, looking at the faculty, the only one currently doing medieval is Sandra B Straubhaar in medieval Norse. Cornell does not have anyone teaching Germanic studies (they have a media specialist who dabbles in Middle High German).

The fact that many departments formerly were called Germanic Studies or formerly included distinguished faculty who considered themselves to do "Germanic Studies" does not change the fact that they are no longer called that and those faculty are no longer there - there is clearly movement away from such an idea. At the University of Michigan while I was there, they were even planning to phase out calling it "Germanic Languages and Literatures" in favor of "German, Dutch, and Scandinavian", although I note that no longer seems to be the case based on the website. Germanic studies, is, when used at all, simply another term for Germanic languages and literatures.

Whatever "Germanic"'s usefulness as a term might be, I think we can all agree that medieval Scandinavian, Old English, and Old and Middle High German would be essentially parts of it - and yet there are very few places that do more than one of these. Germanic, outside of the linguistic sense, implies a cultural continuity that most scholars simply no longer believe is there. To speak from my own field, most scholars of Middle High German at this point don't even study beyond that one language, even if they study things like the Nibelungenlied that have historically been called "Germanic".--Ermenrich (talk) 23:39, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, The Oxford Guide to Middle High German (by Jones and Jones, 2019) discusses the broader Germanic linguistic context pretty frequently and even breaks out the phrase Germanic peoples in a few cases when discussing the speakers of, well, ancient Germanic languages (cf. p. 253, p. 340). :bloodofox: (talk) 00:21, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I've carefully referred above to a group of cultures, plural; I think we can all agree that assuming simple cultural continuity is problematic. Here's that Texas faculty page: note how many faculty have a background in historical linguistics, including Scandinavian, and the different balance among the emeriti. What you are seeing as movement away from an idea I am (and I think Bloodofox is also) seeing as primarily evidence of retrenchment and dwindling student interest. And as I said above, things are complicated by many courses being assigned to other departments and/or interdisciplinary programs, notably medieval studies and in the UK especially, English, but also including comparative literature, folklore, and classics; partly this is because of the scholarly advantages of synergy, partly it's because of dual appointments to eke together the funding for a faculty position. For one notable example, Cornell's Medieval Studies program is a point of pride there, and its faculty page shows more coverage of the earlier eras of Germanic studies than you gleaned from the German Studies graduate faculty page; as I mentioned, Old Norse has been transferred to Medieval Studies, and so for example Oren Falk is in History and his interests are listed as "medieval, cultural and Norse", and Wayne Harbert, emeritus, is in Linguistics with primary interests in the syntax of Celtic and "older Germanic" languages. Andrew Galloway, in English, starts his focus of interest at Bēowulf. I would not class Erik Born as "dabbling" in Middle High German, here he is again in Medieval Studies; he's no Art Groos, but rather he reflects the modern emphasis on intersections. I'm afraid that in saying Cornell "does not have anyone teaching Germanic studies" you're using the term in a very different way from as the conventional term for an overarching field incorporating many specializations, and for which "Germanic languages and literatures" is not a bad second-best, it just happens to omit much of what I am most interested in. ... Finally, Bloodofox also mentioned Slavic. In the UK and the Republic of Ireland, there's also the relationship with Celtic languages, literature, and culture complicating the picture, as I mentioned with reference to Cambridge.

In response to the question Andrew Lancaster posed below, I am not a folklore specialist and, as in linguistics, many who are are more interested in either theoretical studies or a specific topical issue, but tracing motifs in and between Celtic, Finnic-Altaic, Slavic, mainland Germanic, and Norse traditions continues to be something academics do, and the applications of such studies include the study of Old Norse mythology and religion as well as of early Germanic literature; in pursuit of my interests in Germanic studies, I've read scholarship about heads in wells and groups of three impossible trials as Celtic motifs, about goats in Siberian folk tradition and the goddess Rauni and her possible relationship to Sif, and about columns and oak trees in Irish Celtic and classical tradition in relation to arguments about whether either figured in continental Germanic tradition. So, yes, in some areas of inquiry and to follow some scholars' theories. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:45, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir: I really think the problem here is (and "always" has been) the difficulty of getting a calm discussion about which topics NEED to have their MAIN coverage in this article. IMHO there are one or two such topics only (the Roman era peoples, because "Germani" is not a common English term, and according to normal WP methods, the broad concept should be here too?) but too many other topics which are relevant here are having their MAIN coverage pushed to this article. (While satellite articles that could be proving the viability of those topics, such as Early Germanic culture, and archaeological and linguistic articles, seem to be of no interest to anyone, and are left languishing.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:16, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier: to be clear, one reason for looking into this concept was the implication in some earlier posts that there are Germanic studies sources, so far un-named (except perhaps Grimm) who should be seen as the mainstream when it comes to defining the topic of this article. It was clearly implied that this does not include the Vienna school and the various German and English speaking scholars who either accept Vienna position(s), or something even more critical of the older methodologies for defining early Germanic identity. The un-named Germanic studies scholars you and Yngvadottir are discussing are not matching that description I think? My attempt to understand what people are saying here is that there are scholars who are not notable writers about definitions and methodologies, who still use the older definitions and assumptions? If that's correct then I suggest that no-one is denying the relevance of that to how WP should handle these topics. It does give some challenges. But we need to consider how important it is, for example, to call everything "Germanic". Is it essential to European folklore studies that folklore needs to be designated to a language group such as Romance, Celtic, Slavic, or Germanic for example? (It is not a sarcastic question. That really seems to be one of the positions being put forward?)

My suggestion has been that we should always use wordings which explain what "framework" of terminology is being used in specific articles. I think normally this would be uncontroversial on WP when there are different terminologies being used. This can be done partly by using terminology such as "Germanic (language) speaking" instead of just "Germanic", and in other cases it can be done by mentioning alternative viewpoints, and so on. So to point to the gorilla in the room, the special problem we have had is that these types of solutions are apparently controversial. It is argued that there is too much mention of alternative viewpoints, and too much explanation of how we're handling the scope of topics. Maybe I was just too ham-fisted, or maybe I just did not go far enough and have left things in a compromised situation? OTOH, historically, the article mixed things up more freely, and we continually had people understanding this article to be a topic which included, for example, modern Afrikaners and Luxemburgers (but not Jamaicans).

I can't help wondering how we avoid the return of such problems, especially if we re-merge discussions of early Germanic culture into this article. Some editors interested in those topics apparently prefer to unite an enormous range of topics under an older Grimm-esque definition of the term Germanic, from etymologies of proposed proto-Germanic terms, to much more recent folklore that happens to be found in Germanic-speaking countries. (Ironically though, at least some of those editors accept that the Roman era historical peoples are a different topic which leads to proposals that the Germanic peoples should be pushed out of the Germanic peoples article, leaving room for other topics named after them.)

Note that I did not split out the Early Germanic culture article, but until now that split has not been much objected to. Collectively, the two child articles (this one and that one) contain much that we did not have in July 2019, but no one has yet made any serious attempt to make that article look like a coherent single topic that is justified by mainstream scholarship. I propose that some of the concerns raised in recent days and weeks require us to look at both articles, and also to ask ourselves what we do with material added to them since July 2019.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:16, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

PS, I think older versions of this article and related ones basically contained no full and fair discussion of the Vienna school's ideas about ethnogenesis. I think WP is still basically avoiding them even after the work I've done to get them at least mentioned. I think WP policy implies they should actually be the reference point of what we write on this topic. This also seems to be a "gorilla" we have to deal with when considering what the July 2019 version does not have.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:06, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Getting more eyes

Under the theory that more editors with less investment in this topic may finally lead to some progress, I'm going to advertise this article's difficulties at the Classical Greece and Rome and the Middle Ages wikiprojects.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:41, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

See here and here.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:49, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

A good initiative.--Berig (talk) 14:14, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Great idea, full support! This morning I was tempted to throw in another two *panninganz of mine, but then I thought: "nah". –Austronesier (talk) 20:00, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Let my people go

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This comment is made pointedly toward improving the general tone and direction of the article. Above, I suggested that the political aspect of these massive, ongoing discussions that pervade this Talk page should be ever present in contributor's minds. I don't think Wikipedians and the public in general are willing or able to acknowledge the elephant in the room. After two world wars and the attendant racism of the Nazis, it became de rigueur in the anglophone academic universe to distance, disparage, and minimize the concept of a Germanic people. That should be pretty obvious. Before and during WWI, American newspapers published the vilest imaginable depictions of those murderous, rapacious Huns who were prepared to enslave us and ravage our women. German-Americans changed their names to sound more English. People didn't want "sauerkraut babies" in their schools. In the period that I've lived through, the post-WWII Cold War era, the depictions continued with regard to the Nazis. A German accent was equivalent to a comedy routine. In the town where I lived, the chief of police refused to hire a fully qualified German immigrant because the citizens would feel uncomfortable being pulled over and "interrogated" by someone with a German accent.

Pursuant to this, it becomes irrelevant what a consensus of scholars believes about the Germanic people, either as a concept or a reality. Such a consensus has highly dubious antecedents. It is time to release the Germanic people from the chains and shackles of being enslaved to a century of two world wars in which Germany, a separate nation, lost twice. It was stated above that everything involved in these discussions is political, but I would caution that if if there are no important distinctions then there is no meaning. If you believe in everything then you believe in nothing. Dynasteria (talk) 07:37, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Not to worry, Donald Trump is working hard to restore balance to the German reputation. I am compelled to add that your choice of heading for this thread ("Let my people go") is startling in its pregnancy. EEng 12:51, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I can't see anything about this article, or talk page, which is potentially offensive to Germans?? I don't think the concept "Germanic peoples" is something "average" people think about or talk about much at all in any clear and consistent way. For many years this article has seen lots of pumped-up over-strong feelings, with all kinds of themes. Everyone seems to see the topic of this article completely differently, and a surprising number of those seem to see their position as vitally important. When people feel moral indignation, they feel justified to make deliberate distortions of what scholars and editors say, and complain that everyone else including mainstream scholars have "political agendas". In fact, such deliberate distortions constitute the main problem this article has faced, and have helped no-one. While we should be ethical of course, we can't be aiming to actively right great wrongs here, and part of the reason is that as a community we don't even agree with each other, or have anything clear to say. Our task is defined here. We can only make real progress here by summarizing what scholars say, as per WP policy. The longer people fight that principle, the more difficult it is to make this article better in any direction.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:41, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

You’re missing the point, Dynasteria, that in my experience numerous German and Austrian scholars (Walter Pohl, Helmut Reimitz, Sebastian Brather…) including the current editors of Germanische Altertumskunde Online, deny the existence of “Germanic peoples”. This has nothing to do with anti German sentiment in the anglophone world, it has to do with dismantling 19th and 20th Century nationalist and essentialist ideas about language and ethnicity. We can’t ignore the consensus of scholars, that goes against Wp policy.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:30, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

What are you thinking, Dynasteria? "Let my people go" is a completely inappropriate heading for your statement in this context of what you say about the racism of the Nazis. Of course you know that "Let My People Go" is a phrase from the Book of Exodus 5:1: "And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness." I am astonished and amazed that you transpose the pleas of the Israelite leaders before the Egyptian ruler onto your screed made on behalf of people of German descent concerning modern-day prejudice against them. You should strike it. Carlstak (talk) 13:43, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

At least it wasn't Arbeit macht frei. EEng 15:54, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I would like to think that the heading was chosen in haste, without thinking through the implications, because it's the sort of oblivious remark that one expects from Trumpista fascists rather than an intelligent WP editor like Dynasteria. Carlstak (talk) 16:06, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Given Dynasteria's plea that It is time to release the Germanic people from the chains and shackles of being enslaved, I'd say that's wishful thinking. But ya know, as Tom Lehrer put it, Once all the Germans were warlike and mean, / But that couldn't happen again. / We taught them a lesson in 1918 / And they've hardly bothered us since then. EEng 17:01, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, and putting the words of Moses at the top of the apologist diatribe is beyond the pale. The very first sentence saying "This comment is made pointedly toward improving the general tone and direction of the article" is beyond satirization. My father's mother was German, I fit the stereotypical blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic type in appearance, as do some of my Jewish friends, and I am outraged by the comment. Carlstak (talk) 18:38, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

And my wife is Jewish, as are technically my children. I just don't understand why this discussion has to be so polarized. Correct me if I am wrong, because I might not be smart enough to grasp this, but it is like either the article will cater to the delusions of white supremacists, or it has to be a deconstructionist essay. Can it be possible to write an article where we are just honest with how little we know and present opinions as opinions, and theory as theory?--Berig (talk) 20:03, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Hear here.

-EEng

Hear, hear! I believe it is possible; the devil will be in the details, as always. So..... Carlstak (talk) 20:26, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm just trying to remember how the hell I got into the middle of this contretemps. (That's German for mishegas, which of course is French for dangerous liason.) I've heard of people leaving Wikipedia because they got bored, but from where I'm standing that seems inconceivable (which is Russian for impregnable, which in turn is Norwegian for inscrutable). EEng 22:20, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

With regard to the propriety of the title, it should be clear that Bible stories are allegorical and are intended to apply to all humanity. If a group of people, for whatever reason, are the object of persistent and inescapable prejudice then they are in the shackles and chains of that prejudice. Therefore, the story of the Israelites in slavery is metaphorically appropriate to that condition.

Whether the concept of the Germanic people is being treated by scholars under a general cloud of prejudice is, of course, up for debate. The fact that I believe it strongly likely does not make me a "white supremacist", a term I consider to be offensive and racist. It is interesting that my title and comments aroused such vehement reactions and quickly provoked the bigoted stereotypes which in fact are frequently and offensively applied to Germans. Trump is German-American, so I can be compared to a Trumpista?. Auschwitz must be interjected for no known reason. Berig wonders why this discussion "has to be so polarized" and so do I. But I am not the one calling names. Dynasteria (talk) 08:00, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Your comment was pure sophistry and mean-spirited polemics, Dynasteria. You know very well that such a comparison as you make between the modern Germans and the plight of the ancient Israelites in Egyptian bondage would be laughed out of serious consideration in academe and would get even a tenured professor fired; it is is shameful, and you should certainly apologize to all Jews. Carlstak (talk) 11:43, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

"white supremacist", a term I consider to be offensive – Well, that's something at least, given that not everyone's even agreed on that [13]. EEng 12:37, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

EEng: I really don't care what some moron in congress has to say about the English language. A politician's second biggest talent, after prostitution, is spewing whatever verbal garbage will get him or her elected. Dynasteria (talk) 19:05, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

@EEng: which raises the question of how many of the problems on this article are caused by over-dramatization, which could be a symptom of people being bored by what Carlstak rightfully identifies as what is really needed - a discussion of the details. So I'll be the advocate for that "devil" Carlstak refers to:

• I notice no-one is disagreeing with the stunning idea presented in this thread that the antonym of "white supremacist" is "deconstructionist"?? Good to see we are all worried about people being polarizing. So if we get rid of white supremacism , then we should get rid of "deconstructionism"? Hmm: [14][15].
• Of course for some people the term "deconstructionist" (and anything referring to French philosophy) is only ever used as an insult, but like it or not, we can't dismiss discussion of the details (which is what people general mean to parody when they use this term, unfortunately) as easily as we can dismiss "white supremacism". The main practical disagreements about this article are about how much it should, erm, deconstruct the traditional concept of "Germanic" (as scholars specialized in defining the concept do, including the ones in Germany), and how much the concept should be simply accepted in its 19th century form (as scholars in various fields sometimes still do). That should be a practical discussion. There are valid issues on both sides.
• One reality we have to deal with is that all uses of the term "Germanic" imply strong knowledge claims about about the Germani, known especially from records about 50 BCE to 200 BCE, and there is no denying that modern scholars do not see those old ideas mapping easily with reality anymore. The Roman writers themselves treated the concept as a "geo-political" category of convenience, but 19th century writers thought they knew much better and could make a scientific family tree of real European nations, connecting people who did not know they were related, and peoples in completely different periods, based on language families. So we now have a plethora of different approaches to the term. It is quite natural that the problems this rejected methodology causes are different in different fields that use the concept, but how can we explain this if we are not allowed to "deconstruct"?
• The continuous implication that critics of 19th century methodology are still just worried about the Nazis is nonsense, and is another good example of the polarizing distortions which plague discussion of this article. There are lots of reasons the methodology was rejected. It was wrong. We do not live in "Middle Earth".
• Anyway, since early 2020 the article does have some limited discussion of the concept's controversies. (And I would question one description by Ermenrich: it has been more stable, not less.) So in practice we are talking about whether to delete information about what the most highly-cited scholars like Walter Pohl or Guy Halsall really say, and what their opponents are really responding to? (This is also the tendency on the troubling BLP articles about the various relevant scholars, despite what Austronesier says above.) If not, then what are we talking about? If for example we go back to the July 2019 version, which has been a good thought-provoking idea, there are some significant practical issues involving, yes, details. What do we do with all the new material, not only the "descontructionism" but also all the material now in Early Germanic culture, and the mini "languages" article added into this one by Alcaios, and what should we do with the disconnected material people say they still want added (like archaeology and folklore)?
• Honestly, I've come to think we need more smaller articles. This article is trying to be the MAIN article for too many topics, most of which are are only weakly linked to each other by the "broad concept" Germanic, which unquestionably derived from the topic of the Roman era Germanic peoples. We should assume that actually deleting proper scholarly discussions of these two core topics from WP is an idea that is unlikely to lead to a solution. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:23, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster, your extra long comment here is a good example of the avoidance techniques so frequently employed to avoid actual change. Moreover, it avoids the topic of this thread, except where you say "The continuous implication that critics of 19th century methodology are still just worried about the Nazis is nonsense," which is nothing more than an assertion. I will have to take some time to do a bunch of research to see just where this debate stems from and who is on which side. Presumably there is an opposing side. However, it should be absolutely clear to anyone with even the smallest experience of academia (and I have plenty) that scholars are driven by popularity, avoidance of scandal and criticism, and most of all money. There is lots of money in being controversial, edgy and envelope-pushing types who get all kinds of flashy press. There is no money in pushing back against an entrenched agenda. Dynasteria (talk) 08:51, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

So you have not done the reading, not even reading of previous discussions here on WP, but you already know what you will find and demand that your opinions should be treated as equally valid and claim that I am just making an "assertion"? The fact that you do this with so little circumspection says something about the way people are used to internet discussions working, and WHY we can't work that way on WP. Do the reading first please, and please consider whether you really want to be the person claiming that we live in a world where ethnicity works like it does in fictional Middle Earth. (By the way, I have nothing against Tolkien.) If you go back before 2020 you'll find I did not arrive on this article's talk page with strong predispositions. I've done a LOT of reading especially since 2019, and I've adjusted my position over time. One thing you should have learned from the reaction to your post above is that you should think twice before making strong comments using a "poetic" approach to reality. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:16, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

- Cont. -

Here's a place to continue the discussion for all you that do not have an axe to grind.

@Andrew Lancaster: What can we take from the quote Harland & Friedrich which I have mentioned before: "the general tendency in humanities scholarship is, arguably, still simply to assume that the ‘Germanic’ is a self-explanatory label"? I have a hard time not to translate "general tendency in humanities scholarship" as "mainstream"—whether we "like" it or not. The point is: however compelling the deconstructionist arguments and conclusions may be, there is ("arguably") still a kind of discrepancy (or asynchronicity) between trail-brazing theorists and the less prominent bulk of scholars in academic disciplines related to this topic. –Austronesier (talk) 09:37, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I think it matches my description above. The field that is most concerned with the definition of the concept Germanic has strongly rejected the old methodology, but satellite fields use the concept, often harmlessly, without thinking much about it. In many articles I've read, including this one, authors feel the need to respond to, or pre-empt, critics who say in effect, "it is already obvious that 19th century methodology is wrong, so you are just being argumentative" (...or indeed, "you read too many French writers"). In fact, the quote I gave from the same article (a little before yours) might give readers here a completely opposite impression of what that article is saying. Let's add missing words to your quote (the bolding is mine):

The legacy of such processes is still felt. The general tendency in humanities scholarship is, arguably, still simply to assume that the ‘Germanic’ is a self-explanatory label, which accurately describes phenomena including identities, social, cultural or political groups, to material cultural artefacts, languages and texts, and even specific chemical sequences found in human DNA. We need only to consider a few examples to demonstrate just how pervasively this assumption still persists.

The example they use is from archaeology, and they then move on to the worrying way in which the old Kossinna methodology is being used lazily within DNA studies. So they are telling their colleagues, no, this is really still being taken seriously in worrying ways. What I don't see being disputed in this article, as my quote showed, is that Kossinna's methodology is proven wrong among those who actually think about such things. (Your description above suggestion that they only imply this. In fact, they say it has now been highlighted that the old methodology is absurd.) It is also clear to me as someone whose spent time looking at specific topics on the RGA, that newer additions to the work often disagree with older parts. I would say the turning point in European academia who are most focused on this topic was already in the 1980s and 1990s. It would be pretty easy to list quotes from both friends and enemies of that change, which all describe basically the same thing?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:14, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

BTW the normal solutions are relatively straightforward: we use archaeologists for the archaeological information, and linguists for linguistic information, etc. We don't use them for their interpretations of Tacitus and Jordanes. We should also be careful of older secondary sources when we know there has been change, and short entries in generalist tertiary sources (Oxford dictionaries etc), or uncritical tertiary sources like Waldman and Mason which was a major source in July 2019. I'd say these standard Wikipedia methods do lead to a relatively straightforward story. There should be no real dilemma about what to do with, say, the fact that Polish archaeologists sometimes assume Jordanes was accurate. If Polish archaeologists start writing frequently-cited articles about how to interpret old texts that might change things, but they don't. Instead they always seem to add short asides that the modern reinterpretation from the Vienna school tells us that we don't need to assume mass migrations, and "biological" ethnicity. Here on WP though, the push is not to even mention the Vienna school's widely-accepted qualification, or even to treat it as a radical new idea. (It is supposedly caused by subsidies from the European Union according to our article on the Vienna school!) The problems here are much cruder than the debates between the scholars.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:03, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

You should know by now that this is not about going back to Kossinna. This is an old and intellectually dishonest straw argument which also was used against the Vienna school. –Austronesier (talk) 11:50, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

So what practical steps can be taken? I would need to have a good hard look at the article again, but it would be worth while having a good section specifically on the controversy. Most scholars who reject the label are early medieval and late antique historians. I would venture so far as to say the majority of them, in both the Vienna and Toronto schools, at this point. Linguists and literary scholars still use it, although literary scholars have gotten more circumspect (see the article in Harland and Friedrich, as well as the work of Shami Ghosh, but as a counter see Neidorf “The dating of Widsith and the Study of Germanic Antiquity”, it’s on academia.edu). I can’t speak for archaeology specifically, but Sebastian Brather is certainly against its use. Andrew is probably right we need more split off articles, but here is definitely the place to start and should have summaries of all the minor articles. I agree with Andrew we need to use specialist sources.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:04, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Just thinking freely but I wonder whether it would not be easier to put more effort into making spin-offs with some quality. Merging good articles "back" together would be much easier in many ways than the abstract discussions we keep having because people are annoyed about "missing" things which don't yet exist on WP and which they are not prepared to write. Archaeology and the Early Germanic culture article are two examples which show how it is easy to complain, but not easy to really make coherent articles like the ones which would supposedly be obvious and easy to make.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:11, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier: the concern about Kossinna's methodology is that it is already everywhere on the internet, including all over Wikipedia. People don't necessary place sign posts when they use it, nor indeed do they necessarily even know the name Kossinna. The simple categories of Kossinna and the movement leading up to him appealed to something deep in human nature (as indeed does the Lord of the Rings). We should be ok if we are vigilant about for example not using Poland archaeologists for methodological debate or interpretation of Jordanes. Who do they cite if they want a methodological back-up? Vienna school. In the RGA volume we've been looking at together Steinacher represents a pretty good updated version of the Vienna position on the current topic of this WP article, in nice quotable English. It was not available when I worked on this new opening sections of this article, but I think the similarity will be clear? Both are influenced by the same older works.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:26, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier: If the meaning of 'Germanic' (outside linguistics) were merely self-explanatory, there would be no point in an encyclopedia article to explain it. This is what I was getting at when I said above that if you define Germanic peoples as "communities of native speakers of Germanic languages", then you have a very clear answer to the question of who they were. The result, however, is no longer necessarily an encyclopedia topic. It may be an encyclopedic topic if you concentrate on a period when the "communities of native speakers of Germanic languages" can be treated as a singular and cohesive cultural group, i.e., a very early period. If you apply this thinking to the 21st century, on the other hand, it will just seem silly. Somewhere in between the inference from language to people breaks down.

Then there is the issue of identity. For historians of late antiquity, working with texts, there is an absence of 'Germanic' identity in the period, which renders such talk among moderns an obvious target for accusations of anachronism. For linguists working on Proto-Germanic, there are no texts and so no question of 'identity' arises. The very idea of Proto-Germanic assumes a singular speech community. Whether it identified or understood itself as such is an unanswerable question. I think that we are getting near the crux of the issue. Srnec (talk) 16:47, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Srnec my extra two cents. The linguistic definition could theoretically be kept separate from the history-based one, and clearly one of the arguments on WP and among scholars, is that this is not just theory, but that it has happened: people can understand the difference between the different definitions, and so those complaining are just Derrida readers, or subsidized by the EU or something. But that would mean we could just write two sets of articles, with appropriate links etc, and judicious use of clear terms like "Germanic-speaking". No problem? Everyone happy with that? Apparently not. The 21st century secondary commentators like the volume introduced by Harland & Friedrich are in effect describing the remaining barrier. Linguists, archaeologists, and other "humanities" have not got the difference between these concepts clear in their mind at all (presumably because they just aren't interested in the methodology debates) and the tradition or habit continues without any real deep consideration, of, in effect, "correcting" classical texts and claiming authority over how classical writers should be read. This is why it is so important for us to use linguists for linguistic things, archaeologists for archaeology, and experts on text interpretation for text interpretation. We can't be citing (to keep repeating a simple example) Polish archaeologists for our interpretation of Jordanes, but in effect we are, and in effect Kossinna's method is alive and well here on WP. At least that's how it seems to me.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:38, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Srnec, the crux lies in the push for the idea that "communities of native speakers of Germanic languages" cannot at all be treated as a singular and cohesive cultural group, not even as a loosely cohesive group that blended into other areas at its edges, and not even at a very early period (i.e. Late Antiquity). And even if you restrict yourself to talk about a loosely cohesive group in the Late Antiquity, all you get in answer is the straw man of the utterly silly concept of Germanic peoples in the 21th century.

The formation of an identity out of patterns of wider cultural, linguistic or whatsoever coherence is a chimera (or a hydra), but so is the insistent perpetuation of its deconstruction. From my experience as field linguist, I am pretty aware of the fact that the glue of ethnolinguistic identity never exceeds the boundary of mutual intelligibility (unless there is a "roofing" literary language), and often stops even before it due to cultural/religious barriers. But an outside observer (whether linguist or anthropologist) can sharply establish linguistic families, and also—less sharply—cultural areas (and we know that these never fully overlap). Even archaeologists without historical and linguistic data at hand can observe clustering of patterns, which have traditionally been called 'cultures'; modern archaeologists continue to use that term even when they know that shared patterns in material culture don't imply shared linguistic affiliation, ethnicity, identity or agency.

Now, starting with the linguists, scholars have borrowed the name of the Germani as a proxy for things believed to be related to or having emanated from the latter. Not all of this is an outgrowth of Kossinna's ghost lingering in every corner. Sure, much of it is, especially when the label "Germanic" is attributed in totality to things that actually only can be mapped to early NW Germanic-speaking groups (e.g. religion/mythology) or even much smaller units (e.g. archaeological 'cultures'). Cătălin Țăranu has aptly described the word "Germanic" as a terminological balloon in his contribution to Interrogating the ‘Germanic’. But has all scholarship that has used the label "Germanic" beyond the Germani of the Romans become meritless for inclusion/mention here? Is the only heading to talk about early Germanic culture really "Roman descriptions of early Germanic people and culture"?

Andrew Lancaster, linguistics, archaeology, and other "humanities" are not auxiliary disciplines to supplement the historical record. This idea is only valid if the Germani are taken to be the only valid denotatum for the term Germanic peoples. And FWIW, linguists and archaeologists are interested in the methodology debates, but presumably they are less prone to engage in it as an exercise for its own sake because of the wealth of primary data they continue to produce (especially the archaeologists). –Austronesier (talk) 19:45, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Anyone (including archaeologists) can publish something in the methodological and definition debate and potentially become a citable source for that area, or that they might come to conclusions relevant to the Roman era Germani. No one would deny that I think. The point I was trying to make is that I think there are also scholars not interested in methodology and definitions, but who want to just keep using terminology in a traditional way, and they are concerned to make sure WP covers their field well. Those people are, in a sense, using the term Germanic in a auxiliary way? The trick is how to do this without creating confusion and making no-one happy.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:38, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

You're hitting the nail on the head here, @Austronesier:. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:55, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier: What stands out to me from your comment is at a very early period (i.e. Late Antiquity). It stands out because I would have called Late Antiquity a late period, not an early one, much less a very early one. Clearly there is a lot of talking past each other here. I think that the scholarly debate (i.e., Goffart contra mundum) is precisely over whether the Germanic-speaking peoples were even a loosely cohesive group in the Late Antiquity. What, for example, would calling the Visigoths in Spain 'Germanic' mean? That is the kind of question that interests me (i.e., from the perspective of my reading and studying). I am not at all interested in denying the validity of linguistic and archaeological perspectives—or the validity of 'Germanic peoples' as an ancient ethnic category—but I am most concerned with things like this line from the opening paragraph of Visigothic Kingdom: one of the [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]] successor states to the [[Western Roman Empire]]. Srnec (talk) 04:19, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

@Srnec:, this is a problem that concerns other articles on old ethnic groups. The Visigoths that entered the Hispanic Peninsula were generations from the Visigoths that fought against the Moors. They were probably more Germanic linguistically and culturally in the first generation than they were in the last generation. We can compare this to the politicized debate in Eastern Europe over whether the Rus' were Scandiavians or Slavs. Naturally, the Rus' settlers of the 8th c. were not ethnically the same as the Rus' of the 11th, just like the Norman settlers in France of the 10th c. were not ethnically identical to the Normans of the 11th c. The chronological span is a huge issue here, as well. In Scandinavia we have a vague idea of ethnic interrelatedness, so it is also hard for me to grasp why the early Germanic tribes *must* have completely lacked an idea of ethnic relatedness, when their languages were still mutually intelligible.--Berig (talk) 05:22, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

This seems a reasonable direction of discussion. But clearly there are several valid "Germanic" topics here, and so I suppose it is uncontroversial to say that one challenge on this article is to explain why several topics which are today seen as relatively weakly linked, all use the same term in different ways. (Their link is to some extent a "history of ideas" and "scholarly controversy" type of topic, but the original proposed link was the Roman era Germani.) And a connected challenge is to work out which topics will have their MAIN discussion here. (Like I've said a few times, it is pointless to propose ideas which would delete reference to certain aspects of scholarly reality.) When we come to a compact and uncontroversial region like Scandinavia, you would think the main discussion will not be in this article? Or is that an unreasonable proposal? (I am not asking this sarcastically.) I also presume that like Srnec says, the more recent a topic gets, after say 100AD, surely the less relevant it gets to any Germanic unity? (Scandinavian languages must have been incomprehensible to other unfamiliar Germanic speakers quite early? So their mutual intelligibility is Scandinavian, not pan-Germanic?) Perhaps I should mention the gorilla in the room possibility again also: should this article, or a spin-off, be structured around the history of idea/ scholarly debate topic which is probably the only way to explain the wide range of topics which use the word "Germanic"? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:24, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Germanii and Germani

I've moved the following discussion from User talk:Srnec to enable a wider consensus to be reached:

Hi Srnec, you've been converting Germanii to Germani with the comment that it's a spelling correction. That's not the case, both spelling are acceptable and appear in the literature. so I've reverted some of your changes under WP:BRD and happy to discuss under Talk:Germanic peoples. Cheers. Bermicourt (talk) 07:28, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bermicourt: can you give an example of any such literature? I've tried google and my impression is that this is Srnec was correct to remove this word. The only publications where I find this spelling are in Slavic texts, but Slavic has its own system of grammatical inflexions. In English, when a Latin word is borrowed we normally use the Nominative forms [16].--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:35, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bermicourt: Germanii implies a singular Germanius. The only Germanii I can find in the literature are the Carmanians of Persia. Srnec (talk) 11:23, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster Ngram Viewer which only records English language sources shows that Germanii, while clearly less common than Germani, is used frequently enough to suggest it is a valid spelling, so there is no reason to delete every occurrence of it as if it were a mistake. It might be worth making this clear in the article on Germanic peoples where I see Srnec has removed it even as an alternative spelling. You're right that the mass of references is cluttered by Slavic texts or book references, but there are enough English language examples to make the point that the spelling is valid.

Srnec. Well just as one example among many, Ring, Watson and Schellinger (2013) state that "By the time the Romans first crossed the Rhine, in 38 BC, the Celtic people known to them as the Germanii were living on its banks." And I think you're onto something: a singular Germanius would probably have been (one) Germanic person, so Germanii would make entire sense as the plural. Either way the Romans used Germanii alongside Rugii, Bavarii and countless other tribes that use the Latin "-ii" ending. Cheers. Bermicourt (talk) 17:04, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Bermicourt, why mention a tool like Ngram without any numbers or examples? Some of the examples are likely to be the Persian tribe? Can you actually cite one good history source in English, or any Latin source, which uses "Germanii" or "Germanius" to refer to the Germanic peoples of continental Europe? OTOH we do not use every spelling variant of course, because almost any spelling mistake possible has been made somewhere. Why would we use this one which is obviously extremely uncommon? I am not sure why you find this spelling so important. You can try searching relevant Latin works on https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ and site:penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/ . I only find those Persians.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:17, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Continuation of discussion here:

The level of evidence you're asking for is way in excess of that which you've provided i.e. the edit comment "sp" implying that Germanii is a spelling mistake. By contrast it's quite clear from Ngram that Germanii is used in English sources and from Ring, Watson and Schellinger (2013) that it is a) not a spelling mistake and b) was the name used by the Romans (see quote above). Please understand that I'm not deprecating the term Germani or denying that it's more common; simply saying that we cannot mass delete Germanii on grounds of spelling. Nor in my view should it be deleted because it's less common. Wikipedia is meant to reflect the real world, not deny it. Bermicourt (talk) 11:52, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I’m sorry, but the fact that the reference given refers to “the Celtic tribe known as the Germanii” leads me to believe that it probably does not mean the Germani, or that some distinction is being made. Ringe is a historical linguist and expert on the Germanic languages who is unlikely to call them Celtic.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:45, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

There was also a tribe with a similar name in Spain but I think Srnec is correct to point to the Persian tribe here as the normal one to get a double I. You can click on that Ngram result and see this, as well as the Slavic results (apparently Ngram is NOT only picking up English). Bermicourt, I gave links you can click on, and then you can see for yourself, because seeing is believing. Srnec was right. If Germanii was good Latin you could find it in any reference work, or indeed on Wiktionary.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:17, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Just to throw it in here, Herodotus mentioned the Persian Germanii. Carlstak (talk) 20:00, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Ah yes, not that long ago there was some guy peddling the idea here that the Germanic languages were from Persia based on that and a few other coincidences of onomastics...--Ermenrich (talk) 20:04, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

There was even a guy much longer ago who maintained that the Geats were Jats.--Berig (talk) 20:24, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I wrote my dissertation in a flowery Akkadian / And proved the Philistines were almost certainly Canadian. EEng 00:09, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

If you actually open the Ngram Viewer results[17] by clicking on the year ranges, most attestations of "Germanii" turn out to be transliterations of Russian Германии (genitive of Германия 'Germany') in the references of these books in English, plus a few splashes of Herodotus's Germanii. –Austronesier (talk) 20:46, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Here's a bonus with Germanius[18] (there's a saint, a trainer of gladiators, a German chemist etc.). –Austronesier (talk) 20:53, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

A way forward?

Perhaps I've lost my mind trying to parse the discussion on this page, but is it possible that the only way to reconcile all the various viewpoints is to reorganize the article, and treat the history of the different schools of thought rather than the history of the Germanic peoples, a project which I gather from the conversation is not likely to ever succeed? :

"In some ways, I regret that we have to have the narrative history section. It is all handled in other articles. I hope that by explaining why problems I found and tried to resolve, others will find a better way." ~Andrew Lancaster

"...we need some kind of history of research section that addresses archeaology and comparative studies more broadly." ~bloodofox

"...nobody here wants to "avoid historians as sources". Archaeology, history, linguistics, genetics, and philology work together." ~Alcaios

"I cannot help but see the ancient references, at least from a linguistic perspective, as being nothing more than a hereditary tool for describing people from North of the Rhine etc. We do not have to separate them entirely from one another, when the archaeological evidence suggests their material cultures were shared." ~Obenritter

"Then we'll also need a short overview of the Toronto, Vienna and Oxford schools as well." ~Berig

"...the various uses of the term "Germanic" need to be placed in context in a single article. The changes in how it has been used should be explained to the reader, but with emphasis on the modern use of the term, which is primarily tied to the linguistic. Not only is it ridiculous to base our encyclopedic use of the term "Germanic" primarily on "the real names from written history"... ~Yngvadottir

"The question of "what we may describe as 'Germanic'" had already become a problem for the editors by the second edition. Today the concept remains important for linguistics, but is no longer useful for archaeology or history. It is thus difficult at present to speak of an interdisciplinary germanische Altertumskunde. In any case, the temporal, geographical and content-related boundaries of this encyclopaedia are not defined by the notion of “Germans” as the bearers of a particular culture." ~The Germanische Altertumskunde Online

"The linguistic definition could theoretically be kept separate from the history-based one." ~Andrew

"Then there is the issue of identity. For historians of late antiquity, working with texts, there is an absence of 'Germanic' identity in the period, which renders such talk among moderns an obvious target for accusations of anachronism." ~Srnec

"The formation of an identity out of patterns of wider cultural, linguistic or whatsoever coherence is a chimera (or a hydra), but so is the insistent perpetuation of its deconstruction." ~Austronesier

And all the problems that entails. Carlstak (talk) 02:25, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I repeat what I wrote to Srnec, above: The Visigoths that entered the Hispanic Peninsula were generations from the Visigoths that fought against the Moors. They were probably more Germanic linguistically and culturally in the first generation than they were in the last generation. We can compare this to the politicized debate in Eastern Europe over whether the Rus' were Scandinavians or Slavs. Naturally, the Rus' settlers of the 8th c. were not ethnically the same as the Rus' of the 11th, just like the Norman settlers in France of the 10th c. were not ethnically identical to the Normans of the 11th c. The chronological span is a huge issue here, as well. In Scandinavia we have a vague idea of ethnic interrelatedness (you even hear people in ordinary situations say that were are the "same people"), so it is also hard for me to grasp why the early Germanic tribes *must* have completely lacked an idea of ethnic relatedness, when their languages were still mutually intelligible. I think we need to assume here that the Germanics were not the same in the late Proto-Germanic era as they were in the late Antiquity. We are talking of centuries of massive change, geographically, politically, linguistically and culturally, and of extensive mixing with other ethnic groups.--Berig (talk) 05:31, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

What I am trying to say is: can we try to avoid being dogmatic here?--Berig (talk) 06:43, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

@Carlstak: your comments make me think again of my vague idea that we need a "history of concept" article which can serve as a place to link into and out of for all the diverse "Germanic" terminology, and helps readers understand the connections, but also the doubts. However, in a sense that was where I started going in 2019 and then parked in what I think of as a holding pattern. I think it is important to see that there is not really one simple counter proposal to that direction, only a wide range of doubts. Everyone who did not like it wanted their specific favourite things to be bigger, and other things smaller, but they do not all agree on which things IMHO. (There has been a bit of an illusion, I think, that everyone who does not like the direction the article was going all wanted the same thing.) I am certainly open to all ideas, but it still seems like we'll probably end up making some kind of stripped-down concept article. The problem? Perhaps the one uniting thing about opponents is that it makes the term "Germanic" look scholarly and controversial, and they find that shocking and distasteful. It surprised me too when I started looking into it, but I am personally over that shock. That particular shock and horror seems unavoidable. It is a topic where scholarly debate has gone in a direction which surprises people.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:39, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

@Berig:, I think the problem is that most scholars of Late Antiquity would now deny that the Visigoths were ever Germanic [...] culturally. Linguistically, sure. The standard Toronto School line about whether there was any recognition that the Germanic languages were similar is that we don't hear about it until the Carolingian Period, and this doesn't appear to be disputed by the Vienna school. It's only disputed by a few figures like Leonard Neidorf on the basis of potential alliterating lists of Germanic tribal names in Widsith and earlier, but not, it seems by most people who study Germanic heroic literature anymore (see Millet, Germanische Heldensage, the work of Shami Ghosh, the articles by Goering and Sebo in Interrogating the Germanic).

I think Carlstak is correct when he points the way forward. I think we need to make it very clear that many/most scholars now doubt that the "Germani" ever had a unified culture or identity beyond language, but that does not mean that we can simply throw out the old term at this point. I was, like Andrew Lancaster, angry and horrified when I first heard about Walter Goffart and the denial of a common Germanic culture. That was back in 2010, however, and I was able to make my peace with it. We can still describe things as Germanic (i.e. we don't need to go as far as those scholars who want to eliminate the terminology entirely - they do not make up a majority). We do need to present the problems with the term in an informed way - but one that does not take up the whole article. As an example of how I think this can be done on a much smaller scale, see my text in the relatively new article Germanic heroic legend#Definition, specifically the last paragraph.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:35, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Carlstak is right, in that, we cannot throw out the baby with the bath water. To me, Austronesier's comment that "The formation of an identity out of patterns of wider cultural, linguistic or whatsoever coherence is a chimera (or a hydra), but so is the insistent perpetuation of its deconstruction," is the most fitting description of the problem. Ermenrich's solution of balancing the matter as he's done with Germanic heroes is precisely the kind of concision I had in mind for dealing with the academic minefield of "Germanic" in general. Perhaps at some point, the various peoples considered Germanic can be listed with synopsized histories emphasizing their uniqueness as individual groups, the geographic dispersion that occurred over time, their subsequent Romanization and the effects that such cultural interaction rendered. That will help dispel any false dichotomies of the Germanic peoples as a monolith for Wikipedia readers. --Obenritter (talk) 13:57, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I'll just say I'm happy with the above posts. It seems worth continually remarking that I have always seen my work on this article as an emergency patch-up, waiting for a new consensus, so there are no strong defenders of the current situation, only worriers about not going back to problems of the past. The challenge was, and IMHO remains, how do we tone down the definitional/methodological discussion at the opening without having the article slip back to what was happening between July 2019 and January 2020 (and had been building up for years before that). My vague idea is that to avoid scholarly detail, we need "clear English" instead about the doubts and debates. I felt in the past that this would be too controversial to some editors? To say the least it does not get away from the distastefulness of saying that this term, commonly used in a workaday way in various humanities, has a problem? But if we can accept that little bit of shock, then we would have a way forward.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:58, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

My thoughts....

My thoughts on the article is that it's entirely too dense. There is too much on the various Roman author's definitions which is oddly intermixed with modern controversies about the concept, but for the average reader (not someone in academia who is well versed in the topic) it's utterly unreadable and makes no sense in its placement - it just rambles and doesn't inform the reader about WHY all these long dead Roman guys are important. As a historian, I'd be interested in this sort of material but it's not helpful to the actual topic of the article .. whether we're going with the "Germanic peoples" exist angle or if we're going with the opposite angle... all this stuff just buries the topic under historiography that's not going to be relevant to explaining the controversy. There's 11K words in the article, and 4400 are on the historical definitions of "Germanic peoples".

Frankly, this article reads more like a grad level paper on the historiography of the topic than an actual attempt to concisely explain what the controversy is to the non-historian/linguist/sociologist/etc. It needs severe pruning and cutting out of academic minutiae. Until THAT problem is solved, it's always going to be a confusing mishmash of an article that can't convey what its about because no one can read it enough to figure it out. Ealdgyth (talk) 14:22, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Good points.--Berig (talk) 16:27, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

No disagreement from me.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:45, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

As you say, Ealdgyth, the article is nearly opaque to the naif. I believe your points should be applied to any reorganization of the article, if that is ever done,;-) although I would say it should go with neither "the Germanic peoples exist angle" nor with "the opposite angle". Our purpose is to describe the opposing views, not to adopt one or the other as the point of view of the article itself. Carlstak (talk) 17:12, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly, Carlstak!--Berig (talk) 17:16, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Well, as an "outsider" .. I can't make heads or tails of what's being proposed for the article direction, at least from reading this talk page. But that's a totally different problem than the actual article content. Ealdgyth (talk) 17:21, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Assuming the folklorists are on board, I think there’s actually a viable path forward in the section above.—-Ermenrich (talk) 17:30, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with all the above. Thanks Ealdgyth. There's a history of how we got here, as I am sure you can imagine, but once we have enough people talking we will move ahead. I am wondering if it would help to make some kind of spin-off article already about the Germanic concept's history and debates etc. If such a thing existed it might help editors start the pruning process with the confidence that there is another place where the more scholarly aspects are discussed in detail, so that they are not just being deleted completely from WP. What do others think? I could potentially help on that, or kick it off, if others think it is a good idea. But what would we call it? Of course in German every good topic has a Begriff or 5, but not sure Wikipedians like "concept" in article title names?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:03, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I will weigh in here once more, as a warning or on a cautionary note: too great a reliance on scholars and academicians can never bring satisfaction or peace. Academicians live for controversy. Historical facts are kind of like real property, i.e. land. They're not making any more of it. Those facts exist more or less inertly; the only thing ever new about them is how they are interpreted and argued over by scholars. Although ... new facts have been created recently, namely, the wealth of DNA evidence on ancient peoples. And guess what? David Reich's brilliant and scholarly book just raised more debate! Wikipedia can only succeed as an encyclopedia by presenting facts first and then barely nodding to the academic debates swirling about them. Dynasteria (talk) 00:28, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@Dynasteria: there have been lots of attempts to make encyclopedic websites, and Wikipedia has been the most successful one with its specific strategy on how to handle things. We don't try to "pick a winner" when there is scholarly disagreement. We report the disagreements, and only make our report of "facts" simple when a scholarly field has itself decided upon a "winner". This works well. The complication here is that we have several fields and schools who once shared a terminology, but have grown apart. That would normally be easy to fix by just splitting up topics and disambiguating carefully. However, in some cases the older terminology contains presuppositions which are NOT seen as facts anymore, causing more concern in some fields than others. There is (as I'm sure you've noticed) a push to simplify our story about this, but the MORE it is simplified the LESS compromising can be done in terms of respecting the old terminology? I'll be interested to see how people propose to do this, but your idea of ignoring scholars is something you could do on another website, but not here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:22, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Why a spin-off article about the Germanic concept's history and debates, etc., Andrew? That's basically what we're talking about doing with this article. We don't need to start another discursive discussion here—we need to stay focused on getting this one in good order—I thought we all agreed on that. Since we have so many content creators with expertise, I was thinking that someone could start boldly pruning the article, perhaps temporarily reducing it to bare bones, and the experts could write about the history of whichever school they follow, with the various histories assembled in the article, without interminable discussion, because we will be merely describing those positions in their appropriate sections. Everyone will have their say, without unproductive debate. Carlstak (talk) 00:53, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@Carlstak: I don't have a clear vision of how this would look so maybe I am over-worrying, but I suspect that unless we have another place for it, it means that much of the discussion of the history of the concept, and the debates, will end up being deleted from WP and replaced by a simple statement that there is disagreement? Maybe you and the other editors see a way to avoid this. In that case call my comment a back-up idea? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:22, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

With all due respect, Andrew, I think you over-worry everything. Why can't we just step back and let change happen, without trying to anticipate every possible issue that might arise? It seems to me that is why there is no progress in improving the article. Carlstak (talk) 12:20, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@Carlstak: I don't think I'm holding up anything, and I think people know I'm not against bold editing. Quite the opposite, LOL. I understand that in answer to my question you see discussion of the concept debates as staying here, but being re-worked. Sounds good, apart from the query raised below about making sure we avoid too many "parallel" schools all being treated as equally mainstream, as also explained by Austronesier. I think we can be simpler than that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:44, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I believe that; you've said so before. When it comes to the discussion, however, xtools shows that presently you've made 815 or (45.2%) of the edits on this page, and added 721,614 bytes, or 56.8%, of its text. Second place editor has made 179 (9.9%) edits, and added 220,121 (17.3%) bytes. Carlstak (talk) 14:17, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster:, while I'm sure you mean well, I think Carlstak is right and it might be best to limit your replies for a while. You do tend to dominate the discussion, which has the side effect of chilling attempts to edit the article, whether you intend it to or not.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:34, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Beg to differ, Ealdgyth, moving the article forward is not "a totally different problem than the actual article content". The article's problematic content, now stagnated, is exactly what we want to move forward from. The consensus here is that the article in its present state sucks. Carlstak (talk) 03:25, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I second Carlstak's proposal above "and the experts could write about the history of whichever school they follow, with the various histories assembled in the article, without interminable discussion, because we will be merely describing those positions in their appropriate sections. Everyone will have their say, without unproductive debate.", but we need to have a maximum length for every school, so the section on a specific historian doesn't explode in size.--Berig (talk) 07:18, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not opposing anything, but concerning those words, I can't quite envision how this will look simpler yet, and maybe I'm not yet understanding the proposal. Won't we end up with different sections of the article essentially arguing against each other, and covering the same partly-shared history of the definitions and debates based on different POVs? (That was something which was happening in late 2019.) If the topics are truly separable we could be just splitting them into different articles? (That was something everyone seemed opposed to in early 2020.) Having said that, I will be interested to keep reading.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:35, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Presenting the range of opinions for the main topic and every subtopic is the probably the only way to go. Every school attributes a different degree of thingishness to the term "Germanic", ranging from presumed emic collective identity all the way to zero validity except for the textual record about the Germani and the linguistic family with continues to the carry the name solely for historical reasons. This affects every subtopic. So it is virtually impossible to separate debate from content.

What we should clearly avoid is the principle of "each-one-adopts-their-pet-scholar/school", which leads to an indiscriminate accumulation of School A says, School B says etc., each from presented only either from an internal angle, or from the opposing angle (with all its polemics and strawman distortions). It's utterly ridiculous to let School B talk about School A in Wikivoice (e.g. "The Vienna School of History is a revisionist school of history"—source: Liebeschuetz LOL). Ideally, each discussion should rely on honest and non-polemic secondary sources. Obviously, such sources are hard to find in the 2000s, but this discussion has brought up several sources from 2020/2021 that we can take as guidance for a decently neutral presentation of the overarching debate (but keeping in mind that no scholar can fully detach her-/himself from her/his POV in such a review). In the same way, we must also to dig up secondary sources that review the subtopics from all angles, which might be a harder task. –Austronesier (talk) 08:51, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Sounds correct to me. I think the actual definition debate is not so complicated. There really is a recognized mainstream, and then critics. Discussion of the definitions (or implied definitions) used in specific fields like archaeology and linguistics, outside that main debate, are more challenging to keep simple.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:04, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Actually, my "a totally different problem than the actual article content" comment was about the insanely long and discursive and (frankly) impenetrable walls of text on the talk page that make it difficult for the outsider to figure out what's being proposed to move the article content forward. If I had even the slightest bit of knowledge about the disput, I'd start whacking on article content, but I'm not at all knowledgeable about the topic so I've restrained myself. But the long discussions on the talk page aren't getting anywhere with improving the article, so someone probably needs to do something ... Ealdgyth (talk) 12:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Many of us have been saying just that since forever. That's what I'm trying to cut through with my proposal—it's a call to action rather than more endless discussion and no progress. Someone more knowledgable than me needs to get bold. As the hippies used to say, "just do it.";-) Carlstak (talk) 13:15, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Wasn't that the ethos of WP in the early days? "So fix it". Those words now redirect to the WP:BOLD guideline, also called WP:FIXIT, which starts: "Be bold can be explained in three words: 'Go for it.' " That's what I'm saying. Carlstak (talk) 13:27, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I say, to start, get rid of much of the exegesis in the article, it's more clearly explained in the given sources anyway. There is a lot of scholarly jargon, confusing and boring to the average reader, that could be pruned. Even those a little more conversant with the material will be overwhelmed by all the unnecessary depth of detail. Pruning is something I could do, but won't have time because I'm re-embarking on my commission. So why don't some of you big strong editors get in there and kick some ass?;-) Carlstak (talk) 02:13, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Ealdgyth, you would be an ideal person to do some pruning, if you still want to, because you're new here, don't seem to have any alliances, and aren't subject to feeling inhibited because of loyalty to a friend. I think the editors who contributed the materials would take it less personally to see it removed if a neutral, previously uninvolved editor did it. I know what it's like to see content one sweated over removed, but when I saw that it was replaced by something manifestly better, i.e., more helpful to the reader, I could accept it. Carlstak (talk) 03:33, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree. I think you would do a good job, Ealdgyth.--Berig (talk) 10:52, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, but my wiki time is much reduced and what time I can carve out really should go to projects I've left half-finished. I'm happy to give outside opinions though. Ealdgyth (talk) 13:32, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

That's a shame, Ealdgyth, thanks anyway. Carlstak (talk) 15:03, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm going to put my comment in this section rather than starting a new one, because the person to whom it is addressed is already here. Andrew Lancaster, you've come to my talk page with another wall of text, but I haven't read it, and I'm not going to. You seem to be obtuse to what several editors have been telling you for a while. It comes down to this: you talk too much, and you're muddying the waters. I'm asking you to keep the promise you made to shut up (your words way above, "I promised to shut up"). Carlstak (talk) 11:43, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

New book on Archaeology and Germani

Austronesier, since you asked about it specifically, but this will interest everyone: a friend of mine who works on the tribes-formerly-known-as-the-Anglo-Saxons has just made me aware of this volume by Heiko Steuer „Germanen“ aus Sicht der Archäologie. For some reason, the Wikimedia Library only grants me access to some of the chapters individually, but I was able to download the whole book. Besides the use of scare quotes in the title, he oftens refers to the "population of Germania" when discussing the people-formerly-known-as-Germani, though he also sometimes uses the plain "Germanen". For instance, he says that the aim of the book is to write about "Germania from the Perspective of the Germani" ("Germanien aus Sicht der Germanen", title of chapter 2). His explicit aim is: "to turn the view of the "Germani" away from the written sources and to try to display the living environment the "Germani" overwhelmingly with archaeological sources, as "archaeoogy of the 'Germani'" or "archaeology and Germani" or even "archaeology in Germania". die Blickrichtung auf die „Germanen“ von den schriftlichen Quellen abzuwenden und zu versuchen, die Lebenswelten der „Germanen“ überwiegend von den archäologischen Quellen aus zu schildern, als „Archäologie der Germanen“ oder „Archäologie und Germanen“ oder auch „Archäologie in Germanien“. (p. 19). He complains that most works on the "Germani" do not cover archaeology in any detail.

He notes on page 28 that the use of the term "Germani" is today very controversial and that some people want to stop using it altogether, while other archaeologists wish to keep using it because it is generally understandable. On page 30, he notes, following the discussions in the Reallexikon in 1998, that every discipline now has its own definition of "Germani"/germanic", and that the "least controversial" aspect is the linguistic definition, for which reason some now prefer "Germanic-speaking". Nevertheless, Steuer has decided to use "Germanen", "germanisch" and "Germanien" (p. 33).

This is how he begins the first chapter: Wenn auch diese Publikation im Titel wieder den allgemein im Bewusstsein gespeicherten Begriff „Germanen“ enthält, dann muss gleich zu Anfang betont werden, dass es im Nachfolgenden nicht eigentlich um eine imaginäre Völkerschaft „Germanen“ geht. Vielmehr geht es geographisch um den Raum zwischen Weichsel und Rhein sowie zwischen den Ländern an der Ostsee und der Donau als Siedlungsgebiet und um die Bewohner dieses Gebietes, also um die Bevölkerung in diesem Raum. Behandelt werden Kulturerscheinungen aller Facetten, auch Kunsterzeugnisse, die innerhalb dieser Landschaften während der ersten Jahrhunderte um und nach Chr. Geb. entstanden sind. Zeit und Raum verbinden mit ihren Bewohnern die Aussagen für ein Gebiet, das ich im Folgenden als „Germanien“ bezeichne (Abb. 1). Aber, und das ist entscheidend: Alle die zu schildernden Facetten früheren Lebens sind keine Eigenschaften, die „Germanen“ als Völkerschaft definieren und in ihrem „Wesen“ gespeichert sind, sondern sie sind im genannten Raum entstanden, wer auch immer darin wohnte.

Even though this publication once again contains the general term "Germani", which is saved in the [common consciousness], in its title, one must stress right away at the beginning, that [the subject] in the following is not really the imaginary people of the "Germani". Rather it is about the area geographically between the Vistula and Rhine as well as the lands on the Baltic and the Danube as an area of settlement and about the inhabitants of this territory, therefore about the population of this area. Cultural manifestations in all their facets are discussed, including artistic products that were created within these landscrapes during the first centuries around and after the birth of Christ. Time and place connect the attestations for a territory that I refer to as "Germania" in the following, with the inhabitants [of these territories]. But, and this is decisive: all the facets of earlier life that will be portrayed are not qualities that define the "Germani" as a people and are saved in their "Being", but they have appeared in the aforesaid area, no matter who lived there.

My apologies for the very clunky translation - German academic prose is not easily rendered in English.

Anyway, for those of us who read German, this is a great resource for the page - he discusses settlement types, evidence of lordship, transportation, agriculture, crafts, gold and treasure, religion, warfare, sacrifices, graves, etc. etc.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:55, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: I already noted this same source on Austronesier's talk page, but now I suppose it would be silly not to post a short note here together with yours. Compared to most archaeology works this seems really well suited to use on this article because of its engagement with the bigger perspective. I would note that this article's archaeology section is currently a relatively separable task which has been waiting for a source like this for a while. In a sense he is going back to the Caesar/Tacitus approximate and geographical definition, and dropping the assumption that the Germanic peoples need to be one material culture or language family. Each of the material cultures have their own story but it has been difficult to find sources which are not either dry "primary" work about individual groups of sites, or else totally built around various proposals about what was happening with languages.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:02, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

On pages 1275-1276 he gives ten reasons why he thinks we can speak of some sort of Germanic identity:

1. language
2. runes
3. burial practices
4. warrior groups from different "tribes"
5. spread of jewelry and pottery
6. spread of artistic forms
7. gold bracteates after the 4th century
8. gold sheet figures ("Goldblechfiguren")
9. the encounter with the Roman world and material continuity into the Viking period
10. again the encounter with Rome (unless I'm missing something - I'm sort of skimming)

So it seems that the issue isn't as cut and dry as I thought and it really is mostly historians who are trying to abolish the term entirely.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:05, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

It is those points that make me quite perplexed as to why this historical revisionism is so popular among historians. This article can't be the sole domain of revisionistic historians, and I expect the views of archaeologists and scholars of historical linguistics to be just as relevant.--Berig (talk) 14:37, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't say its revisionism, with all of its negative connotation. It's a reaction to the information given in the written sources. Steuer's work is full of examples of how the written sources are obviously inaccurate from an archaeological perspective, and it's not surprising that many historians would find them less than trustworthy from a historical perspective: Caesar and Tacitus use cliches from other ethnographies, etc. What has made the idea of "Germanic identity" especially suspect is that we don't get any descriptions of similarities of the Germanic languages even from the perspectives of their speakers until the Carolingian period.

As I've said elsewhere, we need to incorporate the criticisms of the term and the reasons for this into the article. Steuer doesn't just dismiss these criticisms, he takes them seriously, which is why he's so careful in how he presents his ideas. "Germanic identity" is probably too strong a translation even, he says "ethnic group feeling" ("ethnisches Gemeinschaftsgefühl"). Nevertheless, he finds it appropriate to continue using the terms Germanic.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:53, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I am fine with criticism, but should it be the topic of the article?--Berig (talk) 14:57, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

No, but it needs to be a significant part of this article.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:00, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

What would be a source from historical linguistics equivalent to this new work? I have a feeling that Steuer's book is a relatively unprecedented step forward in terms of the fields trying to adapt by defining their terms more carefully. Certainly the RGA circles that Steuer is part of include many whose speciality is more in a linguistic direction. I think as a collective they've been working towards such adapted approaches for some time.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:10, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: after looking at that list of 10, I notice that it is presented as an argument for the existence of a community consciousness and inter-communicating region among Germanic-speaking peoples. IMHO that makes a big difference. Old dilemmas which still seem open still seem to include: how long any community consciousness lasted, which Germanic peoples spoke Germanic languages in which periods, and to which extent Rome was a cause of language dispersal and community consciousness. Correct? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:24, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Ermenrich IMHO you are wrong here. For example:

Nun gibt es auch (zehn) Gründe, die für ein überregionales Gemeinschaftsbe-wusstsein der Bevölkerungsgruppen in Germanien sprechen, für einen „germanisch-sprachigen“ Kommunikationsraum.

We need to look at the way our sources define their terms and then make sure we do not equate apples and pears, let alone make apples fight with pears in a fantasy play-off.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:50, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

TNTing the lead

So Andrew Lancaster has a draft of the lead in this sandbox. I was looking at it trying to figure out what I would change, but it seems to me like I would just apply wp:TNT to it and start over. I think the focus on Roman authors is misplaced and that the obvious place to start would be the linguistic aspect of Germanic peoples before even getting into the geographic issue of Germania. The rest would follow. We'd include a single paragraph in the lead about the controversies over the term. Roman descriptions can go in a paragraph on history rather than being the focus of the lead.

Unfortunately I'm not sure I'm the one to write this. Like many of you I'm very busy with other projects that give me more joy than endlessly arguing about Germanic peoples. But I'm more than willing to lend a hand.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:08, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

As a comparison, if we look at the German article, it begins by saying Germanic people are traditionally identified by speaking a Germanic language. It then mentions "Germania magna". Then follows a paragraph on history and then mentions other articles. The lead doesn't mention any of the controversies, but we would.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:22, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Again, I'm an outsider and not knowledgeable about the topic area, but this whole focus on the lead is approaching things the wrong way around. The lead should summarize the article, and until you get the article into shape, you're putting the cart before the horse. Get the article into shape, then the lead will write itself because it will be the summary of the article that it should be. I've found over the years of editing wikipedia that folks who want to focus on the lead are often here to push an agenda - because they are wanting to make sure "their" version is right there in front of the reader, while folks who are really working to create NPOV content worry about the article body first. Ealdgyth (talk) 20:28, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

You're right - I think we need to TNT the whole article, now that I think about it. I think the best solution is to roll it back to the version created by Obenritter as discussed above, and make adjustments from there. In fact, I'm going to do that and see what happens. At least something will finally have happened.

I also think that, as the most visible part of the article, work on the current lead would help get us going where we want to go. It would also help us identify what the hell this article is about, because at the moment it seems like it's about Greco-Roman writers writing about the Germani. This would be my preferred first paragraph:

The Germanic peoples (Template:Lang-lat) were a historical group of people living in Central Europe and Scandinavia. Traditionally, they have been defined by their use of a Germanic language. The Romans described the area in which they lived as Germania, which modern scholarship typically describes as stretching West to East between the Vistula and Rhine rivers and north to south from Southern Scandinavia to the Danube.

We can add footnotes/argue about the rivers later, but for reference I just followed p. 3 of Steuer's book mentioned above.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:36, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

And done - for some reason all the references are f%^!&$ up now... But I suppose in fixing them, we might start to make some progress?--Ermenrich (talk) 20:45, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Ermenrich – Your proposed changes to the article seem the most cogent and pragmatic, particularly the lead paragraph. Like so many of us, this is coming at a bad time when we're busy on other things, but if we make it a collective group effort and peck away at it over time, we should be able to make notable progress. --Obenritter (talk) 20:49, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: p.3 must be in the contents pages? I have not accessed those. What does it say? Does it really say "Central Europe and Scandinavia"? (That would not even include the Rhine. The only "modern" definition of Germania is classical, and it did not stretch to all parts of the Danube or include all parts of Central Europe.) Honestly I am surprised. I thought Austronesier was talking about using the structure?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:19, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Central Europe and Scandinavia was added on the basis of the German article, Steuer mentions the countries on the Baltic sea instead of specifying Scandinavia (although he talks about it elsewhere). I'm not sure what your definition of Central Europe is, but mine includes all of Germany, including the Rhine. I think you're confused: I say "between the Rhine and Vistula" which obviously does not include the entirety of central Europe, nor the entire length of the Danube if we're only going as far as the Rhine and Vistula.

The discussions about structure, etc. were simply not leading anywhere, so I decided to go back to a version of the article more people were happy with. We can improve it from here.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:31, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Central Europe has multiple meanings in English. During the cold war for many (most?) English speakers it came to be the term for the countries along the Iron Curtin. The peoples of Hungary varied a bit in Roman times, but at most moments none of them were described as being in Germania. The definition proposed above certainly includes Hungary and even Romania the way I read it. A fine point which I may as well mention, is that from the very first descriptions classical ethnographers mentioned Germanic peoples stretching into what is now Belgium, west of the Rhine, and also before Caesar the Bastarnae, later described as Germani, were east of the Carpathians. So there were Germanic peoples outside Germania, meaning we should avoid words which disallow that possibility.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:46, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

That's not the definition of Germania used by Steuer - the focus is the part not conquered by the Romans ("Germania Magna"). This isn't really worth arguing over though - lets focus on actually improving the article.--Ermenrich (talk) 23:53, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Citations

Does anyone know what's going on with the citations? Half of them are from books that weren't cited in the old article.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:07, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I recall that being a major job. Obenritter also put a lot of work into cleaning that up but it got completely messed up again and was not easy to repair. One of the things I recall investing in was reducing the number of long notes, and reducing the number of works in the bibliography because I think a lot were not used. I also replaced many old ones with newer ones. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:24, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I've managed to get most of the notes cited to something, but a few are still missing.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:27, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, so now we are back to an Encyclopedia Britannica version. We are starting with Nordic Bronze Age Proto Germanic people, and Arminius is one of the most important world turning points. Goths won a victory over Iranic peoples. etc etc. This is not coming from Steuer.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:34, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

if it isn’t cited to Steuer, it’s not from Steuer, it’s what was there in the version on July 2 2019. I haven’t gone through the whole lead, I’ve merely reverted to a structure more people were happy with as a basis for further improvements - it was either that or write a new article from scratch.-Ermenrich (talk) 22:15, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

At any rate, Ealdgyth is right: or focus needs to be the article right now, not the lead. I believe it’s not clear what the article is and is not about so we can set about doing that.—Ermenrich (talk) 22:25, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Too much of the page is now back to its original state of just a few days ago. We have more mentions of Aëtius than Theodoric or any other Germanic kings. Pathetic.--Obenritter (talk) 23:12, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Which section are you referring to? Is it the history section I just put back sort of the way it was? What would you like changed exactly Obenritter? We could return to the previous medieval sections potentially - two sections have "citations needed" tags...--Ermenrich (talk) 23:25, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

While I am in agreement with omitting the content from the Proto-Germanic discussion wholesale, as well as the discussion of genetics (which still abides), returning this page back to its Romano-centric focus from the 3rd century forward (poorly cited on top of it) does no service to the history of the Germanic people, but that's just my perspective. The fact that I had to mention that Flavius Aëtius is getting more textual attention/mentions than Gaiseric (entirely unmentioned), Theodoric, or Alaric combined should speak for itself.--Obenritter (talk) 23:45, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

The old version was largely cited to 19th century scholars, so I think the current one is still an improvement. Feel free to change anything you want though. Is there some improved version that was later than July 2 2019 you had in mind?--Ermenrich (talk) 23:51, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree, starting with the lead was not necessarily a good idea in terms of editing, but talking about it a bit would have been wise IMHO, because it encapsulates some of the questions like what this article is about, and it seemed better to start discussing concrete text, not vague generalizations. Anyway something had to happen. One thing I would say though is that coming out of the last round of chaos I feel that one bit of progress we did make was to get agreement what this article is primarily about, and that we would avoid structuring this article around the Kossinna approach of simply equating language, archaeology and ethnicity and using those definitions interchangeably as if they were the same topic, which is basically what we are back to. In fact, I think going quite far back this article has been primarily about the Roman era Germanic peoples, and it has been confirmed a few times, and it is a good topic that deserves an article? I still don't understand what the problem is with that or even what alternatives are being proposed. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:32, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew, we haven't written the section on the controversy and problems with previous scholarly approaches yet. This is exactly the sort of hand-wringing that's prevented anything meaningful from happening here for a year. I'm sorry, but almost no one was happy with the article as you had it - you'd turned this into an article almost entirely about terminology. I've tried to gently remind you a few times that you're sort of wp:BLUDGEONING the conversation here - why don't you let the rest of us work, or maybe do some edits yourself, and we can actually work via action instead of constant hand-wringing?--Ermenrich (talk) 00:03, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Ermenrich you wrote that "I believe it’s not clear what the article is and is not about". Does not seem a minor point to me.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:33, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Culture

Just a note so people don't end up regretting working on something without knowing this. I believe that after July 2019 what is section 5 at the moment was vastly expanded and split out to a large new article, Early Germanic culture.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:38, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Geography

FWIW the Steinacher (Vienna school) article in the "Interrogating" book which we started looking at (and which we should forget!) offers this A term like Germani still evokes, no matter how much one tries to avoid it, notions of contingent identities in vast areas east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, including parts of Scandinavia, and with undefined borders to the east. This is very near to what Roman writers from the first century BCE to the second century CE, especially Caesar and Tacitus, wanted their fellow Romans to believe. For Caesar the Rhine was the one clear boundary.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:54, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Mystery source...

What is The Imperial Teutonic Order given as a source for some of the footnotes? By all the gods, I hope it's not http://www.imperialteutonicorder.com/index.html this "order"... which is blacklisted in fact. Ealdgyth (talk) 00:14, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

It's a blacklisted source that should be removed wherever you see it.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:18, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Started working on Modern definition

I've started working on presenting a modern definition and the controversy around it, but this is by no means finished.

@Alcaios:, I think that we should present the theories of etymology about the term in more detail. Would you be willing to do that?--Ermenrich (talk) 15:03, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I can handle that.

I think the sub-section "modern definitions" does a good job at summarizing the current (and often conflicting) scholarly positions.

It is controversial to say that the "Proto-Germanic population emerged during the Nordic Bronze Age" though (especially since it is stated as a fact in the lead). The only material culture that can be quite confidently associated with Ancient Germanic peoples is the Jastorf culture because a continuity can be demonstrated between this culture and populations described as "Germanic" by the Romans. While the Nordic Bronze Age is one source of the Jastorf culture, one should remain very cautious when equating an archaeological culture with a prehistoric people or language.

There are also some issues in the "linguistics" section, but it can be handled in a future discussion. Alcaios (talk) 17:29, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Please feel free to correct any inaccuracies you see (I am not versed in the early archaeology of the Germani), thank you Alcaios!--Ermenrich (talk) 17:36, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

This is rather a speculation than an inaccuracy. I would mention it but not state it as a fact, especially in the lead. Alcaios (talk) 17:45, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I would say that limiting the Proto-Germanic to *only* the Jastorf culture is also controversial since it disagrees with linguistic evidence from the Uralic languages.--Berig (talk) 17:47, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I've added "securely" since that seems to solve the issue while leaving other controversies out of the lead. I think the current article actually fails to discuss this? Maybe I need to dig out something from an earlier version.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:57, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Actually, the information from the old draft is so bad (and much of it cited to a blacklisted source website) that I think it's best to write about the Jastorf and other cultures proposed links to the Germanic peoples from scratch.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:00, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the position of Alcaios about what the sources say on that, and can help with providing sources if requested. It is pretty clear. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:39, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I have never said that Proto-Germanic should be limited to the Jastorf culture (even though linguists date the emergence of the Proto-Germanic language to ca. 500 BC, so the Nordic Bronze Age would be "Pre-Germanic" rather than "Proto-Germanic"). The thing is that associating Ancient Germanic peoples to the Jastorf culture is way less controversial than to the Nordic Bronze Age. The issue could be discussed in the article, but we cannot write in the lead that the "Proto-Germanic population emerged in the NBA" -- this is both speculative and terminologically incorrect. Alcaios (talk) 23:07, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

This is absolutely correct as far as I can see.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:28, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I would add that most Finnic loanwords were borrowed during the Proto-Germanic rather than the Pre-Germanic period (cf. Grimm's law). It is probable that Proto-Uralic speakers occupied an area further south of Scandinavia, where they were eventually "replaced" (i.e. population replacement or language shift) with Germanic speakers during the first part of the Common Era. Cf. Nedoma: "The oldest loan layers − they can only be dated relatively − possibly trace back to PGmc. times; however, it is doubtful that there are any Pre-Gmc. borrowings (Ritter 1993; on the contrary, inter al. Koivulehtu 2002: 586 ff.)", cited in the previous version of the article. Alcaios (talk) 23:49, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

But, @Alcaios:, the reason why there are no pre-Germanic words in Uralic is because the Uralic languages were probably not spoken in Scandinavia until the Iron Age, see Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate.--Berig (talk) 05:39, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Berig:, you're right (if by Scandinavia you mean "Scandinavia proper", that is without Finland). I'm not familiar enough with Uralic scholarship. I'm going to spend more time with the relevant studies of early loanwords in the coming days. Alcaios (talk) 17:08, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I think Finland is part of this. The hunter and gatherer cultures of the northern Scandinavian forest hinterland have usually been extensions of those of Finland.--Berig (talk) 17:14, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

questioned edit

Edit summary [19] of Ermenrich: No Andrew, for any modern scholar using the concept Germanic people use Germanic language - any ancient people NOT using a Germanic language would not be Germanic by the standards of modern scholars who use the term, even if Roman authors called them that. For other scholars, see the word “traditionally “. The second sentence of the lead is not the place to start deconstructing the term. Ermenrich, saving time, you are flat wrong, and I completely disagree, but I won't "bludgeon" you with evidence unless you demand a full debate on it. You are saying all modern scholars agree that all Germanic peoples are known to have spoken Germanic languages? Really?? If the second sentence is not the place to put a Pandora's box like this, then I think we have to get it out of there? If this article is about the history of Germanic languages then please tell me where is the article about the Germanic peoples? And "deconstructing"? What is going on with that word? That is apparently just a culture war word for "defining" here, so yes the opening sentences of an article are a pretty good place to be defining the article topic?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:01, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew, we need to find a balance between Goffart, Wolfram and Heather. All of them are respected scholars in Germanic/Barbarian studies. If we manage to collaborate with each other efficiently, we can write an article where any significant voice in the field can be heard : "Heather argues that ... On the other hand, Goffart thinks that..." Alcaios (talk) 23:19, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

That's true (assuming that "Goffart, Wolfram and Heather" is meant as a rough simplification) but I don't see the connection to the defence of this sentence which has been added to the lead and is just completely incorrect? None of those three scholars would agree that all Germanic peoples spoke Germanic languages by definition, except in the tautological case that someone is voluntarily using the controversial definition of Germanic peoples which says they speak Germanic languages. All of these authors know that this is not the only modern definition. It is the old linguistic definition which is now widely rejected. What language did the Sicambri speak? What language the Ariovistus, Ambiorix, and Arminius speak at home? We do not know. Please find me a strong source saying that the Eburones, Tencteri, Usipetes and Sicambri were not Germanic. Everyone calls them "Germanic" and doubt about their language is mainstream, which proves that the definition of Germanic is not always linguistic. I am not even trying to use examples from Tacitus, but serious scholars know they can't just ignore his testimony on this either, as none of these proposals could ever have existed without him. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:45, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew, you are trying to force the definition of a single clique of historians onto the article - this is precisely why no one liked how you had edited the article before. We have it from the mouth of the Reallexikon itself and from Steuer that the modern definition of Germanic peoples is people who spoke Germanic languages. It has traditionally been understood as an ethnolinguistic group. Some scholars like Goffart are now saying that we have to use the definition that the Romans themselves used, as this is not, apparently linguistic, but that is hardly the majority perspective in the field. The same people who want us to only use the Roman definition also want us to not use the term "Germanic" at all. We can't have the article written from the perspective of people who think the subject does not or should not exist, that's just ridiculous. We can mention criticisms, but there's no getting around the fact that most scholarship has historically associated being Germanic with speaking a Germanic language.--Ermenrich (talk) 23:51, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

The comment was not directly related to the issue but to the constant "fights" I've been seeing on this talk page between editors. That said, I would argue that Roman/Greek sources were sometimes biased and ill-informed. Ancient Germanic peoples spoke Germanic languages and shared common cultural traits, just like Ancient Greeks spoke Greek dialects and worshipped Greek gods, no matter if they or contemporary observers saw them as "Greeks" or not. But this is a personal point of view. Alcaios (talk) 23:58, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

You're right Alcaios, we need a balanced view on this. It's true (maybe most) historians and some archaeologists dislike the term now, but it's definitely also true that the traditional definition, based originally in historical linguistics, is still going strong and is actually the basis for the term as used elsewhere. We need to include Goffart, Pohl, etc., but we can't base the article around their definitions (namely that we shouldn't call them Germanic peoples), otherwise it would be a redirect to Barbarian.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:03, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Everyone agrees that many Ancient Germanic peoples were influenced by Celtic speakers. The name of the Eburones and their leaders are most likely of Celtic origin. Yet, they are described as "Germanic" by Caesar. But the ethnic name "French", as well as most of the names of French kings, are of Germanic origin. Would anyone argue, based on these facts, that the French are a Germanic people? I don't agree with most of Goffart says, but he's right to point out that ethnicity is way more complex than the essentialist vision of 19th–early 20th century scholars. Alcaios (talk) 00:10, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

No disagreement here, Alcaios. The problem is that we can't present Goffart's views (or Pohl's views) as the "correct" subject of the article when it goes against the entire tradition of talking about Germanic peoples and they don't want us to call them that anyway.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:24, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Ermenrich: Please quit the ad hominem, which is normally sign interneters know they are twisting the sources, and just bring your sources. (Note my citations above.) IMHO you have misread. There are disagreements between scholars, but you are getting confused about what they are. Tacitus and all serious scholars who have engaged with this topic know that we can't say all the peoples known as Germanic peoples definitely spoke what we now call Germanic languages, except of course if they are talking in the context of using the 19th century / Kossinna definition which just equates language with ethnicity etc. That is just a tautology - a word game which makes the many Germanic peoples non-Germanic. Mathematicians don't bother arguing when they know differences can be accounted for by different definitions, and neither should we. This is not about minority and majority positions, or "nobody likes you". For goodness sake. Kossinna is not mainstream. We need to avoid mixing apples and pears. If deconstruction means defining our terms, then it is WP policy. You can look up the Eburones, Sicambri, Usipetes etc in RLA. You can also check what material culture they were in (La Tène). But if this article is about a speculative linguistic topic, then tell me where is the article about the historically real group which they were part of? I think they were part of a group called the "Germanic peoples" in both ancient and modern sources. Prove me wrong. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:12, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Many "Germanic" peoples are only not Germanic if you insist on using the definition of Julius Caesar, Andrew. The Reallexikon says that the Ebrunones were Germani cisrhenenses in Latin and then discusses whether they were Germanic or not: So steht die Forsch. hier vor der Frage, wieweit sich diese Beobachtungen mit der oben erwähnten Aussage Caesars vertragen, auch die E. seien ‚Germani‘ genannt worden, oder präziser formuliert, inwieweit sich diese Bezeichnung mit dem deckt, was die Sprachwiss. als ‚Germanen‘ bezeichnet. The linguistic definition is, and always has been, primary for modern scholarship.

It is not an ad hominem attack to point out that you are trying to force a definition on the article that is at odds with what "Germanic peoples" is commonly understood to mean outside among historians who don't want us to use the term at all, and that this is precisely why this article was tagged as non-neutral and has attracted numerous complaints over the past year.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:20, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

You know this is wrong, and you have brought no source to prove it: The linguistic definition is, and always has been, primary for modern scholarship. Most people who come to insult and bait this article's editors do not read the main sources, but you do, so you can't claim ignorance about the fact that complaints on behalf of this belief are not according to WP policy. What would be ridiculous would be if WP goes back to giving Kossinna's methodology in it's own voice for any long period time. This is certainly not mainstream and I can't see how you would avoid this being a political compromise that has nothing to do with WP policy or the publications of experts in this field.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:40, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Wie gesagt, entscheidend ist, dass der Begriff „Germanen“ ursächlich und überzeugend von der Seite der Sprachwissenschaft her zu definieren ist. Die Definition des „Germanischen“ von der Sprache her ergibt sich aus der Überlieferung von Namen und Texten im beschreibbar eigenen Idiom. "As said above, it's decisive that the term "Germanen" is causally and convincingly to be defined from the area of linguists. The definition of the "Germanic" preceding from language is produced from the transmission of names and texts in describably their own idiom." Steuer, 2021, p. 30. The RGA also says that the definition originates linguistically.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:47, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Am wenigsten umstritten ist der Germanenbegriff der Sprachwissenschaft; denn „germanische“ Sprachen haben ohne Zweifel Gemeinsamkeiten, weshalb sie so definiert worden sind, und von der Philologie aus wurde der Begriff dann in die anderen Disziplinen übernommen. Man spricht deshalb auch von „germanischsprechenden“ Bevölkerungen. "The least controversial is the "Germanic" term of linguistics; for "Germanic" languages doubtlessly have commonalities, for which reason they are defined [as Germanic languages], and out of philology the term was taken up into other disciplines. For this reason, one also speaks of "Germanic-speaking" populations." (Steuer, ibid.).--Ermenrich (talk) 01:00, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Steuer goes to great lengths to explain which definition he is using. To say the least, this does not show that there is a consensus that the definition he uses is the only serious one in modern academia. The first chapters of his large work show a lot of agreement with those who write in different ways, as I am sure you have noticed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 01:21, 22 July 2021 (UTC) Here are the sentences before the second quote you give, which argue against the way you are using those words: Vielmehr versucht jede einzelne Wissenschaft zu definieren, was bei ihr „Germanen“ bedeuten. Es gibt also einen Germanenbegriff der Geschichtswissenschaft, einen der Archäologischen Wissenschaft und einen der Sprachwissenschaft. [ADDED: in other words historians and linguists use different definitions of Germanic peoples.] Also notice how this ONE author says we can use the terminology "Germanic speaking". Indeed, we can. We can easily split discussion of that concept out and avoid being confusing, or we can deliberately be confusing. Why would we deliberately be confusing? We know why.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 01:34, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Alcaios: so are you really saying you can bring good sources showing that a clear scholarly consensus is that the Eburones, the largest part of the original Caesar-period Germani, were only pretending to not be what we now call Germanic speakers? Hmm. I think all evidence including archaeological evidence makes all the early Germani on both sides of the Rhine, and covering a large part of what is now Germany, a kind of Gaul who used fewer luxury goods and coins, and indeed Caesar and authors after him continued to write that way. Tell me if your want citations, ancient or modern. FWIW Steuer, for example, is far more careful how he defines his terms, and explains which part of the topic he is talking about.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:25, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Caesar says, in a definition that everyone says is problematic, that the Eburones were Germani. They don't "pretend" to be it, since Germani is by all accounts not a name any Germanic people ever called themselves.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:33, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I think you might be misunderstanding. According to Tacitus the Eburones and their neighbours were really called Germani before the innovation by which that name started to be used for more peoples. When applied to them the name was not an innovation. Their name was extended to other peoples, not the other way around. Modern sources also call them Germani. Also, I guess you must not realize that Caesar called the Eburones not only Germani, but also Gauls, and Belgae. He never said anything, anywhere, about Germanic languages. Pre-empting any "technical" complaint, this is not just what the primary source says, but also what modern secondary sources say. As human beings we can doubt whatever we like in primary sources, but modern secondary sources couldn't say anything without accepting most of it. You are picking on the fact that a classical source is (as always) "problematic", but not explaining whether there is consensus among modern secondary sources about any specific problem relevant to this discussion here. So back to the issue: modern experts do not all say that all Germani spoke Germanic languages. And we can not "pick a winner" (let alone make a minority position into a winner) based on the idea of choosing the position which makes the article easiest to write, and is most friendly to people who post angry messages on this talk page but never cite sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 01:19, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

What I mean is that even if we can prove that an ethnic name (or personal names for that matters) is of Germanic or Celtic origin, this doesn't imply that they spoke a Germanic or Celtic language. Historical examples demonstrate that this is not always the case. Therefore, founding the definition of "Germanic peoples" on the language they spoke is a dead-end since we'll never know which language most these peoples actually spoke before the Early Middle Ages. Ethnicity is way more complex than saying "Caesar wrote that they were Germani" or "their ethnic name is of Germanic origin" so they can certainly be described as a Germanic people. Alcaios (talk) 00:38, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

What I mean fundamentally is that even if I agree that Ancient Germanic peoples can be defined as the populations who spoke a Germanic language and shared common cultural traits, it is very difficult to tell whether they spoke a Germanic language or shared (inherited) Germanic cultural traits based on our primary sources (Caesar, Tacitus, et al.) Alcaios (talk) 00:47, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I again agree with Alcaios. Hence the use of the word "traditionally" in the lead and other hedging.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:51, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Goffart, Halsall et al. are playing on these ambiguities to say that Germanic peoples never existed. The right way of thinking would be to carefully analyze all available evidence in order to reach the most probable conclusions, or to simply say that we don't know (and will never know) with certainty which of these pre-Migration Period peoples were Germanic or not. Alcaios (talk) 01:00, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

But those two authors don't argue this in any way which makes sense here, as has been pointed out many times. (Their concern is the question of whether there was a single Germanic-speaking people in late antiquity.) And why do you suddenly mention these two authors who make people angry? It seems like a change of topic?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 01:25, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)So Alcaios (slightly tongue in cheek) if all evidence is pointing in a certain direction, we can be sure it is wrong? Perhaps you will say that is not what you mean, but anyway it is just presented as your personal argument so far. What is important is whether we can find proof that modern secondary sources are in consensus that languages define who was Germanic, and that the Eburones and Sicambri and so on, who many experts believe probably spoke Gaulish, actually spoke Germanic. I don't think the sources allow us to say this in good conscience. I think when we come down to it, you'd have to agree Alcaios? I understand this is controversial to some people, but IMHO we can't ignore this reality.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 01:19, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: 'Germanic peoples' is a modern scholarly construct. There is no obligation that any of Caesar's Germani be included. There is nothing wrong with saying that, e.g., the Germani of Tacitus were not in fact all Germanic peoples. You cannot simply put together a source which says the Sicambri spoke Gaulish and another which calls them Germanic and conclude that, for scholars, Germanic peoples included some Gaulish speakers. For example, see Rolf Hachmann, The Germanic Peoples (1971), p. 71: "In this sense [the total cultural picture revealed by archaeological evidence] neither the Sugambri and Ubii nor the Vangiones, Nemetes and Triboci can have been Germans, even though the Romans referred to them as such." By the way, I think this would be a good source for this article. Although dated, it addresses certain important definitional questions head-on. Unfortunately, I do not have full access.

I would support a separate article on the Romans' Germani, as I've said before, so that the ancient concept is not conflated with the modern concept. Srnec (talk) 22:32, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Srnec: Alcaios Austronesier In past discussions about such ideas the consensus seemed to be that because of the significant overlap and unclear boundaries, both topics (Germanic-speaking Germani and La Tène Germani), should be covered by this article. But looking at recent edits we've given up on that, and the article is moving to a more Hachmann-like position which will mean defining the La Tène Germani as either "not real" Germani or else they really spoke Germanic but had all their names translated? (FWIW I don't see that as "the" modern concept, but just one common modern approach.) Whatever the case, it is awkward to use this language orientation for all Germani in the Caesar/Tacitus period because language use was unclear for most of them. We'd be presenting this whole topic as just a problem. So I think no matter how many articles we have, at least for this period the definition of Germanic peoples needs to be looser, and more uncertainty about language admitted. For this practical reason, for such early periods where the languages and the peoples are hard to connect, I've argued that proto-language discussion should mainly be in language-focussed articles. (Sorry if I am repeating myself.) But indeed (and maybe this is more approximately what you mean Srnec) perhaps another idea is split by periods: If this article is to be more language-focussed now, then the "narrative history" of the Caesar-Tacitus period Germani be moved out, letting this article focus on speculations about how Germanic languages were dispersing during that period? In any case I think as Ermenrich progresses, there will be call to reconsider if any splits are needed and this is one area where it is worth thinking ahead about it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:57, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, 'Germanic peoples' is a modern scholarly construct, and as we have seen, read and discussed, this construct is defined in different ways by different disciplines and scholars. (We say this in the lead and there it should stay.) One of these definition includes the identification of 'Germanic peoples' with Caesar/Tacitus's Germani, but this is just one out many possibilities and thus neither wrong nor absolute truth. If scholars choose to define them differently, of course the outcome can be that certain tribes subsumed by the classical sources under Germani are not counted as "Germanic" from the chosen angle. And we should be aware from Sebastian Brather's research that populations which have left a archaeological track of a "Germanic-looking" material culture might not necessarily have been Germanic speakers, and vice versa. This natural fuzziness does not inevitably render the term "Germanic" useless. It's complex, challenging, and defies dogma. –Austronesier (talk) 07:49, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Outsider stepping in again...

Okay, first, whatever Caesar, Tacitus, Herodotus, etc may have said, we should not be basing our article on interpreting what they said. They are the primary sources, and the historians/linguists/etc are the folks who interpret those sources (as well as others) to create the secondary sources we use for our articles. So let's not get side-tracked into discussing what Caesar/Tacitus/etc may have meant, because that's pretty much textbook WP:OR. (Likewise trying to figure out what language ancient figures spoke at home isn't something we can do nor does it help the goal of improving the article). Secondly, we need to focus on the secondary sources - and depersonalize the discussion. If a source isn't up for inclusion, we shouldn't be discussing it. So we need to stop dropping "Kossinna" into the discussion unless we're thinking of using them as a source (which I gather no one is since he's been dead for a while). Third, if folks are putting up German sources, can they be translated for the folks who don't speak German? Same for any other foreign language source. Fourth, can we again ... depersonalize the discussion. Try to address the sources, not the other editors. Don't do challenges - we're supposed to be editing cooperatively. Saying "prove me wrong" or accusing others of twisting sources just contributes to a worsening of the atmosphere and does not get us further along the goal of improving the article. Ealdgyth (talk) 00:36, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

"Prove me wrong" is IMHO a simple reference to the standard WP position that our rights to make demands here are based on bringing sources to the table. The onus is on those who make claims? Let's not be too over-sensitive? I think it is the one kind of "challenge" which we are encouraged to make.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 01:16, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

"Prove me wrong" is needlessly confrontational. Perhaps rephrasing to "Can you show me the sources that support that position?" would work better. And please do not say "Let's not be too over-sensitive?"... that appears to be trying cast requests for decorum as being bad (i.e. "over-sensitive"). There have been several requests on this talk page and in the archives to have the discussion on the talk page be less bludgeony and more focused on improving the article, I made some suggestions on how to improve it, from an outsider's perspective. Folks are free to ignore that outside perspective but ... if the talk page doesn't improve nothing is going to improve in the article either. Ealdgyth (talk) 12:09, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I can't disagree with your description of best practice, of course. IMHO "bludgeoning" seems to have become an easy way to get away with attacking people trying to explain sources, whenever you don't like what they are saying. It is extremely disruptive and it makes discussions longer and less effective. I really don't like WP:NONO bombing, but if I were to pick a relevant acronym for our road block it would be good old WP:IDHT. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:48, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Ealdgyth honestly what do you think of Ermenrich's demand that WP can not present the mainstream consensus (some Germanic peoples probably did not speak Germanic languages), because it goes against "tradition"/"historical" scholarship?[20][21] Is this not similar to demanding that articles about God should have leads making it clear that God exists, and only mention doubts in an isolated sub-section, or am I exaggerating? I must be missing something about why my edit to the opening sentences was reverted?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:19, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

the question of what this article is about

@Ermenrich: after some reflection, these points seem to be worth distilling from recent discussion:

• Your new position is that this article can not treat the "views" of Pohl and many other mainstream historians as the "correct" subject of the article because they "go against" the "entire tradition" of defining Germanic peoples as "Germanic-speaking peoples", "and they don't want us to call them that anyway". I don't think this is a standard WP rationale?
• OTOH, from what I understand (but please correct me if I am wrong) you do not just want this article to be describing this "tradition", but in fact to write in Wikipedia voice as if it was the "correct" "view". (There could be notes saying not everyone agrees, but the article would be structured around the presumption. For example it seems we must treat the Eburones as either not real Germanic peoples, or else as probable Germanic speakers, "with doubts", just to force things to fit the "tradition". We also seem to be back to deliberately avoiding terms like "Germanic speaking" which allow for the possibility of "Germanic" having other meanings.) At first sight, this is opposed to WP policy because we do not write "in world" about "traditions". For example, our article on Christianity does not have to be written from the viewpoint of it being "correct".
• It seems relevant to clear our minds and ask what would an article which was clearly and openly written about the likely prehistory of Germanic languages look like? (Maybe we need to write that.) I proposed to you as follows, but please reconsider these words in the light of your revert to my edit of the lead:- Old dilemmas which still seem open still seem to include: how long any community consciousness lasted, which Germanic peoples spoke Germanic languages in which periods, and to which extent Rome was a cause of language dispersal and community consciousness.
• While there might have once been a unified tradition, with a straightforward bundle of views about each region and period, is there still such a tradition? You seem to think so, because Pohl "goes against" it. I think this misses one of the main points of doubters like Pohl: there is no single set of definitions anymore. Pohl and Steuer seem to agree on there being confusion, and the need for clear language. You seem to think such concern about confusing word use is something we can not be guided by on WP, because it would necessarily be taking a side concerning specific historical proposals. I think this is a mistaken conclusion. Clear language, rather than old "in world" terminology that deliberately confuses terms in now-controversial ways, is not only a practical aim, but also most consistent with WP policy.
• Steuer is only one author, who sees himself as making a new proposal relevant to specific regions and periods, and who uses fairly clear language about that. I suggest you should specifically reconsider what Steuer says about his use of the ideas of Geary (one of those "revisionist historians"). In some ways it seems his proposals are not very traditional. Please try putting aside the question of which terminology he prefers (like mathematicians do) and reconsider what he is proposing about those old dilemmas, those old debates about "what really happened" which I mentioned. He is proposing that the Germanic-speaking peoples of Germania came to be a real entity, but this entity did not exist before Rome in effect created them. It is a fascinating idea, but is this compatible with the way you are using him in our article and on this talk page? (To me, when we ignore the question of terminology, this does not "go against" the "views" of historians, even "revisionists", in any simple way?)
• Proposal: There is nothing wrong with articles or article sections about the history of early speakers of language families, including debate about how long these peoples continued to be a single community in any way. However, such articles can and should clearly identify themselves as being about speakers of a certain language or group of languages. If the concept of Germanic peoples was always ONLY linguistically defined, then this whole article could be written that way. But for better or worse we also need to find a home for the real scholarly topic of historical peoples who are always called Germanic, but lived in the period when the languages of specific groups are uncertain.

Just to remind the context here: we've had a bold revert worth two years of edits. Fine, but we are not going to get past the above questions without being a bit thoughtful at some point. I've made an attempt to explain something difficult to explain, and I hope this will not lead to ad hominem posts. We really do have to deal with the above issues eventually, surely?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:04, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Just look at his latest wall. This editor continues to ignore community input about his constant overlong posts on this page, and demonstrates once again that he will continue to bludgeon the page, and sabotage progress, despite repeated requests to lay off from other editors. I think someone needs to take the matter to ANI. I would, but I don't have time. Enough is enough. Carlstak (talk) 12:02, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Carlstak: enough is enough. We’ve been having these discussions “what is the article about” here and at Goths for over a year I think, and it only seems to make things even LESS clear and allow Andrew Lancaster to bludgeon his way to having the article how he wants it….—Ermenrich (talk) 12:19, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

My work was reverted, and there were three of us in a conversation about that last night. The above post summarizes some fundamental problems now apparent after that discussion. Just read it? How can you justify constantly ignoring and attacking any attempt to discuss problems even after you've reverted 2 years of edits and (unsurprisingly in such a situation) posted many long posts yourself (then told me to just edit, and then reverted my work)? It was also you Ermenrich, not me, who described yourself as making these changes without having being clear what the article is about. The way you've started chanting "bludgeon" at everything you dislike is Kafkaesque. This is a cheap shot, because we all know that the scholarly sources themselves are making people angry, and that this has demanded a lot of discussion (including responses to constant visitors to this talk page). No version of this article has ever been much loved, and that goes back before my involvement. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:30, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew, honestly we don't need to have the same debates again and again (I myself shouldn't have participated in needless debates yesterday night). The relevant discussion is already occurring among specialists of the field. Remember that we're just WP editors ; our only job is to provide a fair and comprehensive overview of the current scholarly debates and positions. Alcaios (talk) 17:21, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Of course I fully agree with that principle, and sure we all sometimes say things with too many or too few words. But what on earth is going on? It is exactly the principle of accurately summarizing our sources which is rejected in these edits: [22], [23]. Which sources justify those edits? Not Steuer. This is a simple valid question and I'm being attacked for asking it. Furthermore, whatever you want to say about past debates, this one is about specific edits and sources and we have not had it before.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:38, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

So the source behind the edit (Steuer doesn't say "Germanic speaking", he says "Germanen", as anyone can see by looking at the text) cannot be used to justify not changing the wording to say something Steuer does not say? Constantly accusing people of twisting sources when you don't get your way is not a good look, Andrew.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:12, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I'd prefer to translate Steuer's Germanen as "Germanic peoples". His usage of the the term relates to the geographical area of Germania, but also to the relatively coherent cultural area that largely overlaps with it. In the introduction he states that he bases his conclusions on what archaeological founds (which he calls Quellen 'sources', thus equating them in value with written historical sources) tell us. So it does not equate with the Germani of the historical record. And überregionales Gemeinschaftsbewusstsein der Bevölkerungsgruppen in Germanien ('supraregional sense of unity of the ethnic groups in Germania') is different from "shared ethnicity". –Austronesier (talk) 20:43, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Austronesier, I believe "ethnicity" is a Freudian slip/muscle memory on my part. It should read "identity" and I've changed it accordingly.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:54, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Ermenrich: just give me one second and don't kill me? The 10 arguments are introduced like this: Nun gibt es auch (zehn) Gründe, die für ein überregionales Gemeinschaftsbe-wusstsein der Bevölkerungsgruppen in Germanien sprechen, für einen „germanisch-sprachigen“ Kommunikationsraum. Please just help stupid old me understand why you think I am misunderstanding? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:52, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

He goes on to say Aus römischer Sicht lebten östlich des Rheins Germanen, nicht nur weil Caesar und in Nachfolge auch Tacitus durch ihre Benennung der Bevölkerung jenseits mit dieser Sammelbezeichnung Germanen charakterisiert haben. Den antiken Historikern war durchaus klar, dass es einen Unterschied zwischen den „germanisch“ sprechenden Germanen und den „keltisch“ sprechenden Bevölkerungen in Gallien gab. (From a Roman perspective, Germani lived east of the Rhine, not only because Caesar and following him also Tacitus characterized Germani by calling the population across [the river] this collective term. It was completely clear to antique historians, that there was a difference between the "Germanic" speaking Germani and the "Celtic" speaking population in Gaul." So if you take the whole context, he's arguing that the Germani spoke Germanic, and thus I don't see any real reason to say "Germanic speaking" rather than "Germanic peoples" - when the article is about "Germanic peoples" and he is clearly discussing "Germanic speaking peoples" as the "Germani".--Ermenrich (talk) 21:01, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

But then he is talking about Germanic-speaking Germanic peoples, „germanisch“ sprechenden Germanen, right? He does even use those words. I feel you accused me wrongly. I wish you'd read me the first time. Can we agree that the judgement call to remove the disambiguating words was yours? ("I don't see any reason...".) My reason for questioning this judgement is that Steuer (and all our sources collectively) show that this is not the only possible definition. We need to define terms: apples, pears etc because we also use other sources. Another way to do this, longer, is to explain Steuer thinks all Germanic peoples were Germanic speaking (although I think this only applies to a specific period)?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:26, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: A concrete proposal: Heiko Steuer has chosen to define his own work on the Germani geographically (covering Germania) rather than ethnically. I think it could better be "linguistically and geographically" (or Heiko Steuer has chosen to limit his own work on the Germani to Germanic speakers living in Germania, without trying to define ethnicity.) because that is how Steuer describes his working definition. Without this, the meaning of the first argument also becomes more fuzzy the original IMHO. (I am posting rather than editing because I was reverted for a vaguely similar idea.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:17, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I think this is actually a slight inconsistency on Steuer's part - he says he's defining it geographically, but he clearly is also defining it linguistically, and some of his ten reasons assume a connection between geography and language (burial practices, Gold bracteates, for instance, although by that time I don't think there's much question the people were speaking Germanic). This is what I've been trying to get across: even scholars who attack the concept of Germanic peoples do so under the guise of uncertainties about what language some of the Caesarean/Tacitean tribes spoke. Supporters, on the other hand, can always point to the reality of Germanic languages, who must have been spoke by someone, and gosh darnit, ancient sources say it was these people who lived here. What we need to avoid doing is deconstructing the subject of the article or trying to force it to follow the definition of Germani in ancient sources, as even most historians don't do that (whatever Goffart may say, his goal is for people to stop saying Germanic, not to start talking about the ancient Germani as described by Tacitus and Caesar).--Ermenrich (talk) 12:55, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

What we need to avoid doing is deconstructing the subject of the article or trying to force it to follow the definition of Germani in ancient sources. So are you accusing me of that? Please see the discussion above with Srnec and Austronesier where this is discussed in a more constructive way. This is about reading the modern sources, which is what we have to do. If deconstruction means paying attention to the way different authors define similar-looking terms then I am sorry but we have to do that. If it means something else, please explain.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:25, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: it strikes me that we may have lost sight of the original point. You are attributing the modern scholar, Steuer, and specifically his delimitation approach, in a very prominent way. In accordance with the principle you explain yourself, I think it is important you report his "deconstruction" accurately and that we don't attempt to "improve" upon him. It effectively changes the meaning of the whole list. My suggestion above would be a small simple tweak?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:41, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Language section and Roman classification section

I've reinstated the language section that was made by Alcaios that was an inadvertent casualty of the larger revert. I've also readded the version of the Classication subdivisions section that was made, I assume, by Andrew Lancaster. While it's an improvement over what was there before, it needs to be footnoted to secondary sources. I also am not sure if it's proper to even include questions there such as "whether the Gothic peoples saw themselves as Germanic". That strikes me as outside of the scope of a section on classical subdivisions.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:38, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Just as a quick note I think historically discussion of this topic has been in many versions of the article, but often moved around. It overlaps a bit with other topics and should maybe be merged into another section. I think it has been mixed with discussion of Germanic languages (as per tradition) but the approach of Alcaios meant splitting them, which is indeed better. Perhaps it should just be wherever we are going to summarize classical ethnography. We can discuss further if interesting.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:29, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

My two cents: I applaud Alcaios' language section. It's clarifying and even I could understand it. Carlstak (talk) 17:13, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Agree with Carlstak that Alcaios has notably improved the content discussing the language division. Nice work. --Obenritter (talk) 21:15, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Obenritter to avoid misunderstandings, it is not new work. It is a reinstatement of the version which was there before the reversion to the July 2019 structure.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:24, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster Since I had remained away from the article for some time, largely due to the ongoing bitter contestation over its contents, I had not carefully read that particular section. If it was part of the original text, you should be happy that we're all expressing pleasure with the content. Unless that is, you've come to gloat? Not sure why you'd stress that otherwise. Anything else? --Obenritter (talk) 21:42, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I am not stressing anything. I saw a misunderstanding. That's what people do for each other. You are welcome. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:25, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me, once again, why I stayed away. --Obenritter (talk) 22:33, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Germanic-speaking peoples

Germanic languages (whose speakers may also be called "Germanic-speaking peoples" reads as terribly redundant to me. Like "the English language, whose speakers may be called English speakers". Srnec (talk) 01:25, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

It’s because we (and scholars) are having this debate about whether or not we can say Germanic peoples are people who speak Germanic languages. It is a real term used in scholarship for that reason. Is there a better way to word it? We can’t just list it as an alternative title because that just replicates the problem…—Ermenrich (talk) 02:17, 24 July 2021 (UTC)