Talk:Frankfurt Constitution

A fact from Frankfurt Constitution appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 June 2008, and was viewed approximately 2,025 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that a German Empire was first proclaimed on 28 March 1849 with the so-called Paulskirchenverfassung, or Constitution of the German Empire?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/June.

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Notice of category nomination for deletion

The related Category:1849 in Germany has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming.

What? "Germany did not exist between 1813 and 1849 inclusive"? -- Matthead Discuß 03:18, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Title of this article

I can't help noticing that this article has a title that is entirely in German, which is contrary to both WP:ENG and common sense, this being the English Wikipedia. I am not quite sure what the title should be, since I don't know what the most common name of this document is in English. This article indicates that the English translation of the title is "Constitution of St. Paul's Church." However, I do not know whether it is necessary to translate the name of the building itself, and the article Frankfurt Parliament (about the body that produced the constitution in question) calls it the "Paulskirche Constitution." This article notes that the actual title of the document is (in English) "Constitution of the German Empire", but apparently it is not usually called that since it was never actually implemented, and a different document with the identical title was issued and implemented in 1871, and is the subject of the article Constitution of the German Empire. So this article could either be Constitution of the German Empire (1849), or "proposed" instead of the year, or Constitution of St. Paul's Church, or Paulskirche Constitution (which is already a redirect to here, I now see.) Any opinions? (If not I will probably move it to the complete English translation, Constitution of St. Paul's Church.) Neutron (talk) 22:55, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would leave the original name, like the names of some German universities and other institutions. The mixture of Paulskirche and Constitution is impossible language, also not a "name" at all. In German it has to be Paulskirchen-something. Btw the titles of all the Bach cantatas were all German until I added the BWV # to give a hint. Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, smile, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Frankfurt Constitution seems to be commonly used in English literature, see for instance this book, pp 195-6. Markussep ^Talk 08:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Paulskirchenverfassung seems to be an established English designation [1] [2]. There are many examples of foreign locutions as article titles, Kaiser to begin with. ^walk victor falk^talk 06:36, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

L'esprit de l'escalier is another. ^walk victor falk^talk 06:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree completely that not everything should be translated, wikipedia certainly shouldn't invent new names. However, I briefly looked through the google books search results you posted, and most (I'd say more than 90%) of the results was actually in German. I conclude that "Frankfurt constitution" is more commonly used in English than "Paulskirchenverfassung". Markussep ^Talk 10:18, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Many, if not most, Universities have been renamed into English. As have other articles, such as this, to generic English names. This seems to be mainly to save users from having to decipher what alksdjlskjaljkdalskjalasdjk — sorry Paulskirchenverfassung — means when wikilinked in other articles. In addition, manual redefinition for every single wikilink of ... Paulskirchenverfassung ... to something that makes any sense, instead of minor uses like tense, is frowned upon for many reasons. Int21h (talk) 08:28, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Gerhard Casper and Hans Zeisel called it the "Reich Constitution of 1849" in his article "Lay Judges in the German Criminal Courts" in the January 1972 Journal of Legal Studies on page 137. Anything in English is better than alfhjldkgfldsgadlfjkadkfjldaf — sorry Paulskirchenverfassung. Frankfurt Constitution or Constitution of the German Empire (1849) is a good interim solution that fits the Wikipedia naming scheme. In other words, I think it should be English, and I think this article should be renamed during the debate as to which English translation to use, which will likely continue. Int21h (talk) 07:20, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think five and a half months of discussion is probably enough. :) Based on the above discussion, I am moving this article to Frankfurt Constitution. Whether this is an "interim" solution (or, more to the point, what "interim" really means in the context of The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit), is a subject for future determination. Neutron (talk) 21:55, 1 August 2011 (UTC) I also have created a redirect at Constitution of the German Empire (1849), the other name suggested by Int2h. Neutron (talk) 16:50, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]