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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 [1] [2] [3] and [4], 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: [5]). 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 ([6]), 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)

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 [7]. 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: [8][9].
• 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.

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 [10].--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[11] 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[12] (there's a saint, a trainer of gladiators, a German chemist etc.). –Austronesier (talk) 20:53, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

- 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)

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)