Talk:Ladislaja Harnoncourt

Death of fiancé

She was engaged, that young man died, possibly by suicide but unclear, and she decided to remain single and serve as a nurse. (Source says he was shot, but unclear if he shot himself or it was a duel.) How can that be said? Just "died" seems not enough when there may have been feelings of possibly having played a role in his death. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:13, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Notable?

Is getting born, getting married, and giving birth really grounds for inclusion in an encyclopedia? The only occupational statements in this article are that she was a "good dancer and singer" and decided to work as a nurse. Her notable children and ancestors doesn't warrant a stand-alone biography of her (notability is WP:NOTINHERITED). --Animalparty! (talk) 05:49, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with being a dancer, singer and nurse. Many biographies on WP are based on those types of career. All we need here is more information about Harnoncourt's involvement in those careers or activities. It would also be good to have more detailed information about how positively or negatively she influenced her successful children - again there are plenty of decent articles here about "kingmakers". We are not given online access in the citations to Nikolaus' book - so maybe someone who has access can add this information? Meanwhile, please leave this article in situ so that others can fill in the gaps. Storye book (talk) 14:16, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I think there is a sufficient assertion of notability here. People are actively working on the article and improving it and it’s also currently an active DYK. Please don’t tag the article while it’s on the front page. Instead, if you want it removed from DYK, go ask it to be pulled. You can’t just ignore the consensus to post this ; you have to get that reversed. Jehochman ^Talk 14:27, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Hmm that sounds an awful lot like a woman's work is not notable. I understand the "inherited" part, but surely we have plenty of fathers whose notability derives from their children. I don't see any great violation of a guideline here--"she's mentioned in sources" is enough for many topic areas. Drmies (talk) 14:28, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

To address comments: The work might be notable, but the person is not. We have biographies of dancers and singers and nurses who received independent non-trivial coverage for their singing, dancing, and nursing careers. And "she's mentioned in sources" is insufficient for WP:SIGCOV. If her "mentions" involved several paragraphs in multiple independent sources, that might count towards notability. If every mention simply states essentially "she was a nurse and the granddaughter of X and mother of A, B and C", that's clearly trivial and can easily be added into the biographies of separately notable kin. If all that was required to get a Wikipedia article was mention of existence, then every named mom and dad of any notable person would also have their own biographical article, as would every mechanic or shop owner named in your local newspaper. And lastly, most content in this article that is actually about the nominal subject appears to comes from a book by her son Nikolaus Harnoncourt, which makes it a non-independent (the Basler Zeitung source appears to merely highlight snippets of Nikolaus' book), so for all we know only her son thought she could dance well. Being a woman or a man makes no difference for notability, although I recognize women are underrepresented in historical records - that's an inherent bias in sources that Wikipedia can't fix (we can't write about subjects that haven't been substantially written about yet without violating WP:OR or WP:NPOV). Wikipedia is not a genealogy, nor a database, and not a Find a Grave or WikiTree. If WP:GNG or WP:NBIO are not met, the few scraps of salient biographical info on Ladislaja could easily be incorporated into other articles, or perhaps an article on the Harnoncourt or Meran family.--Animalparty! (talk) 19:15, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I have to agree. A minor member of a minor noble family. Spouses or parents of notable people don't automatically get a page. And as for underrepresented women - she's an aristocrat, probably the most over-covered people in history, there are a million lower-class women who are more deserving of pages here. Sheila1988 (talk) 19:45, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I see a lot of negative talk here, and not enough actual work on the article. Firstly we need to see the sources. Only then can we decide whether they are biased or valid, or whether they contain more material that we can use. I see no sign in this discussion, of people searching for other sources. How many of us in this discussion can read German (I cannot)? Can we find some German speakers who can do some research for us? One more point - we cannot dismiss Nikolaus' book as entirely biased - he is only one of several contributors to the book, and we don't know anything about their attitude towards Ladislaja. Old aristocrats used to be mentioned a lot in the old newspapers, not just due to class bias but also because a lot of them contributed to society (Justice of the Peace, being a benefactor etc. etc.) - so old newspapers may be a source for more information about her work. It is so easy for us in this discussion to break things, and it's so easy to see an article as a hopeless case if you haven't had access to the sources. It takes work and a constructive attitude to improve articles. Storye book (talk) 21:10, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Re photo request

There is a 1930 photograph of Ladislaja Harnoncourt, holding her son Nikolaus at age 6 months, here. I am not sure of the exact licence to use for an unknown-author German photograph of that date. If it had been a UK photograph, I would have known which licence to use, which would be valid on Commons (both Germany and the UK require an artist to have died 70+ years ago for their 2-D artwork to be out of copyright, and the UK has an option for unknown authors). If you are reading this and are familiar with German copyright licences, please check whether it is permissible to upload that picture (or let me know which licence to use, if there is one). Thank you. Storye book (talk) 18:03, 13 May 2022 (UTC)