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Several edits

@E-960: I have been working on this article, so concerning your edits, some further discussion is requested. Please consider and comment:

  • Map removal, archaeological cultures. [1]. If I understand correctly you think the map should only show "Germanic" archaeological cultures? You mean only Jastorf? I think it would be good to have not only a map of the Jastorf culture but also neighbouring cultures including La Tène, because these are discussed in the article also. What do you think?
  • Removal of the Hermannsdenkmal picture. [2]. I think also in this case you did not look at the text which the picture is next to? The connection between some simplified concepts of Germanic people and German romanticism and nationalism is discussed, as it has to be, but I don't think you can say Wikipedia is taking a positive side with such movements (if you read the text). I added the picture to help illustrate that connection. On the other hand, given that many readers might also just notice the picture and get the wrong idea, perhaps it should be in the more specific section? Here?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:02, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
The possible issue with the archaeological cultures map is that it shows various cultures, and some indeed are though to be related to Germanic peoples, and others not. It's not outright problematic to have it in the article, so it can be put back, but it lacks broader correlation to the text.
As for the Hermannsdenkmal image, 19th century romanticism is a side note to this article, which focuses on the ancient Germanic peoples, referencing historical sources and archeology. Later correlations to romanticism are really a passing note, especially given that they were often based on pseudo-history, especially that modern Germans (as evident in DNA) are a mix of Gallo-Romans from the Rhine region and the invading Germanic tribes, not to mention further mixing with Slavs in what is today eastern Germany. So, such an image places too much emphasis on made up ideologies, rooted in fantasy rather than historical realities. Just to show you how screwy this concept is, take for example that 19th century German romantic ideals showing Germanic peoples as blond haired, yet most Roman sources describe Germanic peoples as having ruddy/brown hair. --E-960 (talk) 10:49, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
  • If anything I would put some image related to Wagner, who is the quintessential romantic composer who based his operas on Germanic legends, rather than a political movement.--E-960 (talk) 11:12, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
@E-960: Let me know what you think:
  • I have tried adjusting the archaeological map, so that the text is only focused on the cultures in the middle of the map.
  • I have moved the Hermannsdenkmal picture and changed the text.
  • I don't see Wagner as very useful for this article because his interest was in medieval myths. The connection between those and the Germanic peoples is another can of worms, which I think does not fit in this big article? Arminius OTOH was a real Germanic person, discussed by Tacitus, who really did become a very big thing for Germans. Make sense?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:45, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

I think this is indeed a better place for an image relating to Germanism, however I still think the image is not the best one for this section, it has less to do with artistic romanticism, and more with political ideology based on ancient Germanic peoples. --E-960 (talk) 13:50, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

@E-960: But that situation makes sense to me, and is not a mistake, so maybe it needs discussion. To explain my perspective: The article is about Germanic peoples of course, and not about romanticism. Romanticist nationalism is relevant to the article, I think, because many sources discuss its strong effect on ways of understanding the basic definition of what Germanic peoples even are/were. 2 examples of connections which need to be discussed are (1) the linguistic approach to defining peoples and (2) the way in which the concept "Germanic" got mixed up with politics both in Roman times and modern times, which tended to twist the meanings around also. In contrast, I am not seeing any big reason to write about the effect on the modern arts?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:03, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Edit summaries

@Andrew Lancaster, I appreciate some of the things that you've done for this article, but please use edit summaries for your edits, especially if you're going to make many of them in succession. Edit summaries (as you know) make it easier for other editors to track and verify edits made to an article. It's difficult enough for the average editor to keep up with the long discussions on the talk page and the many edits that this article has been receiving. --TrynaMakeADollar (talk) 03:04, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, and I will try a bit harder, but like you say there are lots of edits many very minor and obvious, and I have been trying to explain them on this talk page also. At a certain point, explaining every edit during a major workover can become a bigger job than the edits. As an editor myself, with a lot of pages on my watchlist, my experience is that edsums don't always make it easier to keep track when there is major work being done? (They can even make it harder in some cases.) I don't think there is any perfect solution.
Concerning your own edit and edsum just now [3] I am not sure I follow by the way. You re-added a sentence in a painting caption: "The artwork depicts Arminius saying farewell to his beloved wife before he goes off into battle." It already mentioned the people being depicted: "An 1884 interpretation of Arminius and Thusnelda by German illustrator Johannes Gehrts." Edsum:
I don't really understand why this was removed since no explanation was given for the edit summary. That is actually what the artwork shows, the painting does show Arminius saying goodbye to his wife and it's clear from Tacitus's writings that Arminius cared for Thusnelda.
For the most part, the second sentence is repetition - two people's names. You can click on the links to learn who they are, and you can see the artist wanted to show something like "caring". Concerning the importance of "caring" though, just looking quickly I don't see Tacitus saying anything romantic, but more to the point even if it were a simple and clear fact, why would it need to be emphasized in this particular article? Perhaps a related question should be raised: what does this picture add to this article? Of course at the moment it is the question we should keep asking about everything, including of course my own work. I am not normally against art works and small digressions, but anything which is going to attract accretions and debates can be problematic on a long article like this.
Playing devil's advocate, I suppose that for many editors the only argument for keeping the picture is as an example of the excesses of 19th century Romanticism, whereas it is certainly not a good illustration of objective historical "facts"? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:16, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Unusued references in bibliography

Placing here for consideration, discussion etc.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:30, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Unused references

This list of "unused" sources highlights just how much academically relevant and substantive content has been removed in the past few months by a certain editor.--Obenritter (talk) 14:33, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
@Obenritter: whoever you are referring to it sounds both true, and also a bit oversimplified. On 23rd December 2019 the article had rapidly grown to >240,000 bytes, and there was clearly a POV conflict that was about to explode, and would keep coming back unless we made the article more focused on its own topic, rather than the topics of other articles. In any case, I put this list here for a reason, so please consider whether any should be used. Many of them are old, or tertiary sources, or sources cherry-picked to support one sentence. Some of the best ones were needed for sections which are now reduced. (Starting with the massive culture section which Krakkos moved out on 23rd December.) Concerning topics covered more on other articles, many of those also need work and I see them as part of the same project. The Early Germanic culture article which split out is now itself quite a large article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:35, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
"Many of them are old, or tertiary sources, or sources cherry-picked to support one sentence." No further input given the ridiculousness of this comment (look at most of the sources again). Funny to hear you express this as cherry-picking when you have managed to Goffartize this entire page, while deleting out loads of whatever YOU decided was irrelevant content. Multiple sources are the way academic content stays objective...that is, if that is the goal here.--Obenritter (talk) 15:46, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
@Obenritter: Well I certainly object to that accusation, I'm afraid, though I am happy to be in a dialogue with you again. I don't think WP should ban mention of Goffart of course, as was the demand, but is that really what you wanted? Most importantly anyway, is that if you have suggestions about anything, please let's discuss in a practical way. I don't even know, honestly, what you want or don't want. Obviously you were one of the main editors of the article like I have been, and I don't remember any disagreement we could not talk through. The changes I made affected my old edits as much as anyone's. I wish more editors could have contributed to the difficult editing period this article had, and I certainly tried hard to get feedback and help.
What I really do feel strongly about is not any particular POV or author, but the article structure. This article needed a structure which ALLOWED coverage of different positions which scholars have. Our old versions failed. This article needed a structure which made it easier for article watchers to see bad and POV-pushing edits, and easier for good edits to find their right home. We had too much duplication and even deliberate de-structuring happening, and this was being enabled by our old editing. I feel both of us were not looking enough at the big picture, where a problem was building up.
I do therefore feel strongly that having this article try to cover every aspect of Germanic or Gothic history was a mistake. This is a BIG article. It just made problems on this article impossible to fix, and exposed the article to the dark arts of POV pushing. You remember the article was going to be about Luxembourgers and Afrikaners?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:35, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Duplicated content certainly needed removed as did much of the POV you reference. On that and on modern depictions of "Germanic peoples" we have always been in agreement. At no point did I ever state that I did not want or value Goffart's opinion, but I feel that other scholars like Burns, Williams, Schulze, Wolfram, Thompson, and Pohl have not been fully reflected in this article since so much of their opinion on a variety of matters is now missing entirely (even if small bits) with the restructuring that has occurred. If you will recall, I wanted to focus this article on ancient and Medieval Germanic peoples to the extent of possibly renaming the article even. Nonetheless, much of what has been deleted came from leading scholars on German history. Also a few experts on Rome who made relevant observations to this subject like Peter Wells, Peter Brown, Bryan Ward-Perkins, and Chris Wickham have also been removed entirely. Somebody has elected to replace their comments in some instances with what I would otherwise deem inferior sources, but what would I know...I am just a PhD scholar on European history. It's not that your efforts have not been worthy of recognition, it's just that in haste to "fix" the article, there has been omission of quality content to a greater extent than it deserved and instead of remedying this, you want to constantly reflect on how "bad" the article was without acknowledging or retaining what was good. You have essentially single-highhandedly deleted substantively supported content and rewritten the vast majority of this article.--Obenritter (talk) 17:13, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@Obenritter: ok. Let me say, the way I worked was more or less forced upon me and it is NOT my idea that my restructuring is the end of the job. This article needs new input to look for bits I might not have put back together well. I think the article started growing in the wrong direction and you seem to think I blame you but I see myself as another of the editors responsible for the previous versions. Perhaps on our own in a smaller group the article would have been much better, but we had more opinions at work that we did not resolve early enough.
  • I would say that Pohl was more missing in the older version, and that I have added a lot of his position? Much of what has been hated about Goffart by some people on WP is also in Pohl by the way. This is a very important one! If you like Walter Pohl maybe please look at his article by the way.
  • Concerning Wolfram I feel I have not removed him, and he is still a presence in the article, but let me know.
  • Shulze, on 23 December 2019, was used for one etymology, and there has been quite some discussion about that. Wickham was only used for a sentence saying "Over time, the Anglo-Saxons, with their distinct culture and language, displaced much of the extant Roman influence of old".

Comparing to 23 December I can see all or most of the others tended to be in the now shortened history sections, and like with these last two it tended to be in sentences were going away from basic "Germanic peoples" issues, and also not particularly in need of a specialist source, or notably different from many other sources. In any case I have no strong feelings about these, have not read them, and am open to discussions. BTW you assume I removed everything but the history of the article starting 23 December is a bit more complicated than that. I did however shorten the history sections, trying to (I think for the first time) only write about turning points for "Germanic peoples" overall in a big way. Though it was for a logical reason, I found this a difficult process and consider it unfinished. I would like to review it with others. OTOH we do not need to cite every good writer just for the sake of it either of course. The article length and focus is a concern. The question is "what else do we need?" (and is there anything more we can remove?)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:05, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

BTW I should have mentioned that Burns is back in since I posted the above list. But not in the history section. So many questions come down to how much narrative history of Rome needs to be in this article. But it should be kept in mind that it is still a big major of the article even though other articles should be covering details of events and I have tried add to, and focus on, turning points for the Germanic peoples as a whole. I think the history section deserves slow and careful consideration and discussion about what should or should not be in it. It is certainly not difficult to make it much bigger, but the article is already big.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Further reading (please review if we really need any of these)

Comment. The Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde editions are of course potentially very useful, but I can not access them all. They now have a website with the most updated material. Possibly some Wikipedians have access to it?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:39, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Another one removed

For reference:--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:17, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Agenda Anyone

The statement, "the tendency of some historians to describe late Roman historical events in terms of Germanic language speakers has been criticized by some scholars because it implies a single coordinated group" implies that lots of scholars tend to share this view, which is not the case. This does not belong in the lead of this article and is utter bunk. The mere notion of peoples who speak a related language does not make them some monolith and scholars of German history (myself included) do not make that argument in general terms. Such a sweeping statement followed by a very controversial remark from Goffart also implies that he has the last word on this matter. Worse, the notion that there is debate about the existence of Germanic peoples from antiquity is couched under two separate and very much related claims both designed to delegitimize the notion that such people ever existed. It represents bad scholarship that reeks of an agenda. What these Germanic people are called in modern terms does not trump their existence because contemporaries called them something different; this ignores the diffuse relationships between their cultures, religion, manner of fighting, and related languages. Not every scholar of antiquity convinced that the ancient Germanic peoples once dominated north and central Europe—despite being in various but related groups—is some imperialist Nazi sympathizer who remains wedded to the 19th century ideas of race and nation. This article needs to be rewritten to reflect the divergent points of view more effectively and with much less hyperbole.--Obenritter (talk) 01:50, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Obenritter: there is a lot to unpack there in terms of generalized accusations, and it might be easier to make concrete proposals one by one, where we can look at real sources and the real words in our article. However, I'll try to answer every point in a compact way first:
  • I think the terms "some scholars" is an accurate and careful description of the field. It just means more than one. Any less mention would mean Censoring it completely, OTOH, which would be a big call?
  • The specific proposal of Goffart about terminology (not "existence" which is a word that confuses the issue) is clearly very well-known and discussed (and widely respected). MOS:LEDE says: "It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies." It is being presented as a minority position, which is actually arguably unfair for that particular position. (See below.)
  • I do not think Goffart's opinion is being presented as the "last word" but as one of the most prominent criticisms, it must be mentioned. Your description of Goffart's influence on this lead is also extremely exaggerated and unfair. It is clearly not based on reading the lead or the sources.
  • Concerning "debate about the existence" in all honestly this must be coming from prior angry ideas about Goffart, and not by what is in our current article, either in the lead itself or the body which the lead should (and hopefully does) refer to here. What you will find instead is that there is doubt about the unity and continuity of the Germanic peoples (which you agree with?) not worded as a doubt about "existence" (which would, I think, worry you):
  • Field consensus which even Heather and Ward-Perkins pay lip service to: there is doubt about whether late Roman-era Germanic peoples were all unified by any single unique shared culture, collective consciousness, or even language.
  • An attributed remark which uses Goffart to represent a strongish version of a commonly accepted practical point (as mentioned above): Walter Goffart, for example, has gone so far as to suggest that historians should avoid the term when discussing that period. Honestly I think this is very cautious. What I constantly see in the literature is that many scholars feel Goffart's point was already widely accepted before he made it. It is probably important to note that on Wikipedia, due to the efforts of some editors, Goffart's words are routinely caricatured by cherry picking small bits, in the way you have done. See my notes about that here.
  • Description of an undeniably prominent debate, associated with the Vienna school: there is a connected debate concerning the extent to which any significant Germanic traditions apart from language, even smaller scale tribal traditions, survived after Roman times
  • Of course "imperialist Nazi sympathizer" also simply does not appear in the text of our article. You are exaggerating and not engaging with our real article text, which is not helpful or fair.
OTOH the Nazi associations of certain methodology mistakes which are still being made, are constantly mentioned in literature about this subject: Liebeschuetz, Todd, Halsall, Wolfram, etc. It is a constant in our expert sources. So once again, I feel WP:Censorship would be a big call? And once again I also feel your reading of the lead text is extremely exaggerated and based more upon concerns that can only come from a certain Wikipedia editor who has been distorting the sources and the work of Wikipedians? In general though, these are all sensitive issues that I've tried very hard to balance right, with reference to MANY sources. I think therefore that we need to walk through any concerns carefully and thoughtfully.
You mention agendas as your title for this whole theme. Let's consider this ad hominem accusation. Frankly, there is clearly a lot of anger about such topics that has been deliberately promoted among some WP editors, and which existed long before my recent lead changes. This is distorting the way people read and write. I have seen claims by one editor involved of there being off-wiki correspondence critical of my editing recently on this article. Whether you are involved in those or not, such efforts (also on-Wiki) explain why people use the same wordings about Goffart on WP, which do not reflect real sources, or accusations about me which do not reflect the article text. I do not think that approach is helping any of us make a better Wikipedia.
It would be much better to put concerns into concrete and detailed terms mentioning real sources, and edits I really made. I think that trying to guess and then publicize what my inner thoughts might be, is not going to be easier than just asking me what my thoughts are. If you have not tried that, then you should not be accusing me of any "agenda"?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:22, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Putting cards on the table, though no one else does:
  • I think Walter Pohl might be the author who has most influenced my changes to the lead and first section. But it would be a close call, and honestly wouldn't make a big difference because there is a lot of agreement between the sources.
  • I do not have a conscious recollection of being interested in Goffart in the past. I had to start reading him carefully recently, due to the fact that he is constantly being mentioned in our sources and talk pages. I do not see myself as a fan, though he is clearly worthy of respect and is widely respected, both for his non-controversial ideas, and at least some of his controversial ones.
  • As someone who jumps between different editing topics, I find all the trumped-up drama on these articles unbelievable, in the sense that it is rare to find a field where scholars write so often and so clearly about their own field, and they all seem to describe it the same way, in terms of both what is widely agreed, and what isn't agreed. (This doesn't mean I've got every detailed perfectly balanced yet, but we never seem to be able to get to detailed discussions. The caricatures always intervene. We can't get beyond all positions of Goffart being collapsed into one sentence.)
  • Liebeschuetz for example defends the unity and continuity assumptions for the Germanic people not from "Goffart" alone but also from Pohl and many others; he also reads them properly and does not over-focus on Goffart's "existence" wording, but clearly understanding that it is (for all involved) a question of whether there was a unity and continuity of "the" Germanic peoples in late antiquity - both as one unity, and as several larger older unities. Remarkably, he even defends his position in the same way the the new sceptics say it is defended: he says it is important because if we give up this model we can't describe Europe as the result of two civilizations.
  • Partly on the basis of such reading I did not focus on Goffart's "existence" wording, despite all the accusations now flying around, but upon what all these scholars explain to be their point where they agree to disagree: continuity and unity in late antiquity.
  • Do I agree with Liebeschuetz? Well, indeed I can not see why we need to describe Europe as the result of only two parties: Rome versus the Germanic peoples. However, this does not make me "Goffartized", and anyway I have no problem that we should report all scholarly positions.
  • My current thinking: The problems making discussion so difficult on WP are entirely artificial, and not an accurate representation of any mainstream scholarly positions.
  • Wikipedia is not even close to having to deal with some of the more thorny problems such as how to explain the differences between Goffart and Pohl. That is perhaps beyond our abilities, and outside our project aims.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:01, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
So much for your "compact" response. You've seemed to latch onto the idea of the Germanic peoples as a monolith far too much, which is where I think your editorial approach to the subject went awry. That's why it feels like an agenda is present. Germanic peoples was plural for a reason.--Obenritter (talk) 15:15, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
It has been a monolith (or a gorilla in the room) for some years, and I am not the cause of that. Sources were consistently twisted, poor sources were preferred on key sentences, and many sections were swamped by nonsense, and duplicated in mangled forms all over the place. So the gorilla is clearly important to some people! The simple reality is that I have simply been doing the best I can to fix basic structural problems and ADD a LOT of material which was never in the article, such as real references to Pohl's discussions on the core topic of this article. It would have been better to have had more help from other constructive editors. Obviously that has not happened yet, but let's hope it will happen. Wikipedia articles are never finished.
Do you, for example, have any actual sentences or sources you would like to point to for discussion? Just based on your remarks so far I have already tried to tweak a few things today.
Concerning whether scholars think the Germanic concept can lead to systematic bias in conclusions, they certainly do. I've now spent several months reading masses of material on Germanic peoples, and it is continually mentioned in 21st century publications, especially in German sources. Apparently this is often under the influence of Pohl rather than Goffart. Even Heather and Ward-Perkins pay lip service to this methodological issue, and there are many examples given in the sources of the types of conclusions which it biases for.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:34, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Andrew Lancaster, you say you're "Putting cards on the table, though no one else does" and "It would have been better to have had more help from other constructive editors." May I say that your posting of ever-multiplying walls of text here effectively obscures any particular points (and there are so many of those) you're trying to make. It seems to me that your attempts at micro-managing the conversation only muddy the issues and scare constructive editors away; it's too overwhelming to consider all at once. I think you would do better to determine what you think the three very most important issues are, state them in a concise couple of paragraphs here (forgetting the details for now), and seek comment on just those issues, rather than trying to address all your concerns at the same time. Carlstak (talk) 03:08, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
@Carlstak: point taken and accepted. However in this particular case I was answering a long, misleading and loaded post, which was about me personally. So I never had a proposal to discuss here, but was only answering some vague and misleading accusations. Maybe I should have just asked for concrete editing suggestions from the beginning. There do not, in any case, appear to be any at this stage. As mentioned though, I have tried to make some tweaks to the article based on the initial post.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:55, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
Interesting that you would take the original remarks so personal. Nowhere was your name to be found. Your constant hyperbolic and obscenely long Talk Page overreactions to any disagreement with content are exactly why you've gotten so little collaboration. As @Carlstak: has implied, you might be "muddying" things enough to dissuade otherwise substantive help. Meanwhile, you come to Talk Pages and tell other editors that their editing—across all of Wikipedia evidently—demonstrates no knowledge of the authors mentioned in the text. Is that what you call constructive collaboration? --Obenritter (talk) 19:32, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
That would be muddying. Please let's only mention what real sources say, or edits which are really on WP. WP is WP:NOT an internet forum or therapy. As discussed on your user talk page, your constant attempts to guess things about me, including whether I read more than you, or have whatever academic qualifications you claim to have, are NOT relevant. I am not editing based on any such claims, and none of us should. I am naming the sources I am looking at afresh, and working as a Wikipedian. I would welcome constructive discussion with editors working the same way, including you of course.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:17, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Discussion relevant to this article, on less watched article. Topics include Walter Goffart as source.

As Heruli is not much watched, it would be good to get more community input on events there which certainly involve sources relevant to this article. In short: (1) approximately 1 third of the article including 6 sources was deleted in a major revert, [4]; (2) the only clear rationale given so far is that Walter Goffart was mentioned as a source in some of the new material. (But Goffart is not one of the 6 sources deleted, and was already in the article, and still is.) That issue has clearly come up here before also.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:11, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Posted only at Heruli, though it is about Scirri, this appears to also be part of this same systematic work which is relevant to this article [5]--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:20, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
Just so we do not loose it: Main attempt to defend the Heruli revert by Thomas.W has been led by Krakkos at User_talk:Thomas.W#Heruli. It is certainly about Goffart, and involves the interpretation of Goffart and other sources which has been proposed on Wikipedia by Krakkos. The discussion leads me to feel concerned about edits being made on the articles of living scholars like Walter Pohl and Walter Goffart.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:36, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

As a result of those discussions, I have posted some notes about what some scholars really say about the unity and continuity of Germanic peoples here. I think a notable source of confusion and dramatization on Wikipedia is that there are many quite specific technical debates, such as the debate about Goffart's vision of "accommodation", and Heather vs Amory on Ostrogothic continuity, and so on, which have ZERO necessary connection to the discussion which has obsessed Wikipedia: which I think of as a "unity and continuity" debate. On that point, Heather uses old style unified terminology in practice (placing Goths and Franks in one category), like Liebeschuetz would want, but his discussions about the theory show him accepting that at least in theory this unity in terminology is misleading. I think another thing thoroughly confusing Wikipedia is the use of snippet quotes to create caricatures and make people upset. Hence my summary of Goffart's own summary of his real concerns about how terminology can lead to biased conclusions might be useful:

  • 1. Barbarian invasions were not a single collective movement: different barbarian groups moved for their own reasons under their own leaders. (And not all of them even moved. There was no massive inevitable single chain of billiard ball migrations.)
  • 2. The pressures on the late Empire did not have a united source, and often came from within. (Side note: Heather seems much more interested in the debate about whether pressures came mainly from within. Perhaps he deliberately unites all Germanic peoples because that terminology helps his case in that other debate.)
  • 3. The classical Germanic peoples lacked any unity or center, and so they should not be seen as a civilization in the same way Rome is. This is a concern Halsall has taken on board. The Liebeschuetz quotes I have selected show Goffart is completely correct about this concern.
  • 4. We can not accept Jordanes as preserving an authentic oral tradition about migration from Scandinavia. (Heather fully agrees. Though he does not like Goffart's proposal that Jordanes knowingly wrote in a politically sensitive way, during a period when Goths were a highly charged topic in Constantinople, calling that a "conspiracy theory", this does not have a massive impact for us.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:11, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
The issue with this view (not especially Goffart's but the one you follow in your edits in general) is that is it does not go well with linguistic evidence. If Germanic peoples were not a civilization, they clearly shared the same language during the first century BCE, as runic inscriptions from the first centuries CE only show dialectal variations of a same language from Central Germany to Scandinavia. The euphemistic formulation of the article ("They are also associated with Germanic languages, which many of them probably spoke") does not seem justified: what other language was spoken then? Can you name one? Or are we following the mistakes of Classical authors who wrongly identified some remote Celtic tribes as Germanic (e.g., the "Heruli" were described as Scythians)? Azerty82 (talk) 10:50, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
PS: I'm not saying Germanic peoples formed a "nation" sharing a "state language". But I've seen your draft on Liebeschuetz and Goffart, and I think that we should follow specialists (i.e. linguists) rather than historians on linguistic matters. For instance (emphasizes are mine), "it is unclear when and where PGmc. evolved as a “condensation” of an individualized culture or of a quasi-individualized ethnos. (...) During the first two centuries CE the Gmc. dialect continuum covered roughly the territory between the Rhine in the west, the Vistula in the east, and the Danube in the south, including Denmark and southern Scandinavia in the north. (...) The N/WGmc. “residual” dialect continuum was broken after Angles, Jutes, and (parts of the) Saxons left their homelands to settle in Britain." (Nedoma (2017), The documentation of Germanic. In: "Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics"). Azerty82 (talk) 11:14, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
PS2: from your draft, no linguist is arguing that Goths and Franks could understand each others in, say, the 6th century CE. East Germanic tribes broke the dialectal continuum earlier (probably in the first or second century BCE). It is not clear whether the article is discussing Germanic peoples in the 5 c. BCE or in the 9th c. CE. One could wrongly say that Latins did not speak a mutually intelligible language during the Roman Republic because French and Italians spoke different Romance languages in the 7th century CE (!). Azerty82 (talk) 11:22, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your feedback. When you refer to my "article" or "draft" I think you are referring to the notes about why Goffart and how he makes people angry. So the first thing is that it is not necessarily my opinion at all. I am just showing that some things Goffart says are not controversial. Concerning the relevant period, the way I understand Goffart, and this is one of things people don't realize when they see isolated quotes, he is mainly talking about "late antiquity". So as you say, this means that that many aspects of what he says agrees with all or most scholars. Actually the unity (or lack of unity) of Germanic peoples in the first century BCE is not what is causing debates on WP, or between historians as far as I can see.
Concerning how to edit WP, I think what you say about being careful of historians (whether Goffart or Liebeschuetz or whoever) is very logical, but not always easy. Maybe one practical problem: such publications are less widely distributed and more difficult for me to define and get my hands on sometimes. If you can point us to more and better sources, great. But anyway please note that WP editing problems have by no means involved anyone bringing such sources and having them rejected. Once again: the context is that WP has been disrupted by editors who see Goffart as an author to be literally angry about.
Technical points "If Germanic peoples were not a civilization, they clearly shared the same language during the first century BCE". Here I guess you are using two assumptions that are questioned by scholars.
  • First you use a linguistic definition of Germanic peoples, but you are applying it to real peoples in history for whom we have almost no linguistic evidence. This can give a known logical problem. See the remarks of Pohl I cite on that Goffart diccussion page, or the quote from Burns on the current version of this article. As long as you simply define Germanic peoples by language there is no logical problem, because it is a tautology, but you do not know which peoples from history are included or not included. Once a linguist starts making claims about historical peoples based on texts or archaeology, things get multidiscplinary.
  • Second you are assuming that the proto-languages actually existed as unified languages. This is not a necessary assumption that linguists make anymore, although of course it can be true. But by the way, I think this does not touch on any debates relevant to WP editing that I've seen lately. It is just me making a technical point. It relates to the bigger conclusion that actually languages do not need to develop as family trees at all. They can for example merge, and in an enclosed area, languages can keep merging and splitting in an ever-changing Sprachbund which never needs to become one language.
An example of a Germanic people who probably did not speak a Germanic language would be the Eburones, or Ubii. So the original Germanic peoples at the time of Caesar were probably not one people except from Caesar's political/military viewpoint. To the extent that they evolved into one group of peoples their origins were "polycentric" (to use the terminology of many of the Vienna scholars these days). The Rhine Germani who were probably the "real" Germani at first, probably did not speak Germanic. The Elbe/Jastorf/Suebian Germanic peoples, who the Romans hardly knew in the time of Caesar, really did become dominant in a much larger area, and it seems like their languages spread to the Rhine somehow though it may have been quite late. (The second German consonant shift happened maybe 600, and before then it seems all continental West Germanic in the north and south must have been almost the same language. How did that happen? I actually don't see many writers ever even getting to that question, let alone answering it. If you have any good things to read, please let me know.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:53, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for your comprehensive answer. First of all, I have no issue with Goffart as long as he is only referring to the Migration Period to argue for a “fragmentation” of the Germanic concept.
To clarify, I don’t “assume that the proto-language actually existed as unified language”, but that they spoke mutually intelligible idioms in the first centuries BCE (plural, let me correct here a typo in my original answer). Mutual intelligibility is the most common definition for a shared language, even a poly-centric or multi-dialectal one like Serbo-Croatian.
That said, I agree with the following; we cannot conclude from this assumption that they shared a common culture, even though the name of deities are closed cognates and clearly inherited from a common belief (e.g., *Tīwaz as a proto-Germanic sky and war god, from which derive ON Týr, OE Tīw, OHG Zio, Gothic *Teiws)
The issue with most of the tribes you’re citing is that they were “transitional” entities dwelling between the Germanic and Celtic worlds. They could have been Celticized Germans or Germanicized Celts (language obviously does not equal genetics; it is probable that non-Germanic tribes adopted Germanic languages following their progressive migrations. The same model is used to explain the diffusion of Celtic languages, and even Indo-European languages in general).
PS: the second Germanic consonant shift emerged in the southern part of present-day Germany. Only Old High German was affected, not Old English or Old Dutch: “This started in the south of the speech-area (Upper German) and spread north with diminishing force. Implementation thus varies from dialect to dialect and according to date.” (Patrick V. Stiles, HCHIEL p. 892)
For a good introduction on Germanic linguistics, I would advise “Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics” (HCHIEL; Volume II; 2017), with chapters written by Robert Nedoma, Patrick V. Stiles, Jón Axel Harðarson, Rosemarie Lühr and Joseph Salmons). Donald Ringe’s “From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic” (2006) is also a quite comprehensive monograph on the subject. Azerty82 (talk) 14:17, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. Most of this is just interesting to me and not necessarily relevant to this article, but...
  • Yes, but really I don't see anything special about Goffart. Many academics have been involved in controversies. WP policy tells us how to handle controversies. If we work that way there should be no problem. The concern with some of our Germanic articles is that there has been a real effort made to create drama, anger and panic about the fact that his name has appeared somewhere in a footnote. Actually he has long been cited in many WP articles, and the problem I am referring to is quite artificial. Most of the scholarly controversies involving Goffart are NOT about Germanic identity in late antiquity, where Liebeschuetz is in the minority and also disagrees with Pohl and Heather, but for example about things we are not even covering yet on WP.
  • Sprachbunden which include non-mutually intelligible languages are possible, and were probably normal for large parts of human prehistory. Aboriginal Australian languages are sometimes seen as an example, and in such cases multilingualism is a constant, and partly caused by the need to seek marriage partners from afar. But for our purposes here this is probably not relevant. (It could have been if we assume proto-Germanic had a very large range.)
  • You are again equating Germanic language to Germanic peoples here? Nothing wrong with that, except that it does not help us with what you call the transitional cases (which might have been the normal cases).
  • The fact is that we don't know what they spoke, but anyway they were just normal people, no more "transitional" than people on the Elbe or people on the Seine? It could have been a third language. Multilingualism may have been common too. Europe seems to have had many small cultural groups. In terms of big language families, their historical links were to the Celtic world when Caesar met them, and Germanic might not have been very widespread at all at that time. Caesar then defined geography for military reasons, and THAT was the only thing that made the Rhine "transitional". We can only see it that way because we see it through his definition. (I suppose we can also argue that LATER, his vision changed reality, and perhaps also his predictions partly came true, with the Elbe German culture being very influential in a bigger area.)
  • Yes but I am not sure if you are seeing my point. (Which has nothing to do with any WP concern at the moment.) The implication is that in the time of Clovis, for example (ie BEFORE the shift), there was ONE single proto language ancestral to Bavarian and Dutch, and so on, with almost no dialectical differences. Where did it come from? Or perhaps it is an example of what we discussed above - an illusion of an homogeneous reconstructed language, created by the fact that the later dialects did not work like a family tree, but more like a Sprachbund. One reason I find the question interesting is that the implied homogeneity of 500 AD makes old ideas about a distinct Rhineland (Istvaeonic) branch of Germanic already existing in the time of Tacitus very difficult to believe in. My understanding is that linguists have indeed rejected those old ideas, but I have not yet seen it all laid out in a continuous discussion. This is an example of something the historians are not good for.
  • I was hoping for more than an introduction, but I don't have that one and will see what I can find. Thanks.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:50, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't have the time to answer all the points but there was no "single proto-language ancestral to Bavarian and Dutch" after the disappearance of Proto-Germanic. Bavarian comes from Old High German (Irminonic) while Old Dutch is a variety of Old Frankish (Istvaeonic; from which also derives the Central German dialects). Irvinonic and Irminonic are not proto-languages but a grouping of similar dialects (like Gallo-Romance, Ibero-Romance, etc.) Azerty82 (talk) 15:22, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Fair enough it is a side issue. I also don't have all sources ready to throw into this discussion, as I have been reading this out of own interest while working on other things. But what you are saying is what the older books say. One problem with what you are saying is that there is minimal evidence of OTHER differences (apart from the consonantal innovation) between these supposedly anciently separated dialect groups. In other words, there is no sign of ancient dialect divisions in West Germanic, except the North sea-influenced group. The main distinction between early Irminonic and Istvaeonic is a sound shift which is now estimated to have happened 600 AD.

Coming back to this article, and not my Goffart userspace page, the sentence you cited so far is the second one of the lead. Although it is a lead sentence, given all the possible controversy it has a long footnote citing Wolfram, Pohl and Burns. It is not really a Goffarty sentence IMHO. The rationale for the sentence is that the history of this article shows that (a) everyone wants it to include coverage of a linguistically defined Germanic people and (b) no one wants this article to be purely about languages, but also about the groups named by classical authors and historians. Luckily, the secondary sources of our time have been facing the same type of issue, and hence the footnotes help explain the latest thinking. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I have nothing to say about the article, it is rather good indeed. I would just add information about the pre-Roman period based on reliable sources and well-accepted arguments.
ps:The second Germanic shift is not the only distinctive feature separating the two groups. How would you explain the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, shared by Old Frisian and Old English? ;-) (the Anglo-Saxon migration occurred in the 5th c. CE) Azerty82 (talk) 17:12, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
@Azerty82: suggestions on the pre-Roman period welcome. Concerning the other point yes, that is the Ingvaeonic distinction which is not yet rejected, the way I understand it. So West Germanic has gone from 3 groups to 2.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:31, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
@Andrew Lancaster:, I'm going to write a draft on the pre-Roman period this week-end. Note that my knowledge of Germanic cultures mainly come from the fields of linguistics, classical literature and comparative mythology (i.e. Indo-European studies). A list of RS on the archeology of the Nordic Bronze Age is thus welcome. Best regards, Azerty82 (talk) 14:01, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
@Azerty82: it sounds good. A few things to keep in mind apart from the basic fact and source collection:
  • Can it fit this into the existing structure or will there need to be changes such as a new section (if so, will that create duplications or otherwise create structure issues).
  • Could it end up creating an article length issue? Perhaps a solution is to work in such a way that smaller additions are made here, but bigger additions to other detailed "child" articles such as Early Germanic Culture.
FWIW my feeling is that on this article it is important to distinguish the sections which have no other "main article", meaning this article has to have the best discussion on WP, and those where it might be easier to work in parallel on whatever the "main article" is, in order to constantly consider what needs to be in the summary version here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:45, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
Yes the idea is to summarize the essential facts and main theories related to Germanic tribes during the pre-Roman period (i.e. the introduction section of the most erudite works). I known Krakkos is working on the article Early Germanic culture, so he'll provide a complementary perspective to the subject, although my contributions won't be limited to the cultural part. Anyway, I'll be working on a draft before publishing my results here. Azerty82 (talk) 18:10, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
@Azerty82: The pending rewrite of Early Germanic culture will discuss the cultural aspects of Germanic origins and history. Much of this information will certainly be of relevance to this article.
Your work at Proto-Indo-European mythology, Indo-European cosmogony and Proto-Indo-European society are excellent, and this article would certainly benefit from your contributions. For information on the Nordic Bronze Age and Germanic peoples i would recommend the following sources:
If you have trouble accessing these sources i can send them to you by email. Krakkos (talk) 18:44, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the bibliography and your kind comment on my previous work Krakkos. Polomé (1987) is the only source I couldn't locate among those you listed. Azerty82 (talk) 21:05, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Back to the etymology question

@Austronesier, Florian Blaschke, Obenritter, Ermenrich, and Krakkos: Do any of you have institutional and or any other type of access to the updated online version of the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde? Concerning the etymology of Germani, my reading (playing various tricks to see more pages) of the 1998 discussion (by Neumann) is that there is a least worst theory. I wonder if they still see it this way. The article says the least assailable proposal is a modified version of one by Much that connects the name to the same root German "begehren". Overall though they are saying there is no really convincing theory.

With some uncertainty about what to do with this question, I should at least post a link to the now archived discussion [6]. The obvious place to discuss etymologies is this section of the article which already has linking to the long discussion in the 1998 edition of the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, edited by Rosemarie Müller. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:09, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Sadly I no longer have access to the Reallexikon online. I will note that outside of specific discussions of the etymology of Germani the Celtic origin theory is often mentioned, e.g. Salmons History of German, [7], Young/Gloning, History of German through Texts, p. 63. For this reason alone it probably deserves mention, even if it's not actually the most likely or widespread etymology.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:06, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
The proposal that it must be Celtic seems to go back to Jacob Grimm? Wolfram is one person in recent times who repeats that. In the past this article always mentioned the spear-people theory and the loud or swelling idea. I am not giving up on finding a solution but I am still not sure where to draw the line, if we do have any extra discussion on this side issue. More opinions and comments anyone?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:13, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
@Andrew Lancaster: While I have this original work (book), Neumann shows up a few times. His mentions of begehren in this context relate to the first use of the term by Becker and Holder, and then asserts that this was the result of an incorrect translation that would have been better rendered as "Erwünschte haben/bringen". (p. 83) Theretofore, I am not sure what it is you are wanting. Also, I was not under the impression that you were functionally fluent in German either. Is this the case? --Obenritter (talk) 22:12, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
@Obenritter:, German is not my first language, but I have been happy to get some practice while working on this. Let me know if you see any errors of course. If you have the 1998 printed book which is on google books, as per some of the citations I have been making, then yes as mentioned above Neumann says that his modified version of a Much proposal seems to be "least worst" (to convert to an English idiom). Not a strong recommendation. For now, what I have put in the article is that the etymology is unknown, or that there is no consensus about it, and that is the best and least controversial summary. So my practical question here is whether we need to say more. My initial question above is whether anyone has access to newer "authoritative" comments on such theories.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:33, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Florian Blaschke concerning this old etymology question, I will just note one of us has taken a position in the article now: [8]. Personally, I feel it is undue deference to the old Celtic theory, but at least it is only in a footnote.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:12, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

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