Talk:Joseph Haydn's ethnicity

ethnicity

I do not agree with the sentences: "The principal contending ethnicities were Croatian and German. Mainstream musical scholarship today generally adopts the second of these two hypotheses." and wanted to change it to "Mainstream musical scholarship today generally adopts that Haydn's mother tongue was German, but due to the vagueness of the concept, does not generally use the term ethnicity in this context any more."

My changes were reverted with the explanation: "I think we can rely on the commonsense notion, just as Haydn himself would have meant."

My answer: In the German language literature this is certainly NOT considered a common sense notion. No modern scholarly text written in German or written by German speaking authors would use the notion "ethnicity" in this context (since it is dangerous to use such a vague concept after the notion of "German" has been so much misused by the Nazis). So the sentence that meanstream scholarship generally considers Haydn of German ethnicity is clearly wrong. Nahabedere (talk) 14:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello Hahabedere, By "mainstream scholarship" I mean the biographies of Haydn that you'll find on the shelf of any large library: Geiringer, Brenet, Hughes, Larsen, Robbins Landon (all cited in the article). These are unquestionably the "mainstream" scholarly authorities concerning Haydn's life, and they all discuss the question of whether Haydn was Croatian or Austrian.

Now you write Austrian, which is a totally different thing. The term Austrian does not necessarily imply a certain language. For example, both in history and today, many people identify themselves as Croatian-speaking Austrians.

In general, it seems that by "mainstream scholarship" you mean, "mainstream scholarship in the English language". A large part of scholarship on Haydn has been written in German, and there, today the situation is different. We could present it that way. Nahabedere (talk) 11:54, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Concerning the purpose of your edit: obviously, horrible deeds have been done, by the Nazis and others, in the name of ethnicity. But pretending that ethnicity doesn't exist will not be of any help in preventing future deeds of this kind. To the contrary, full awareness of ethnic identification and its often terrible consequences is probably crucial in preventing such deeds. Sincerely, Opus33 (talk) 15:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

A discussion on this would lead to far. In the German speaking world, people just tend to use more precise terms instead of the vague, and hence dangerous concept of "ethnicity", for example, "German speaking", "German citizen", "declaring oneself German". Nahabedere (talk) 11:54, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

This article is tampered by a germanophile. Shameful The reality of Haydn nationality and ethnicity. Citizen of Austro-Hungarian Empire (not Germany). Germany (Deutscher Bund) was founded five years after Haydn's death. The Haydn's links (folklore matters & culturally) are with Austria, with Hungary and with Croatia. Not Germany. (italianboy)

You seem to be very confused about several concepts. First, "ethnicity" should perhaps be replaced by "nationality" - one's nationality is usually based on what one's mother tongue is (there are exceptions) - "citizenship" however is based on political boundaries. The German people existed long before there was today's nation-state of Germany. From what the Romans referred to as 'Germania' up through the hundreds of small independent German states within the boundaries of the 'Holy Roman Empire" and the Germanic areas of Austria and elsewhere, Germans as a nation existed beyond any political boundaries. Today, when one speaks of an "Austrian," the term means a citizen of the sovereign state of Austria, however, there is no 'Austrian nationality' technically, a few extreme nationalists notwithstanding. Although the majority of the population is ethnically German, huge slices of it are also made up of Italians and Swiss - Austria is not a 'nation-state' the way the Czech Republic is, for example. Nationalities are one's "blood" based on a specific common language. The slang of my country, the USA, as "one nation, under God ..." is an idealistic goal rather than a scientific classification - America is a multi-national country of English, Germans, Africans, "Indians," Latinos, Japanese, Chinese etc., etc. So although we may call ourselves an 'American' all of us have a deeper background of nationality, also. It's pretty clear that in Haydn's mind (not to mention his first language) that he was a German/Austrian, and not Croatian. HammerFilmFan (talk) 23:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC) HammerFilmFan

Sorry, I have to disagree. Today more then 90% percent of all Austrians identify themselves as belonging to an Austrian NATION, and more or less NO Austrian would identify as German, neither concerning nation nor ethnicity. And concerning "And huge slices of it are also made up of Italians and Swiss": sorry, this is complete nonsense, as only 5 seconds of reading Austria would confirm. The point here is something different: In HAYDN's time, identifying as German indeed just meant "having German mother tongue", and hence it as the appropriate term for describing HISTORIC facts, but NOT the appropriate term for describing NOWADAY's situation. Nahabedere (talk) 18:35, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

No gypsy ancestry without reference sources

Hello, the edit recently made offered a helpful link to an article posted by the Haydn Festspiel Eisenstadt. I've incorporated this into the External Reference Section. However, this article says nothing whatever about Haydn being of Roma ancestry. Therefore, the edits that say Haydn was a gypsy are in violation of the policy WP:VER (please read if you haven't already) and so I have removed them. Opus33 (talk) 16:32, 12 April 2010 (UTC)