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In 1611 Gdansk was a Part of Poland not Germany and its name was Gdansk not Danzig. It wasnt Danzig till after the Partitons of Poland, So will some of you people stop renaming it. And Jan Heweliusz was Polish and dedicated his first book to Sobieski and the Polish Crown.
See:http://www.ampolinstitute.org/people/heweliusz.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kommiec (talk • contribs) 04:41, 2 October 2003
We use current names on Wikipedia.Vancouverguy 03:42, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
And the Current name is Gdansk so stop renaming it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kommiec (talk • contribs) 04:44, 2 October 2003
The Britannica lists Gdansk: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=41189 12.243.94.55 04:31, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
City was refrenced as Gdansk in 1611 then it became Danzig not as the page is currently stated see biography: http://www.hao.ucar.edu/public/education/sp/images/hevelius.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.243.94.55 (talk • contribs) 04:58, 2 October 2003
He wouldn't be renaming it if it hadn't been part of your "program" to change all Danzig's to Gdansk's without explanation. You're better off explaining your changes, that way when they are not incorrect they won't be reverted -- Someone else 03:57, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Only changed the names to when it was a Part of Poland. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.243.94.55 (talk • contribs) 06:33, 2 October 2003
John Hevelius was Polish astronomer in non stricte ethnical sense - see Mikołaj Kopernik casus. He was Polish citizen, supported by Polish king. See also casus of G.F. Händel who had German origins but he was British.
The article was based on Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, which asserts that Hevelius was German.[1] The next day, after someone tried to assert him as Polish, someone else reckognised the conflict and left out the nationality[2], in line with WP:NPOV. Nevertheless battles ensued. As you can speak German a little, you might want to have a look at a page from Das Erste for German-Polish affairs [3]. (Roughly translated) "Like in the case of Nicolaus Copernicus, Hevelius' nationality, too, was disputed. Germans put forward Hevelius' ancestry and language, Poles his reverend loyalty to the Polish kings. Today - at least in science - other tones prevail." At the very least it explains why the web contains several sources that either attribute him as German or as Pole. To argue which of the two nationalities should be asserted is what WP:NPOV tries to prevent. These two point of views, which in Hevelius' time probably didn't conflict one another, can be fairly described in Wikipedia ... or left out. As his nationality is not his most famous attribute, (and because it is easy to do this) I'd suggest to simply exclude it. Sciurinæ 01:01, 8 May 2006 (UTC)Reply
The modern Britannica however clearly states that he was Polish[4], and updated source take precedence over outdated ones. I don't understant why information on country of birth is being deleted. Both Scinurea and Matthead seem to be obsessed with determing ethnic bloodlines, instead of acccepting that countries were mutltiethnic and a Polish astronemer could have ethnic Jewish, Lithuanian,Ormanian,German roots, it is irrelevant as long as he was a Polish citizen belonging to Polish culture. --Molobo 13:18, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply
You are unable to distinguish between culture and ethnicity. --Molobo 12:23, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply
Molobo has to be a joke, right? He/she can't possibly be for real. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.98.20.195 (talk • contribs) 13:45, 23 June 2006
Discuss Danzig/Gdańsk issues on pages covering the history of the city, not in biographies like this here. -- Matthead discuß! O 23:38, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
Google book search brings up 174 books with Hevelius Gdansk and over 600 with (Johannes) Hevelius Danzig
'A Halophänonem was observed by many in Danzig...' : May I enquire what, precisely, a 'halophänonem' is? --Nalco 17:21, 5 July 2007 (UTC)Reply
The following is written on Tycho Brahe's page:
while this article states:
I think that this should be resolved. Since Hevelius clearly did his work after Tycho's death, it would appear that the claim for T. is a bit of an exaggeration. H. did use telescopes, but not for his positional observations. Michael Daly 20:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)Reply
Some translation of the plaque might be nice...
Dear Poeticbent, I was neither involved nor knew that Hevelius had been put into the see-also section at Category:German astronomers until today. I'd disapprove of that in that the same should have been done with the Category:Polish astronomers and approve in that it is a better idea than asserting him into that group as really a German (Polish). Since you have now done the same with the Polish astronomer cat, meaning there is absolutely no current double standard in that regard, you needn't have solely put in that cat again to point out in the edit summary that there had been a double standard, thus also creating one. See the old talk on his nationality (above) and couple it with the thought that "Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Categories that are not self-evident, or are shown through reliable sources to be controversial, should not be included on the article; a list might be a better option." (Wikipedia:Categorization#Some_general_guidelines). That said, I undid the undiscussed introduction of the category again. Sciurinæ (talk) 19:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I have also noticed the sneaky attempts at inserting often incorrect Polish categories.
Also, several people at Wikipedia persistently keep re-adding wrong country Poland or Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth [6] , [7], [8] as country for Danzig.
That is incorrect. Danzig was in the country of Prussia or (Royal Prussia). Prussians from eastern Prussia (Ducal Prussia, East Prussia) held in common with people from western (Royal Prussia, West Prussia) ius indigenatus - citizens of Prussia status (not Polish). MfG 8 January 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.133.64.78 (talk • contribs) 01:44, 9 January 2008
Royal Prussia was a province within Poland, not a country. --Molobo (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Among his works:
The oddity is that the posthumously published catalog would be available to Hooke only after the death ("posthumously") of Hevelius. What was such a stupid theoretical controversy about, and with whome did Hooke quarrel? Elisabeth? Was then Hooke stupid enough to quarrel about not using telescopes with a quality that didn't exist under the life time of Hevelius? The sentence might be true, since some absurdities actually occur, but it is so odd that it needs some citations. ... said: Rursus (mbork³) 13:29, 24 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
Uh, ok, look, it's not that hard. [10] (and I'm not talking about the Tin Drum). Since HM put in 5 "he was German sources" I could go in and put in 6 or more "he was Polish sources". Then HM could come back and add a few more. And I could add a few more. Then Matthead and others would revert etc. etc. etc. And it would be a complete waste of time.
So how about 1 source per nationality, noting that he is referred to one way in some and another in others, and maybe even note that some sources use both [11]. Otherwise this is just gonna become another silly episode in an already silly story.radek (talk) 00:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
The former section Career renamed to Astronomy is a little too fragmented by small paragraphs. Is it maybe possible to merge some of them? Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 12:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
I've looked around but can find no indication that a plaque with the inscription as previously given in the article actually exists, though I guess it might have at one point in time. For example, here's a relevant google image search: [13].
On the other hand, there are plaques like this and this.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:31, 23 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Unsurprisingly the supposed plaque text was added in by our friend the banned IP [14].Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:37, 23 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Rethis: this is the same exact source as the 1995 Michael Bakchik source, that's why it was removed. It's just at two different urls on the intranets. This is just padding the "German sources" list.
Rethis: attribution is obviously to the author, not publisher. If Random House publishes something that does not make that something the opinion of Random House. Attribute it properly and let's not engage in mind reading original research about what the esteemed Royal Society "really thinks" about this issue.
Rethis: show me how many other scientists who are not subject to Polish-German dispute, or some other ethnic dispute, have their religion prominently marked in the first sentence of their article's lede. Kepler? Nope. Geiger? Nope. Leibniz? Nah. So why single out poor ol' Hevelius? Come on, we both know that 1) at the time religion was indeed not a very good marker of nationality/ethnicity but that 2) readers will tend to associate certain religions with certain nationalities but not others. This "protestant" business was put in there by the anon IP or some other editor like that, because they couldn't get their way and put "German" in there. You want to discuss his religion somewhere in the body of the article, that's fine. But it has no place - or relevance - in the first sentence of the lede. Volunteer Marek (talk) 09:54, 23 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Re: [15] - there's always a number of ways to spell a particular name - in this case the name "John" - in a particular language. Including all the possible variants of the German spelling is simply WP:UNDUE. Why not include all the possible Polish variants? This is just more of the same "include as much German as possible in a En-wiki article" territory marking. And again, this is stuff that was inserted into the article by long-banned users.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
The problem with this [18] is that it's not entirely correct. Yes, obviously, "Hevelius" is a Latinization of ... some variant of the guy's name. But it's simply very dubious as to what is actually latnizing. I dunno, is there a record of his father's name? Back in those days there were no such things as birth certificates (and if there were, they were in Latin), no national ids (and if there had been, it would've been in Polish) and no standardized single names that somebody went by. Basically, he went under all these names so "Hevelius" is a latinization of all of them.
The way the section is written it also seems to marginalize the "Polish" name presenting it apart from others and labeling it as in Polish - no such thing is done for "in German known as Johann" or "in German known as Höfelcke". That needs to be changed also.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
What is this JPG File doing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gda%C5%84sk_Hotel_Mercure-Hevelius.JPG Dadofsam (talk) 04:15, 6 January 2012 (UTC)Reply
Is there any actual substance to these latest edits [19]? The text is essentially the same except anything mentioning Poland is moved to the bottom and the claim about his German (Bohemian actually) father is added. This appears to be just a "Hevelius was a German astronomer!" kind of edit, not particularly useful.Volunteer Marek 13:00, 22 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
This is the current Wikipedia policy concerning foreign language sources: "1. When quoting a source in a different language, provide the original text and an English translation, either in the body of the article or in a footnote. 2. When citing a non-English source for information, it is not always necessary to provide a translation. However, if a question should arise as to whether the non-English original actually supports the information, relevant portions of the original and a translation should be given in a footnote, as a courtesy." I do propose that you cite and translate the respective paragraph of the "Polish Academy of Sciences" accordingly. A second reference from an English source would do as well. It would be clarifying, if references 4, 8 (the link is ridicluous), 10, 13-15, 20-23, 27, and 28 were handled the same way. Discordion (talk) 21:33, 22 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
This issue was settled nine years ago, as follows:
Alas, since then we've been a resurgence in changing all mentions of Danzig to Gdańsk — ostensibly on the basis of the city's political alignment with the Polish Crown after 1466 — without reference to the city's ethnic and linguistic character at the time in question.
It's evident from reading details of Hevelius's life that German was his first language, and that, like any good 17th century intellectual, he used Latin professionally. One American source, the Galileo Project [21] identifies his nationality as "German (as Danzig was)," but adds that after graduation from the Danzig Gymnasium in 1624, he was "sent to a school ... near Bromberg (now Bydgoszcz, Poland), to acquire fluency in Polish" (my emphasis). [22] From these and other factors we see that Hevelius was a typical upper-class citizen of 17th century Danzig, a city of predominantly German (and Lutheran) character situated in a region controlled politically and heavily influenced by (Catholic) Poland.
We must bear in mind that in Hevelius's day nationality, particularly in northeastern Europe, was sometimes nebulous — but in the Vistula Delta area there were definite differences in language and culture, the history of which should not be obscured by simplistic modern ethnocentrism. Sca (talk) 15:49, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
The "Gdansk vote" - a discussion that took place freakin' fifteen years ago is completely irrelevant. It is not nor ever was policy or even a guideline. The appropriate guideline is Wikipedia's naming convention and manual of style. Did Wikipedia even have infoboxes when the Gdansk discussion took place? If not then how can it possibly apply to that. Did the sources change in the fifteen freakin' years since the Gdansk discussion? If so, then that's an additional reason not to care about it.
If you think that you can hide behind the Gdansk vote in order to carry out your edit wars, or to engage in nationalistic POV pushing, that's your prerogative. I very strongly doubt that others will see it the same way.
(and btw, you're even misinterpreting the Gdansk vote in these edits).Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:08, 16 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
As you can read in the article:
"His observatory, instruments and books were destroyed by fire on September 26, 1679. The catastrophe is described in the preface to his Annus climactericus (1685). He promptly repaired the damage enough to enable him to observe the great comet of December 1680. He named the constellation Sextans in memory of these lost instruments.
His health had suffered from the shock of the 1679 fire, and he died on his 76th birthday, January 28, 1687."
Well, we can compare dates with the article on the sextant:
"(...) a glazier in Philadelphia. John Bird made the first sextant in 1757."
I'm trying to understand this inconsistency, but also take the opportunity to leave the question here, where I think clarification may be useful.
85.247.92.144 (talk) 20:49, 24 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ok...sorry about this. Now I uderstand there is no contradiction: Hevelius sextant and the constellation he created based on his instrument was an astronomical sextant.
85.247.92.144 (talk) 21:39, 24 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
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