A number of their works were considered to be permanently lost following World War 2. However, recent research at the Adam Mickiewicz University Library led to an unexpected discovery — specialists managed to find 27 original volumes with rare prints and unique editions.
lots of people mention the advancements and technologies gained from war, but how can we possibly remember what it caused us to lose?
it's gone
Anyone with the slightest bit of interest in the tales should read the recent English translation of the first edition. https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-original... or https://archive.org/details/originalfolkfair0000unse It's obvious reading the originals that it they were more a collection of tales with no particular moral, some unspeakable brutality, and a ton of hallucinatory weirdness. Why does an anthropomorphic needle go down the road? Heck if I know! The later versions, as explained in the preface of the above book, were sanitized and Christianized for popular consumption.
I think there are morals in Grimms Fairy Tales even in the earliest versions. What is striking to me when I read them is that many of the stories come from people at the bottom level of society and reflected their struggle for survival. These include terrifying consequences for misbehavior and that violating group norms (including those imposed from above) is a big no-no. A lot of the stories feature tricksters who cleverly got around these restrictions.
These patterns don't show up clearly in individual stories. But it's pretty strong if you read them from end to end.
Yeah, this is definitely the case IME. It's easy to read these stories and go away thinking "WTF." But it's important to remember that these stories come from oral societies, which means 90% of the communication is lost since it's only written on paper. But that communication can be reconstructed by a charitable mind.
For example, in the first story in Grimm's Fairy Tales (at least the version I read), there's a mouse and a cat that are friends. The cat and mouse find some delicious food and they hide it somewhere far away from their house. The cat then proceeds to go "visiting relatives" (in reality he is eating up the delicious food) and the mouse is gullible and believes the cat. After a while the mouse discovers the cat ate up all the food and angrily accuses the cat of being deceitful. The cat then proceeds to eat the mouse. The end.
I think this is a profound story on not ignoring the fact that the cat is the natural predator and the mouse is the natural prey in the relationship. The mouse has convinced itself that this time will be different. This has relevance for e.g. not dismissing signs of abuse.
But it's so easy to read that story and be like, "Well, I guess the point is that gullible people get screwed, so don't be gullible." Or even, "It's a dog-eat-dog world." It's a good story to tell a friend who's trying to rationalize being passive in an abusive relationship.
in the first story in Grimm's Fairy Tales
It's the second story. The first is the "frog prince".
The cat then proceeds to eat the mouse.
Even the english Wikipedia article does not mention the most important part:
When she beholds the empty pot, enlightenment dawns on the mouse: "First 'Top-off,' " she murmurs, "then 'Half-gone,' and then ..." The cat warns her to say no more, but the mouse persists. The cat pounces on the mouse and eats her up.
The mouse says "All-gone" and is than eaten because of that. And the first version does not contain the phrase
"And that is the way of the world," the story closes.
Yeah dang I just read the original version and the moral is a double whammy of don't fool yourself into being deceived/oppressed by a predator, but if you do, don't ever call them out on it!
Wait, isn't the mouse screwed from the beginning though?
One read I get is that the cat is making friends with the mouse so that, specifically in the lean times, it'll be able to eat his "friend", while also not sacrificing any hard-earned payoff in the good times.
The mouse only reached self knowledge at the end. One should work on it sooner.
The universality of these truths I think is exemplified by the same principles being expressed by Sun Tzu and others.
To me that story reads like thinly veiled political commentary. Peasants and feudal lords/nobility/local government working towards a common goal (e.g. paying taxes to fund defense against bandits, building grain stores for times of famine, etc). A person in power misappropriates the funds for personal gain, and any peasant who complains loses their head.
Telling a story about a mouse and a cat allowed you to keep your head, and the situation was probably common enough for the fable to become widely known before it was picked up by the Bothers Grimm.
It's not that different from Gulliver's Travels complaining about pointless religious wars under the guise of talking about far-away islands of tiny humans, or Star Trek criticizing the Vietnam War under the guise of talking about a primitive planet light-years away centuries in the future.
My thoughts were this might also be on the World politics level. E.g. a case where a stronger country during wartime will co operate with weaker country, and then slowly infiltrate because it's easier than to do full on invasion.
Then finally when weaker country starts to complain they will completely take over. The stronger country in theory could at any time swallow the weaker, it's just that it might be more beneficial for stronger country to do it in a slower, methodical, deceiving manner, until it can. Or when it actually needs to.
In this case it seems to me it was strategic behavior by the cat to not immediately eat the mouse, but instead consume the fat first. Eating the mouse was a fallback in this scenario.
But overall this specific scenario happens on so many levels of relationships including, but not limited to interpersonal, business, country level, World level, etc.
The main key points in my view are that it is a cat, and cat always will want to eat the mouse in what you would think is pscyhopathic mannerism if it was between people, but it's most easily explainable on level of countries. Because ultimately countries as entities have to act in psychopathic ways with each other, because territories, resources are all clearly limited.
Due to the complexity of World politics you have to co operate with your enemies as well. Both sides are lying to each other, keeping secrets, but at the same time co operating, because they have to or they otherwise will fall behind other countries.
I hate to break it to you but this is ahistorical, as this story is several hundred years old the peasants at that time had no concerns for world politics nor were they concerned by whom they were governed, the circumstances for them wouldn't change
It's a good story to tell a friend who's trying to rationalize being passive in an abusive relationship.
Uhmm ... so they should be passive or they will get killed? I guess that was not the point you were trying to make? Like, warn them, that if they don't play their cards right, it will end bad, like for the mouse?
Well, not OPENLY confronting your abusive lord was a pretty good advise. Cutting your losses and leaving when nobody was looking, or, some "happy little accident" if there was no way to leave would have been the clever choice.
I don't know if it's a good story for telling said friend, but the point would be to get out of the relationship before the cat eats you.
I’m in therapy right now and it’s hard not to see it as some sort of cluster-b discard cycle fable.
I think there are two ways to think about stories like this: that they are Wisdom, or that they are tools for those who are wise. I prefer to think of them in the second way. The stereotypical Bible-thumping Christian thinks of the Bible as Wisdom. That is, it doesn't require much critical thinking or wisdom to apply. The Bible says X, therefore X is true in every situation and you should apply it to everything.
But I think in an oral culture it was more likely that these were tools for thinking. E.g. if your wise friend tells you this story (which you've heard before) and says, "I think in this area you're being the cat in the relationship," then that has some weight. But when a random priest says, "You're the cat in this area of the relationship," their priestly authority doesn't mean they are the voice of God and they are speaking infallible truth into your life. Your wise friend has more weight because you know from experience that they are wise and because they know you.
Basically, the story is a tool that is only useful to those who are wise. The story is worthless in the hands of a fool.
Who made all these revisions? The bothers themselves?
Yes, they set about on an academic exercise and found themselves with a surprise bestseller. They spent the rest of their days churning out subsequent editions. It was kind of the Harry Potter of its day.
They revised the stories themselves. The initially publication was an anthropolical work collecting folk tales but it became succesfull as childrens litterature. So in subsequent editions they revised the stories to be more child friendly (according to the standards at the tme).
This does not mean the original publication was completely uncensored though. In any case orally transmittet stories does not have a single canonical version.
After the second revision only Wilhelm, Jacob did add some "scientific remarks" for these. The biggest problem had been the idea of the Grimms' of the books being both a "scientific" collection of stories (which never were meant exclusively for children) and a book for children.
For my cheapskates like me, Amazon has that book for about half the price (in paperback). Cheaper if you get a used one.
Link please?
Yup. The early collected tales often violate a lot of what we'd today understand to be basic "rules" of storytelling, for example maybe somebody gets given a magical item, they're told it can be used three times - in any modern story we known we will see it used three times in the story, maybe the last time is a twist, but a reader or audience knows that's how this works - but in one of these tales it'll sometimes just get used twice because that's all the story needed.
Chekhov's Gun is another rule, in these early tales maybe our hero is given a magic whistle, big deal is made of the whistle, there's a ceremony for it, and then he fights a dragon, and... he slays the dragon with a sword. What is the whistle for? Nothing, it's just a magic whistle, the real world is untidy like that. If you wrote a Hollywood movie which did that, reviewers would be appalled.
These rules create a straitjacket that I think needs to be resisted more often, and so I'm glad to see that the stories targeting small children (e.g. "The Tiger Who Came To Tea") don't obey them as strictly, and that's why my favourite comic book issue is "Winter's Tale", Gaiman's telling of the story of how Winter Moran (Miracleman's daughter) went far away and came back. Gaiman chooses to tell this as a kid's picture book in a story-within-a-story because in this mode it needn't obey normal adult rules - Winter meets various ludicrously powerful people across the galaxy, they all seem perfectly delighted and assist her. Adults would suspect that maybe the galactic slaver traders and arms dealers aren't entirely aligned with Winter's preferences, but in a kids book that never comes up. Winter says "Everything" already belongs to her and the arms dealers just say OK, then this is already yours. Just like that. There is no big fight scene (back on Earth a climactic fight is happening, but it's not shown at all), there are no verbal or physical clashes, she just meets people around the universe who are all very agreeable and then she comes home.
There’s also an excellent translation by Philip Pullman. My eldest daughter was obsessed with it when she was about 11 or 12.
Similar to Greek, Roman, Hindu, or another other ancient tales.
A bit of morals, a bit of entertainment, a bit of propaganda, a bit of superstition.
The difference between these tales and others is perhaps the "for children" angle.
They have morals and lessons, they are just so alien to modern Christian morals that they are misunderstood. I suspect what you are calling “hallucinatory weirdness” is where the important parts are that are being misunderstood, as these are often about spiritual unconscious personal development.
The book Iron John by Robert Bly is a great example of explaining the purpose and meaning of the “hallucinatory weirdness.”
The german version of the first two books can be found (for example) here: http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Grimm,+Jacob+und+Wilhelm/M%C...
I'm actually actively researching the Grimms tales - I'm glad you linked to Zipe's translation! I think he has the most accurate and complete English translation out there, but it's still being frequently overlooked for lower-quality public-domain translations.
It’s unclear to me from the article if these volumes had never been discovered before or if the editions of these volumes are unique? Meaning are there wholly unique stories that have been discovered?
I'm sure the folks at Disney are at the edges of their seats in anticipation of new source material.
The fact that these volumes were "lost" suggests to me that there are "new" tales in these pages.
I'm sure the folks at Disney are at the edges of their seats in anticipation
Until they find out the new tales are about a story teller that let politics ruin all the good stories.
Do me a favor. Go back and rewatch Dumbo (1941) and prepare a few thoughts regarding its treatment of hot-button issues like miscegenation (hint: what kind of elephant has big ears?). Then, comment again on Disney’s recent discovery of “politics.”
That is an absurd level of reading things into a work. Unless you have actual primary sources which say that's what they intended, I'm calling bullshit.
Look, the other elephants start out the stork delivery scene declaring they’re part of “a proud race” and end it gossiping about “what would Mr. Jumbo think?!?” and “Jumbo? More like dumbo…”
We also see what happens to certain black men in the world, during “Song of the Roustabouts” (“when other folks have gone to bed / we slave until we’re almost dead,” “boss man hounding / keep on pounding / ‘grab that rope you hairy ape’”)
Afterwards we see the cruel and arbitrary nature of those who mock the poor kid, contrasted to the universal experience of family (“Baby mine don’t you cry”). Eventually the kid ends up with a bunch of (black) crows, including one Mr. “Jim Crow,” who make fun of him, before his buddy from Brooklyn calls them out on how people make fun of them for being different too, and they feel real bad; after finding friendship there, he earns social acceptance for his athletic feats (flight) and later through participation in the armed forces (“Dum-bombers for victory!!” read the newspapers.)
You sayin’ that this isn’t about race at all, and the whole storyline is just a coinkydink? Ha! Tell me another one. Disney’s been at this stuff for longer than your parents have been alive.
For a good introduction to the problematic social and political content of many Disney films - Dumbo definitely included - I highly recommend Lindsay Ellis' video "Woke Disney" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU1ffHa47YY
Speaking of that, there ought to be a streaming service that uses bittorrent and has only old, public domain movies on it. Like popcorntime, but with only legal stuff on it. Internet archive just isn't the same.
Well the Brothers Grimm themselves let politics ruin the good stories, e.g by removing sex and turning evil mothers into evil stepmothers.
It is probabaly unavoidable that a retelling of a folktale will reflect the biases of the storyteller. It is just that politics which align with ones own tend to be invisible. Like when having a black stormtrooper is considered political but a white isn’t.
Disney only adapted a single Grimm tale, Snow White, in 1937.
Other Disney fairy tale moves were based on other sources like Charles Perrault (Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty). Grimm also have variants of these tales, but they are significantly different.
I wondered the same.
They mention the prints are unique and presumably the footnotes they found are ... but I agree, the question of content is surprisingly not mentioned at all.
Poznań is Posen - a former German area with lot of German literature culture
Poznań has been Polish for a millennia, it was a part of Germany from 1793 to 1919.
It was majority Polish during that period, with Germans making up at most 40% of the population, or ~65000, when it became a part of Poland again.
Neither "Germans" nor "Poles" have existed for millennia, the idea of national identity isn't that old. Also going back only 2 millennia, it was Germanic territory, the Burgundians lived in the area before they were displaced by Slavs coming from the east during the Migration Period. So if one were to make the argument that territory belongs to whoever was there first, Germanic peoples would have a better claim on it by that logic.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Roman_Em...
No, Poznań is Poznań.
Former German area.
Former from 1939 to 1945.
Both true. And translated it is Posen
Do you mean a former German area during the WW2 occupation of Poland or after the Second Partitioning of Poland at the end of 18th century?
The article references reporting by Nauka w Polske, which I believe is https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezi... which in turn references an article published by the library https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... which has an English abstract:
The private book collection that belonged to Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm testifies to the sixty-year-long period of the fertile research (and artistic) output of the famous German researchers and founders of the German philology, and in itself is an important subject to study. This book collection, comprising rare prints and unique editions, is more than just a series of items of significant material of bibliophile value. It is particularly valuable primarily as a source of knowledge on the research methods used by the two researchers. In the footnotes and indexes to their publications of fairy tales or folk legends, both Jakob and Wilhelm were very meticulous in providing their written source material, i.e. the sources that they held in their book collection, the items of which had purposefully been acquired by the duo to preserve for subsequent editions of old relics European and German literature. Equally important for the research on the literary output and research activity of the Grimm Brothers is the analysis of hand-written underlining, notes and annotations that the texts were typographically enhanced by during the reading. The volumes from the portion of the working collection of the Brothers Grimm found in the Poznań University Library were long though to had been lost during the WWII, and now can be of significant value in their contribution to the development of modern research on the Brothers’ literary and scientific output. The very fact that they have been found allows us to believe that the book collections at the Library can hold other volumes that belonged to the private book collection of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm still to be discovered.
So it's not about books written by the Brothers Grimm, but books which they used in their research.
best part about > Polish science news outlet Nauka w Polske reported is that "Nauka w Polske" is not correct Polish. I hate to be the grammar Nazi everywhere I show up but to prevent copy pasting errors, that should be "Nauka w Polsce".
original src: https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezi...
I'd say it could be interpreted as "correct funky informal Polish" - "Nauka w Polsce" indeed is super correct Polish, but "Nauka w Polske" is: - branding "nauKa w polsKe", - and a play of words "nauka (noun) w (go inside/towards) Polske (where)" - interpreted as "Hey Science, go to Poland", "Hey Science, go into minds of the people who live in Poland"
If that's so, then where's the "ę" at the end?
I cannot enter my name on a plane ticket without changing some characters, I’m not surprised an ogonek[1] got lost.
Title is inaccurate, including article's title. No volumes of fairy tales were found - only books used for research.
Could we update the submission title to: "Portion of Brothers Grimm working library found at University Library, Poznan" and point it to: https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... ?
Which is even more interesting since that could pointing to older unknown works.
I saw nothing indicating that; is there a source?
Of course. As a Ukrainian I would never trust a ukrainian news site.
Why are they the Brothers Grimm and not the Grimm Brothers?
Just an archaism
The German is "die Brüder Grimm" and early English translations preserved that order, which is unusual but not completely unknown in English; then it stuck.
I assume this is a good spot to give a shout-out for the Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest podcast - kid-friendly story-telling podcast great for long car rides. The author likes to point out deviations between original stories and later re-tellings. I believe the first 2 seasons are free.
* https://pinna.fm/library/kids-shows/pinna-podcasts/grimm-gri...
This is an excellent podcast for children (and adults!). It used to be season 1 was available on podcast platforms, seasons 2-4 required a subscription, which I’ve gotten both through Apple and Pinna (different years).
I hope this is genuine. It’s the kind of low stakes anthropology that I like. Nothing major, nothing to fight over, just “how fucked up were these guys’ stories”
They didn't write the stories associated with their name, they collected and published existing stories.
I'm glad all of those works belong to to public domain.
so were they just sitting on the open stacks? Was someone just wandering down the aisle?
I can just imagine being a librarian and someone walks up to check the book out ...
I always find discoveries like this so encouraging. There are so many treasures out there to re-discover
If you’re looking for more Grimm fairy tales, there are some: there was another brother, Ferdinand, apparently the black sheep of the family. He also published fairy tales, but was largely forgotten. Some of his tales were rediscovered and published (in German) in 2020. I read a few and they sound like authentic Grimm.
https://www.aufbau-verlage.de/die-andere-bibliothek/der-frem...
Well Disney's got some new films in the pipe now I guess.
Here is the original article about the finding, including a complete list of the books: https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... (PDF, in Polish)
If you are in Poland it ought to be painfully straightforward to remember the losses it caused.
The volumes of Brothers Grimm fairy tales found here were german. And they were found in Poland, because some of todays Poland was Germany, and most of the knowledge lost in the war in todays Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and heritage, when the Soviets invaded from the east and burned down all the houses and libraries. Millions of Germans fled and died, and with this large amounts of german knowledge has been lost forever. In this case, due to some luck, some works survived.
Edit: "some", not "most".
It's not like all this has happened in vacuum though. Some context is missing from your observation.
nothing in history happens in a vacuum. But as a matter of fact, when the Soviets invaded Germany from the east, what got lost was mostly german knowledge in the destruction and burnings.
When they invaded Germany proper, sure. But that was after the Germans had already destroyed countless Polish cultural treasures over the previous five years.
And of course that’s not even mentioning the Russification and Germanization programs that aimed to destroy Polish culture and knowledge during the Partitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_culture_during_World_Wa...
https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-germans-...
Yes indeed. When governments lead wars against each other, it is the populations that suffer, and knowledge and culture get destroyed on all sides.
Characterizing the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union as “governments leading wars against each other” is sloppy revisionism at best. Poland was invaded by occupying powers.
Polish heavy cavalry was entirely innocent for a thousand years?
That has what to do with WW2, exactly?
All war is state terror. As the great Sebastian Haffner wrote:
"European history knows two forms of terror. The first is the uncontrollable explosion of bloodlust in a victorious mass uprising. The other is cold, calculated cruelty committed by a victorious state as a demonstration of power and intimidation. The two forms of terror normally correspond to revolution and repression. The first is revolutionary. It justifies itself by the rage and fever of the moment, a temporary madness. The second is repressive. It justifies itself by the preceding revolutionary atrocities."
Nice quote, but I'm not sure how it relates to my comment.
You're quite right about that, but it is true that the post-WW borders of Germany viz. Poland were a little ridiculous, and the Allies after WWII undertook a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing after the war against territories that had had major German populations for centuries in an effort to create ethnically homogeneous states.
The national myth of Germany actually obscures one of the biggest successful efforts in "restructuring" the Allies engaged in: the complete elimination of Prussia.
Not only were parts of Eastern Prussia reassigned to other countries but also Prussian provinces within Germany were dissolved and remodeled into the German Bundesländer. Today "Prussia" as a cohesive identity largely only exists as something for Bavarians to differentiate themselves from. Well into WW1 German national identity was defined more by Prussia than anything else but the Allies completely eliminated it. Denazification was largely a farce and appeals by influential people were mostly rubberstamped but Deprussification is the secret success story.
It's worth remebering though that this was Stalin's plan to enlarge the Soviet Union (incidently also approved by the Western powers in the Yalta Agreement) at the cost of German territory. The expulsion of some millions of Poles from the territories of some newly created Soviet republics that now belong to Western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania is just as well a striking example of campaign of ethnic cleansing against the territories that had major Polish population for centuries. Morover, the Western Poland was subject to Prussian ethnic cleansing policies for more than a century, not to mention the war itself.
It didn't help that in Poland was an aggresive country in 1930s too, and was waging aggressive wars against its neighbours (read, "Lithuania"), and occupying and bruttaly polonizing what was never its ever. Not too say that Lithuania was not run by own nationalists, who also managed to get into military conflicts with Latvian "brothers". The moral is that the whole Europe was boiling in every own nationalism that culminated with WW2. Thinking that it can never repeat is as delusional as 100 years ago
Nationalism truly was the mindkiller that enabled WW1 and WW2. It's important to remember that although WW2 is rightfully remembered for the Holocaust, it was in essence an attempt at a European colonialism by Germany coupled with a Germanic ethno-nationalism (or more accurately: völkisch nationalism, which is still deeply entrenched today).
The racist pseudoscience of the Germanic übermensch served the same purpose as the skull measuring scientific racism used to justify the enslavement and extermination of the native population in African colonies. "Lebensraum" was just a Germanized version of Manifest Destiny.
The colonization of Africa, India and the Americas involved massive displacement of natives and mass killings that at least colloquially can best be described as genocides. Much the same way as forests were cleared to create farmland, native populations were cleared to create "living space" for settlers. Much like natural resources were exploited and brought back home, natives were used for manual labor until they were used up.
Nationalism allowed leaders to use a national identity to rally their subjects against their neighbors. In an act of massive hubris and severe underestimation of technological advancements this nationalist fervor led to the mass death event that was WW1. WW2 in turn built on this but also brought colonialism home with the explicit goal of not only redrawing borders but also repurposing the land and eliminating any natives standing in the way.
I.e. Poland may have engaged in nationalist assimilation in the form of Polonizing Lithuania but Germany explicitly wanted to remove anyone not part of the "volk", at the barrel of a gun if necessary.
Funnily enough a lot of Polish art was "lost" during WWII. Every now and then it resurfaces from someone's "private collection" in Germany. German government is kind enough to let Poles bid for the art they carelessly lost during that affair in the 1940s. If it is for sale, that is - much of it isn't.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looting_of_Poland_in_World_W...
My favorite German proverb is "children are not responsible for the crimes of their parents".
Doesn't work as a response to "this was robbed from my grandfather, you should give it back because benefitting from crime is generally bad".
It absolutely does. You need to end the chain of responsibility somewhere, and stuff that my grandfather did to your grandfather is beyond the line of what's reasonable.
My uncle is a lawyer in Europe who specializes in art law and I can assure you based on listening to him talk about cases, that you are likely to have to return the stolen art if there is sufficient evidence despite any inheritances or intermediate transactions (at least in the nation where he practices).
However, returning the stolen goods is on a different level from taking on the penalties or damages of the initial theft.
So if someone kills you and isolates your family for one generation, that would make it even?
Not only in Germany. Poland got looted by the Nazis and Soviets from both sides.
And that somehow changes the merit of the argument?
Which argument specifically? Your sarcastic overtone make it difficult to detect an actual argument.
Your general remark that Polish art disappeared from Poland is true. Your implication that only Germany was responsible for that is wrong. The german state is generally cooperative, in contrast to the ex-soviet states, in giving back and trying to find solutions. Even from the private side is cooperation - some time ago some private owner gave back art to Poland, which rarely happens.
You did not provide a source for your claim that "German government is kind enough to let Poles bid for the art they carelessly lost".
Even top US politicians, like Albright https://www.jta.org/archive/wealthy-austrian-family-claims-a...
"Most" is a bit of a stretch, but then it's hard to keep up with the territorial changes in that part of the world, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Polan...
As for those poor Germans who had to flee... a lot of those lands were captured during partitions of Poland, but no other that Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia, and Russia. No love lost there.
Thing is, European Countries before the Napoleonic Age were quite a bit "intertwined"; Several times between ~1400 ... 1700, Polish (or shall I say, Polish-Lithuanian?) Royalty also ruled Bohemia, Hungary, Wallonia (modern Romania), Sweden, almost got there in Moscow during "the Troubles", while at other times the German / Central European Wettin (Saxony) or Luxemburg (Bohemia) families also held the Polish Crown. Nevermind military alliances (Jan Sobieski's contributions to to lifting the Turkish Siege of Vienna in 1683 got him a memorial in the sky to this day ... the constellation of Scutum).
The way to become King of Poland was not quite as elaborately ritualized as the German electorate, but not generally/universally hereditary either. But neither did Poland isolate itself from its neighbours, on the contrary. Up until internal strife and the great Nordic War, it involved itself a lot with both central and eastern Europe. And while one may look at the partitions as predatory, let's also remember that for 80 years before the Polish Duma flogged the crown to the highest bidder (August the nth of Saxony, for three generations), which, and realize it's a strong word, also sold the country. Let's remember "predatory" territorial expansions also a little in context; Turkey overrunning the Balkans and Hungary between 1300..1526 eradicated a dozen countries. Louis XIV's wars of reunion were very predatory and gained France territory the size of Switzerland. The Austria-Turkey wars after 1683 "undid" 200 years of Turkish rule in Hungary within two decades, as did Russia taking over the Cossack Hetmanates, Crimea; the wars of the Spanish and Austrian succession changed territorial "ownership" on a large scale as well. What Napoleon, in league with quite a few of the German states, did to "countries" in Germany was neither less disruptive nor, territory-wise, smaller in scale than the partitions of Poland.
That doesn't make them "right". I would contest though that they were a "uniquely polish" sort of doom. Other countries lost their independence for centuries as well (Serbia, Hungary, Bohemia/Czechy, Lithuania if you like ...).
The difference "then" was that such changes in overlordship only began to be associated with forceful removals of population - ethical cleansing - after the rise of nationalism post Napoleon. My country (Germany) did rather evil there, and can't blame others for having taken retribution. No need for "love lost". It's not deserved.
The real evil was less the partitions and the "ganging up" on Poland, but the nationalism in the 19th century. The idea that within your country's boundaries, there shall be one language, one culture. It'd have been considered very odd up to ~1700 for sure. And it created all the evil between 1780 and 1945. Looking at Russia trying to eradicate Ukraine, maybe ... to this day.
And yet, it's all _shared_ history.
"European Countries before the Napoleonic Age were quite a bit "intertwined""
Excellent contribution. Marion Gräfin Dönhof talks about this, a descendant of both Prussian and newly turned "Polish" political elite and aristocracy. Some of her german ancestors adopted polish names and became thus polish. Before the rise of nationalism, there was not really such a gap between nations as today. Germans sometimes even ruled parts of Poland with no issues. There were also special laws and leaders in Poland exclusively for Germans, in other words, the Germans in Poland ruled themselves, living side by side respectfully with the Polish people. All of this makes one ask what nations really are and what national identity really is in the end, beyond political propaganda. National coherence was forced onto people everywhere, with dramatic consequences and suffering.
People have lived hundreds or even thousands of years without the need for unified nations, often many different cultures coexisting with each other under a banner of a "nation", which was mostly just the culture of a given ruling aristocracy at that time.
It seems that creation of nation states was a way of scaling up tribalism.
It’s money - taxes and tax collection a then the power of those with bigger coffers.
That's a very good summary. I would also add colonialism to the conversation. The idea that "lesser" nations' culture and language could be erased, their populations turned into slaves, and natural resources exploited for the benefit of the colonial powers was also an important contributor to what happened in that region in the 20th century.
Whereas prior to colonialism, the nobles would declare a new loyalty and life for the peasants would continue on as normal (or the nobles would be replaced). It seems that the Protestant reformation was a big contributor to change in this structure, with rulers having much more concern for how the peasants conducted their daily lives and holidays (and language?) not just taxes and fealty.
Wow. It sounds like you have a grossly misinformed view of this part of the world, with a clear sense of superiority of one culture over the other. So, here's a few facts for you:
¹ https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-germans-...
https://www.fr.de/kultur/literatur/eine-katastrophe-11007951...
Generally, the cultural loss via burning down libraries and knowledge is inherent to war, and obviously does not only affect one country. The article also mentions the Library of Warsaw as an example of lost knowledge, but the loss of german culture "has no comparison in the history of libraries", per renowned librarian Georg Leyh.
P.S.: Germany still does not own the Berlinka - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka_(art_collection)
The German losses were mostly collateral damage related to the bombings of the cities. The burning of the Polish collections and archives by the German army, on the other hand, was a conscious, deliberate act pertaining to the objective of destroying the culture of the Polish nation – I refer you, amongst other things, to Himmler's and Hitler's clearly expressed intent of razing Warsaw, the nominal, but also cultural and intellectual capital of pre-war Poland, to the ground. That intent is not inherent to war in a universal sense – for one, it is a war crime, for which Alfred Rosenberg was convicted during the Nürnberg Trials – and it looks like you are generally convinced the conduct of the German army in WWII was that like of any other, and that war as carried out by Germany in 1939-1945 was war like any other. At this point, my curiosity in continuing this conversation is limited solely to the question on where you received your history education.
It does not, the German state dropped it for safekeeping in Lower Silesia and according to international law, its ownership was transferred together with the legal status of the respective territories per the Potsdam conference. Any discussion on the possible return of parts of the collection would need to start with the return of the thousands of Polish works of art held in German collections, to which, unlike Poland's legal claim to the Berlinka collection, Germany has none.
My original argument was: "and most of the knowledge lost in the war in todays Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and heritage"
to which I gave a reference that makes a good case for this to be indeed true.
You chose to ignore it and instead resort to talking about something unrelated (intent), which is a straw man, and you also launch an ad hominem, another logical fallacy. You also resort to faulty generalizations.
In case you have overlooked it, here's the most relevant part of the quotes I gave:
But it's not a thesis of Die Deutschen Wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken nach dem Krieg, it's just a quote, and it does not support that "most of the knowledge lost in the war in todays Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and heritage", this is out of the scope of Georg Leyh work
Oh some German books were burned, while most of Poland's then inteligencia lie in a mass grave courtesy said Russians.
In this case they had an idea of how many volumes there were before the war and then how many after.
Think he is just making general case that it is easier to destroy than create, and during war, a lot is lost.
With recent advancements in generative AI that balance is changing quickly.
War is one thing, but the inexorable march through geologic time is far worse. Everything we are and know will be erased due to entropy and the arrow of time.
my theory is The Great Filter is just species which figured this out and also figured out how to 'escape', and... well... us
One extremely sad example is the libraries of brass matrices for hot metal type --- all-too many of these were melted down, mostly to make shell casings by various accounts.
After the war, it was necessary to re-create said type libraries, mostly as phototype though, thus ending a golden age of printing which had reigned since Gutenberg, eventually, the Linotype and Monotype machines followed this into dissolution when digital type became prevalent.
While most designs were eventually remade as phototypes, and later as digital type, many of them were only imperfectly preserved, so for example, rather than all the different hot metal sizes and variations, only a single phototype master usually exists, capturing only the state of a single size (usually a larger display size).
agree this is interesting and worthwhile.. notice however that the divergence of letter forms in Eastern Europe (into Central Asia) is really a reflection of the drastic cultural conflicts in that area over centuries.. from a distance, it seems that "modern" typeface, and the type it replaced, together really are not very old compared to the cultures that were using them... and those cultures merged by imperial forces from multiple directions.