Talk:Germans


New World Map Image, New Zealand

Hi, i think we need a new world map image since there are actually more than 10,000 people of German descent in New Zealand- the real figure according to the New Zealand government is some 200,000.

Please bring back the map

This page used to have a map of the German diaspora (the way similar ethnic groups/nationalities had maps and lists of how many people from said group lived in each country). I also understand there’s a separate German diaspora page that has this map but I think it would be better on the main ethnic/nationality page. Honestly, I’m not a fan of what the Germans page has turned into since rephrasing it as the “natives, inhabitants, etc.” Please don’t take that the wrong way of course. (It could be rephrased like “Germans are the citizens and nationals,” like Austrians). However, it would be nice if it at least still featured the diaspora map, at least the Austrians page still has that. Thanks Wiscipidier (talk) 03:46, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you've seen the previous discussion about that map you'll see that there are serious concerns about not only the relevance but also the accuracy of the information in it. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:32, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I notice that the article still has problems coming from the use of sources about other topics. In the geographical distribution section one of the sources is discussing "German speakers", and we have turned them into "Germans". We've got to stop mixing up different concepts and treating them as the same. The word "Germans" when used in a 21st-century context does not mean "German speakers" or "people with German ancestry". Using careful language is really essential on an article like this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:40, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, that's very interesting, thanks for sharing. What solution do you propose instead? Again, at best it's odd that Germans doesn't have a map when French, Italians, English, etc. all have diaspora maps but maybe you know something I don't. Wiscipidier (talk) 21:46, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see it as a problem to delete all incorrect or misleading material, so no further solution is needed as far as I am concerned. I haven't checked those other articles, but if you think they have the same problems then maybe there should be deletions on those articles. OTOH it is not clear what your point is. If you want to add something perhaps you should be the one making a concrete proposal? WP:ONUS In any case if I were going to make a diaspora map I would look for a single dataset from a reliable source, with a clear and consistent definition. That is the minimum starting point, surely?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:02, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well Andrew, my friend, I don't see it as a problem myself, but I do see the absence of a world diaspora map as frustrating, if not outright problematic. I also get what you're saying about Austrians being roped into the German definition. My points is, isn't it odd that Germans don't have a map when other ethnic/national groups still do? It's illogical to me. Still, I take your point about data from a reliable source. I mean, wasn't it previously reliable if it was featured. In short, maybe my point is, I, as a mapping enthusiast, am the kind of user who appreciates maps to contextualize this kind of data (even if they're not as accurate as they should be), while maybe you're not as focused on those types of representations, especially if not as accurate as they should be. We both want what's best for this page, of course. Regardless, I would like to take this opportunity to propose a new German diaspora map. Thanks
Wiscipidier (talk) 22:16, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
From your posts I don't feel confident that you understand. You are not really being clear about what you believe and what you want and why. No, obviously it was not an appropriate set of statistics, because it synthesized (WP:SYNTH) information from different sources and came to new conclusions that were not in the sources. And no, if other WP articles have similar problems this is not a reason to copy them. Repeating such arguments over and over is not helpful for you or anyone else.
I'll try to cut through the fog. I gave some advice to another editor in a previous discussion here: [1]: At the top of our German diaspora article is a map which cites the Pew research website, and seems to actually not be a map of people of German ancestry, but people born recently in Germany, living elsewhere in 2017. That could in theory be useful to this article. The big problem with the map you want is that it is NOT really the Pew map, because it has been custom-modified to emphasize certain things, and reinterpreted to give a misleading and unclear impression.
I'll be honest. I just want to avoid circular discussions. None of the editors who express all these deep urges for this map actually seem to want it to be accurate. If you are an exception, then I'll be happy to be proved wrong. However, we've been through the same loop before. Like many problems which keep coming back on Wikipedia, the background here is clearly something to do with American sensitivities which don't align well with Wikipedia standards. So let's put this on the table: Americans identifying as having German heritage are an interesting and notable topic, related to things German, and perhaps they are even sometimes called "Germans" in very specific circumstances, but they are NOT the "Germans" that this article is about. A properly sourced map about them might be interesting on Wikipedia, if we had one. It could even be discussed for this article. However, the original Pew data is more relevant to this specific article because it is about Germans who emigrated relatively recently. The definitions in that Pew data were at least clearly defined, and uncontroversially about Germans. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:50, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps best to link the other article right in the lead so people can understand that this is a nationalistic article versus ancestry article.
From....
Germans are the natives or inhabitants of Germany, or sometimes more broadly any people who are of German descent or native speakers of the German language.
To...
Germans are the natives or inhabitants of Germany, or sometimes more broadly, German diaspora descendants or native speakers of the German language Moxy🍁 23:20, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. Firstly, in English people are not normally called "Germans" just because they speak German (like Austrians), or claim German heritage in some way. (Conversations like the following are possible when context makes things clear: Where were your ancestors from? Oh, I am Irish. But Americans do not walk into international meetings and introduce themselves as Irish.) But putting that reality to one side your proposal does not seem like the normal approach on WP when one word has several meanings? Normally what we do is choose a main meaning, and place disambiguation notices at the top of the article. Why would we not do that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:22, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I generally find your responses perplexing... What people are referring to is ancestry as defined by Oxford as Ancestry refers to the lineage, heritage, and familial origins of an individual or a group. It encompasses the cultural, ethnic, and geographical backgrounds passed down through generations, shaping identities and influencing perspectives. Ancestry can manifest through various factors such as genetic inheritance, familial traditions, language, customs, and societal norms Moxy🍁 00:35, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
From my side I also don't understand your response. Why have you just quoted a definition of ancestry? How does this relate to the discussion about this map? The problems in this map are obvious.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:26, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, we are talking about three almost completely different sets of people. There might be overlap but no-one would confuse the three sets (or use the same words for them in careful speech). This is NOT a case of one concept which has three slightly different definitions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:31, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Wonder if we should explain to our readers why Germany has such a national identity problem. Something like "Germany's national identity problem stems from grappling with its Nazi past, the legacy of its historical ethno-cultural definition of "German", and the challenges of integrating large immigrant populations into a society with deep-rooted ideas of bloodline citizenship." As this is something that has been discussed for decades..90s,,,2010s,,,2020s Moxy🍁 01:31, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see that Germany has a bigger "national identity problem" than other European nations. I just read the last of your three soures - a short essay focusing on the AfD (German right-wing party). Rsk6400 (talk) 07:47, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Sure. I think pretty much all national identities have a national identity problem. I don't think national identity has ever been a simple black/white thing, and whenever people start trying to pretend otherwise it leads to problems. Like many popular concepts nationalities are changing and fuzzy, and not everyone sees their national identity the same way. In the case of this article, the fuzziness and change is particularly important because the idea of Germanness went through some particularly dramatic and destructive changes in recent generations. The modern country was sometimes seen as a new homeland for a people spread all over Europe, and this led to dramatic actions which tried to define being German in ways which excluded some German citizens from being truly German, such as Jews, but welcomed "ethnic Germans" from other countries (not all of whom even spoke German). However, no new wording about these topics is being discussed here, and I don't agree that this talk page has a long history of serious disagreements about that history. So I don't see the relevance of your remark to this particular discussion. From a textual point of view, lots of words have several meanings. If there are ideas to improve the text, let's discuss them in another section.
This discussion is (once again) about a much simpler problem, a particular map which states, for example, that there is a debate about whether Austrians are Germans (which is nonsense) and treats a whole range of different types of people as if they were Germans in the same way. This map, and some aspects of what it demands, are the real repeating discussion here. Please go back to my question. Why would we not use the normal WP approaches when words have different meanings? Why should we allow such obvious OR and SYNTH, and why should we ignore that this term can have different meanings? As you say, the same demands keep coming back here. But I would not say there is much discussion from the proponents of this map. The demands are made, vague claims are made about this article being bad because it is different to other articles, but it feels like no one ever makes constructive proposals or engages with sources and other editors in the normal WP way. The proponents of this map just stop by, and then do some edit warring, maybe raise a few real philosophical issues, and then disappear again. I can't do a perfect analysis of what these editors are trying to achieve because they tend not to want to explain their aims clearly. However they mostly seem to be Americans who have strong feelings about being "German" without being a citizen or resident of Germany. Can you explain why for example Austrians should be defined on Wikipedia as a type of German? Do you personally support that idea?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:26, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The first sentence

Moxy I am trying to look separately at the first sentence. You proposed changing people who are of German descent to German diaspora descendants. I honestly don't see how this solves any problems that any editors have mentioned concerns about. I do however have concerns about the opening sentence, but more about the way language is added on to it in an over-simplistic way. Although we cite 2 diciotnaries for this opening sentence only one of them does this, and I find it very dubious. Once again, Austrians are also German speakers and they are no longer called Germans in the 20th century. I think our opening paragraph as a whole should do the main work of give a first indication about what the various "broader definition" of a German might mean. Being a native speaker is an important determinant of German (or Austrian) identity but it is can't be described as a sufficient condition for being a German (or Austrian), which is what the current wording does. Therefore I would like to rewrite our first sentence so that it leads in better to the following sentences which should explain it. For example: Germans are the natives or inhabitants of Germany, or sometimes more broadly any people who are identified as German because of factors such as their ancestry, native language or culture. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:08, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Another sentence in the lead: when did it begin?

This part - ... a sense of national unity as Germans began to evolve in the eighteenth century ... - deserves some more clarity, especially in terms of definitions. If you take the definition of modern nationalism, it might be correct, but then again, modern nationalism did not exist anywhere in the world before the late 18th century. A sense of national unity as Germans was namely already present during the High Middle Ages. Eva Schumann's Beiträge des Rechts zur Ausbildung einer ‚deutschen‘ Identität im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (2018) gives some examples from different 13th century German law books which included multiple references to a collective German identity. For example, the Deutschenspiegel [de] states, Die Tuschen sulln durch recht den chunich erwelen ("The Germans will chose the King by law") and Jsleich tævtzhelant habent irn pfaltzgraven. Sahsen. Baiern. Vranchen. vnd swaben ("Every German land has its count palatine. Saxony, Bayern, Franconia and Swabia"). BTW, the king of Bohemia was denied the status of chief elector on the grounds that he was not considered a German. At the end of the Middle Ages, German humanists showed some very nationalistic behaviour (e.g., celebrating the German language, Gutenberg's achievements). The sentence Es sei etwas Köstliches um das Glück, Deutscher zu sein und im gesegneten deutschen Land zu wohnen ("There is something delightful about the happiness of being German and living in the blessed German land") was already written in 1502. Eem dik doun in toene (talk) 14:19, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Eem dik doun in toene: I hope you don't mind me putting this in a new section, but otherwise it could get confusing. I think this question of when German national unity was first felt is a distinct subject, and definitely worth looking at better. This relatively scholarly question has come up before. I don't think editors interested in this question have big differences of opinion but we've struggled to explain it well in a nutshell, and put it into a clear context that shows the connections and differences with the modern conceptualisation of Germans. I think most would agree that a "German" identity began to develop in the middle ages, probably already in Ottonian times. (I think it was often based on basic perceptions about the "teutonic" language. Interesting that your quote does not cover the Lotharingians though, or are they under the Vranchen?) However there will be sources that also correctly say that the concept of what being German meant changed radically in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Indeed concepts of nationality changed throughout Europe and these new ideas spread.) Does that make sense so far?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:59, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Reminder of a previous short discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Germans/Archive_9#Caution --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:10, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Andrew, I don't mind, and it makes sense. If we insist on clarifying the beginning and further development of German identity, then some references that may come in handy are Der Spiegel (2007), Scales, Len (2012). The Shaping of German Identity: Authority and Crisis, 1245–1414, and Schumann (2018). And yeah, as long as it's clear that the concept of national identity has changed since the 18th century, then it's sufficient IMO. Interesting that your quote does not cover the Lotharingians though, or are they under the Vranchen? I'm not sure, but it seems like it (I believe Otto of Freising also grouped the Franks and the Lotharingians together). Cheers, Eem dik doun in toene (talk) 16:33, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have any ideas about how to make this better, both in the lead and body?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:16, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'll have to take a better look at it soon. Eem dik doun in toene (talk) 19:56, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Germans