Talk:Copernicus as Ermland Administrator and the Prussian Coin Reform

Text regarding IP blocks to User talk:H.J./ban

Later talk at Talk:Copernicus and coin reform

Copyright questions

Zoe, Danny, and others asked whether user:H.J.'s content was a copyvio - she replied that it was not, but was largely based on a German book. Zoe pointed out that translations can still be copyrighted. H.J. claimed to have removed all direct translations, and sufficiently reworded the content. This was disputed.

Because nobody saw the original German that H.J.'s work was based off, there was no way anyone could tell whether or not H.J.'s work legally counts as a direct translation (hence, a copyvio) or a new expression of the same information (hence, legal).

H.J.'s version can be read in JHK's review, below.

Discussion

copyvio comments ruthlessly stripped

Why does this deserve a separate article instead of being part of the generic Copernicus article? -- Zoe

This certainly can be part of the generic Copernicus article. Danny

No one would give a medieval Polish zloty about this if Copernicus hadn't figured out where the sun was. It should be boiled down to two paragraphs (at most) and stuck in the Copernicus article.Ortolan88

I agree - this level of detail is nauseating for an encyclopedia and only appropriate for a book (if that). This material needs to be boiled down to the basics and integrated elsewhere or else the whole thing will be moved to the meta (along with other essays). --mav 21:19 Jul 21, 2002 (PDT)

This is hardly relevant to anything. Is the point of this article to prove Copernicus's ethnic origins? If so, is that really the most important thing to say about him? So what if he minted coins? Are we going to have an article about every minter in every defunct country? Finally, he is hardly remembered for that. In comparison, Anthony Trollope is best remembered today as an author. He is almost forgotten as the inventor of the mailbox, which is no less an important claim to fame. If this is important, it should go in the article on Copernicus as a sentence--NO MORE! Or are we going to have separate articles about Einstein the patent clerk, JFK the journalist, Lincoln the Congressman? Enough already!!! Danny

One. There's nothing wrong with hyperspecificity in Wikipedia. It's an infinite resource. If people want to write articles on Einstein as a patent clerk, so be it.

Two. user:H.J.'s prose is simply not particularly comprehensible. It's bad English, and poorly organized.

Three. It's "copyright".

Four. This should be in meta until/unless it becomes understandable.

Just my two cents.

--The Cunctator

To The Cunctator et al

Coin reform or coin (money) system in general is very important, unlike one of Danny' remarks, that it is not important. user:H.J.

This is getting silly already. Can we please just move this to meta or something? Danny

Some observations from me:

any article which does not match Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is "allowed". So does this
It occurs to me that Fräulein user:H.J. is involved in many situations where appears not to be following wikipedia policy and is insisting on her personal opinion.
The above article displays a bias towards the Prussian side of the debate surrounding Copernicus' nationality (another silly situation involving the same persons.

My conclusion:

The article should be extensively rewritten and NPOV'ed before it is put back here. If that is done, there should not be a problem.

Jeronimo 13:35 Aug 4, 2002 (PDT)

Personally I think that there is a lot wrong with the article that was here, but that it could be replaced with something worthwhile. Enchanter

Enchanter, I will put back (unless somebody else does it) the lock when there is some agreement over what to do - especially user:H.J. should reply. Otherwise the deleting/putting back stuff will begin all over again. You can edit the article at a temporary page if you wish, the text is listed above. Jeronimo

This article, purportedly on Copernicus and coin reform, really doesn't address the subject. Basically it's badly written and unfocused. user:H.J., there needs to be a clear explanation of the issues, why they were important, and how Copernicus contributed. Example:

During period x, there was a problem with the coinage in Warmia. Coinage was devalued (was this the problem?) because of x, y, and z.
Elaboration of x,y,and z and any other reasons -- perhaps because there was political turmoils and two different rulers were trying to claim sovereignty???
What Copernicus did to effect change

At present, the article assumes we all understand "problems with coinage" -- a complicated subject and one that could mean many things. Exactly how Copernicus contributed is very vague -- basically, this is presented in a "Prussia vs. Poland" way designed to prove Copernicus was Prussian... whatever happens, this needs a re-write if it's to stay in any form. JHK

Thanks JHK for trying to bring some sanity into this debate. Eclecticology

The page did not meet NPOV and it barely, as JHK and others pointed out, addressed the topic. My assertiveness was the result of considerable frustration. I did not think that user:H.J. should continue to violate Wikipedia policy in order to express her politica agenda. Perhaps I went about it the wrong way. Perhaps my zeal got the better of me, but I have yet to come up with any other solution to what was happening at the time. Like you, this is not a subject I know much about. I do not think it is my responsibility to write about it in order to correct user:H.J.'s mishaps. Danny

One person's initial presentation of a controversial subject is rarely NPOV. I agree, [you should not be] be stuck with having the responsibility of presenting the opposing point of view to make it NPOV. I'm sure there are others out there with the ability to do that, even if it means that the erroneous article must stay there for quite some time. Eclecticology

JHK's review

I have included the article below, with questions and comments(in bold) that I think must be answered in order to make the article useful and not just another way of trying to prove that Copernicus was Prussian. That said, I really think that this deserves no more than a couple of lines in the Copernicus article. Thanks all for bearing with me and helping make this work. user:H.J., plese help out by answering the questions -- and perhaps even doing a bit more research -- so that we can work together to make this a well-written, meaninful, article. JHK

Copernicus as Ermland Administrator and the Prussian Coin Reform

Nicolaus Copernicus is today world famous as Astronomer, but at home he wore many different hats. Amongst other positions he held, he was Nicolaus Copernicus Thornensis Prussus Mathematicus, the Prussian mathematician from Thorn.

This really isn't a position, I don't think -- he wasn't hired as a city mathemetician. Also, I think there should at least be some kind of connection for new readers as to how the whole Ermeland/Thorn/Prussia thing works -- it is very unhelpful to assume that the reader will know that one is a city, the other a region, the other a principality, etc...

In the Copernicus manustript an entry from December 1603 states in partial :...Nicolai Copernick Canonici Varmiensis, in Borussia Germaniae mathematici...

In what manuscript? this appears to be a random comment, and doesn't make much sense

Besides being a church canon and administering as physician to his people, Nicolaus Copernicus worked with the other Prussian states on coin reform.

Again, reference? What Prussian states? What does this mean in practical terms?

The situation in Prussia as well as in other parts of Europe in the years before, during and after the Reformation became very insecure and confused.

Copernicus died in 1543 -- well before the Peace of Augsburg -- Although this statement is correct, I'm not sure how Copernicus the church canon, physician, astronomer, etc., fits in.

There were cities in Prussia that fought for keeping the government of the Catholic Teutonic Knights and others, who fought to get the Papal domination out and to become Protestant. During this time the crown of Poland, held by the Lithuanian Jagiello?s, married to the imperial Habsburg's had some limited influence in the politics of Prussia. Sigismund I wanted the Prussian cities to give up their right to mint coins. The leading cities of Prussia, Thorn, Danzig and Elbing declared, never would they give up their individual city rights to mint coins. Minting coins was a right given by the emperor and giving up this right would mean loss of sovereignty .

This helps to explain something about the former, in that it sets up a Catholic-Protestent conflict. My questions:

What cities, if any, were ruled by the Teutonic Knights at the time -- or was it all of Prussia?
Does this have something to do with either the Second treaty of Thorn or the abdication of Albrecht of Prussia from his position as Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights? From the other info on the site, it looks like there may have been some conflict over jurisdiction between Albrecht and his heirs and the TKs, who began to get their Grand Masters by imperial appointment (and from the impreial -- read Habsburg -- family)
How do the Jagiellos fit in? Is their involvement because of their distant connection to the Habsburgs, as user:H.J. implies? or because (as we know from other articles) at one point, residents of the area had appealed to the Polish rulers for help in overthrowing the Teutonic Knights?
Could the objections of the cities mentioned not have something to do with their being members of the Hansa -- a group notoriously jealous of their independence and privileges? In answer to the much-anticipated imperial comment, viz., that the objections had to do with an infringement of imperial right and law, I cry bullshit. The Hansa cities regularly played off their position between the emperors and other rulers -- Emperors could grant them independence from local rule, but the cities fought hard to keep the emperors from having too much control. They, like rich bankers like the Fuggers and Welsers, used their economic sway as much as possible to influence the emperors and their politics.
NOTE: get those bloody apostrophes out of Habsburg's and Jagiello's -- unless you want a possessive (which you don't)!!!

Copernicus wrote ???Muncze wyrdt genennet geczeichennt goldtt, adir sylber??? and at the end he wrote a recipe ???..wie solche Reformation geschenn moechte???. (Coins will be named, marked gold and silver added. ..how such a reformation can be undertaken).

I infer from this and the other comment below that the problem with the coinage was not completely as user:H.J. understands it, i.e., it was not primarily a problem of minting rights, but of a debasement of the currency, that concerned people. Minting rights may have been an issue, but was not the primary one.

The nobles and the church delegates said, that if there has to be one common coin system, the coins have to be minted in Prussia, naturally and not in Poland. Poles said that it should be in Poland, because it is the larger country in Europe.

How did they say this and where? Why, for that matter? Was there a conclusion that the best way to standardize the monetary value of the coins was to have them minted by one party? More info would be good

The grandmaster of the Teutonic Knights said nothing at all, he did not show up, he stayed away.

One half of Ermeland was occupied by Polish troops, the other half by the Teutonic Order. Again -- where did he NOT show up? and what shoudl we understand by occupation -- it sounds like two opposing armies swept in to fight over this issue -- could this be true?

The dome master of Ermland argued with the bishop of Ermland about the money situation. As soon as the bishop died , the Ermland Administrator Georg Prenck chased the brother and mother of the bishop out of the official seat in Heilsberg castle. He then also chase away the dome master (later Catholic bishop) Tiedemann Giese and Leonhard Niederhoff, who had come to take over the vacant position. Georg Prenck now collected taxes himself, with which he paid the soldiers.

Um...no such thing as dome master -- does anyone know the name of the guy who runs the cathdral (not the bishop)? Is it the head of the Cathedral chapter? something else?

Also, this now appears to be a squabble over who got to collect taxes, too -- is it possible that this is a situation where the tax collector gets a cut and/or that it had to do with where the money went? -- Also, was the bishop at the time Lucas Watzenrode -- Copernicus' uncle? That could put a different light on a lot of this.

This was cause for the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order to appeal to the pope in Rome, suggesting that the Order again straighten out the situation in Prussia?s Ermland.

Was Prenck Protestant? whose side was he on? If the Order needed papal permission to again straighten out the situation, does this mean that they had in fact lost their jurisdiction?

Amongst all this unrest Nicolaus Copernicus was elected as General Administrator of the Diocese during the time of the sedis vacanty (vacant seat). Copernicus saw to it, that the Catholic church received church property back..

Who elected him and how -- what property did he reclaim?

The king of Poland Sigismund I, had to announce an edict: to vacate the parts of Ermland , which his military had occupied.

WHo mad him announce such an edict? does this mean "he was forced to withdraw his troops" -- what exactly is the cause/effect connection here? Very unclear

Sigismund I then came to Prussia personally and tried to do away with Prussian money altogether. Duke Albrecht ,Albert of Brandenburg Ansbach Prussia and the cities of Thorn , Danzig and Elbing opposed.

Again -- how and for what reason? Here, it appears that Sigismund thought he had exclusive rights to mint for the area -- why would he think this? or claim this? also, are these two Alberts, or just the one?

Copernicus wrote on the loss of value of money (transl. ? Woe to you , our unfortunate Prussialand, that you should have to suffer for such bad money situation. If we do not have help here soon, then Prussia is going to have only coins , which will contain nothing but copper.?

Copernicus worked for many years with Albrecht of Brandenburg Prussia on the coin reform situation. He reworked the monetary memorandum of 1519 and 1522 and took part in many Prussian government assemblies. The second delegate for Ermland was Felix Reich. Copernicus went to Elbing and when a reform commission was founded in 1529, he and Alexander Sculteti of Ermland took part. At the time Copernicus was ?nuncius capituli? a delegate of the Capitel in the offices of Allenstein? and Mehlsack.

This is again unhelpful. What were these monetary memoranda and what did they say? Did they carry any force? What happened to Sigismund and his claims? WHo founded the reform commission? Which capital? -- I'm iffy on the translation of nuncius capituli, by the way -- clearly an office, but what did it entail?

That Copernicus had humor too, can be seen in the fact, that he often referred to his quiet fare-away small town near the Baltic Sea Frauenburg , where he had come to live and stayed to die, as Gynopolis or Weiberstadt.

(The official translation from the German Frauenburg to English would be (our) Ladie?s castle, the polis town gyno , gynne is Old Prussian for woman and Weiberstadt is a reference to a rather common name for woman and city).

Excerps from Hermann Kesten?, Nikolaus Kopernikus, translated by user:H.J.

This is horrible. First, Copernicus was clearly punning in Greek -- not Old Prussian!! Secondly, since Frauenburg is the name of a place, there is no English official translation -- just a literal one. "Rather common" is really just a euphemistic way of saying that Copernicus didn't think much of the place and gave it a nickname that could have been amusing, but may also have implied that he thought little of the place.

JHK 12:54 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)

Further discussion

To JHK, user:H.J., and Jeronimo:

I am interested in Copernicus, coin reform, and the History of Poland
I would like to encourage user:H.J. to "learn our ways" (i.e., writing factual, well-researched, NPOV articles.
I hate seeing articles locked, especially ones as obscure as "Theory of System" or "Copernicus and coin reform"
I like to support the admins

Therefore:

I would like to see user:H.J. write an article called Copernicus and coin reform.
I volunteer to edit user:H.J.'s contributions from now until Friday, for spelling, grammar and NPOV.

--Ed Poor 13:10 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)

Best of luck, ED -- please try to keep my questions above in mind, unless you think they aren't worth addressing. JHK

Quite the contrary, they are key questions -- and I'm certainly out of my depth in terms of KNOWING anything about the subject. What I propose is merely to apply basic editing PRINCIPLES. You might say, returning the favor you did for me and sexual morality or Axelboldt did for me and global warming. Sometimes a person is so passionate about a subject... --Ed Poor

Except that I'm not passionate about the subject at all, Ed. i don't CARE. I care that the article is well-written, accurate, and NPOV AND reflects current, mainstream scholarship on the subject with appropriate mention of differing scholarly opinions and the cases for them. I know enough about the general subject to understand that many of user:H.J.'s assumptions about how the world worked at the time are dead wrong. Unfortunately, I don't have time to go out and find sources to prove a negative, and strangely enough, expect contributors to do their own damned work and answer questions and criticisms. JHK

I am starting a list of controversial points raised by user:H.J. --Ed Poor

Ok, I have done a little research and this is what I have discovered so far, doing a bit of googling. Apparently, Copernicus developed an economic theory that presaged the later Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good money." In other words, an overvalued legal currency will replace an undervalued legal currency." Copernicus explained this theory in a book called De Monetae Cudendae and proposed means of alleviating the situation. Now, as I understand it, there were several different currencies circulating simultaneously (possibly as a result of rival governments), and Copernicus attempted to create a single currency that would maintain its real value. He wrote: "It is impossible for good-weighted coin and base and degraded coin to circulate together, That all the good coin is hoarded, melted down or exported; and the degraded coin alone remains in circulation." While this does not answer all of your questions, JHK, it may explain why the different parties were so interested in controlling the minting of this new currency. These were factions feuding over who would have control over the single currency that would be minted. In other words, the debate was over economic control of the region. Of course, I may have misunderstood everything. I am off to the library to do a little research. Hope this helped clarify some of the issues. Danny

Poland vs. Prussia

Where was Copernicus born?

Torun

Okay, but what country was Torun in?

Prussia (vote here)
Poland (no, vote here!)

What was Copernicus's "nationality"?

Did you know there was an article on this question: Copernicus' nationality oi, veh)
I think he went to school in Cracow, then in Italy, returning to "Poland" for the next 40 years.
Ah, but does that make him "Polish"? (Beethoven lived in Vienna; does this make him Austrian?)

When did an area between Germany and Russia begin to be called "Poland"?

Needs research

How does coinage relate to sovereignty?

Needs research

You know what, Ed and Danny? It doesn't. Since one of the clearer inferences I was able to make is that Copernicus was concerned with debasement of the coinage, you have verified that I was correct, which I do appreciate, but by which I'm not surprised. Since the majority of questions i asked and since user:H.J.'s reasons for putting them there are rooted in a deep misunderstanding of late Medieval and Early Modern political and economic systems, sovereignty, etc., however, this isn't really helping solve the problem. One of the primary questions is in fact whether there was an effort to create a single coinage and, if so, under whose auspices? Moreover, did the people who wanted to reform the currency have that right?

This all leads right back into a HUGE amount of debate that went into the original Copernicus article, in which several of us who actually DO KNOW something about the period and DON'T care about the politics tried to convince user:H.J. that being born in a town that was geographically located in an area called Prussia did not necessarily mean that Copernicus thought of himelf as German -- or even Prussian -- or, that if he thought himself Prussian, this obviated the fact that he actually seemed to feel political allegiance to the ruler of Poland.

Since you aren't addressing these issues, which I outlined above as I did because I know the bloody history -- this has been going on for over six months, in my estimation, and has actually driven some wikipedians to take long breaks from contributing -- I'm sorry to say that I believe you have just opened up another can of worms for user:H.J.. Unless she is held responsible for doing her own work in support of her atrocious articles, she won't ever be a help, but will instead continue to waste our time by adding her own special twist and leaving it to others to verify her facts, etc.

And frankly, since most of Ed's questions have already been answered ad nauseam by wikipedians such as David Parker, Michael Tinkler, WojPob, Gianfranco, and myself, among others, at great expense of time and effort, it pisses me right off that the wheel is being reinvented.JHK

I'm planning on adding this portion of user:H.J.'s text to Copernicus and coin reform.

The situation in Prussia as well as in other parts of Europe in the years before, during and after the Reformation became very insecure and confused. There were cities in Prussia that fought for keeping the government of the Catholic Teutonic Knights and others, who fought to get the Papal domination out and to become Protestant. During this time the crown of Poland, held by the Lithuanian Jagiellos, married to the imperial Habsburg's had some limited influence in the politics of Prussia. Sigismund I wanted the Prussian cities to give up their right to mint coins. The leading cities of Prussia, Thorn, Danzig and Elbing declared, never would they give up their individual city rights to mint coins. Minting coins was a right given by the emperor and giving up this right would mean loss of sovereignty .

The nobles and the church delegates said, that if there has to be one common coin system, the coins have to be minted in Prussia, naturally and not in Poland. Poles said that it should be in Poland, because it is the larger country in Europe. Any comments? Vote and/or explain here:

Don't add this text:

Hi Ed, my vote is here, because this is exactly the problem I was talking about. I'm not sure how much, if anything, the Reformation had to do with the situation, how much was squabbling between interested parties,etc. For example, if the Jagiellos are tied closely enough to the Habsburg emperors to have this fact mentioned, then why would the Hansa cities listed object on grounds that only the emperor could give out coinage rights? Who called the conference to discuss the coinage and by whose authority. user:H.J. has demonstrated in other articles that she knows more factually than most of us, but she doesn't know how to interpret those facts. ALso, if this has something to do with the Reformation, why aren't the emperor and the pope on the same side? There are just so many unanswered questions and murky details -- and we can't be sure it isn't written the way it is because of the Poland/Prussia thing. Speaking of which, look at the talk stuff on the Copernicus' nationality article (or something like that)JHK 16:16 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)

Please do add this text:

Ed Poor 14:37 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)

JHK, I did not attempt to answer all of your questions, nor did I attempt to open up the issue of Copernicus's nationality. That is irrelevant to the topic of this article. Quite simply, I attempted to confirm what the historical problem was (debasement of the currency, as you stated) and to add Copernicus's contribution toward its resolution (the theory he set forth in his book, De Monetae Cudendae and the proposal of a single currency standard). Neither of these appeared in the original article. In fact, we agree that the real content only begins with the paragraph? "There were cities in Prussia that fought for keeping the government of the Catholic Teutonic Knights ?" Albrecht of Prussia, a Lutheran, not only abdicated his position as Grand Master of the TK; he also denounced his position as a Duke of the Reich and assumed the new title "Duke of Prussia by the grace of the King of Poland." It is unknown whether he did this with the approval of other members of the order, though user:H.J. would apparently argue that he did not. Regardless, this formal statement would have provided the kings of Poland, i.e., Sigismund, with a legal claim to the TK lands and the right to control the single currency proposed by Copernicus. No, this does not answer all the questions you asked. I believe that it does, however, explain, the Polish position. Certainly there were religious differences between Albrecht, a Protestant, and the Catholic Polish monarchy. Nevertheless, I think this may be overstated, since the same differences existed between Albrecht and the HRE, and Poland had taken Albrecht under its wing, despite a ban issued by the Pope against him. Danny

Wow -- nicely done, Danny. I had not seen the full title before -- a major difference. I am not sure that this would have given Sigismund a claim to the TK lands, however -- I think the lands would have remained within the purview of the order...except that possession is 9/10 of the law! Also, a papal ban may have had to do more with the land than anything else, oh hell -- I can't do this now, I have to finish cleaning the bathroom. It's just very complex situation, and I think we need more background before tackling it. I did not mean to say tht you were intentionally opening the Prussia-Poland thing -- but that is in fact why I believe user:H.J. wrote it in the first place, so anything that doesn't provide more answers than questions will open the can. JHK

AND BTW -- I'm still not sure this wouldn't be better as a sentence or two in the main article. "During his time at the court of albert of Brandenburg-Prussia (if that's where he was), Copernicus worked avidly on a reform of the coinage. It was at this time that Copernicus came up with one of the earliest known iterations of the theory know known as Gresham's Law." JHK

Agreed, ideally with links to currency reform and coinage. The particular reform probably belongs under Albert of Brandenburg, or whoever: the article on the ruler/regime/government in question. Vicki Rosenzweig

Can of Worms department

By the 12th century Germans had begun to migrate eastwards, displacing and dominating the Prussians, ethnic kin to the Lithuanians, who lived in what is now northeastern Poland. In 1229 the Boleslaw V, duke of Poland, let the wolf in the door by requesting the aid of the Teutonic Order against the pagan Prussians. The knights did a thorough job. Indeed, the Prussians were so thoroughly trounced that they shortly ceased to exist as a people, leaving behind only their name. The problem thereafter was that the Teutonic knights refused to leave. Instead, they organized the territory they had conquered and ruled it, ostensibly in fief to the Pope, but in actually as an independent entity. Under the knights German settlement in East Prussia, as it came to be known, intensified, sowing the seeds of ethnic rivalry that eventually flowered into World War II. (source)

I take back my offer to NPOVify user:H.J.'s contributions. The rivalry is just too intense, and I mean medieval European history as well as the last 6 months of Wikipedia "editing". I'm returning to my usual mode of "a little snip here, a little rephrasing there". --Ed Poor 06:05 Aug 6, 2002 (PDT)

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