Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Eduard Fraenkel/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Buidhe via FACBot (talk) 22 March 2022 [1].


Nominator(s): Modussiccandi (talk) 10:46, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the German classical scholar Eduard Fraenkel. He has by far the most eventful life of any classicist I've brought here: he started his career as a rising star in the German academic world, fled to England after Hitler came to power, and had an impactful second career as a refugee scholar at Oxford. The article was recently reviewed for GA status and improved by the generous comments of Amitchell125. I will be happy to work with your suggestions. Thank you, Modussiccandi (talk) 10:46, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Image review—pass

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  • Any photos published before 1927 would be in the public domain. I take it none were found?
  • File:Leo Friedrich retouched.jpg No PD-US rationale, likely still copyrighted because of URAA

The third image looks fine (t · c) buidhe 10:54, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for not getting back to you on this, Buidhe. Regarding the first point: I've been in touch with someone who might be able to provide a free alternative. However, until this lead yields some results, we might have to live with the fair-use image. Re. the second point: I just assumed that any picture of Leo, who died in 1914, would be in the public domain. Would you suggest I find a different image if that isn't the case? Modussiccandi (talk) 09:04, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the Friedrich photo, the photographer died in 1934, which means that it was still copyrighted in Germany on the URAA date, which means that it is likely copyrighted in the US (unless published before 1927). So yeah, either more documentation is needed or swap to a different photo with a solid PD-US rationale. (t · c) buidhe 10:10, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Buidhe: I have removed the picture of Leo and replaced it with an image of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. Please let me know if there are any further issues regarding this or the other images in the article. Modussiccandi (talk) 20:26, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support from Kavyansh

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(edit conflict) Will try to take a look soon! Looks solid from a quick glance. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 10:57, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

More later – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 11:07, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • "by the National Socialist German Workers' Party" — can we just say "Nazi Party"?
Done, Modussiccandi (talk) 20:43, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at Lloyd-Jones 2004 (a source of the highest quality), you'll see that he says about Fraenkel's death: ... Fraenkel chose not to survive her and died at his home. There is no doubt Lloyd-Jones says that Fraenkel took his own life. Quite apart from this, I would say that he had no will to continue living is merely a thinly veiled, decorous way of saying 'suicide'. Modussiccandi (talk) 22:01, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'll still like to hear what our medical editors say; can that narrow definition be used to cite an sensitive claim of suicide? – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 11:31, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That is mostly it. I hope that comments would be useful. Thanks for this excellent article! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 18:44, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral until the point about assertion of suicide is further clarified. Advise of a coordinator of medical editor is appreciated. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 17:18, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from passerby: I added a source from the Gnomon obituary, which, while still somewhat euphemistic in the British style, I think is clear enough. Note also this book (found with a Google Books search), which indicates Fraenkel died from an intentional barbiturates overdose. blameless 02:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, this is reliable enough, and explicitly mentions that he committed suicide. Other than that, very solid article. I Support it's promotion as a FA. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 03:22, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support by JBchrch

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Congrats on your adminship Modussiccandi! Will take a look over the coming days. JBchrch talk 18:52, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox

  • Why is Berlin is in “education” and Göttingen in “Alma mater”? Not that I ever truly understood the difference between these two parameters, but since you make a distinction, I figured I would prong at it.
  • Without being 100% sure why I put it there, I think it's because of a believe held by some editors that Alma Mater is the last institution of one's education. I don't subscribe to that view, so will be happy to put everything under 'Education'. Modussiccandi (talk) 14:01, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

  • "Antisemitic legislation". I find the wikilink to antisemitism a bit underwhelming. Would we have a better target?
  • "introduced by the Nazi Party" -> enacted in Nazi Germany?
  • "Corpus Christi College, Oxford". I am aware that Oxonians (and Cantabrigians) place a heavy weight on the constituent colleges, but I often feel like texts written for a general readership should refer to the University of Oxford rather than the college, for reasons analogous to WP:COMMONNAME and WP:WORLDVIEW.
  • You are right: it's a bit insider-ish to constantly refer to the constituent parts of a well-known university. In this instance, the name of the uni itself will work. Sometimes, however, it's better to have the name of the college since their not always equivalent. So, in a nutshell, I will evaluate these on a case by case basis. (I've changed this one to Oxford University). Modussiccandi (talk) 14:21, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "its sub-discipline". It seems to me like the sub-discipline we are talking about is not defined or mentionned earlier?
  • "teaching at Oxford". If you decide to not act on the "Corpus Christi College" comment, I would suggest teaching at the University of Oxford, for analogous reasons.
  • "In 2017, an effort by the Corpus Christi student body to re-dedicate a room in the college honouring Fraenkel on account of allegations of sexual misconduct garnered national media coverage." I’m not a fan of this sentence :
  • Grammatically, the core claim of the sentence is that the effort by the student body garnered national coverage. Given the body and its source (I’m looking at Elsner p. 319 and 332), the core claim should be that the college decided to rename the room based on allegations of sexual harassment (possibly “on a request/proposition by the student body”).
  • Which leads me to the use of "misconduct" instead of "harassment". Misconduct seems to be a euphemism compared to "harassment", which is also the term used by Elsner p. 319 and 333.
  • Which leads me to (what I understand to be) other euphemisms in this sentence which I’m not a fan of, i.e. "re-dedicate" and "honouring": I would simply say that the room was renamed, as Elsner p. 319 does (possibly “and his portrait removed”)

More to come. JBchrch talk 01:18, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Early life and education

  • "assimilated into the German Empire" Is that correctly worded? Drawing from a cultural background with which I'm more familiar, the sentence "assimilated into the French Republic" would sound strange.

Exile in England

  • “Trinity College, Cambridge” Same comment as above about the constituent colleges.
  • Do you have the sourcing to give more details about what the seminars looked like? How they worked? What they did?
    • Without looking at the source right now, I'm sure that they read the text in the Greek and commented on linguistic/philological/literary/historical points of interest. I will go back to the sourcing and try to see if anything can be found. Best, Modussiccandi (talk) 19:35, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have gone to the best source on these seminars that I have (Stray 2017) and found that it didn't reveal much detail about their method. I have added a clause to the description of the seminars in the article, but it's nothing to write home about. I think one problem may be that that the authors of these sources have in mind an audience of classicists, who'll already know what seminars such as these are like. Modussiccandi (talk) 20:44, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Retirement and death

  • ”Her death on 5 February 1970 led to Fraenkel's suicide on the same day”. That’s a lot to take in for one sentence. I would prefer to break it up into two, with the first one saying that Ruth (see also WP:SPOUSE) died on 5 February and the second saying he committed suicide on the same day.

Still more to come. JBchrch talk 20:28, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Modussiccandi I'm sorry for the delay, but you can expect answers to your replies, and the rest of my comments by the end of the week. JBchrch talk 05:26, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Contributions to classical scholarship

  • "his characters' habit to intimate their own transformation into someone else" (emph added). Perhaps it's just me but I'm not sure I understand this sentence.
    • Ah yes, this sentence... I think I tinkered with it because of the GA review, but essentially what it tries to say is that people suggests that they might be transformed into someone else. 'Intimate' was suggested by the reviewer as a more neutral version of what I had written; have a look at Talk:Eduard Fraenkel/GA1#5.1 Plautus. I'm actually fairly happy with 'intimate', but I would be willing to change it if you were to insist. Modussiccandi (talk) 20:21, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "at times very frustrating". I think readers may be curious why that is, but I understand that it's perhaps difficult to integrate the whole argument without giving it UNDUE weight.

Last bit later or tomorrow. JBchrch talk 23:28, 27 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reception

  • Reading the sources, it seems like the allegations involve three women, not two (Iris Murdoch, Imogen Wrong, Mary Warnock)?
  • Reading the source, again, one element that seems to be important is the context of the sexual misconduct, i.e. that it happened during individual tutorials in Fraenkel's office. It seems to me that this is an important point to understand the contemporary reaction and that it would be fair to mention.

All good, supporting. JBchrch talk 16:26, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments and support from Gerda

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I met the article on DYK and am curious. Will comment as I read, lead at the end when I know more. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:33, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox

Early

  • "he enrolled at the University of Berlin to study law, as antisemitic hiring conventions would have made it difficult to obtain a teaching position at a German university" - not sure what the hiring convention has to do with the choice of subject, - probably my problem
    • The point is that Fraenkel chose not study Classics because the most probable career route (becoming a university lecturer) was going to be difficult to attain for him. So he studied law to become a lawyer, a field where, presumably, his status as a Jew matters less (at least in 1906). Modussiccandi (talk) 16:09, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Perhaps say that something like it in the article, that he was more interested in Classics but ... - Completely unrelated: please indent following the essay on top of User talk:Drmies. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • translate title of thesis?

Career in Germany

Exile ...

  • "Fraenkel spent the part of 1934" - why "the", and which?
    • I have removed the superfluous 'the'. The part referred to is the summer. I changed 'summer' to 'part' in response to a reviewer's comment because we shouldn't use the names of seasons in articles because they differ in different parts of the world. Since I didn't know the precise months, I settled for the vague 'part'. I'm definitely open to suggestions. Modussiccandi (talk) 16:09, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reception

  • "the philosopher Mary Warnock wrote that Fraenkel had touched her ..." - I was not prepared for "touched" meaning literally "touch", because the German "berührt" is often used to describe being positively influenced. - I also wonder if it belongs under "Reception". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:21, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • You are right, the German connotation of 'berühren' is different. However, English idiom is clearer on this, so I would prefer to keep the current word choice. Regarding the position in the 'Reception' section: I put it there because it forms part of a larger thematic complex on how Fr. was discussed after his death. You are right to say that these events happened while he was alive, but they only became public knowledge afterwards. On the whole, I found it best to tell the story of these controversial events in the reception section as opposed to having different bits in two sections. Modussiccandi (talk) 16:09, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Thank you, and all fine, just one minor thing. I have rehearsal today, will read the lead probably tomorrow. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

Source review

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Spotchecks not done. Version reviewed

I have tried to address you replies, Nikkimaria. Is there anything else in terms of sourcing that I should take care of? Modussiccandi (talk) 10:32, 13 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:24, 13 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.