Talk:Bohemia

2002 talk

To JHK Please take a look at Gdingen and Gdynia and see how Larry Sanger handled the two name situation. I agree with that completely.

The history of most of the places I am referring to , started with the current names in 1945 and some in 1919/1920 -Period.

What you are doing is whiping out a 1000 year of history by taking away the proper names and replacing it with the 1920/1945 and thereafter communist military take-over names. Not only the land is stolen , but that amounts to stealing the history too. And please do not tell me again that it is ok for the land to be stolen , because it is ok to militarily occupy, it is illegal to oust the inhabitants, replace them with others and keep the land.- Period. user:H.J.

H.J., "Bohemia" has been used as the name of this place in writing longer than Boehmen for the simple fact that it IS the Latin name. The Czechs were there by 600. The Boii (whoever they were, Celt or German) were gone. The name stuck to the place, not to a group of people who have lived there continuously. Oh, and I think that Larry was wrong. He's not always right. We should have entries under the modern name of a place with a section labelled "history of {whatever}" to cover the previous history.--MichaelTinkler

H.J., You are absolutely right about that. The name "Bohemia" is the valid name, because it is the original latin name of the region, used by many famous cartographers of the middle ages like Mercator for example. It is correct to all sides involved (Czechs, Germans etc.) And you are right, its about the thousand years of mostly glorious history stolen. Unfortunatelly majority of undereducated Czechs don't even know the facts and still rely on biased communist history books, what a shame. Also, this is not some fairytale country it is very precisely defined by Ore Mountains, Bohemian forest and other mountain ranges so this is not only region with deep history but also with a well defined geographical boundary. Also "Talks with T. G. Masaryk" by Karel Čapek uses Bohemia, just to remind Czechs that insist on Czechia usage.--IEEE 07:55, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

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I had put all the earlier ways of writing the name/s in my early Boii=Boier, Baier, Bajuvaren = modern Bayern and Boii= Boemi=Boehmen entrances. People keep taking it out. But Bohemia = Boemi as it was written on old maps. (That is why I love to look at old maps). user:H.J.

HJ, we keep taking it out because the majority of scholars in the 20th century, and almost ALL scholars in the late 20th century, agree that the Bajuvaren are not ETYMOLOGICALLY the same as the Boii. Let me give you another examples - the entry at Huns says that they are the same as the 'Hiung-nu' in the Chinese sources. The majority of scholars in the late 20th century disagree, including the great Otto Maenchen-Helfen, whose book on the Huns I'm plowing through right now in order to straighten out that entry. He was one of the few scholars with the linguistic expertise in Chinese, Mongolian, Turkish and Turkic dialects, etc., etc., etc. (he was a GREAT linguist) to sort it out, and he says 'most likely not.' JHK, in fact, is probably among the 10 or 15 best informed Americans on the subject of the origins of the Bavarii, given her graduate training and what she wrote her dissertation about. There really are only 2 or 3 people in America I know personally and about 10 others who I don't know personally but whose work I respect who I would defer to more than to her on this topic. The study of names in the 19th century depended on an early state of philology; the linguistic research has changed a LOT in the last 100 years, and relying on comparison of sounds as spelled by Romans or Greeks is not taken very seriously any more.

now on to another topic about which you certainly know more than I - is there any reason to suspect one of Mieszko's wives than the others as the parent of Boleslav I? And is the woman you put in as 'Oda, princess of Ostmark' the daughter of Thietrich (Theoderic)? If so, I wonder about the title 'princess.' What were the March-lords' wives and daughters called?

Thanks, Michael -- Personally, I'd like to know a bit more about this, too. Princess is definitely anachronistic if this was before about the 11th c. (I haven't seen the quote, so I'm not sure what date was given). As for the other titles and names, I'm a bit confused. There seem to be a lot of them -- especially known last names. At the time in question, there were still an awful lot of people out there who didn't have more than one name, or went by x, son (or daughter) of x. One of the toughest things about studying the period is the absence of any clear indication of kinship for many of the people we sudy. This is compounded by reiteration of leading names, i.e., names that re-occur in one family and, in some cases, pretty much "belong" to a family if it's an important one. Also, there is a HUGE difference between title and office. One could be a dux (translated into modern duke, but not really the same) and lose the title and office (and the lands associated therewith) to someone else after a few years. Relationships certainly were more regular and titles more heritable by the end of the 10th c, but the rules described above are little more than a wish-list based on the few consistencies historians have found. Please see the wiki article on feudalism to better understand why we cannot and should not make such assumptions.

As for the "how Larry handled it" matter, please note my response. If we were to create a new article every time a war cased political boundaries to change, whether right or wrong, we would have 5 or 6 entries for many cities. Think of Strasbourg, or any of the cities that changed hands after the 30 years war, and with the Spanish Succession, Austrian Succession, 7 Years' war, Napoleonic Wars, and WWI. doubtful that any one city suffered all those changes, but dead stupid to have separate articles for each era -- the people living there didn't change entirely. I can perhaps see valid reasons for three entires for Constantinople, Byzantium, and Istanbul, but only because the cultures were so different. And even then, I would argue that it be one article under Istanbul, with redirected pages for Constantinople and Byzantium.JHK

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To MichaelTinkler and JHK About the titles, I found : Otto I the Great king, emperor , he became emperor after he was born. Otto II emperor ,Otto III emperor, They were born as a son of an emperor. They were emperor from the day of their birth. Otto III , born 980,was already crowned emperor by his father. Otto II died in 983. Otto III was emperor.But since he did not have the age (with Frankish it was 14), his mother Theophanu (Byzantium) reigned for him. When she died, the grandmother Adelheid (Adelaide) (St) of Italy reigned for Otto III. When a person was born a son of a duke, the baby was born :duke so-and-so. These titles meant, that they were the son of a ..whatever and they had the lawful right to become the same title so-and-so. These royal titles with European (perhaps international)registries of titles and positions are kept up. The person later on in live was not always able to actually keep the position ,after the fathers death, because other inheriters also attempted to get the same position.

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Now back to the other matter, people in the 20th/21st century cannot possibly have all the information that earlier people had. For example in Germany, there were many destructions.Take Hamburg. In circa 845 AD 600 Viking ships came sailing on the Elbe river and destroyed Hamburg. Hamburg at that time had 500 inhabitants. It was the reason that archbishopric Hamburg and Bremen were then combined. The 30 years war slashed and burned a very large part. There were many destructions over and over again. Even without wars there were many fires, that destroyed towns, cities, many times over. There was not even an English translation of Ptolemy's Geography until 1932. The first bible in America was not in English language. These are just a few examples .Therefore I believe that people today can only judge by what is left and what is available to them now. They cannot get a true picture today as the people of that time did. user:H.J.

H.J. NO. To start with, one word: ARCHAEOLOGY. Archaeology has proven many things right and many things wrong. If you go on reading old history books you might beleive that Homer was a myth and that the Trojan war never happened. Schliemann in the 19th century began changing our attitudes toward that. Modern archaeology has taught us a LOT about the ancient Germans that Tacitus and Ptolemy never knew. Let me tell you something about Ptolemy, too. The reason no one had translated Ptolemy's Geography into English until 1932 is that anyone who wanted to read it before the 17th century was already a person who could read Greek and Latin. By the 17th century, by which point the translations into the vernacular languages became popular, no one believed that the ancient Greeks knew more about the geography of the world than modern explorers. And they didn't. Ptolemy had odd ideas about a lot of geography - look at what he thought about the location of Ireland relative to England! And given that he was wrong about a lot of things, why should his THIRD hand reports of what tribe lived where and what ethnicity THEY were be accepted today? He was not an anthropologist or a linguist, so he didn't have any reliable way to tell a Celt from a German except by believing what someone else told him. Since the 17th century the only people who read Ptolemy were also usually able to read Latin and Greek, and didn't need an english translation very much! Gosh! The 30 years war didn't destroy knowledge - it destroyed books and people. Lots and lots of books survived - cetainly enough to cast doubt on the IDENTITY of the Boii and the Bavarii. --MichaelTinkler

I must also dispute what who think you know about the passage of titles, H.J. Your example is very specific and not representative. It also doesn't prove your point. After all, Otto did not become Emperor by inheriting the title -- His father wasn't emperor. Henry the Fowler was elected king after the Carolingian house had pretty much died out in the east. His election was according to normal Frankish custom -- if a ruler cold not rule, the leading men (not nobles, that doesn't really fit the time period, although it is more true in the 10thc than the 8th) had the right to choose another leader. This was not based of any type of vassalage (vassals don't get to overthrow a king), but on the principle that the king was the best leader in war and would provide them with the most plunder. Otto was succeeded by his son and grandson, but only because he was a good enough leader to keep build loyalty to his family. NONE of these people were Emperor from the day of their birth -- that's just silly. That's like saying that Prince Charles has been King of England from the day of his birth. Otto may have had them crowned co-emperor as teenagers (I haven't re-read anything specific on the Ottonians in a while, so I couldn't say when tthey received the imperium)-- the Carolingians certainly did this, as a way to ensure succession and consolidate power.

Your other example of dukes being born dukes, etc, just doesn't fly. Whether or not you like to hear it, modern scholarship (and here I mean Scholars like Prinz, Störmer, Schwind, Riché Wallace-Hadrill, and Semmler -- mostly Germans) does not support that theory. I've spent a lot of time working with the land transaction records from Fulda and Lorsch. Titles are not used, except for royalty, and in the cases of a very few well-known leading men. We can corroborate some of these titles by reading some of the Annals for the time -- Annales fuldensis, Annales vedastini, Annales Laureshaimensis and Annales bertiniani are some I've used. They are interesting because they tell us that so-and-so was dux or comes of the Ostmark, or somewhere else. They also tell us when these guys were transferred or demoted -- which means those offices were not inheritable. That said, they were often held by members of one family. Now, if you are reading edited versions of these documents, there is often commentary that names the people as Duke of such and such, or Count of X -- but these are later additions by (usually) 19th c. historians. For the Ottonian period, more titles were "set" but there was still a lot of fluidity that must be taken into account. JHK

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First, I think we should all agree to call Vaclav Wencelas (or Wenceslaus) -- that's his most common name in English, and if someone wants to know who "Good King Wenceslas" was, they should be able to find him.

Re-wrote for accuracy -- removed anachronisms, removed statement about Charlemagne and the four gaues because I've read almost every primary source on the Carolingian East and a fairly large number of the secondary sources, and I can't recall ever seeing this mentioned. If someone can show me a valid, non-web source for this, I'll be happy to see it returned. JHK

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To JHK Do you want to call him: Saint Wenceslas , Chech Vaclav -? that seems alright to me user:H.J.

let me suggest: "Wenceslas (Czech, Vaclav, later canonized)" By the way, Vaclav is my fault - Collins seems to be Frankophobic, in his Hispanophilia, and so he's very sympathetic to Slavic names in reaction, I guess. --MichaelTinkler.

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I must say, as someone who knows nothing about Bohemia, this article is not particularly useful. It gives me no approximation of its location in any of the historical eras discussed, nor does it do a very good job of explaining, for example, who the heck a Carolignan is and why this mattered to Bohemia. I certainly know enough about recent European history to be well aware that national/regional borders can vary (sometimes significantly, viz. Poland). Perhaps defining Bohemia as "located primarily in present-day East|West|North|South [insert country here]", or discussing how the passing back-and-forth of various dukedoms, princedoms, etc, affected the geopolitical boundaries would also provide some sociopolitical context. As it is, I have to infer that Bohemia was located somewhere in the present-day Czech Republic (by scrolling down to the end of the article), possibly bordering on or near Bavaria, and that it has been associated with least 3 separate policital and/or cultural groups that don't really have much to do with each other aside from that they all called Bohemia "home". Not being a historian, I am woefully unqualified to make useful contributions other than the above criticism, but I'd appreciated if the committee of authors would consider this feedback. --A WikiRoulettist

You're absolutely right, and it's clear unfortunately that the article was begun (or substantially rewritten at an earlier stage) by someone who didn't give a damn about Bohemia, couldn't be bothered to find out where it was and didn't even know enough to realise that its frontiers are among the oldest in Europe (a millennium apart from an extremely unfortunate interval in 1938-45). Of course it was all originally someone's effort to show that ten million Czechs show everything they've achieved to the greater German fatherland of which they're an organic part. It sometimes takes time to excise the remnants of this drivel, but it'll go. Thanks for raising the problem. User:David Parker.

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Lovely re-write, David! you're right, you know -- this was initially an HJ article to which actual history was quickly added. BTW, added Carolingian to East Frankish kingdom -- I think it's important. JHK

On Bohemianism

Should someone talk about what bohemian (small "b") means? (Arty, etc.)--firepink —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.254.237.47 (talk • contribs) 08:54, 7 Mar 2002 (UTC)

yeah, ditto! all fine and dandy to have it as a seperate page, but at least give it heavy mention in the intro. e.g. "...region...known primarily for it's artsy-fartsy culture, poetry, drugs, and ragdoll clothing". or w/e.

also a note on the distinctions betw "bohemian", "gypsy", "roma", and "cyndi lauper" would be nice....

4.154.249.215 (talk) 01:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Flag

Does anyone have any information on the history of the flag and why it's the same as the Polish flag? --Aramգուտանգ 19:17, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, the flag pictured here seems to be wrong. See CIA World Factbook. --MarkSweep 09:07, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The flag is derived from the Czech coat of arms showing silver lion on the red field, that means white strip above the red one. Poland has silver eagle on the red field and therefore the same flag. When both countries regained their independence in 1918, Czechoslovakia adjusted its flag with blue triangle to avoid confusion. Since than the white/red flag represents "Bohemia proper" only, but officially isn't used any more. Qertis 09:02, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well the flag of Bohemia proper is, I think, more appropriate for this page than the flag of the Czech Republic, even though it's unofficial. Also the Czech Wikipedia article uses the red-and-white flag. So I suggest we change it back. --Fwb22 14:40, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I support a change back to the red and white, see also: [1]. --Aramգուտանգ 03:48, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Right, I've changed it back to the red and white flag. --Fwb22 13:36, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Explanation

To the history of the flag - that blue triangle originally represents the blue hills from the coat of arms of Slovakia. After the Czechoslovakia ceased to exist in 1993, the Slovak blue triangle remained in the Czech flag for two reasons 1. because people were just used to it, 2. to avoid confusion with Poland. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xmort (talk • contribs) 05:26, 3 January 2005 (UTC)

As the previous editor wrote, the reason why present-day flag of Czech rep. differs from that original one is: to avoid the confusion with the polish one. (And for that was natural, to choose the czechoslovakian one). Before the constitution of Czechoslovakia the Czech lands was for 3 centuries under the rule of Habsburg Monarchy and Czechs couldn't use the flag by any oficial way in that time. The Poland readopted the colors as their own meanwhile. (as far as I know)--Reo On 22:04, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Map Moved

I moved the Historic Map down and to the right, and also changed it's annotation to reflect the data on the image record. This was tested against my browser in fine (smallest) text, and largest; as the prior arrangement had some 'inconvieniently located wrapped' text displayed while in the same display ranges. In other words, the edit is purely cosmetic. FrankB 7 July 2005 02:14 (UTC)

Current Map - Identification of Geographic Sub-Areas

Who can identify by name the 10 geographic areas shown in the currently displayed map of Bohemia file "Image:CZ-cleneni-Cechy-wl.png" Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.170.92.214 (talk) 01:07, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

See [2] - the summary names each of the districts.--Jirka6 (talk) 01:13, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Jirka6 ! You're the Man!

Russian Bogemiya

Is there a need to have the Russian Bogemiya in the intro? I can understand listing Bohemia, Čechy, and Böhmen, but the territory was never administered or heavily populated by Russians, nor is Bogemiya a term used in English. It is already listed at List of European regions with alternative names as well. Olessi 03:32, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I was just wondering about the same. As there were no replies for three months, I'll delete it. It is wrong anyway, the real Russian name is written in Cyrillics. -- EJ 20:39, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

On Boleslav I

Hi, I am a history student at the Charles University in Prague. I was quite surprised to read that Boleslav I. is considered to be the first king of Bohemia. It may be possible that he was referred to as "rex" in the contemporary (or somewhat later) writings but he had never been crowned (as Vratislav II. and Vladislav II. were). There is no evidence, as far as I know, that he considered himself to be a king and he is frequently referred to as a duke by Czech historians. --Grw 16:57, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Czech Wikipedian's notice board

You are invited to join Wikipedia:Czech Wikipedian's notice board! The Czech notice board can be used for discussions on Czech-related topics; to plan your Czech-related projects; and ask for, or offer assistance for Czech-related subjects. Editors are encouraged to sign their nickname on the list of active participators. --Thus Spake Anittas 02:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Twenty seven Protestant noblemen excuted

A question to Aecis: I cannot understand why you are revereting the given number to few, could you explain? The exact number might not be important on its own, but the public execution of Bohemian noblemen cannot be described as a few Protestants were executed. If you cannot accept the number then the wording should be at least something like selected noblemen or so. Saying few is like saying unimportant number of protestant noblemen were executed which is absurd. --Cepek 16:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

The communist regime is completely ignored

Is there a reason that the communist regime as a Soviet satellite, from the end of WWII until the fall of communism in eastern Europe, is completely ignored in this article? The 1968 Soviet invasion was a significant event and should at least be mentioned. Dwood202 18:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Do you even know what Communism is? Has there ever been a anarchic utopia? Don't use that term.

-G —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.117.158.83 (talk) 06:36, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Why such a detailed history?

In most part, the history is in fact the history of the Czech Lands. I added the link. I do not think it makes sense to duplicate the information. I would suggest to shorten the history significantly, maybe only describing the differences between the history of Bohemia proper and the history of the whole Czech Lands. But maybe event that is not necessary, since the difference is or should be described in the article about the history of Czech Lands. What do you think? Jirka6 01:05, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Much of the detailed history here (and at History of Bohemia) could instead be moved to expand Kingdom of Bohemia. Olessi (talk) 02:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Bold in lead

So this term keeps getting bolded:

it is often used the refer to the whole country

Our readers are capable of figuring out that this is an important detail by themselves, without having it emphasised for them. The Manual of Style recommends not over-doing markup, and we're perfectly fine without here. Chris Cunningham (talk) 22:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Twinkle failed me

I, of course, wanted to revert to Lightmouse's version. Sorry about that.--Svetovid (talk) 19:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Ancient Bohemia

What does this mean? It was caused because they kept strategical central cult in their territory. — Robert Greer (talk) 19:30, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Austria post WWII occupation

The 3rd paragraph under Twentieth century, starting with "Beginning in 1949, ..." has this:

"(interestingly enough, surrounding countries including Austria were occupied by the Red Army) ..."

Actually, only Eastern Austria was under Russian occupation. While this may not seem overly important, it is NOT TRUE and should be corrected like this:

"(interestingly enough, surrounding countries including Eastern Austria were occupied by the Red Army)"

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Austria I would have edited this myself but am new to this and don't want to make a mess of a page without learning more before. Absatzneu (talk) 01:30, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree, so I implemented the suggestion into the text. Reo ^ON | +++ 17:15, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Charvat

Quote: "Charvat" is of Turkic origin

What's the basis of this claim? The most commonly accepted derivation is from the Sarmatian, thus Iranian Choroatos or White Croats. See also Name of Croatia. Although the exact etymology is disputed, a Turkic origin is new to me. (See also Guldescu, A History of Medieval Croatia).--Joostik (talk) 20:36, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Doughnut Days 2009

What is a listy? Is it a particular type of doughnut or just the Bohemian word for doughnut? ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:44, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Assistance needed with the Eastern Europe article

The Eastern Europe article is fraught with errors, mislabels and slanted facts as if much of it was written by ultraconservatives during the Cold War from an ethnocentric position. If you agree with that Poland Czech r. Slovakia Hungary are Central European states rather than a Soviet satellite, please assist in rewording/correcting the article lead and body. It is un-encycopedic! (just read English Britannica and German Brockhaus) Gregorik (talk)