Talk:German–Polish Border Treaty

Criticism

The treaty is criticised as it done in haste. It doesn't provide equal terms for Polish minority in Germany as the German one enjoys in Poland. Also Kohl was very much opposed to the treaty and it was American pressure that made him sign it in order to push for restoration of German unified state.--83.26.174.234 (talk) 18:41, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

One day...Germany will restore its integrity... I know.

Prussia never was part of Poland!Eros of Fire (talk) 03:03, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I suggest you read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Prussia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.177.34.46 (talk) 13:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

There is not any-more a settled Polish minority in Germany, as there is a German minority in Poland, or as there was a Polish minority in the parts of Germany now ceded to Poland. There are Polish people and people of Polish ancestry in Germany, but they are immigrants and descendents of immigrants. Or else they were citizens of Prussia and settled in other parts of Prussia or Germany where they did not originally come from. By the same logic, we would have to grant special rights to the Turks or Italians, which we don't. However, the Danes in Schleswig or the Sorbs actually are settled minorities which is why they, outnumbered by the Turks by orders of magnitude, do have minority rights.--2001:A61:2162:CD01:2D94:9E38:E33C:C140 (talk) 12:34, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

June 2009

Philip, you reverted my edits [1] arguing that "Changing the wording from English to Polish and German is not making it more intelegable." I beg to differ: In my perception, "German-Polish Border Treaty" is a lot easier on the eyes than "Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Poland on the confirmation of the frontier between them". Also, "German-Polish Border Treaty" is the title of the page, so there's a good case for using this wording at the beginning of the first sentence., I see no reason at all why the first sentence should be burdened with a lengthy literal English translation of the complicated legal German and Polish name, which nobody uses - neither in Polish, nor in German, let alone in English. For the sake of completeness and accuracy, I stated the full title in the next sentence, along with the literal English translation. Even if you are right and my change to the lead was in any way wrong, there's no point in reverting the rest of my edits along with it. This is just rude. --Thorsten1 (talk) 14:27, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree. Anyway, I've revised Thorsten's version a bit so as to take those strings of foreign words out of the lead sentence, which I presume was the only problem.--Kotniski (talk) 14:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

@Kotniski: Thanks a lot! Just in my defence, though, my version didn't have any string of foreign words in the lead sentence. :) --Thorsten1 (talk) 14:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

@Philip Baird Shearer: Thanks for finding the UN version in English and referencing it. However, your removal of the link to the original Polish and German versions, along with the statement that we should use "a UN translation of the name not something in a foreign language" [2] strikes me as a bit odd, not to say arrogant. The documents are not simply in some random "foreign language", but in their original binding versions. Quite apart from the fact that there's no reason why the original titles should not be reliably referenced, en.wikipedia is not only used by "English-only" speakers, but also by people with an ability to read these original documents, who may actually appreciate having references pointing directly to the original documents, not just to the semi-official English translation. --Thorsten1 (talk) 14:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I did not find the UN source recently, it was in the the reference section until this edit Revision as of 13:12, 6 June 2009 when you removed it. The policy is clear WP:NONENG "English-language sources are preferable to sources in other languages so that readers can easily verify the content of the article. However, sources in other languages are acceptable where an English equivalent is not available." In this case there is a UN source so there is no need for a foreign language source. -- PBS (talk) 20:30, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Philip: first off, the only reason I removed this was because the link didn't work. I think it's better to have no link at all than a non-functional one, for obvious reasons.

If you check the link to the UN source you will find that it works and it is the same link that you removed with this edit Revision as of 13:12, 6 June 2009 --PBS (talk) 10:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

As pointed out above, I replaced the full English name with the short version in the introductory sentence because its both consistent with the article's name and a lot more readable. Of course, we should include the clumsy full name, but it'd better not be at the very beginning of the very first sentence, so I moved it a bit further down. As there was no source for the English translation of the official name(s), I additionally those official names, correctly sourced, to be on the safe side. Now that we have a good reference for the full English name again, the official names in both original languages might be dispensable, of course. I'm not going to remove them, but I wouldn't have put them there, either, if there hadn't been a good reason for it at the time.

Regardless of whether or not there is a need to quote the actual Polish and German names in the text, I disagree about the sources. You're quoting the rules according to which "sources in other languages are acceptable where an English equivalent is not available." A fine example that common sense trumps "rules" any time. If, as in this case, we have an article about what is basically a text in a foreign language, it does make a lot of sense to link directly to the original text, even if it is also available in English. Please keep in mind that the UN version is strictly for informational purposes, and not binding anyone in any way. That's why we should give people easy access to the subject of the article, rather than forcing them to navigate to .pl or .de and look for a source there (let alone forcing them to poke around in the dark with nothing but the English version at hand.) So while there may, arguably, be no need for the full original names themselves, I disagree that there "is no need for a foreign language source". --Thorsten1 (talk) 09:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Replying to this down here for chronological readability. "If you check the link to the UN source you will find that it works and it is the same link that you removed with this edit " - it works alright, but it doesn't point to the source. In said revision, one of two links leads to the UN's Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Office of Legal Affairs, which has no connection with this at all. The other one leads to a subpage of that site providing a very long list of treaties to which Germany is a party. To be sure, at the bottom of that page, there is a link to the border treaty - but this isn't how we reference things here, of course. I had removed the second link because I overlooked the entry about the border treaty in what is, in Microsoft Word, a four-page long list of treaties - my bad. Anyway, it doesn't justify reverting all of my subsequent changes (let alone the ones I did before). --Thorsten1 (talk) 11:36, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you are confused "it was in the the reference section until this edit Revision as of 13:12, 6 June 2009 when you removed it." What you are talking about was a stale link that was footnoted and that originally contained a citation containing the ratification dates. --PBS (talk) 15:25, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

You can call me "confused" all you want, Philip. Calling the link "stale", as opposed to "dead", smacks of sophistry, but even if it didn't, it certainly doesn't justify any wholesale revert of all of my edits. If you don't get it, too bad - I'm not going to keep repeating it. Have a nice life. --Thorsten1 (talk) 08:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The reference "was in the the reference section until this edit Revision as of 13:12, 6 June 2009 when you removed it." --PBS (talk) 08:46, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Poland has no claims to Pomerania, East or West Prussia (with exception to to former Polish corridor, and that is largely irrelevant) or the majority of Silesia. This treaty and it's predecessors which stripped Germany of it's rightful lands and forcibly moved Poles from their Eastern homes into German lands is an abomination and a remnant of Soviet aggression. Koenigsberg (or Kaliningrad as they call it these days) should be transferred back along with Polish-occupied German lands, Poles should get their eastern lands returned (areas where they had a majority population, that is.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.26.41 (talk) 01:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

There was another German guy I heard of who thought that Germany's borders with Poland, as agreed to in international treaties (most notably the Treaty of Versailles), were an "abomination." He convinced the overwhelming majority of Germans to dedicate their lives (or other people's lives, I should say) to 'return' these "rightful" "Polish-occupied German lands" to Germany, and to erect landmarks marking this occasion in Auschwitz, Birkenau, Stutthof and Kulmhof, to name just a few. But you're right, all that is to be forgotten, all of it is to be forgiven. But what is not to be forgiven is the "Soviet aggression" "which stripped Germany of it's rightful lands" leading to an "abomination." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.232.163.211 (talk) 03:37, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

In 1990 the Power of State and all its Territories (incl. former eastern german parts) belong to the goverment of the Fedral Rebublic of Germany. Therefore the treaty between Germany and Poland is legal in terms of international law. By the way MOST of germans today have no use for those territories and is just mad to think it is possible to transfer millions of people again. You know the states of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern? It can be called "Raum ohne Volk" today, so why get MORE space? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.184.136.16 (talk) 09:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on German–Polish Border Treaty (1990). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090122213856/http://pol-niem.pl/index.php?page=1101100000 to http://www.pol-niem.pl/index.php?page=1101100000

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 03:13, 15 October 2017 (UTC)