Talk:Erich Weise

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I have removed a link to a website that claims to be sponsored by BdV.First this seems to be a political advocacy site on behalf of BdV, second BdV and its actions have been criticized as unwilling to deal with Nazi past of its founders and members.Thus it doesn't seem a reliable source on Nazis like Weise.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 21:27, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Was this [1] the site or a different one? That one got put in by Estlandia :[2]. It's from the Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenen, whose CEO is Hans-Günther Parplies who is or was - I think also president [3] of BdV. So also unreliable.Volunteer Marek 17:16, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this website seems to be also co-sponsored by another organization which IIRC was praised by the Nazi judge Hans Kruger responsible for draconian occupation of Chojnice. --MyMoloboaccount (talk) 19:54, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Drive by tagging

This [4] is just spurious IDONTLIKEIT drive by tagging. His Nazi career is one of the things that Weise is known for. Note also that Estlandia did not even bother justifying the tag on talk.Volunteer Marek 17:19, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

???? Volunteer Marek 17:21, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I removed the undue template again. It's silly to slap it on there without explaining on the talk page what the problems are. What, are we just supposed to guess what's putatively given undue weight? Too much on Konigsberg? First identify problems, then template article. — alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:23, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

War crime

"In 2008 Polish authorities proved that in December 1940 Weise was personally involved .., which constituted a war crime."

The given source actually just states that an investigation was cancelled because Weise et al. were dead anyway. The result of that investigation and the alleged involvement of Weise is unclear. Weise was not sentenced as a war criminal and the result of that investigation is speculative, nothing was "proved" (at least the source doesn't say so). HerkusMonte (talk) 06:21, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, my initial version had that in it(that he escaped punishment because it was too late to sentence him). However the information is clear about his crime. As to the plunder-it is widely known the he was engaged in this crime, as he personally oversaw in 1940 the theft of Polish archives which is sourced by many sources.— Preceding unsigned comment added by MyMoloboaccount (talk • contribs) 09:12, 4 May 2013‎

he served as honorary coworker and

I took this phrase out because I couldn't make sense of it. The link to the nearest reference seems to be broken somehow, too, so I couldn't check to see what it was talking about.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 20:03, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I think the dead link is supposed to link here [5]. But I don't think that supports the sentence which you fixed, as it was.Volunteer Marek 20:19, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I did manage to fix that link. It seems to only support the two sentences before it but not the first sentence in the paragraph. I left it in, though, since it hardly seems controversial.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 20:29, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that's fine. The "Publications" section also needs to be cleaned up. I can't make heads or tails out of some of the entries.Volunteer Marek 21:26, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I was working my way down, but now I see you're doing it, maybe I'll go have coffee instead. It looked like a daunting task. — alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:43, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

He wrote a single article, a collection of book reviews dealing with Polish literature on Prussian history, in cooperation with Maschke [6]. Is this really worth mentioning? Or is it just an attempt to mention Maschke? HerkusMonte (talk) 05:30, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Publications

Questions:

1. What is " KB 81 (1933)"? Volunteer Marek 22:27, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

My guess here is that Die nationalen Aufgaben des Grenzlandarchivars is the title of the talk he gave at the conference in Königsberg that's discussed in the article text and that KB stands for Königsberg. This theory doesn't explain the number 81 and I have no evidence for it other than that the year matches and google scholar shows no publications in 1933 in journals with the initials KB. It might be possible to figure it out by getting a copy of the German article that the quotation is cited to in Eckert's book.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 22:57, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

2. Or "AltprF 10, 1933, S. 148" Volunteer Marek 22:32, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

This one might be "Altpreuß. Forschungen" I haven't yet found a listing that would tell if the volume and year information are consistent with that. — alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 22:45, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Korrespondezblatt des Gesamtvereins der d. G. u. A-vereine Jg. 1933., No. 3.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 12:15, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

War crime

Re: [7]. The source states the commitment of the war crime as a matter of fact, and gives details. The source states that the reason the investigation was stopped was due to the fact that Weise and Forstreuter were dead and at that point (in 2008) it was impossible to determine other guilty parties.Volunteer Marek 05:07, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The source just states that the investigation was canceled because of Weise's et al. death, an investigation is not a verdict and calling someone a "war criminal" needs a very good and precise source. You're not guilty just because someone starts an investigation. HerkusMonte (talk) 05:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The source states that the crime was committed but the full investigation was ended because of the fact that Weise and Forstreuter were dead. This related source [8] gives the IPN investigator's statement:

"Kradzieży tych dokumentów z Archiwum Głównego Akt Dawnych w Warszawie dokonali dr Erich Weise oraz dr Kurt Forstreuter. Tym samym dopuścili się zbrodni wojennej grabieży dóbr kultury. Nie przedstawiono im zarzutów ponieważ ustalono, że obaj już nie żyją"

Translation: "The theft of these documents from the Main Archives of Historical Documents in Warsaw was carried out by Dr. Erich Weise and Dr. Kurt Forstreuter. In this way they committed a war crime involving the looting of cultural property. They have not formerly been charged because both of them are no longer alive"."

It's silly to pretend that this didn't happen or that there's some uncertainty involved as to Weise's role.Volunteer Marek 05:35, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's a different source. I already said in the section above that this claim needs at least a better source. The current quotation says nothing about the result of the investigation and Weise's role. Do we agree on that? HerkusMonte (talk) 09:43, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

What kind of documents did Weise "plunder"?

Everything appears to be going on a little bit too hasty here. An attempt is made to stigmatize Weise as a "war criminal". I find this article unbalanced if I compare it, e.g., with the article on Wernher von Braun, who had been a member of the Nazi party too, without that this fact is almost enthusiastically stressed and celebrated right at the beginning of the article on him. Anyway, what kind of historical documents did Weise "plunder"? I don't know it, but I guess that he confiscated historical documents stemming from the area of the Polish Corridor installed in 1920 after World War I in a region which until then had been German territory. If this is so, things should be seen in an different light. At the time of the establishment of the Polish Corridor the Atlantic Charter had not yet existed, but if it had existed already, then the establisment of the Polish Corridor itself could be called a crime. So, Weise might have been convinced that he did do nothing wrong. Most probably, everybody else in his position would have done the same.

I noticed that the British historian Michael Burleigh, who seeks publicity by writing on Weise, speaks as a scientist, which he apparently would like to be, of "traditional German chauvinism". As the Burleigh case once again shows, prebiased judgements of this kind usually concern the person itself, who generates them. --Kaiser von Europa (talk) 08:23, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

First, your comment above pretty much establishes that you were in fact sockpuppeting in evasion of your indef ban on German wikipedia [9].

Second, your opinions of Burleigh are irrelevant.

Third, your opinions about the Polish Corridor are also irrelevant, as well as irredentist (and it is these kinds of comments that got you banned from de-wiki)

Fourth, the documents plundered involved diplomatic notes between the Teutonic Knights and the kings of Poland. What Weise thought about his actions is also irrelevant - lots of Nazi war criminals didn't think they were acting criminally. So what?

Volunteer Marek 13:04, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I am glad that you are so well informed on the German wiki. I do not really bother whether you did register my opinion on Burleigh or not but you obviously did. Your statement concerning Weise's "war crime" does not answer my question. The primary question is, whether the documents confiscated by Weise had first been property of German archives prior to 1920 (e.g. of archives in Danzig) and had been moved to Warschau during 1920-39, or whether the documents concerned had been in Warschau already all the time before. If the latter case corresponds to the truth, then this should be clearly pointed out in the article, in order to avoid the impression that here a "war crime" might have been constructed by purpose. If the full truth is told - I do have nothing against it - then the reader is not forced to speculate on possible low motives of the authors of the accusations. If an historian speaks in his book of "traditional German chauvinism", then also anything else can be expected from him. --Kaiser von Europa (talk) 20:42, 8 May 2013 (UTC)