Talk:Hajnal line

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I forgot the picture. I'll set it asap --alfanje 21:17, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Inaccurate image?

I believe that the image shown in this article is incorrect, not least because it shows Hajnal's line as connecting with Venice rather than Trieste. An apparently more accurate graphic can be found here:

http://demoblography.blogspot.com/2008/01/hajnal-line.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.24.33.196 (talk) 18:08, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

it's still incorrect Yes, it is still the wrong line, which, by the way, is not just a line, it is also the border of the Holy Roman Empire, including the loosely integrated Baltic.

Canterbury statistics

These are uncited and neglect to mention that anyone got married at age 18, which seems unlikely. Shmuelic (talk) 18:22, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Criticism?

This article needs a criticism section featuring the views of the many researchers who reject the Hajnal Line entirely. This research,

https://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/eichengreen/Dennison.pdf

for instance, found no evidence that late marriage, high celibacy, and nuclear families were necessarily linked. The researchers did, however, find plenty of evidence for heterogeneous marriage patterns and family structures throughout all regions of Europe, and even within the individual states.Jonathan f1 (talk) 02:57, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

A search in Google Scholar shows other articles offering evidence that the Hajnal line is dubious. I found this Wikipedia article because it was referenced by an ideological article elsewhere that used the Hajnal line to subtly justify European exceptionalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.238.229.250 (talk) 08:04, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello, folks. You are right: this article lent way too much weight to Hajnal's theory, as if it were a law. It no longer holds favor among scholars and the article should include the new, more popular position. And there's good reason you found links to racist or ethno-nationalist sources promoting the theory; the Hajnal line has always been a favorite among white nationalists and Neo-Nazis, and these are its primary proponents today. I find it deeply disturbing that it has taken so long for someone to heed your calls. Hunan201p (talk) 07:40, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Should Conze really be considered the origin?

The "Origin" section doesn't say anything about Hajnal citing or even reading Conze. If he did cite Conze, that would be worth noting. That section also indicates that Conze was only writing about eastern Europe, whereas Hajnal also demarcated parts of western Europe (like southern Italy, Spain & Portugal) as outside the line. So did Hajnal build on Conze by noting those areas were similar to eastern Europe or did he independently arrive at a similar demarcation? TGGP (talk) 03:42, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

He should not even be mentioned on the article, he is not relevant. It is an attempt by a partisan editor to discredit the concept via guilt by association. Some on the far left find this phenomena deeply problematic and wish it did not exist, and they are not above trying to discredit it by associating it with Nazism and the alt right, neither of whom had ANYTHING to do with it. Mostly Holy (talk) 11:14, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Are you sure Werner Conze is not relevant? Have a look at the sources cited.

The Hajnal Thesis before Hajnal by Georg Fertig of the Max Planck Institute has an entire section devoted to Werner Conze's research of this "phenomena".

After reading that, check out Historical Family Systems and the Great European Divide by Mikolaj Szoltysek and Barbara Goldstein. This is an entire paper devoted to Werner Conze's Nazi science as the foundation for the Hajnal line theory.

In 1940, almost two years into World War II, the book, “Agrarverfassung und Bevölkerung in Litauen und Weißrussland”(Agrarian constitution and population in Lithuania and Belarus), was published. The habilitation thesis of the young German historian Werner Conze, the book was an extensive study of premodern family patterns of the peasant serf population in Lithuania from the 16th to the 18th centuries. In an approach that was innovative for its time, Conze used a type of historical source which, up to that point, had not yet received a lot of interest, namely, quantitative data derived from original inventory lists of historic estates. The analysis of the data led Conze to detect a difference between West and East. The comparison emphasised the cultural divide between the Germans and the Slavs to the East by postulating smaller family sizes throughout the western or German-influenced part of historic Lithuania, and larger families with more complex structures throughout the Slavic parts of the country. Thus, Conze also suggested that population growth in the Lithuanian west had been restrained, while the Lithuanian east had experienced abundant population growth. Conze’s scientific insights remain present in today’s historical-demographic literature, and have become an essential building block of any argument in support of the validity and persistence of East-West differentials in family systems in East-Central Europe. Because of this study’s continued importance, it may prove useful to re-examine “Agrarverfassung und Bevölkerung,” looking at its auctorial and ideological context, its methodological procedures, and its empirical content.

And here's Attila Melegh's view from European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History:

He was also creating the pathways toward the so-called Hajnal line, at least in the Baltic region. Conze was a follower and promoter of the “Ostforschung” in Nazi Germany, publishing his related thesis in 1940."

These authors all saw fit to mention Conze as an important figure in this area of research.

Please be advised that when someone voices ideas about the "far left" wanting to "discredit" research in to things that the left finds "deeply problematic", that person opens themselves up to scrutiny. That sounds exactly like the kind of rhetoric that the alt-right uses in defense of scientific racism. I will give you the benefit of a doubt, but...

The loudest people talking about the Hajnal line today are alt-right soapboxers. The fifth result of a google search for "Hajnal line" is a twitter post by HBDchick. - Hunan201p (talk) 00:06, 25 June 2022 (UTC)