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The theory of Jakob Fallmerayer is not based on scientific facts. On the other hand, there have been no researches to prove the opposite. There must be a gene study, that will compare the gene type of modern greeks with the one of ancient greeks and see if there is any link between them.—Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
It is my guess that the article contains a good deal of original research, or at least, uncited claims. E.g. what is the deal with the "ignored Latin texts"? Were there some hidden Latin texts which contradicted the Chronicle of Monemvasia? Can this statement become more specific? On the other hand the genetics section supposedly proves that Greeks and Slavs have unrelated genetic backgrounds or whatever. Fair enough but is this specific research generally linked to the Fallmerayer thesis or is it just the conclusion of the person who made the edit? And why does the section talk about genetics stuff that most people don't have a clue about? In addition, the article states in the lead that Fallmerayer was refuted by genetic research only in 1991 or so. The validity (or degree of validity) of Fallmerayer's theory is a question restricted to the historians of the 19th century (and of the 3rd Reich). Fortunately, modern historiography is advanced to the point of treating ethnology in terms of cultures/nations rather than "races". To imply that such a question was finally answered in 1991, as if it had been the world's major concern 'till recently, assigns an outdated degree of importance to the question at hand. It's true that Fallmarayer may be cited even by modern scholars every now and then, but such a practice is common trash-scholarship which should not affect the imagine of mainstream scholarship. It doesn't take a genetic research or a PHD in history in order to realise that peoples such as Poles, Russians and Ukranians are physically different to Greeks. So maybe the article should not be trying so hard to disprove a 19th racist theory. The only thing it achieves is to give it more credit. Miskin 13:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that meaningful contribution Javits. I think that if we remove the genetics section some people will eventually complain about it and add it back. In order to balance it out maybe it would be wiser to provide some arguments from the works which have refuted Fallmerayer. Douglas Dakin promotes some concrete arguments: Fallmerayer firmly advocates that the Greek language had disappeared from the Greek peninsula during the Slavic invasions, and it was re-introduced by the Greek church which hellenised the Slavs. But why would the Church Hellenise the invaders by imposing the vernacular language instead of the erudite? Fallmerayer's thesis "requires the assumption of an absurdity - that the Greek Church had at its disposal an elaborate organisation of schools and a veritable army of teachers for teaching the Greek language to the Slavs". Dakin ellaborates on this and continues about Greek folklore, which is the only non-genetics counter-argument mentioned in the article (yet unsourced). Other crucial flaws emerging from modern historiography:
Those arguments seem to me much more meaningful than the gibberish genetic conclusions which simply refute him with a "no". Miskin 12:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Let's deal with this Nazi question. I've found no reference to suggest that Nazi propaganda during WWII made direct reference to / use of Fallmerayer's work. The one source I have found by searching JSTOR (cited in the article) suggests that they rather followed the "party line" (Rosenberg) according to which the modern Greeks were "Levantine." That's obviously completely different from Fallmerayer's theory, and the simple fact that the Nazis promoted a concept of "discontinuity" doesn't mean that they were following F. -- he was hardly the first nor the last to suggest such a thing. For the time being I'm placing a "fact" tag on the following sentence: "The Nazis espoused and promoted Fallmerayer's theories, as a means of reconciling their admiration of Ancient Greece and their atrocities against modern Greeks." I'm sure there's a good history of the Nazi occupation of Greece that could answer this question -- it's just way outside my own ken. -- Javits2000 10:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
In addition, the theory about Levantines was probably one out of many, but its existence does not imply that Fallmerayer's Slavic theory had not been revived. I doubt that nazi scholarship had a consensus on the subject, there were most likely many theories with a common objective. I recall reading about a German booklet that had been distributed to all German soldiers and officers in Greece. It may have been called "Von Soldaten für Soldaten herausgegeben von einem Generalkommando" (Athen 1944), and I think it included the Fallmerayer thesis.
Miskin 14:20, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I've glanced through the booklet that Miskin cited (Der Peloponnes etc.), and I find no mention of Fallmerayer or of the disappearance of the Greek race from the peninsula. The Slavic invasions are discussed, but conclude with Der Sieg des Griechentums über das Slawentum (807-1204) (The victory of the Greeks over the Slavs -- which would imply that there were still some Greeks around). On the whole it's pretty banal stuff (cf. Hannah Arendt). I also note that in Veloudis, "Fallmerayer," 89-90, as cited in the article, the booklet is mentioned in the following context: Unmittelbar nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg wurde ein deutscher Historiker, der keinesfalls Pro-Fallmerayersche Ansichten vertrat, als "neuer Fallmerayer" gebrandmarkt [Footnote:] A.D. Keramopoulos, Hoi hellenes kai hoi boreioi geitones, Athen, 1945, S. 94-97, gegen G. Stadtmüller, Die Geschichte, in Der Peloponnes... von Soldaten für Soldaten, hrs. von einen Generalkommando, Athen, 1944, S. 42-158.
Translation: Directly after WWII, a German historian, who by no means championed pro-Fallmerayer views, was denonunced as a "new Fallmerayer." [Footnote:] Keramopoulos, The Greeks and their northern neighbors, Athens, 1945, pp. 94-97, against [precisely this booklet].
Therefore Keramopoulos could be the source of the belief that the booklet cited, or otherwise made use of, Fallmerayer. I'll take a more careful look at the booklet when I get the chance, but for the time being it seems not to corroborate the claim that Fallmerayer's theories were cited in Nazi propaganda. -- Javits2000 13:39, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I've largely finished with the re-write of the biographical & legacy sections from the Britannica article, although I'm sure they could still use some tidying up. Moving on now to the remainder.
That's all for now. Thoughts? -- Javits2000 09:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Why devote so much space to such a marginal figure? His ideas influenced a tiny minority. Also, why isn't the word 'racism' mentioned in the article? He clearly drew on racist germanic notions of 'racial purity' that unfortunately persist to this day.
p.142 Fallmerayer’s thesis is most often received as an example of the general racist conceptions that dominated the discourse of nineteenth-century colonialist Europe, more or less akin to the racist philosophical musings of Arthur Gobineau. Though there is an undeniable discursive affinity between Fallinerayer and the racist—colonialist spirit of his time, , it is important to understand that Fallmerayer’s specific pronouncements about Greece are essentially tied to a wider political framework, the international balance of power in mid- nineteenth-century Europe. As Veloudis points out (1982: 39—42), Fallmerayer was the first historian among his contemporaries to forward an uncompromising Realpo1itik on the so-called “Eastern Question,” namely, the concern of Western European powers over the apparent dissolution of the Ottoman State and the expansionist visions of czarist Russia. In this context, Fallmerayer’s contention that Greece was in effect a de-Hellenized culture was meant to thwart the ideology of those European politicians who, as a result of their Philhellenism, actively promoted the dismantling of Ottoman control over the Balkans. He argued vehemently that only a strong Ottoman State could prevent Russian expansion into Western Europe.
In this respect although refining certain tendencies in Western European political thought that hearken back to Rousseau, Fallmerayer certainly stood in the vanguard. But he was not the only one who promoted these ideas, which indeed soon became the prevalent policy of Western Europe more or less until the First World War. In a series of newspaper articles for the New York Daily Tribune (March 1884), Karl Marx meticulously retraced this same problematic with respect to the posturing of English foreign policy,
p.143 using Fallmerayer as a trustworthy reference. Marx’s contiguity to Fallmerayer in this case is not surprising. As a wider reading of Marx’s work on the European political situation would testify Marx was, like many of his contemporaries. Slavophobic. Certainly Fallmerayer shared this prejudice, even though ironically he was perceived by the entire Neo-Hellenic intelligentsia as a Slavophilic enemy. This misapprehension is crucial in understanding the profound effect of Philhellenism as an internalized condition of the modern Greek national-cultural psyche.
p.131 Particular controversy was also aroused in Greece by the well-publicised claim of the Austrian right-wing politician and doubtless racist historian Jakob Fallmerayer, who argued that modern Greeks ‘did not have a drop of genuine and pure Greek blood’ in their veins and that they were instead descended from Slays, Albanians, Turks, Rumanians and others. Genetically, of course, this is obviously nor without some truth, but its effect on Greek public opinion was enormous, not least because it seemed to directly contradict all the positive sentiments associated with Hellenism.
p. 28 minor essays of Jacob Philipp Fallmerayer and their echoes in the racist writings of the Third Reich
I am adding this epithet as it is sufficiently substantiated from multiple sources. I will also add the first source on the paragraph describing the motivation behind his work. I haven't been able to find anything to substantiate the claim that he had an incestuous relationship with his mother though so I agree that it be dropped for now. Obviously anyone that has information about it please don't be shy. He wasn't. Xenovatis ( talk) 22:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Xenovatis ( talk) 16:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
the bio article is very much clearer DGG ( talk ) 01:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
One is a book, another is an author. Moreover, it is precisely this historical and ethnographic work that is the impetus for the formation of modern Greek historiography, and in this sense it is significant and should be an independent article. Angel Angel 2 ( talk) 19:03, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The theory of Jakob Fallmerayer is not based on scientific facts. On the other hand, there have been no researches to prove the opposite. There must be a gene study, that will compare the gene type of modern greeks with the one of ancient greeks and see if there is any link between them.—Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
It is my guess that the article contains a good deal of original research, or at least, uncited claims. E.g. what is the deal with the "ignored Latin texts"? Were there some hidden Latin texts which contradicted the Chronicle of Monemvasia? Can this statement become more specific? On the other hand the genetics section supposedly proves that Greeks and Slavs have unrelated genetic backgrounds or whatever. Fair enough but is this specific research generally linked to the Fallmerayer thesis or is it just the conclusion of the person who made the edit? And why does the section talk about genetics stuff that most people don't have a clue about? In addition, the article states in the lead that Fallmerayer was refuted by genetic research only in 1991 or so. The validity (or degree of validity) of Fallmerayer's theory is a question restricted to the historians of the 19th century (and of the 3rd Reich). Fortunately, modern historiography is advanced to the point of treating ethnology in terms of cultures/nations rather than "races". To imply that such a question was finally answered in 1991, as if it had been the world's major concern 'till recently, assigns an outdated degree of importance to the question at hand. It's true that Fallmarayer may be cited even by modern scholars every now and then, but such a practice is common trash-scholarship which should not affect the imagine of mainstream scholarship. It doesn't take a genetic research or a PHD in history in order to realise that peoples such as Poles, Russians and Ukranians are physically different to Greeks. So maybe the article should not be trying so hard to disprove a 19th racist theory. The only thing it achieves is to give it more credit. Miskin 13:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that meaningful contribution Javits. I think that if we remove the genetics section some people will eventually complain about it and add it back. In order to balance it out maybe it would be wiser to provide some arguments from the works which have refuted Fallmerayer. Douglas Dakin promotes some concrete arguments: Fallmerayer firmly advocates that the Greek language had disappeared from the Greek peninsula during the Slavic invasions, and it was re-introduced by the Greek church which hellenised the Slavs. But why would the Church Hellenise the invaders by imposing the vernacular language instead of the erudite? Fallmerayer's thesis "requires the assumption of an absurdity - that the Greek Church had at its disposal an elaborate organisation of schools and a veritable army of teachers for teaching the Greek language to the Slavs". Dakin ellaborates on this and continues about Greek folklore, which is the only non-genetics counter-argument mentioned in the article (yet unsourced). Other crucial flaws emerging from modern historiography:
Those arguments seem to me much more meaningful than the gibberish genetic conclusions which simply refute him with a "no". Miskin 12:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Let's deal with this Nazi question. I've found no reference to suggest that Nazi propaganda during WWII made direct reference to / use of Fallmerayer's work. The one source I have found by searching JSTOR (cited in the article) suggests that they rather followed the "party line" (Rosenberg) according to which the modern Greeks were "Levantine." That's obviously completely different from Fallmerayer's theory, and the simple fact that the Nazis promoted a concept of "discontinuity" doesn't mean that they were following F. -- he was hardly the first nor the last to suggest such a thing. For the time being I'm placing a "fact" tag on the following sentence: "The Nazis espoused and promoted Fallmerayer's theories, as a means of reconciling their admiration of Ancient Greece and their atrocities against modern Greeks." I'm sure there's a good history of the Nazi occupation of Greece that could answer this question -- it's just way outside my own ken. -- Javits2000 10:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
In addition, the theory about Levantines was probably one out of many, but its existence does not imply that Fallmerayer's Slavic theory had not been revived. I doubt that nazi scholarship had a consensus on the subject, there were most likely many theories with a common objective. I recall reading about a German booklet that had been distributed to all German soldiers and officers in Greece. It may have been called "Von Soldaten für Soldaten herausgegeben von einem Generalkommando" (Athen 1944), and I think it included the Fallmerayer thesis.
Miskin 14:20, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I've glanced through the booklet that Miskin cited (Der Peloponnes etc.), and I find no mention of Fallmerayer or of the disappearance of the Greek race from the peninsula. The Slavic invasions are discussed, but conclude with Der Sieg des Griechentums über das Slawentum (807-1204) (The victory of the Greeks over the Slavs -- which would imply that there were still some Greeks around). On the whole it's pretty banal stuff (cf. Hannah Arendt). I also note that in Veloudis, "Fallmerayer," 89-90, as cited in the article, the booklet is mentioned in the following context: Unmittelbar nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg wurde ein deutscher Historiker, der keinesfalls Pro-Fallmerayersche Ansichten vertrat, als "neuer Fallmerayer" gebrandmarkt [Footnote:] A.D. Keramopoulos, Hoi hellenes kai hoi boreioi geitones, Athen, 1945, S. 94-97, gegen G. Stadtmüller, Die Geschichte, in Der Peloponnes... von Soldaten für Soldaten, hrs. von einen Generalkommando, Athen, 1944, S. 42-158.
Translation: Directly after WWII, a German historian, who by no means championed pro-Fallmerayer views, was denonunced as a "new Fallmerayer." [Footnote:] Keramopoulos, The Greeks and their northern neighbors, Athens, 1945, pp. 94-97, against [precisely this booklet].
Therefore Keramopoulos could be the source of the belief that the booklet cited, or otherwise made use of, Fallmerayer. I'll take a more careful look at the booklet when I get the chance, but for the time being it seems not to corroborate the claim that Fallmerayer's theories were cited in Nazi propaganda. -- Javits2000 13:39, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I've largely finished with the re-write of the biographical & legacy sections from the Britannica article, although I'm sure they could still use some tidying up. Moving on now to the remainder.
That's all for now. Thoughts? -- Javits2000 09:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Why devote so much space to such a marginal figure? His ideas influenced a tiny minority. Also, why isn't the word 'racism' mentioned in the article? He clearly drew on racist germanic notions of 'racial purity' that unfortunately persist to this day.
p.142 Fallmerayer’s thesis is most often received as an example of the general racist conceptions that dominated the discourse of nineteenth-century colonialist Europe, more or less akin to the racist philosophical musings of Arthur Gobineau. Though there is an undeniable discursive affinity between Fallinerayer and the racist—colonialist spirit of his time, , it is important to understand that Fallmerayer’s specific pronouncements about Greece are essentially tied to a wider political framework, the international balance of power in mid- nineteenth-century Europe. As Veloudis points out (1982: 39—42), Fallmerayer was the first historian among his contemporaries to forward an uncompromising Realpo1itik on the so-called “Eastern Question,” namely, the concern of Western European powers over the apparent dissolution of the Ottoman State and the expansionist visions of czarist Russia. In this context, Fallmerayer’s contention that Greece was in effect a de-Hellenized culture was meant to thwart the ideology of those European politicians who, as a result of their Philhellenism, actively promoted the dismantling of Ottoman control over the Balkans. He argued vehemently that only a strong Ottoman State could prevent Russian expansion into Western Europe.
In this respect although refining certain tendencies in Western European political thought that hearken back to Rousseau, Fallmerayer certainly stood in the vanguard. But he was not the only one who promoted these ideas, which indeed soon became the prevalent policy of Western Europe more or less until the First World War. In a series of newspaper articles for the New York Daily Tribune (March 1884), Karl Marx meticulously retraced this same problematic with respect to the posturing of English foreign policy,
p.143 using Fallmerayer as a trustworthy reference. Marx’s contiguity to Fallmerayer in this case is not surprising. As a wider reading of Marx’s work on the European political situation would testify Marx was, like many of his contemporaries. Slavophobic. Certainly Fallmerayer shared this prejudice, even though ironically he was perceived by the entire Neo-Hellenic intelligentsia as a Slavophilic enemy. This misapprehension is crucial in understanding the profound effect of Philhellenism as an internalized condition of the modern Greek national-cultural psyche.
p.131 Particular controversy was also aroused in Greece by the well-publicised claim of the Austrian right-wing politician and doubtless racist historian Jakob Fallmerayer, who argued that modern Greeks ‘did not have a drop of genuine and pure Greek blood’ in their veins and that they were instead descended from Slays, Albanians, Turks, Rumanians and others. Genetically, of course, this is obviously nor without some truth, but its effect on Greek public opinion was enormous, not least because it seemed to directly contradict all the positive sentiments associated with Hellenism.
p. 28 minor essays of Jacob Philipp Fallmerayer and their echoes in the racist writings of the Third Reich
I am adding this epithet as it is sufficiently substantiated from multiple sources. I will also add the first source on the paragraph describing the motivation behind his work. I haven't been able to find anything to substantiate the claim that he had an incestuous relationship with his mother though so I agree that it be dropped for now. Obviously anyone that has information about it please don't be shy. He wasn't. Xenovatis ( talk) 22:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Xenovatis ( talk) 16:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
the bio article is very much clearer DGG ( talk ) 01:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
One is a book, another is an author. Moreover, it is precisely this historical and ethnographic work that is the impetus for the formation of modern Greek historiography, and in this sense it is significant and should be an independent article. Angel Angel 2 ( talk) 19:03, 3 January 2020 (UTC)