Talk:St. Mary's Church, Gdańsk

St. Mary's Church

There are probably a lot of claims for the largest brick churches. Cecile's cathedral in Albi for instance, https://amazed.blog/2021/03/11/albi-in-the-shadow-of-st-ceciles-cathedral-a-scandalous-painter-toulouse-lautrec/ with 113m x 78m x 35m would amount to a volume of 308490 M3. Strange that it is not mentioned here. --- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A459:377C:1:B9AA:7E1F:A3DA:8F63 (talk) 08:56, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Aren't there a lot of Marienkirches? This should be a disambiguation page. RickK 04:29, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Probably. I'll do that. Nico 04:40, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, Nico, but Marienkirche is neither the official name of the temple nor the English name of it. Of course unless you can prove that Virgin Mary is called St.Marie in English and that all churches are called kirche.Halibutt 03:33, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The church is known as the Marienkirche of Danzig in English (see for instance the external link), and will stay here.Nico 10:59, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nico, your version is German. I never thought I'll use Google as a dictionary, but this time it's plain.

• Search for Marienkirche of Danzig returns 2,740 hits, but on the first 10 pages of the search there are only two (2) links in English, the rest is in German
• Search for St Mary's Church in Gdansk returns with 3,760 hits, and on the first 10 pages there are no Polish or German pages, only English-language.

You still want to insist that this church is called Marienkirche in English? Feel free, but please stop this edt war...Halibutt 12:09, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A Google search for (marienkirche gdansk OR danzig -mary's -site:wikipedia.org) in English returns 145 hits, while (gdansk OR danzig "mary's church" -marienkirche -site:wikipedia.org) returns 605 hits.
Besides, it's an English, not German Wikipedia, and the convention for church names in ENglish (and in contrast to place names, it's raher undisputed) is:
St [Saint's name] 's {Church, Cahtedral, etc.}

Note:

• No dot after St
• Saint's name in possessive ('s)
• The word "church", etc. capitalized
  

That's why I redirected St. Mary's Church in Gdansk, St. Mary Church in Gdansk, St Mary's church in Gdansk, St Mary Church in Gdansk, St. Mary's church in Gdansk, and of course Marienkirche of Danzig to St Mary's Church in Gdansk.

Kpalion 12:27, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Basilica

Setting aside the Gdansk/Dazig discussion for a moment, The name of the church in Polish is the Basilica of St. Mary, or else St. Mary's Basilica, not Church. Group29 (talk) 16:18, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

This page title should be acceptable to all (Danzig vs. Gdansk)

It's a compromise based on the fact that the name of the city was "Danzig" at the time of construction, and is now "Gdansk". Mkweise 19:01, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is perfect. Thanks. Nico 20:37, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Note to future readers: at the time of writing the above the title was St Mary's Church of Danzig (Gdansk) — Jor (Talk) 15:25, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I do not agree with this edit. The church was rebuilt in 1956 and has no German connection whatsover except maybe the style. In 1956 as in the 1400s to 1500s the City was a part of Poland and called Gdansk. So if anything the title should be St Mary's Church of Gdansk (Danzig)24.2.152.139 15:29, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You've got a point about Gdansk (Danzig) vs. Danzig (Gdansk). I have no objection to switching the order in which the names are listed, if that will put an end to the revert war. Mkweise 16:51, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There is no city called Gdansk. There is either Gdańsk in Polish or Danzig in Germen. If you don't find the letter ń on your keyboard, you should rather use the German name instead of making up a new one. 91.55.86.96 02:10, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wik is reverting now (or continuing reverts: may be his IP). — Jor (Talk) 16:52, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Rather than use Talk pages he insists on a quick poll: Wikipedia:Quickpolls#St_Mary's_Church — Jor (Talk) 17:14, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Is anyone opposed to moving to St Mary's Church or St Mary's Church, Poland? Then the city naming compromise is gone from the article title, and can be dealt with something like "standing in [[Gdansk|Gdańsk]] (Danzig), …" — the Gdańsk/Danzig article discusses the city name in detail. — Jor (Talk) 15:36, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Has been suggested before—but this isn't the only St Mary's Church, nor even the only one in Poland. We already have an article on St Mary's Church in Kraków. Mkweise 16:01, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. Any others in Pommerania? St Mary's Church (Pommerania) / St Mary's Church in Pommerania / St Mary's Church, Pommerania? — Jor (Talk) 16:14, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Suggestion article be protected at St Mary's Church of Danzig (Gdansk) location (most recent edits) until discussion on move is over. — Jor (Talk) 16:55, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Alternatively a page MOVE to a neutral location. — Jor (Talk) 17:03, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I recuse myself from protecting my own revision. If this page needs protection, another admin should do it. Mkweise 17:09, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Any thoughts on using Pommerania as a disambig title instead of Danzig/Gdańsk? — Jor (Talk) 17:21, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That seems rather odd. It would be like moving the London Tube to Tube in Middlesex.Halibutt 17:40, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

1)Agreed there. But we really do not need yet another location for the Danzig/Gdansk/whatever slugging match... — Jor (Talk) 17:42, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What about St Mary's Church of 1502, taking the date it was completed? — Jor (Talk) 17:48, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

LOL, how about St Mary's Church in you-know-where? Seriously, we should not sacrifice clear and unambiguous article titles for the sake of weasely political correctness. Mkweise 19:02, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In that case Wikipedia should create a 'list of cities in Poland with other names', and strongly enforce the forms given there... — Jor (Talk) 19:03, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Although it takes no clarvoyant to know that such a list will be as hotly disputed as the individual pages are now. Some German users refuse to accept Polish names, and some Polish users refuse to accept historic German names... — Jor (Talk) 19:08, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There already is a List of European cities with alternative names. I think it might be good if all articles about Polish cities with disputed names linked there. As for St Mary's, I'd prefer St Mary's Church of Gdansk (Danzig) (current name first - after all, if you want to visit the church, you have to go to Gdańsk, not Danzig). But I can live with St Mary's Church of Danzig (Gdansk). --Kpalion 19:20, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have no objection to your moving the article to St Mary's Church, Gdansk (Danzig), if Halibutt and Jor can live with that. If it's really true, as Halibutt states below, that User:Nico is the only one who has a problem with St Mary's Church, Gdansk that that's fine with me too—though of course the German name should remain in the article text in any case. Mkweise 20:03, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Look, nobody (I hope) has any problem with placing the church on the map. The only problem is that User:Nico believes that the English name of the city is still Danzig. I know that it's not. IMO the page should be moved to St Mary's Church in Gdansk because it is in Gdansk. Otherwise we'd have to move other pages too. Like the Tower of London to Tower of Lugdunum (London) (Romans started it). The fact that the present church was built by the Teutonic Order and that the German name was used at the time could be mentioned too, but it's not obligatory. Anyway, I see no point in St Mary's Church of Danzig (Gdansk) thing.Halibutt 19:23, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'd rather have both names in the title than two separate, competing articles under different names; that was a situation I found completely unacceptable. Mkweise 19:41, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps protecting redirect pages could be a good solution. This could prevent people from changing redirects to new competing articles which would differ from the main article in nothing but the title and the first sentence. --Kpalion 20:05, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I hope you mean not as a general rule, as this would effectively make it impossible to move a page in order to create a disambiguation page. — Jor (Talk) 20:07, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia policy, protecting a page is never a good solution, but rather an emergency measure that we resort to when all else fails. Mkweise 20:13, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'd rather have this article at St Mary's Church in Gdansk since this is the name used in English (look at the links posted) and this is the name of the city. After the evidence has been posted and starting an edit war failed, Nico simply created a new, similar and competing article. IMO that should be fixed and the whole case ended.Halibutt 21:47, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Alright...since it appears that the total number of Wikipedians opposed to that is one, let's try it and see what happens. I'll use a comma rather than a preposition, since that's more in keeping with encylopedic style (compare e.g. Christ Church, Oxford). Mkweise 22:24, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Now you see what happened. Nico read the first half of the discussion and ignored the rest... And provoked a new edit war. Good going, Nico. That's what we need, my friend :I Halibutt 05:28, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

TO

Cautious, why did you remove my reference to the Teutonic Order?Halibutt 10:48, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Other sources

1. The CIA World Factbook 2003 calls the city Gdansk.
2. Encyclopedia Britannica Online calls the city Gdansk.
3. en:Wikipedia calls the city Gdansk.

Now, since the church is IN Gdansk right now, the title should probably be (IMHO) St Mary's Church in Gdansk (as previously suggested by Halibutt), this is in line with the article title of St Mary's Church in Kraków. Anyone who searches for St Mary's Church in Danzig will still get there as it will be a redirect. The fact that Gdansk was previously named Danzig (English language of course) is only relevant if we use OF in the title rather than IN. Anyone have a better suggestion than this? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 20:35, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

While we're at it, why is the title of the article Kraków on En? Shouldn't it be at Krakow seeing as how English doesn't have an accented o? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 20:35, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

The traditional English name for Kraków is Cracow. However, it's been decided (see: Talk:Cracow) to use the Polish name. Krakow is neither Polish nor English - it's a hybrid resuliting from ommiting the diacritic due to technical reasons. Since it's technically possible to use Ó in Wikipedia article titles, it should be written Kraków. --Kpalion 21:06, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It was decided there to use Krakow, which is used about 8 times as often as Kraków in English (950,000 to 130,000 with an english language restriction on Google, more in favor if you confine it to English top-level domains). Looks as though it was discussed there, then Wik moved it to Kraków a month later. Jamesday 06:19, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have moved the page to St. Mary's Church, Gdansk (Danzig), as proposed above. Nico 22:07, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Looks as though this should be simply Gdansk in the title, though the history in Danzig should be mentioned in the article as well. Jamesday 06:33, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That's what I think too.Halibutt 07:21, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Protected page

I protected this because of rename and edit warring. I plan to leave it protected until the talk page discussion resolves the matter. Please let me know on my talk page once you think it's resolved. Jamesday 06:43, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We can discuss it on the talk page ad mortam defecatam, as we say in Poland, and it'll get us nowhere as long as there are people (you name them) who won't obey the concensus and will always change things in what they think is the one and only right way. --Kpalion 08:27, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually a consensus was achieved in the above discussion, and the currently protected version reflects it. There's one dissenter who wants the German name in the title, and one who wants to remove all mention of its German heritage. Mkweise 11:24, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree but please do something like holding a straw poll and inviting all past participants and the Village Pump readers to express a view. That will make it a lot easier to deal with one or more people who act contrary to a clear agreement later, just because poll votes are easy to count. I'll leave it at least a week to give sometime for anyone who wants to say something to do so. There's no great hurry, so lets proceed slowly and with ample time for discussion. Jamesday 10:14, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think we've got better things to do than hold a poll every time user:Nico and the anon formerly known as user:Gdansk disagree about something. I know I have. They'll just go and make some other article their battleground, anyway.

The larger issue under consideration at Talk:Gdansk/Naming convention certainly would benefit from more voices of reason, though. Most of the people who care about it at all have very strong feelings about it. Mkweise 14:44, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Teutonic city of Danzig" is wrong.

First the city was founded by Slavs. Second from the 1400s up till 1793 the city was a Part of Poland. And saying that it was the "Teutonic city of Danzig" that finished the church even though it was a part of Poland in 1503 is totaly wrong. 24.2.152.139 23:16, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, the construction started under the Teutonic Order, but the city changed hands again during the process in 1454. But what should be the apropriate wording?Halibutt 00:19, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Largest?

Is it really the largest brick church in the world? Polish Wiki says only "the largest brick church of the Baltic area". It should be checked Pibwl 20:33, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[1] the largest in the world.--Emax 21:55, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It probably depends on how you measure it. Is the length, the height (towers included/not included?), the area, the volume...? Measured inside or outside? Or maybe the numver of seats? St Mary's in Gdańsk is most probably the largest brick church in the world by one or more, but most likely not all, of theses criteria. --[[User:Kpalion|Kpalion (talk)]] 22:06, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Mowiac "najwieksza", liczy sie powierzchnia calkowita lub uzytkowa (nie jestem pewny)--Emax 23:39, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's definitely not the highest brick church in the world though. have a look at Church of Our Lady, Bruges and St. Martin's Church, Landshut --Lamadude (talk) 15:19, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Denominational history

The article should explain that at some point — I don't know exactly when — after the Reformation, St. Mary's became a German Protestant (Evangelische) church, and remained so until the German defeat in 1945, after which it became a Polish Catholic church. The German version of the article says it was "the largest Protestant house of worship in the world until 1945." See de:Marienkirche Danzig. Sca 18:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. This is also important from a architectural point of view. Protestant churches are different from Catholic churches. Infact, this difference is much more important and relevant to a church (and this article) then the controversy about Slaws, Poland or the Teutonic Order.

PS: almost every article about churches in Silesia, Pommerania or East Prussia lacks this information. 84.181.100.60 19:10, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

In addition, during the Reformation, many Catholic churches were stripped of iconography and art.Parkwells (talk) 20:21, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

18th Century Rennovations

There are some problem with this paragraph I thought someone could look into: "After the Partitions of Poland, Prussian authorities took many precious items from the church, including cloths and vestments made of fabrics from ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, obtained during the Crusades; as well as renaissance wares from Venice, Florence and Lucca (more than 1000 items altogether).[2] Many artifacts were sold: the winged triptych by Jan van Wavere, sold to archduke Maximilian, is today held in the Church of the Teutonic Order in Vienna; and the sculpture of Madonna and Child by Michael of Augsburg from the main altar, sold to count Sierakowski, is today located in the chapel in Waplewo Wielkie).[1] In addition, the Prussians melted down gold and silver reliquaries for reuse; they reused golden threads from embroideries in uniforms for Prussian officers"

Neither the Polish, German, nor Kashubian Wikipedia pages mention this. I am not sure the references for some of this are reliable, because I can't find some of the information here in them. Likewise some of the information sounds incredible. For example, the turning of the priceless church vestments from Ancient Mesopotamia into gold embroidery thread for the uniforms of Prussian officers, etc., etc.,. Let's clean up the article to make sure all of the information is factual.

Furthermore, the the constant use of "the Prussians did x..." (usually something painted in a very negative light) is problematic. We could just as well substitute in "The Boogey Man dix x...", but we don't need to, in order to see that this savors strongly of ultra-nationalist propoganda. And who are these "Prussians" anyway? We need to at least edit to government, or Prussian government etc.,.

The phrase "After the Partitions of Poland" is also highly problematic. The rennovations described here did happen in the late 18th century. Opening the paragraph in the context of the Partitions of Poland, and to the exclusion of any other historical currents in the country, though would make it seem that the rennovations were the result of the Partitions, which is not at all for certain. The fact is, that many medieval churches, in Poland and Germany, both Catholic and Lutheran, for better or worse, were rennovated, particularly into the neo-classical style, during this period. That this is not mentioned, or that the paragraph is not opened in the likely more approriate context of church architecture and design, again give the impression of history tinged with nationalistic rhetoric.

In all, to the casual observer of the article, it could sound as though Prussian (German) people off the street came in and defiled a Polish Church. This is very far from the truth, and for that matter, the transferal of the church after the explusion of the German population from the Lutheran church department to the Catholic diocese (Rather than to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Poland - which was and is comprised of ethnic Polish Protestants) is more complicated than described in this article. The events of 1946 in anycase were not the equal and oppososite countereacation to the rennovations of the 18th century, as the flow of the narration might seem to hint at to some readers, and they were not a "restoration" in any sense except the architectural one.

Let's clean this paragraph up, keeping what is historical, and leaving out what is allegorical; the church building and its deocration standing in for the breaking up, supression and ultimate ressurgience of the Polish nation. I am very far from discouraging this kind writing. On the contrary, such a comparison is poigniant and eloquently conceived. But let it be drawn openly and directly, and explicitly as such. Subtly blending historical data with this kind of poetic thought, does neither justice, and even if unknowingly so, promotes dangerously nationalistic alternative histories of Poland's rich multi-cultural, and vibrant religiously diverse history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.242.62.15 (talk) 05:28, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Largest?

An early 20th c. source contended that the Metropolitan Cathedral of Villanueva of Medellin, Colombia also claimed to be the largest brick church, but a 2006 Fodor's stated the Colombian cathedral is the 3rd largest. I corrected that article with the following cite.Parkwells (talk) 20:21, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The entry on Albi Cathedral says "it is claimed to be the largest brick building in the world". Perhaps someone should sort these claims out? Peter Bell (talk) 02:36, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

References

Liturgical garments

These alienations and also later sales to private collectors ....

— "Alienations" does not make sense here in English. A more accessible English word should be substituted. Sca (talk) 00:37, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

War damage

... some of the bricks melted ...

— Can bricks melt, like metal? Sca (talk) 00:43, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, clay bricks will melt in a hot fire. If they're high in iron or other metals, they may fuse below 1,000 degrees C. Nearly all clay bricks will melt before they reach 1,700 degrees C, the melting point of silica. Specialised refractory bricks for high-temperature smelters and kilns aren't made of clay, but substances like alumina or magnesite. Peter Bell (talk) 07:31, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

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