Should the Baltic Germans be compensated by Russia?

[Vixen]

Would you accept evidence that they did not receive such treatment from Russia in the first place?

But they did.

 

[Vixen]

The book you cite and quote is about East Prussia, while we had been discussing the fate of the Baltic Germans who lived in Latvia and Estonia. Why do you change the subject?

I think it's especially gross that you mention Die Gräfin. She was the founder, editor and journalist of the liberal weekly Die Zeit and one of the great intellectual voices in post-war (West) Germany. She did come to terms and accepted the loss of East Prussia, both on a personal and on a collective level, and used her journalistic voice to argue for that.

So now the Baltic Germans are anti-Nazis, after all?

 

[Vixen]

Original settlers? Really? The land was empty when the German crusaders turned up ca. 1200 in nowadays Estonia and Latvia? That's taking the cake. I thought you previously said there were people there "living like beasts in the field" (your words)?


What about the Dutch in South Africa?

When, in 1652, Jan van Riebeeck founded Cape Town as a way station for ships of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, the people he and his men encountered there were Hottentots and Bushmen. They were the indigenous people of South Africa, and they still lived like in the stone age, as pastoralists and hunterer-gatherers, without farming, and without concept of private property or of territories. You can truly say, per your words, that they lived like beasts in the field. Therefore, it was only right and proper that Van Riebeeck and his successors took property of the land, started farming crops - for themselves and for providing the passing ships with fresh food - and enslaved those Hottentots and Bushmen that didn't flee into the Kalahari desert, to work for them.

From 1834 onward, the Boers embarked on the Great Trek, away from the Cape Colony with its British oppressive rule, into the inland of South Africa. There, they encountered Bantu peoples like the Xhosa, the Zulu and the Ndebele. These Bantus were not indigenous to South Africa: like the Boers, they had only settled the land in modern times, and so they had no more right to the land than the Boers. Some of the Boers, like Piet Retief and his party, went East into Natal. The Zulu king Dingane invited Retief for a social party and then treacherously killed Retief and 70 of his men. It was only right and proper that Andries Pretorius and his party avenged this breach of Christian hospitality rules, massacred Dingane's men at the Battle of Blood River.

Meanwhile, king Mzilikazi had also led his Ndebele tribe northwards into the Transvaal and ultimately into nowadays Rhodesia. During this migration, he carried out marauding raids all over the Transvaal, with the result that it got totally depopulated. So, when other Boer parties that went North, like that of Hendrik Potgieter, crossed the Vaal river into the Highveld, they truly found a deserted land where no-one lived. It was theirs for the taking.

It were the Boers who settled and developed the land, it were the Boers who set up the institutions of state and held up law and order. It were also the Boers who brought the Word of God to the unwashed black masses. It's only right and proper that they possessed the land and held political privilege under the Apartheid system.

In the above, I've only used the very same arguments you've been using in your defence of the position of the Baltic Germans. The great difference is, though, that I didn't have to falsify history in order to do so.

and now I feel dirty and in need of a shower...

I have nothing but disgust for apartheid Africa. The Dutch going into the earliest regions of apartheid S Africa is not an analogy for the Baltic Germans moving a few miles north west from Germany (then the Holy Roman Empire, made up of numerous individual states, rather like early USA).

The release of Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest events of modern times, together with bringing down the Berlin wall.

However, it is not a case of 'the goodies wear white hats' and the 'baddies wear black'. I brought up the topic of Nelson Mandela with a Zulu-speaking friend of mine from Zimbabwe and she was very muted. I discovered later that her peoples were opposed to the ANC - some kind of ethnic differences.

So you can't assume "All Africans like Nelson Mandela" or that "All Europeans support Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia".

There are all sorts of cultural and political tensions going on all the time.

 

[ddt]

Being able to get together an army of 6,000 in those days didn't mean they had a large population

Yes it did. Around 1200 - that's the period when the German crusaders conquered the Baltics - 6,000 men was a huge army. For instance, the 1288 Battle of Worringen, one of the largest battles in the European Middle Ages, which pitted several dukes, counts and bishops against each other, comprised 4,200 against 4,800 soldiers.

(and one reason Peter the Great abolished serfdom, apart from a fear of a peasants' revolt, was that he had his eye on the Baltic lands, then under the domain of Sweden , and he wanted the serfs as a ready supply of soldiers instead).

He didn't, and he lived around 1700 so why do you skip 500 years?

In fact, most armies then were made up of a rag tag of mercenaries. Sweden had 20K Scottish mercenaries,

During the 30 Years War, 1618-1648.

Generals used to pay each other to buy each other's armies wholesale. For example, Tilly, De Gardie and the Vasily Russian chap.

Again, you're discussing the 30 Years War. Mercenaries only came into existence at the end of the 15th Century (especially Swiss mercenaries). Before that, local rulers (e.g., counts) had only their own vassals (knights) as cavalry and their serfs as foot soldiers. Kings relied on what their vassals, i.e., their counts and dukes, provided.

If they could not afford an army,

In 1200, it was not a matter of "afford", armed service was an obligation of vassals as well as serfs.

Secondly, you do realise that 'parish' refers to a local church, so I expect you mean something like 'province' or 'region', not 'parish' (the onllyonllychurch which took tithes from the locals).

The word "parish" can also refer to secular divisions.

Of course there have been people in the Baltic lands since the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. You can't assume the population has remained constant, as people migrate all the time.

So why have you been denying that then? You called the German crusaders the "original settlers", in other words, the land was empty before they came.

In the dark ages, Europe was a mass of different tribes. Finland has/had at least three. A tribe is not the same as a country or a kingdom.

The "Dark Ages", an outdated term, refers to the Early Middle Ages, from ca. 500 to ca. 1000. Why do you keep jumping through history?

And no, you're lying when you claim that Europe was a mass of tribes. Western (continental) Europe had been territorially divided into gaus, the predecessors of counties, at least since the time of Charlemagne. Rincewind has explained how Estonia, at the time of the Baltic crusades, consisted of 15 counties - wiki even has a map of them - each with their own government and subdivisions. Why do you deny this?

Yes, man's propensity to lay claim to land which should be free for everybody and not property - an old Native American concept, and even a Saami one - is a shame. But having established land rights, then people should be compensated if unfairly and forcibly deprived of them.

So the Estonians and Latvians should be compensated for the land that the crusaders stole from them?

 

[ddt]

The comment about crusaders bring civilisation or otherwise the Nordic masses would still be worshipping Odin, Perkele or Baba Yaga, and living like beasts was - hello? - tongue-in cheek.

Given that you keep denying or disparaging the civilization of the indigenous Baltic peoples - see your response to Rincewind's post - your defence that it was some kind of joke is not credible at all.

 

[Vixen]

Yes it did. Around 1200 - that's the period when the German crusaders conquered the Baltics - 6,000 men was a huge army. For instance, the 1288 Battle of Worringen, one of the largest battles in the European Middle Ages, which pitted several dukes, counts and bishops against each other, comprised 4,200 against 4,800 soldiers.


He didn't, and he lived around 1700 so why do you skip 500 years?


During the 30 Years War, 1618-1648.

Again, you're discussing the 30 Years War. Mercenaries only came into existence at the end of the 15th Century (especially Swiss mercenaries). Before that, local rulers (e.g., counts) had only their own vassals (knights) as cavalry and their serfs as foot soldiers. Kings relied on what their vassals, i.e., their counts and dukes, provided.


In 1200, it was not a matter of "afford", armed service was an obligation of vassals as well as serfs.


The word "parish" can also refer to secular divisions.


So why have you been denying that then? You called the German crusaders the "original settlers", in other words, the land was empty before they came.


The "Dark Ages", an outdated term, refers to the Early Middle Ages, from ca. 500 to ca. 1000. Why do you keep jumping through history?

And no, you're lying when you claim that Europe was a mass of tribes. Western (continental) Europe had been territorially divided into gaus, the predecessors of counties, at least since the time of Charlemagne. Rincewind has explained how Estonia, at the time of the Baltic crusades, consisted of 15 counties - wiki even has a map of them - each with their own government and subdivisions. Why do you deny this?


So the Estonians and Latvians should be compensated for the land that the crusaders stole from them?

Those do not look like ancient names, but rather, modern names applied in retrospect. In addition, some appear to be Finnish names (Läänemaa = West Land, Saaremaa = Island land (saari= island) Harju, means 'ridge' and 'Viromaa' literally means 'Estonia Land' (viro= Finnish for Estonia).

This is truly remarkable, as Finnish did not become a written language until Mikael Agricola translated the Bible in C16.

Whoops!

In addition, if you look up what makes up the landmass of Viro Estonia, you will see that even today, like Finland, Sweden and Russia, there are large areas of nothing but copious forests.

In addition, there was no such thing as a 'civil' parish in those days, meaning, 'secular'. The whole rationale for the many wars in the region was the fight for hegemony of either Catholic or Protestant and each individual country making up the original Holy Roman Empire had to choose which they would be and if you were not of that faith you were expected to convert or leave.

 

[ddt]

So now the Baltic Germans are anti-Nazis, after all?

What complete non-sequitur. First of all, I never called the Baltic Germans Nazis. They were oppressors of the indigenous population, the Estonians and Latvians, but that does not make them Nazis. In fact, they were shafted by the Nazis because they got compensation in a part of Poland or they were interned in Germany proper. And Himmler saw to it that, after the German troops occupied the Baltics, most of them couldn't return either.

And the fact that one lady from East Prussia - not a Baltic German as we're discussing here - was outspokenly anti-Nazi does not translate to all of them either.

 

[ddt]

Those do not look like ancient names, but rather, modern names applied in retrospect. In addition, some appear to be Finnish names (Läänemaa = West Land, Saaremaa = Island land (saari= island) Harju, means 'ridge' and 'Viromaa' literally means 'Estonia Land' (viro= Finnish for Estonia).

This is truly remarkable, as Finnish did not become a written language until Mikael Agricola translated the Bible in C16.

Whoops!

There's nothing remarkable about that:

Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family, along with Finnish, Karelian, and other nearby languages.

So, similarities in words are actually to be expected. And as to Virumaa / Viro, you have it exactly backward. Finns have adopted the name of that one region for the whole of Estonia, not the other way round.

In addition, if you look up what makes up the landmass of Viro Estonia, you will see that even today, like Finland, Sweden and Russia, there are large areas of nothing but copious forests.

So what? Is there some special injunction against owning forests or some such?

In addition, there was no such thing as a 'civil' parish in those days, meaning, 'secular'.

They obviously were called differently in Estonian:

In the 1st centuries AD political and administrative subdivisions began to emerge in Estonia. Two larger subdivisions appeared: the parish (kihelkond) and the county (maakond). The parish consisted of several villages. Nearly all parishes had at least one fortress. The defense of the local area was directed by the highest official, the parish elder. The county was composed of several parishes, also headed by an elder. By the 13th century the following major counties had developed in Estonia: Saaremaa (Osilia), Läänemaa (Rotalia or Maritima), Harjumaa (Harria), Rävala (Revalia), Virumaa (Vironia), Järvamaa (Jervia), Sakala (Saccala), and Ugandi (Ugaunia).[19]

The whole rationale for the many wars in the region was the fight for hegemony of either Catholic or Protestant and each individual country making up the original Holy Roman Empire had to choose which they would be and if you were not of that faith you were expected to convert or leave.

Stop lying and stop jumping through history. The conquest of the Baltics occurred in the early 1200s, the Protestant Reformation didn't occur until 1517.

 

[Vixen]

There's nothing remarkable about that:

So, similarities in words are actually to be expected. And as to Virumaa / Viro, you have it exactly backward. Finns have adopted the name of that one region for the whole of Estonia, not the other way round.


So what? Is there some special injunction against owning forests or some such?


They obviously were called differently in Estonian:



Stop lying and stop jumping through history. The conquest of the Baltics occurred in the early 1200s, the Protestant Reformation didn't occur until 1517.

The Normans arrived in England in 1066. So, if we were to throw out all those of Norman origin (perhaps a French name, or their ancestor was one of William the Conqueror's* barons) does that make it OK if we refuse to compensate them or give them their land back? Of course not. In 1066 there were many communities in Britain already.


But once the Normans settled, would it have been fair to have kicked them out 800 years later? Or say, no, you have to compensate the original Britons and Celts, first?

However, the Baltic Germans were kicked out in living memory, not >1,000 years ago.

*"William "the Conqueror", king of England is your 28th great uncle." - geni.com

 

[ddt]

The Normans arrived in England in 1066. So, if we were to throw out all those of Norman origin (perhaps a French name, or their ancestor was one of William the Conqueror's* barons) does that make it OK if we refuse to compensate them or give them their land back? Of course not. In 1066 there were many communities in Britain already.


But once the Normans settled, would it have been fair to have kicked them out 800 years later? Or say, no, you have to compensate the original Britons and Celts, first?

However, the Baltic Germans were kicked out in living memory, not >1,000 years ago.

*"William "the Conqueror", king of England is your 28th great uncle." - geni.com

That does not address my post.

Why did you smirk about the names of those Estonian counties? Did you really not know that Estonian and Finnish are related languages?

Why did you make that remark about large forests?

And why did you again jump through centuries to try make a failed point? For someone who calls themselves "informed", you really make a hash of history.

 

[ddt]

It is rather strange that history doesn't seem to go back much beyond 7K-8K years ago (the ancient Egyptians and Chinese)

No it doesn't. History starts when there are written records, so goes back at most to ca 3,500BC in Mesopotamia where the earliest script was developed. In my country, history only starts when the Romans arrived. Everything before that is prehistory.

and yet humans have roamed the earth for at least 250m years, according to the archaeologists (from carbon dating).

Studying ancient human remains is the job of paleontologists, not archaeologists (who study ancient culture), and carbon dating is unsuited for anything older than ca. 30Ka.

So I do often wonder, what happened to all these ancient peoples. They obviously can't all have been completely illiterate, and when you consider how tiny the earth's population used to be even 1,000 years ago, one has to wonder, what happened to all these people. What happened to the Neanderthals. Well, we know in their case, they either became extinct or they were genocided.

The Neanderthals went extinct ca. 30Ka. What has that to do with what happened 1,000 years ago?

The other day another poster said we have no idea who the people populating Ireland and Scotland were as we have no records and the 'picts' are a fanciful myth. Isn't that odd?

That's not what Craig said. He said that those old king lists are fanciful myths.

No records beyond circa AD900, and for most people, the Vikings represent something ancient an exotic, yet, hello? they only go back to AD900 for pete's sake.

So what was happening on earth 1,500 years ago? Was it all destroyed? Or did it never exist, anyway?

We are taught that Columbus and Cook discovered various parts of the world, and Scott the Antarctic,

Amundsen actually was first on the Southpole. And returned to tell it.

and Hilary was first to achieve Mt Everest, and we swallow all this obvious ********.

Why do you call that all BS?

AFAIK the Native Americans lived as nomadic tribes.

Some did, others lived sedentary. You can't just treat all Native Americans as one group. That you do that is another sign of the racism underlying your arguments.

From Ancient DNA studies, we know they crossed from Asia over the Bering Strait and into North America. They share the same DNA as Asian people today.

They did so ca. 14 Ka. What has that to do with their lifestyle ca. 1500?

 

[ddt]

That they did anything to deserve such treatment.

Which treatment by whom?

 

[ddt]

But they were not. They were re-peopled by ethnic Russians. Many ethnic Estonians and Latvians were taken to the concentration camps as dissidents.

(Stettin.)

Why do you keep lying? The expropriation took place in 1918-1920, right at the beginning of the independent Latvian and Estonian republics. Stalin wouldn't conquer them until 1940 and only after that start his Russification policies.

 

[ddt]

This is truly remarkable, as Finnish did not become a written language until Mikael Agricola translated the Bible in C16.

There you give another reason that Finland should just be given back to either Sweden or Russia. Its population are only country bumpkins. Even the guy who devised the first orthography was a farmer.

 

[Tolls]

It is rather strange that history doesn't seem to go back much beyond 7K-8K years ago (the ancient Egyptians and Chinese) and yet humans have roamed the earth for at least 250m years, according to the archaeologists (from carbon dating). So I do often wonder, what happened to all these ancient peoples. They obviously can't all have been completely illiterate ...

The people's of 7K+ years ago were literally illiterate.
We have no evidence of writing prior to about 5.5k years ago.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Stalin's motto, wasn't it, "the end justifies the means".

Is that your motto, too?

That's a proverb going back to Ovid, "exitus acta probat". It's somewhat erromeously attributed to Machiavelli (whom I believe Stalin read). Machiavelli said in The Prince that when evaluating a prince's actions, no higher authority exists, and therefore "si guarda al fine", "one must consider the result".

Machiavelli actually used a closer paraphrase in 'Livy', "Though the act condemn the doer ... when the end is good, the act may be excused", though this is in a very specific context (viz., establishing a constitution).

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Being able to get together an army of 6,000 in those days didn't mean they had a large population (and one reason Peter the Great abolished serfdom, apart from a fear of a peasants' revolt, was that he had his eye on the Baltic lands, then under the domain of Sweden , and he wanted the serfs as a ready supply of soldiers instead). In fact, most armies then were made up of a rag tag of mercenaries. Sweden had 20K Scottish mercenaries, which is why you see remnants of a Scottish presence in Finland today (e.g., the Finlayson textile company). This is because these Scots soldiers were well-rewarded for their part in Sweden's victories. One used to own my grandparents' estate, Sir Hans Ramsay. Came from the Douglas clan, crest a black raven.

Ragtag? AFAIKScottish Gallowglass mercenaries were considered some of the finest troops money could buy.

Mercenary is a bit misleading here: the typical "man-at-arms" could be anything from a foreign mercenary to a nobleman or well-off commoner owing service as tribute to his liege.

 

[Rincewind]

Being able to get together an army of 6,000 in those days didn't mean they had a large population (and one reason Peter the Great abolished serfdom, apart from a fear of a peasants' revolt, was that he had his eye on the Baltic lands, then under the domain of Sweden , and he wanted the serfs as a ready supply of soldiers instead). In fact, most armies then were made up of a rag tag of mercenaries. Sweden had 20K Scottish mercenaries, which is why you see remnants of a Scottish presence in Finland today (e.g., the Finlayson textile company). This is because these Scots soldiers were well-rewarded for their part in Sweden's victories. One used to own my grandparents' estate, Sir Hans Ramsay. Came from the Douglas clan, crest a black raven.

Generals used to pay each other to buy each other's armies wholesale. For example, Tilly, De Gardie and the Vasily Russian chap. If they could not afford an army, then they were not able to build a naval port and a navy. So having a large army, being rich enough to sustain it and having naval power was key.

Secondly, you do realise that 'parish' refers to a local church, so I expect you mean something like 'province' or 'region', not 'parish' (the church which took tithes from the locals).

Of course there have been people in the Baltic lands since the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. You can't assume the population has remained constant, as people migrate all the time.

In the dark ages, Europe was a mass of different tribes. Finland has/had at least three. A tribe is not the same as a country or a kingdom.

Yes, man's propensity to lay claim to land which should be free for everybody and not property - an old Native American concept, and even a Saami one - is a shame. But having established land rights, then people should be compensated if unfairly and forcibly deprived of them.

Hi Vixen,

Nothing you mention here justifies the crusaders stealing the land from it's owners.

And - as DDT has so eloquently mentioned - Most of your data is from a long time after so isn't relevant.

Also, I agree with your comment - the Estonians and Livonians already had land rights...

Oh - and what I hope is a helpful correction - the Nazi Party abbreviation in German was NSDAP. NSPD kinda sounds like the New Smyrna Police Department.

 

[ddt]

I have nothing but disgust for apartheid Africa. The Dutch going into the earliest regions of apartheid S Africa is not an analogy for the Baltic Germans moving a few miles north west from Germany (then the Holy Roman Empire, made up of numerous individual states, rather like early USA).

I have no idea what you mean with that.

Is distance really your only argument here? The German merchants who founded Riga came from Bremen, that's over 1,000 km as the crow flies, much longer if you sail (around Jutland). By comparison, the distance from Amsterdam to Cape Town is 9,700 km as the crow flies.

The Dutch settlers of Cape Town came there to set up a way station for ships passing on their way to the East Indies. What is different about that than the German merchants who founded Riga? Is the difference in distance all you've got? If you can't give a sound argument why one is different than another, your claimed "disgust" for apartheid South Africa sounds quite hollow.

The release of Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest events of modern times,

Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. He founded uMkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, which carried out many attacks against the legitimate government of South Africa. That's what got him in prison.

 

[ddt]

Oh - and what I hope is a helpful correction - the Nazi Party abbreviation in German was NSDAP. NSPD kinda sounds like the New Smyrna Police Department.

Are you setting up for another irredentist discussion: should Greece reconquer the West coast of Turkey, which has been populated by Greeks going back to the times of Homer?