I should say from the outset that I have a love/hate relationship with Wikipedia. I admire the devotion that some people show for contributing to a set of knowledge, but I really am troubled by what I often find. The quality of the content and prose can range from the professional to the most deplorable text that I have encountered on the Internet and I will highlight a bit of both of these attributes in the article that I chose to blog about for this week’s topic.
Officially, the article that I chose is called the “German Reunification.” I chose this article, since I asked the students to focus not so much on the content of the article, but rather on the discussion section that highlights how such historical postings are worked out among multiple authors. The title alone is one of the more heated topics of discussion – German reunification versus unification. Reunification is typically favored by the political far Right (and foreigners), whereas unification is favored by all mainstream political parties in Germany and the political Left. The debate and the nuances of each term is discussed in the body of the article itself, but when one delves into the discussion there is simply a note that the title “was debated” and “decided” that the better term was reunification, since “Even though it was a unification in the sense that these two states only came into existence as military occupied countries in 1945 and as such had never been united, it was decided to call it Re-unification, because it includes two sections of the country of Germany, which in 1945 was split in three.” (The italics are also in the original). There is so much wrong with this statement. First, there is no evidence that this was “actually” debated. When one contributor brought up this point, another author responded with two external links where the term was debated… However, none of this takes into account that the “official” term in Germany (as is even stated in the article) is German unification (or just unity). Such struggles over semantics may seem petty, but it plays a large role in the identity of the Germans. Germany never existed historically in its post-1990 form, thus it could not be re-unified. More importantly, re-unification has a connotation of destiny without acknowledging the struggle and the risk of life and liberty that played a role in bringing about the changes that allowed a new, democratic East Germany to enter into a new relationship with West Germany. What is even more difficult for me to understand is why the German version of this article also uses the concept of reunification despite the official language in Germany on the topic (eg. the national holiday is called the Tag der Einheit – the Day of Unity).
There was a much more controversial, third term that was often stated by the Left (especially the Nobel Laureate Günther Grass) who referred to the 1990 unification process as an annexation by West Germany. Yet, this term is not mentioned at all either in the article itself nor in the discussion. The absence of such a discussion really makes one wonder about the level of education or experience that the contributors to this article actually have. The other worry that I have is the low quality of the prose (in both the article and the discussion). This raises a flag for me because why should one trust a contributor if they are incapable of writing in a manner that is easily understood? Most frustrating to me (as with most history professors) is the repeated use of the passive voice. This happened. That was debated. Germany was unified (or reunified)… People have to make things happen! Politicians voted for unification. Diplomats signed treaties that granted sovereignty to a newly unified German state!
One aspect of the German language entry that I did like (aside from it being much better written and comprehensive) was that members of the Wiki-Community insisted that contributors rely (and cite) printed, scholarly literature and not rely on web-based sources or news outlets. The English language site, however, cites only zero scholarly sources! There are two primary documents cited for the entire article and the other twelve citations are all from web-based sources of varying quality, ranging from PolandPoland.com to a reprint of a Washington Post article in the obscure Anniston Star newspaper website. I think I might give extra credit to my undergraduates taking my German history course this semester to go and clean up some of these German history-related articles for extra credit!!!