Talk:German units of measurement

Disputed?

This article was tagged disputed but with no comments on the talk page. I therefore changed it to a tag for needs references. RJFJR 01:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Metrification?

Does anyone know when Germnay adopted the Metric System? (For the intro paragraph). RJFJR 01:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Germany adopted the meter in 1870, and as far as I know, was among the initial 17 countries signing the metric convention in 1875. (Source: German Wikipedia, [1]) 212.149.48.44 10:01, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Germany adopted the entire metric system and made it compulsory effective January 1, 1872. The modern nation-state of Germany came into existence the preceding year. (Before that Germany was an ethno-linguistic region.) The two countries that merged in 1871 to form Germany were Prussia and Bavaria, both of which agreed to go metric around 1869 or maybe 1870. Zyxwv99 (talk) 00:04, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

German? What German?

> “German system Before the introduction of the metric system in German, almost every town had its own definitions of the units shown below, and supposedly by 1810, in Baden alone, there were 112 different standards for the Elle around Germany. The metric system was a much-needed standardisation in Germany.“

It isn't clear to me - is this article about units used in “Germany“ or used in all these areas? Think the latter, because Vienna (Wien) and Switzerland are given, too.

The 1st paragraph of the article in german WP gives:

“Das Lemma führt historische Maße und Gewichte des deutschsprachigen Raums vor allem des 19. Jahrhunderts auf. Zwar unterscheiden sich die Einheiten örtlich und zeitlich teils erheblich, aber die Beziehungen innerhalb eines Systems sind einigermaßen gleich bleibend. [...]“

Only the 1st sentence is important - “deutschsprachiger Raum“ means german speaking areas/regions, where this language is spoken (at that time) like Autria (then part of Habsburg monarchy), the (holy) german empire (some sort of “union“, later on the empire based on the prussian monarchy), switzerland for ex..

So the lemma/headline of your article could be sthing like this:

(Old) German units of measurement - austrian, swiss ones etc. included, or

(Old) Units of measurement in Germany - only for the territory of what was “Germany” at that time (say until the 1870s). And of course separated articles for others countries/regions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.166.249.45 (talk) 08:33, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

As [an] example, in a contemporary account, Georg Büchner is described as having a height of "6 shoes, 9 inches new Hessian Maas" - I am tempted to think that a "shoe" is somewhat less than a British foot. knoodelhed (talk) 21:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Saxony

The name Saxony is used many times, but which Saxony? Do you mean Upper Saxony (modern day federal states of Saxony, Thuringia and the southern part of Saxony-Anhalt) or Lower Saxony (modern day federal state of Lower Saxony, the northern part of Saxony-Anhalt, the regions of Westphalia and Holstein and parts of the east of the Netherlands)? 81.205.234.85 (talk) 20:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Obviously it refers to the Kingdom of Saxony. Zyxwv99 (talk) 13:30, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not obvious and should be clearly linked or stated. — LlywelynII 07:34, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

The wine is OK, but the meat has gone bad

Google Translate says it can transform anything into English. Google Translate is wrong. Articles on the English-language Wikipedia ought not to be replaced wholesale by bad Google translations of articles from other Wikis. Sure, supplement the original English version with as much information as you can glean from other languages, but Google Translate will quite happily transform "out of sight, out of mind" to "invisible idiot" and similar errors that really downgrade the quality of the encyclopedia. --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:11, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced

I've removed a couple of unreferenced sentences. They read: "The foot varied between 23.51 cm in Wesel and 40.83 cm in Trier. Rheinfuß – Rhine foot, used in the North, 31.387 cm." The facts may or may not be correct; but without a reference, and without a date for the values reported, they have no place in the article. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:49, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Rest

Is there a separate article on ancient German units? If not, the old rasta (or it's Proto-Germanic form, if known) should be included at least as the predecessor of the Meile and the reason for its divergence from the length used by the rest of Europe. — LlywelynII 12:52, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

These ancient units (like rasta and leuga) appear to be rather medieval, since they related to the roman system. The concept of an uniform Wegstunde (a half rasta) does not apply to a wilderness of pre-roman Germany. Look into the literature given and you'll see for the most part publications from the age of Historicism - where everything was german first. To quote Shakespeare in german: da war der Wunsch Vater des Gedankens. (the wish fathers the thought). --77.186.236.153 (talk) 04:36, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

They aren't. The leuga is at least as old as the Roman Empire. In any case, the ancient measures that did exist need to be discussed somewhere for precisely this reason. — LlywelynII 07:34, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Move, obviously

Some minor cruft is blocking taking care of this myself, but obviously this should be moved to German units (in keeping with English units) or—more likely—German units of measurement (in keeping with nearly every other article on similar topics). There's no need for old, obsolete, traditional, customary, &c. in the title since everywhere in the world except the US, Liberia, and Burma are official metric at this point. It's also inaccurate since some older units see some use in some contexts and expressions.

Both of the above shorter titles already point here anyway. The only thing the current title is accomplishing is adding a minor bit of inaccuracy, taking too long to type, and keeping Germanophonia a little special. — LlywelynII 07:34, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Bavaria - own unit?

Can someone please explain why Bavaria has it's own Fuss and then various cities within Bavaria have their own?

Also, was there different Zoll measurements used in different periods in the 19th century or was it one unit throughout? Eli Solovietchik (talk) 15:26, 14 January 2024 (UTC)