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Greatest Polish contribution(s) to the world ?

Poles gave big contributions in many different fields.

One of famous Poles is Jan Matejko, Polish painter in XIX century.

He painted large historical events, portraits and murals, and in these he was greater artist and grandmaster.

Jan Matejko, self-portrait

matejko_autoportret.jpg


The Hanging of the Sigismund bell

Matejko_Hanging_of_the_Zygmunt_bell.jpg
 
 
Khaleeji said:
Is this site only for Europeans?
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No, it is for all, although it concentrates on Europe mostly. Welcome to Eupedia Khaleeji
 
Tomenable said:
Polish sounds to Non-Polish speakers a bit similar to how Laki Lan's song "Big Baton" sounds to Polish-speakers: :lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZI9MS3EoX4

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That's because ancient languages created confusion when describing complex concepts. For example: German philosophers. They caused a lot of confusion and problems for 100 years because they were poor writers. It was hard to tell what they meant by complex ideas. This why we had communism and facism.

English people were smart: they tried to simply the language by getting rid of useless words and phrases and in the process making the language more simple.
 
Johannes said:
For example: German philosophers.
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Oh yeah! And my favourite is the one from your avatar:

avatar49328_1.jpg


Here are some of my favourite quotes from him: :laughing: :grin:

1) "Und hiermit berühre ich die Frage der Rasse. Ich bin ein polnischer Edelmann pur sang, dem auch nicht ein Tropfen schlechtes Blut beigemischt ist, am wenigsten deutsches. Denke ich daran, wie oft ich unterwegs als Pole angeredet werde und von Polen selbst, wie selten man mich für einen Deutschen nimmt, so könnte es scheinen, dass ich nur zu den angesprenkelten Deutschen gehörte."

2) "Und doch waren meine Vorfahren polnische Edelleute: ich habe von daher viel Rassen-Instinkte im Leibe, wer weiss? Zuletzt gar noch das liberum veto."

3) "Ich danke dem Himmel, daß ich in allen meinen Instinkten Pole und nichts andres bin."

4) "Ich selbst bin immer noch Pole genug, um gegen Chopin den Rest der Musik hinzugeben."

5) "Meine Vorfahren waren polnische Edelleute, noch die Mutter meines Großvaters war Polin."

6) "Man hat mich gelehrt, die Herkunft meines Blutes und Namens auf polnische Edelleute zurückzuführen, welche Niëtzky hießen und etwa vor hundert Jahren ihre Heimat und ihren Adel aufgaben, unerträglichen religiösen Bedrückungen endlich weichend: es waren nämlich Protestanten."

Now this explains why he grew a Sobieski-like moustache! :laughing:
 
Tomenable said:


Oh yeah! And my favourite is the one from your avatar:

avatar49328_1.jpg


Here are some of my favourite quotes from him: :laughing: :grin:

1) "Und hiermit berühre ich die Frage der Rasse. Ich bin ein polnischer Edelmann pur sang, dem auch nicht ein Tropfen schlechtes Blut beigemischt ist, am wenigsten deutsches. Denke ich daran, wie oft ich unterwegs als Pole angeredet werde und von Polen selbst, wie selten man mich für einen Deutschen nimmt, so könnte es scheinen, dass ich nur zu den angesprenkelten Deutschen gehörte."

2) "Und doch waren meine Vorfahren polnische Edelleute: ich habe von daher viel Rassen-Instinkte im Leibe, wer weiss? Zuletzt gar noch das liberum veto."

3) "Ich danke dem Himmel, daß ich in allen meinen Instinkten Pole und nichts andres bin."

4) "Ich selbst bin immer noch Pole genug, um gegen Chopin den Rest der Musik hinzugeben."

5) "Meine Vorfahren waren polnische Edelleute, noch die Mutter meines Großvaters war Polin."

6) "Man hat mich gelehrt, die Herkunft meines Blutes und Namens auf polnische Edelleute zurückzuführen, welche Niëtzky hießen und etwa vor hundert Jahren ihre Heimat und ihren Adel aufgaben, unerträglichen religiösen Bedrückungen endlich weichend: es waren nämlich Protestanten."

Now this explains why he grew a Sobieski-like moustache! :laughing:
Click to expand...

Of course you have his favorite quotes because they deal with his insane notion that he was part Polish. But there was a study which found out that Nietzsche had no Polish ancestry. However, we can see very clearly that "fusional" languages (German in this case) can cause a lot of confusion. No wonder he was so controversial (just like Marx and Freud). They all wrote in German!

Here is the translation:
1) "And with this I touch the issue of race. I am a Polish nobleman pur sang, the not even a drop of bad blood is added, the least German. When I think about how many times I'm going to go addressed as poles and by Poland how often one takes me for a German, so it might seem that I was only to be sprinkled Germans. "


2) "And yet my ancestors were Polish noblemen: I have therefore much racial instincts in the body, who knows even more recently the liberum veto?."


3) "I thank heaven that I am in all my instincts poles and nothing else."


4) "I myself am still poles enough to add to the rest of Chopin music."


5) "My ancestors were Polish noblemen, nor the mother of my grandfather was Polish."


6) "It has taught me to trace the origin of my blood and name in Polish nobles who were called Niëtzky and about a hundred years ago gave up their home and their nobility, insufferable religious oppressions finally yielding to. It was namely Protestants"
 
But there was a study which found out that Nietzsche had no Polish ancestry
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Sorry man, but that study was worthless because it worked only on genealogy, not genetics. His mother could be cheating in bed with some Polish guy, for example, and that wasn't going to be included in his official family tree... :laughing: They should test his autosomal and uniparental DNA instead, and check if he clustered with Poles, or with Germans. Actually, most of Germans have some Polish ancestry, because various regional groups of Germans share more IBD blocks with Poles than with each other.

See the quote below (from "The Geography of Recent Genetic Ancestry across Europe" by P. Ralph and G. Coop):

(...)
individuals in the United Kingdom share more IBD blocks on average, and hence more close genetic ancestors, with individuals from Ireland than with other individuals from the United Kingdom (1.26 versus 1.09 blocks at least 1 cM per pair, Mann-Whitney p<10−10), and Germans share similarly more with Polish than with other Germans (1.24 versus 1.05, p = 5.7×10−6)
(...)
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This implies, that most of Germans have some Polish ancestry, and that Germans are a "mongrel nation", like Brits (this is why Germans from one region do not share many IBD blocks with Germans from other regions, because they all have distinct ancestors, sharing only language and culture, not genes). Brits share lots of IBD with Irish due to their ethnic Celtic ancestors.

Moreover, identity is what matters. For example, there is no "American gene", but there is American nation. If he identified as a Pole, then why did German nationalists try to prove, that he was German? The same German nationalists claim, that Lutheran Poles in East Prussia were German, because in a plebiscite they voted to remain part of Prussia. Double standards ???

According to German nationalists, a person with Polish ancestry can be German if he/she identifies as such, but a person with German ancestry cannot be Polish even if he/she identifies as such. And this is called "double standards".

Here is the translation
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Terrible translation - did you use Google Translate ??? :laughing:

I have better translation to both English and to Polish, if you want.

his insane notion
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"Insane" is rather your notion that you are "Celtic" or "Germanic". BTW - read Walter Goffart, "None of Them Were Germans", and you will see that barbarian tribes who invaded Roman Iberia were never referred to as being "Germanic":

Link: https://books.google.pl/books?id=dM...age&q=Goffart No of them were Germans&f=false
 
"Sorry man, but that study was worthless because it worked only on genealogy, not genetics. .. They should test his autosomal and uniparental DNA instead, and check if he clustered with Poles, or with Germans. Actually, most of Germans have some Polish ancestry, because various regional groups of Germans share more IBD blocks with Poles than with each other."

Ok, why dont you ask the Nietzsche Philosophical Club or some German university to do a test on him? In his autobiography Nietzsche claimed his mother was pure German and his father part Pole. Even if he had some Polish ancestry it does not mean he was Polish or near Polish. Of course some Germans cluster near Poles. It's natural. We already agreed that there is about 10-20% R1a in East Germany.

"Moreover, identity is what matters. If he identified as a Pole, then why did German nationalists try to prove, that he was German?"

Nietzsche identified as a Pole not because he thought he was a Pole but because he hated the Germans for ignoring his books and for the growing nationalist movement in Europe (especially Germany). Nietzsche hated all nationalists and wanted all Europeans to mix and become one nation (a good and very advanced idea, but that never gets adopted).

"Terrible translation - did you use Google Translate ??? :laughing: I have better translation to both English and to Polish, if you want."

What else can I use? Let me see it.

'"Insane" is rather your notion that you are "Celtic" or "Germanic". BTW - read Walter Goffart, "None of Them Were Germans", and you will see that barbarian tribes who invaded Roman Iberia were never referred to as being "Germanic"'

Insane??? What are you talking about? Who cares anyway? The name was not adopted at the time. So what? They were Goths and Swabians, and we know now they were Germans or Germanic. What's your point? As for Celts in Iberia the majority of the population at the time was either pure or part Celtic. I can also say "insane" your notions that you try to make all East Germans (even Scandinavians) into Slavs. :grin:
 
Of course Copernicus...
no other Polish inventions including Maria Curie are not even close in scale of Copernicus' discovery
 
The map was published in 1932 and it shows 5000 distinguished Polish people from the 19th century. The map is extremely large (19916 x 12467 pixels). It includes only people born in areas which were within the political borders of Poland as of 1772 and as of 1921 (so it does not include ethnically Polish people born outside of this territory, but it does include national minorities in Poland). There is also an English edition of this map, but I couldn't find it.


Link: https://polona.pl/item/69516556/0/


oTThKHW.jpg



It also shows numbers of distinguished people connected with some cities, by their national identity:


Warsaw - 1118, including:


Poles - 1112
Jews - 4
Russians - 2


Lviv - 308, including:


Poles - 290
Ukrainians - 16
Jews - 2


Vilnius - 234, including:


Poles - 225
Jews - 5
Lithuanians - 2
Russians - 2


Cracow - 177, including:


Poles - 175
Jews - 1
Ukrainians - 1


Poznan - 165, including:


Poles - 142
Germans - 23


Kiev - 90, including:


Russians - 61
Ukrainians - 15
Poles - 14


Plock - 48, including:


Poles - 48


Kalisz - 45, including:


Poles - 45


Lublin - 36, including:


Poles - 36


Bydgoszcz - 12, including:


Poles - 8
Germans - 4


Torun - 10, including:


Poles - 7
Germans - 3


======================


Letters after each surname mean:


A - actor/actress
B - fiction writer etc.
Ch, Sch. - chemist
D - doctor
Ec. - economist
Est. - esthetician
F or G - painter
Fl - sculptor
Fz. - physicist
Fzl. - physiologist
Gg. - geographer
Glg. - geologist
Gn - general
H. - historian
I. - industrialist or engineer
J. - jurist or lawyer
L. - littérateur or writer
M. - musician or composer
N. - naturalist
Nb., Nzo. - botanist, zoologist
O. - officer (military)
P. - politician, activist
Pg - educationalist, pedagogue
Pt - poet
S. - scientist (exact sciences)
T - theologist
U - various (univers.)
V - voyager
X, Xb, Xab - priest, bishop, archbishop
 
Not sure if I mentioned this before:

tumblr_mojx6bIl261svgfdso1_500.jpg
 
Okay Maciamo, I have the following suggestions of Polish contributions:

(choose the ones which you like the most and add them into a poll):

- Distillation of crude oil (Ignacy Łukasiewicz, Jan Zeh)
- Typhus vaccine (Rudolf Stefan Weigl)
- Windscreen wiper (Józef Hoffmann)
- Heliocentric theory (Copernicus)
- Bulletproof vest (Kazimierz Żegleń, Jan Szczepanik)
- Mine detector / metal detector (Józef Kosacki)
- Building rockets (Kazimierz Siemienowicz)
- New constellations (Hevelius)
- Trans-Andean Railway (Malinowski)
- The relief of Vienna in 1683 (Sobieski)
- Torpedo launchers on submarines (Drzewiecki)
- Theoretical description of buckling of a compression bar (Jasiński)
- Liquefaction of gases (Olszewki, Wróblewski)
- Long span bridges in the USA (Modrzejewski)
- Material stress theory (Huber)
- Radioactivity research (Skłodowska)
- The discovery of vitamins (Kazimierz Funk)
- Hydroelectric power plants in Switzerland (Narutowicz)
- Polish mathematical theories (Banach, etc.)
- Hydrogen bomb (Ulam)
- Polish-Soviet War 1920 (Piłsudski)
- Overthrowing Communism in Eastern Europe
- Czochralski method (Jan Czochralski)
- Pleograph (Kazimierz Prószyński)
- Polish classical music (Chopin, Ogiński, Kurpiński, Moniuszko, Wieniawski, Paderewski, Karłowicz, etc.)
- Polish modern music (Lutosławski, Komeda, Kilar, Górecki, Penderecki, Dębski, Preisner, Lorenc, etc.)
- Polish sci fi and fantasy books (Stanisław Lem, Andrzej Sapkowski, etc.)
 
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