Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ludwig Ferdinand Huber/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 6 May 2023 [1].

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Ludwig Ferdinand Huber

Nominator(s): —Kusma (talk) 23:13, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This article is about "either a very minor or a relatively minor character in the constellation of 18th century German events", as Goethe scholar Thomas P. Saine put it. Minor or not, he did have some influence and interacted with many great writers of his era: close friend of Friedrich Schiller and Isabelle de Charrière, reviewer of works by Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Marquis de Sade, lover and eventual husband of Georg Forster's wife Therese Huber, and overall I found him a fascinating character. —Kusma (talk) 23:13, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This is just a drive-by comment, but do you think some of the paragraphs could be split? The "French occupation of Mainz and resignation from service" section is one paragraph with 17 sentences and I think that can be a bit overwhelming to readers. It kind of looks like a wall of text, especially with the new display. Heartfox (talk) 02:16, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for this comment! While I did check how the article looks in Vector2022 (I use Monobook for my work here), I only thought about image placement, not paragraph lengths. I have added some breaks. —Kusma (talk) 08:48, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Image review

• Suggest adding alt text

  Done (but I am sure the alt texts can be improved, I am terrible at describing pictures).

• File:Dora_Stock_-_Christian_Gottfried_Körner.jpg: when and where was this first published, and what is its status in its country of origin? Ditto File:Dora_Stock_-_Minna_Stock.jpg, File:Dora_Stock_-_Dora_Stock.jpg, File:Dora_Stock_-_Ludwig_Ferdinand_Huber.jpg. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you for reviewing! The images were first published in Germany before 1900. Evidence and copyright tags added. —Kusma (talk) 08:48, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

CommentsSupport from Jim

I'm very busy in RL at the moments so comments will appear sporadically. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:03, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for taking a look, no worries at all about being slow! Some responses below. —Kusma (talk) 14:22, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• What immediately struck me was the swathes of yellow produced by the Headbomb/unreliable script. Some were links to Google text, but others were links to Google pages with no text or, worse, to WorldCat. I don't see the point of linking with pages that have no text, especially when they are repositories, not even the original documents. Since you don't need to prove the existence of any publication (except, I suppose, in the unlikely event that's challenged), these links seem pointless distractions.

  I have removed the WorldCat links that are duplicated by OCLC but kept the Google Books links that help with verification by providing full text or snippets.

• In the journalist section, you have repeated earlier main text links to August Wilhelm Schlegel and Therese Forster

  These are deliberate; I think it is difficult to find the earlier (piped) Therese Forster link, and Schlegel is very important here and the link is reasonably far away. It could be removed, but I don't think it helps.

• about six of their children died in infancy before Huber's birth— About six looks odd was it six, or from five to seven, or what?

  You are right that it sounds odd. Jordan (you can find this on Google Books by searching for "seven children" in her book) says "six or seven previous children". The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie has six children including LF Huber. I can't prove this conclusively, but looking through what the works cite for this information, the original source for this seems to be a biography of LF Huber written by Therese, and that has six children followed by Huber, so seven in total. For some reason this was mangled into either "six including LFH" or "seven plus LFH" by other authors. So yes, the sources support "five to seven" or "six or seven", depending whether we drop the ADB or not. The exact number is rather immaterial here; perhaps "several" is best, what do you think?

• Several looks better

• ''and he had no religious education and no interest in religious questions. — and he had no religious education nor any interest in religious questions. perhaps?

  Done.

• link "engraver" —

  Done.

• agreeing to marry her once he would have the means—...once he had the means

  Done.

• Saxon minister—Saxony minister?

  Saxony minister for precision.

• ''Also in 1790, his superior left Mainz—I may have lost track, but who was his superior?

  Will find out. My sources don't say, but I tried to clarify that he became the most senior diplomate of the Electorate of Saxony in Mainz (whoever was the senior member of the legation was recalled to Dresden, so Huber was in charge).

• Huber was reprimanded for his return to Mainz and ordered back to Frankfurt, which also was taken by Custine for a short time, arriving there on 22 or 23 October.—dodgy grammar Huber was reprimanded for his return to Mainz and ordered back to Frankfurt, which also was taken by Custine, who arrived there on 22 or 23 October, for a short time.

  Sorry, it is Huber who arives in Frankfurt 22 or 23 October, and I could not tell exactly when Custine took Frankfurt. Must have been shortly after he took Mainz (this quick advance is unsurprising; Mainz was the only major fortress in the area). Clarified a bit.

• Huber did not merely regard the book as pornographic, but considered its underlying principles.—???

  Amended, let me know what you think.

• Forster, who had become a French citizen, could not legally go there... and so Forster crossed the border instead, and they all met in Travers in Switzerland—so did he cross illegally? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:44, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  Clarified. Neuchatel was reasonably neutral, but Forster as a French citizen could not join his family there (I think he would not have received a residence permit). He did cross legally, but the whole cloak-and-dagger conspiracy business was necessary to avoid looking like a spy for the other side.

Thank you for the helpful comments so far! I think I've answered everything. —Kusma (talk) 23:16, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• I'm happy with the changes above, and I'll Support now, but just a couple of minor things for your further consideration

• Friedrich Schlegel ridiculed Huber in one of his sonnets.— presumably we know which?

  It was next to a sonnet, and the epigram has the boring title "An denselben" ("to the man himself"). I've cited it now also to the edition of Schlegel's letters, which mentions the publication. The two-liner reads

  Huber mein Freund sey billig und laß Dich in Spiritus setzen

  Gönn' es der Nachwelt auch, daß sie den Kritiker schaut.

  or in my own quick English translation

  Huber my friend be reasonable and have yourself preserved in alcohol

  Allow posterity to see what a critic looks like.

  But adding it probably goes too much into detail. —Kusma (talk) 15:51, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

• link tuberculosis, pneumonia, necrosis and particularly vehmic court, which I think few readers will know

  Links added (vehmic court is now a duplink, but a very rare word)

• That's all, good stuff Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:25, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you very much for the review and the support! —Kusma (talk) 16:43, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Harry - Support

Not at all my area (the only bit of German history I'm reasonably read-up on is the wars of unification) but I'll do my best to offer some useful commentary but it will mostly focus on prose/MoS/readability:

• However, he was never financially well off "However" is word to watch and implies a contradiction here where there isn't one; suggest "nonetheless"
• engraver Johann Michael Stock is a false title, which is acceptable in some forms of English, but you have the Bavarian-born writer in the lead; it should be consistent

  I only learned about false titles here at FAC (from a very helpful review by User:Tim riley). I am trying to avoid them here.

• he was appointed as secretary to the legation "appointed as" is apparently not incorrect, but just "appointed" reads more naturally
• Consider linking Low Countries.
• However, he was unwilling to be separated from Therese and returned to Mainz on 13 October Another "however" that could be replaced with "nonetheless" or in this case just removed. The sentence would work fine without it.
• retaken by Prussian and Hessian troops,[104] with the bloodshed shocking Huber don't use "with" to join two clauses like that (it's common in journalistic writing, especially headlines where space is at a premium, but it's not suitable for an encyclopaedia), especially as it forces a tense-change mind-sentence. You would be better splitting the sentence in this case.
• Related to the above, do we know how much bloodshed he saw or how personally involved he was? It might tell us something about the impact on Huber.

  He wasn't hurt, just shocked as Mainz had been taken peacefully, and this was his first glimpse of real war. It isn't super important here; if you think it is too much detail, we can drop it.

• Mainz had soon after come under siege by Prussian and Austrian troops and capitulated on 23 July 1793, making it impossible for Forster to return to Mainz repetition of Mainz. Recommend just cutting the last two words.
• from 4 to 5 November 1793, with Forster imploring the others ", with" again
• his 1792 review of Göschen's first edition of Goethe's works in the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung where he compared Goethe to Proteus has been widely influential Can we say what it influenced or how or anything more? To just say it was influential is a little weasel-y, but if the sources don't specify there's not much we can do.

  Tried to expand this a bit and added a source calling it a leitmotif of Goethe reception.

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:41, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your very helpful comments. I have addressed everything (also the things without direct replies). In Germany, short sentences are bad style, and that often influences my English style, so thank you for calling me out on sentences that should be split. Do you think there was enough context for non-experts? —Kusma (talk) 15:35, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Happy to support on prose. Everything I could pick out is addressed. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:42, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments from Z1720

Non-expert prose review.

• "Huber found employment as a diplomat, and in 1788 moved to Mainz, where he became friends with the world traveller Georg Forster and his wife Therese, and later became Therese's lover and moved into the Forsters' house." This feels like a run-on sentence. Suggest splitting into two sentences or adding a semi-colon.
• "When the world traveller Georg Forster with his wife Therese and their young daughter, also named Therese, arrived in Mainz on 2 October 1788 to take up the position of librarian at the university, Huber had a "plan of conquest" to win their friendship, and helped the Forsters settle in the new city. This sentence feels awkward. Perhaps, "Georg Forster, his wife Therese, and their young daughter also named Therese, arrived in Mainz on 2 October 1788 to take up the position of librarian at the university. Huber had a "plan of conquest" to win their friendship, and helped the Forsters settle in the new city." This splits up the sentence into two and removes some words.
• "Huber had finally come clean to Körner and Dora," I would consider "come clean" to be an idiom, and suggest something like "Huber revealed his other relationship to Körner and Dora," or something similar.
• "Huber became editor in chief and moved to Stuttgart followed by his family." Suggest a comma after Stuttgart
• "in the Berlin journal Kronos 1801." Is the journal named Kronos 1801, in which case 1801 should also be in italics, or should there be an "in" between Kronos and 1801?
• "In August, also the five-year-old Adele died." -> "In August, the five-year-old Adele also died."
• Quick check of the sources did not reveal any formatting concerns.
• The lede doesn't mention anything about Huber's reception and legacy after his death. Should a sentence be added at the end about this?

Those are my thoughts. Please ping me when the above are addressed. Z1720 (talk) 14:51, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much @Z1720! I have tried to address your concerns in this combined diff. I found removing the jargon and splitting the awkward and run-on sentences difficult and expect further improvement is possible. Please let me know what you think. —Kusma (talk) 08:58, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I looked at the edits and I am happy with these changes. I can support this. Z1720 (talk) 15:10, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments and support from Gerda

Invited, I read the article during vacation but have time to comment only now. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:02, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll look at lead ad infobox last.

Family

• "in addition to English, French, and German, he could read Italian" - could Italian be introduced without repetition? ... and if repeat why English first?

  It's alphabetical :) I do like to collect all of his skills together.

  I didn't get the alpha-sort ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

• do we need Shakespeare's given name?

  I'm a bit apathetic about this one. Is it better without?

  for me yes - example: Mozart's Don Giovanni, whoever doesn't know Mozart's given names can be sure to find it in the opera, and even without any opera near, he would be recognised without the clumsy given names --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

• use French source?

  Nice that we have this, but I don't see how we can use it here.

  I think for an interlanguage link, but haven't done it myself yet, - nevermind --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

• "Pierre Beaumarchais play The Marriage of Figaro" - several concerns:
  • It's rather famous, so no link to the author (nor given name) is needed, nor saying that it is a play.

    I think it is so overshadowed by Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro that it is very necessary to say it is a play and who wrote it.

    well, I believe that a reader who got this far possibly knows the origin of Le nozze, and if not could look it up, but I'll leave it up to you. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

  • I'd prefer the French title.

    Done, I use original titles throughout.

Friendship

• the caption of the "kiss"-drawing seems too complex.

  Simplified.

  thank you, but I now see "Dorchen", and while you and I know that it's derived from Dora, an English-only reader may profit from a footnote explaining that --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Diplomat

• "the Göttingen philosophy professor Friedrich Bouterwek's novel Donamar" - too complex for my taste ;)

  Simplified?

Exile

• "Ueber ein merkwürdiges Buch (About a Peculiar Book)" - I think the translation should either be a title (italic in title-case) or a translation (straight and sentence-case)

  It is now a translated title gloss in single quotes and title case.

• "de Sade's novel Justine" - as for Figaro

  I don't think there's anything I can remove here.

Reception

• "most well known"?

  What would you prefer and why?

  I don't understand it at all but my be just me. "best-known"? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

That's it for now, hope I can look at the lead after sleep. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:51, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for reviewing Gerda! I have made a few changes, see above. —Kusma (talk) 10:27, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

I like the changes. More tomorrow (or much later today), - going to listen to a concert in the afternoon. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:18, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

A few responses just for explanation, - do as you please. I'll look at the lead now. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Lead

• I'd prefer a stub for his father to the ill link right at the beginning (which could go to his first mentioning in the body.

  I hate stubs. I am happy to write a proper article before this one hits the Main Page, but I won't write a bad stub.

  When I was introduced to FA country, red links were simply forbidden, and even later - when ill was introduced - ill-links were not tolerated in lead and infobox. A stub is a way around that, but of course a real article is much better: good plan. (I wrote 2 articles off Otto Klemperer for that reason.) --GA

• "He grew up bilingual in French and German after his parents moved to Leipzig when he was two years old." - Do we know that his father didn't speak German to the infant until after the move?

  I know they spoke French at home after the move. In the sources, I see no mention of bilinguality before age 2.

• "managed to invite him to come to Leipzig and later to Dresden" - they invited him to come to Dresden? The long sentence seems to simplify matters a bit too much, and leaves open if Huber moved to Dresden before or after Schiller.

  I'm not sure we need to know in what order they moved, but I have tried to be more precise.

• can we avoid "became" in two sentences in a row, became friends - became lover?

  Tried to change the first one.

• how about a translation of Das heimliche Gericht, and saying that it's a tragedy? (if not in the lead then in the body)

  Added a gloss. Huber called it a tragedy; sources mostly call it a play about knights.

• "there was a final meeting" - how about clearly saying who met whom?

  Added.

• "He was mostly forgotten after his death, and studied mostly as a friend of Schiller, Forster and de Charrière." - At first, I read that he studied ;) - perhaps "of interest"?

  Added

• I think the break-up of the friendship to Körner and Schiller over him having treated Dora not well is worth mentioning. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:06, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

  Added, although I fear we are getting into too much detail now.

• The lead image - how about the more mature one? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:07, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

  Originally I had removed the colour portrait because I had difficulties finding evidence of publication, and was very happy to find something by Dora that wasn't a profile; I think it also works well. The 1801 portrait works well in opposition to Therese's in the same format, so I would like to keep them together in the same section.

  Thank you very much for looking at the lead in so much detail! Please let me know what you think of the changes. —Kusma (talk) 09:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you very much, taking the time to explain in detail. Support. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:50, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Source review

spotchecks not done

• Regarding Chisholm, RSP indicates a lack of consensus with regards to reliability - what makes this a high-quality source?
• The article relies quite heavily on older sources - is there not more modern scholarship available?
• Be consistent in whether publication locations are included and if so how these are formatted
• Ranges in titles should use endashes
• What kind of source is Heuser? Nikkimaria (talk) 22:42, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Nikkimaria for providing image and source reviews! (I have also fixed the issue mentioned in the image review, see above). As to the source points:

• Removed Chisholm except when I am citing the 1911 EB to say what the 1911 EB says. The citations were all redundant from a content point of view, just left in because they are in a sense more accessible than Jordan's monograph.
• The main source for the article is Jordan's 1978 monograph. There is rather little more recent scholarship focusing on L.F. Huber; I think I have cited quite a bit of the newer literature that mentions him but does not focus on him. His wife Therese Huber is more popular in recent (especially feminist) scholarship, but there is usually more focus on her first husband than her second. I will try to replace Heiss 1908 by newer scholarship (just requested at WP:RX), but I expect that will be far more important for the article about the father (I promised Gerda that I will write it) and not yield a lot for this one. I could probably replace Saine 1972 by Uhlig 2004 almost everywhere, but that would mean moving to a German source and make accessibility for our readers worse).

• If there's significant scholarship on the wife, it would seem likely that some of the content that focuses on her could be sourced to that? For example the citations for "Therese Forster and her children left Mainz" are 1978 and 1901 - could those be replaced by the modern sources you mention? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:22, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

  Removed some of the 1901 citations and replaced some others by citations to the timeline in the edition of her letters. This led to a change in daughter Luise's birthday. I have only now found a modern scholarly biography of Therese Huber [2] that I will use to update some of these things when I get my hands on it (most of what I have about her except Geiger's 1901 bio either consists mostly of her own letters and writings or concentrates on her marriage to Forster). The remaining Geiger citations (except where I cite him as an example) are now somewhat redundant, but I don't see them as harmful. —Kusma (talk) 09:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

  I should have the Riepl-Schmidt book in my hands on Friday (I'm travelling Wednesday and Thursday, so I won't be able to answer any queries related to paper versions of books I have used until then). —Kusma (talk) 10:21, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

• I removed a ", NY" from New York and think I am otherwise consistent in including locations (yes for books, no for journals). Please let me know if I missed something.

• What about encyclopedias? None for Britannica, included for NDB. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:22, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

  Added for Britannica. (The citation templates for EB1911 and NDB unfortunately disagree on what to include as standard information). —Kusma (talk) 09:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

• Added a few dashes, hopefully to everything.

• Godet, Uhlig, Hahn & Fischer. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:22, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

  Done, and Saine 1980. —Kusma (talk) 09:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

• Changed Heuser to |chapter= instead of |contribution=, well spotted.

Let me know what you think, especially about the older scholarship. —Kusma (talk) 14:43, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Nikkimaria: Fixed the issues you reported (perhaps not all of the older scholarship, but the biographical information presented here isn't something where scholarly opinion changes rapidly). —Kusma (talk) 09:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: I have significantly reduced the reliance on older (pre-1970) scholarship. The article no longer cites the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie or Heiss 1908, but instead I have used Espagne 1996 and Riepl-Schmidt 2016 (which didn't provide quite as much as I hoped for this article, but will be useful when I rewrite Therese Huber). —Kusma (talk) 20:49, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: I have updated a few more citations. Everything pre-1960 that is left is now either used essentially as a primary source or about something so obscure that modern scholarship can't be expected. Life details should all be cited to reasonably modern sources now. Do you think this passes now? —Kusma (talk) 14:16, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:03, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Gog the Mild (talk) 23:02, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.