The majority (but not all) Wikipedias highlight her Polish ethnicity and/or French citizenship (including countries marked as Unspecified).
by LunarNinja_
The majority (but not all) Wikipedias highlight her Polish ethnicity and/or French citizenship (including countries marked as Unspecified).
by LunarNinja_
29 comments
Notable considerations include:
* Marking by official language, I prioritized the most prevalent language in countries with multiple official languages.
* Estonia and Denmark see her as exclusively a French scientist, while Ukraine and Poland consider her a Polish-French scientist, despite all stating that she is of Polish nationality.
Some misunderstood on [the post about Tesla](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/17zrwq7/nikola_teslas_nationality_according_to_wikipedias/) – “origin” here refers to ethnicity (Polish), while her birth country was the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire (today’s Poland).
Also, I won’t create more maps on this topic to avoid spamming this subreddit, but this one was interesting to me.
Honestly these differences are a bit puzzling. It’s not like there is anything questionable about her identity.
She was born in the Polish Kingdom and was later naturalized as a french citizen. And that’s how she identified herself, a polish woman with french citizenship. Anything but that is either inaccurate or incomplete.
I know it’s a quite a repetitve comment at this point, but still, it has to be said. Her name was Maria Skłodowska-Curie. It’s her name, it’s how it was written on her Nobel prizes, how she signed her documents and letters and how she called herself.
Completely Barbaric, there is no doubt that she was Polish not a French of Polish origin
The German language Wikipedia article states that the was “of Polish origin” (polnischer Herkunft), but does not mention her French citizenship. Her article is in the “French person” (Franzose) category though.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie please.
The same debate applies to Frédéric Chopin / Fryderyk Chopin.
Yes, she is mentioned as polish-French in Turkish wiki. However in day to day life or in schools she is regarded as a polish person who studied in France.
Somehow people aren’t as eager to claim Roman Polanski as French, even though he was actually born there unlike Curie or Chopin.
Well, her biggest discovery is named Polonium.. guess why.
I guess for Switzerland German was taken?
First i thought the name of countries was where she was believed to be from and thinking how the f.. can Norwegians believe she was from norway
Both Marie and Chopin were born in troublesome era for Poles, since Poland wasn’t on maps anymore. But the idea of polish heritage and culture was not only prevailing, but thriving, as Poles knew how important it was to preserve it and if it wasn’t for that mindset, we could’ve been long gone as a nationality. Obviously Polish intellectuals emigrated a lot to western countries for opportunities, but they always believed in the importance of their nationality. Chopin despite being buried in France, wanted his heart to stay in Poland. Literally. His heart is right now “buried” in the walls of a Warsaw church. Edgy, but hella romantic. That’s should be telling of just how important Polish nationality was to the emigrated elite and that’s why Poles tend to get rather butthurt when they realize people don’t really know much about Marie’s and Chopin’s place of origin. Those historical figures are a big part of our identity.
grabs popcorn
I like how each Baltic state has a different opinion on it
This is such a non-debate. She was born in Poland, therefore a Polish woman, who then moved to France to have her career and adopted the French citizenship **as well**. Having a double nationality is nothing groundbreaking/unheard of, she was a Polish-French scientist.
French people can’t claim her as theirs only just like Polish people have to accept that she became a French citizen too and that she became who she was thanks to this country that gave her an opportunity to study, which she simply wasn’t allowed to do in Poland.
Could it just come down to a translation issue more than anything else?
hungayrian says “polish physicist and chemist that lived in france”
I wish mapchart had a template for European languages so we won’t have all these maps conflating linguistic borders with state borders
We’re even being robbed of the few important people we had 🙁
The uk is wrong. In school she was only ever taught as being polish.
I mean she named the element she discovered POLON to honor her homeland
Thought she was Swedish for some reason.
Believe it or not, Milan Kundera is classified as a french writer. Czechia (then Czechoslovakia) revoked his citizenship in 1979 and only gave it back in 2019. He moved to France, wrote solely in french after 1993 and personaly revised the translation of his earlier works, meaning that they are considered original works written in french. He died claiming that he wanted to be remembered and classified as a french writer.
As someone who comes from the glorious nation of Unspecified I thank Germany and others for acknowledging she was of my kin!
I feel like polish-french, french or polish origin, and polish naturalized french, all mean the exact same thing in this case, feels odd to colour them differently when they all state she was ethnic polish, born in russian occupied poland, but emigrated to france where she gained the nationality.
Poland was not a country back when Skłodowska-Curie was born, Germany and Russia were doing their best to erase polish culture and identity from existence. Forcing children to learn German/Russian and teaching them alternative version of history, killing/imprisoning adults who tried to correct it.
Taking this into consideration it’s in a very bad taste for Germany and Russia to still try to change her nationality.
Interesting map but could you please use more contrasting colors? lol
This is bullshit. The german Wiki page starts with
>in Frankreich lebende polnische Physikerin, zweifache Nobelpreisträgerin
Which translates into “Polish physicist who lived in France; won two Nobel prizes”.
This doesn’t surprise me