Elisabeth von Salm - Incorrect birth location

Started by Alex Moes on Thursday, July 24, 2014
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7/24/2014 at 10:25 PM

The profile currently shows birth location as "Salm, Germany, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany"

Salm is not in Germany
Salm has never been in Germany
The counts von Salm took their family name from Vielsalm (previously Salm) which is in modern day Belgium.
It is possible that Elisabeth was born in Vielsalm but i have not seen any evidence to support this.
Does anyone have any evidence to support a birth location, other than her surname?

7/25/2014 at 1:17 AM

Hello Alex. Of course, you're right (and I know Vielsalm pretty well for having done tracking there quite often). Traditionally it is actually a German-speaking area of Belgium which has 'changed hands' during the conflicts of the past. I think that the indication of location here stems from the preference of some users to give locations that reflect the historical context of the event at that time. Which is why we see often many places in the Netherlands or Belgium as being part of the "Holy Roman Empire" rather than of modern countries.
Personally, I'm not quite in favor of using the 'geopolitical' context. If necessary, one can use the top field of the location screen for that, but I would rather use Geni's automatic fill-out (which in this case would make it Vielsalm, Wallonia, Belgium - I believe). My line of thinking is that by using Geni's 'nomenclatura', we have a standard which is useful in many ways (search, translation, etc).
It's a debate we often see amongst Dutch and Belgian users, because the current nomenclatura is sometimes pretty awkward, giving constructions that nobody living here ever heard of even. Still, using the standards here feels more appropriate and using the that top field (which is never filled out automatically) for better customization looks to me to be the right thing to do.
About Elisabeth's real birth location, it would obviously require some hard digging to find the truth :-)

7/12/2017 at 11:20 PM

I was about to start a new discussion (as i am planning to start MPing and RLing the Salm family soon-ish) when I spotted this old discussion.

Chasing up the tree we have, in order:
Heinrich von Salm, Graf von Salm Salm, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Hermann II von Salm, Graf von Salm no place name
Count Hermann von Salm Luxembourg
Giselbert of Luxembourg, Count of Salm & Longwy, Count of Luxembourg Chateau DE Salm, Luxembourg, Belgium

I think that without finding specific individual evidence it looks like the intention in creating these profiles is that all these people are thought to have been born in the ancestral home at Salm (modern day Vielsalm)

As I said a few years ago Salm is not and has never been in Germany, to expand on that Rhineland-Palatinate dates from 1946 so cannot be right. Luxembourg is in Luxembourg but Salm is not.

Does anyone have an issue with me changing these less than accurate location names to Vielsalm, which may or may not be correct but at least consistent and logical. Either that or we can just blank them all due to lack of evidence.

7/13/2017 at 12:09 AM

It's better to leave the place of birth blank if it's not documented. If it is documented, probably better to work with Geni's auto-location system, as George says.

7/13/2017 at 5:15 PM

For the sake of completeness i should point out that there is a Salm, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany but this is not the same locale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salm,_Germany

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vielsalm

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