Places across Hierarchy boundaries

Florian Teply <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.genealogy.gramps.user
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hi there,

currently I'm trying to wrap my head around how places are handled in
gramps.
We all know that in history places of all sizes were moved not
physically but politically between bigger places. That is, City A might
have belonged to Country Z until Year Y, and to country G after that
time. But now I have faced a situation, where it's not too clear to me
how to handle: I discovered ancestors which lived in Berlin, Germany.

I do suspect that there might not be a definitive answer here as it
becomes somewhat philosophical, but consider this:
As you probably know, Berlin existed as a single entity before the end
of WW II. Afterwards, parts of it belonged to the German Democratic
Republic, while other parts belonged to the Federal Republic of Germany
(or strictly speaking did not belong to it legally, even though most
laws were enacted to be valid in the Federal Republic of Germany and
Berlin (West)), and since 1990 all these parts belong to one legal
entity. Question is: how would you model this in gramps?
Personally I feel, even though the city was split between countries, it
is still one city and should as such be one place. But can a place
belong to two mutually exclusive entities at the same time? For the
individual suburbs which make up Berlin as a whole the situation is
clear, as they belonged to either this or that part, but not both
simultaneously.
This could be solved using two places of the same name. On the other
hand, having two places Berlin, Germany seems to lead to confusion down
the road in cases where it is not entirely clear which one is applicable.

What would you do?

Best regards,
Florian


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