FW: FW: Corrections to historic German timezone information
I'm forwarding this message from Sebastian Wangnick, who is not on the time zone mailing list (at least not at the address below). Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Sebastian Wangnick [mailto:sebastian.nospam01@wangnick.de] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 5:09 To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: WG: FW: Corrections to historic German timezone information Dear all, it seems the email below did not reach the mailing list. Kind regards, Sebastian Wangnick -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Sebastian Wangnick [mailto:sebastian.nospam01@wangnick.de] Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Januar 2008 19:18 An: 'Paul Eggert' Cc: 'tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov' Betreff: AW: FW: Corrections to historic German timezone information Dear Paul, I understand your concern. As proposed, the timezone Europe/Berlin would be applicable for the "western" countries of the state of Germany and the western part of Berlin, and Europe/BerlinEast for what was formerly first the Sowjet zone and later the state GDR, namely the "eastern" countries of the state of Germany (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Thüringen) and the eastern part of Berlin. Creation of individual timezones for each of the countries of Germany is thus unneccessary. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Deutschland_politisch_bunt.png However, if you can maintain only one timezone for the state of Germany, you should probably use the new definition of Europe/Berlin, limiting the error in 1945 to the smaller territory and population, but please note that this would be considered politically incorrect by said population. In this case we will privately maintain a modified copy of the tz database. Kind regards, Sebastian Wangnick
Von: Sebastian Wangnick [mailto:sebastian.nospam01@wangnick.de] Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Januar 2008 19:18
However, if you can maintain only one timezone for the state of Germany, you should probably use the new definition of Europe/Berlin, limiting the error in 1945 to the smaller territory and population, but please note that this would be considered politically incorrect by said population.
We try to avoid political disputes like that, since that really isn't what we're interested in and it would be a big time sink for us to wade into political disputes. What we mostly care about is describing the clocks accurately for the regions in question. It seems to me that the political issue here might be addressed better simply by treating Berlin more like other occupied cities. If you look at the rules for Paris, you'll see that it switches from "France" to "C-Eur" rules during German occupation. For Berlin, it would make sense for it to switch from "C-Eur" to Soviet rules when the Soviets imposed their own DST rules. Something like the following change, perhaps? (I haven't checked it in detail.) The idea is that this won't change the externally-visible behavior of tz time stamps at all; it'll just change how it's explained. --- europe 2007/12/31 15:23:09 2007.11 +++ europe 2008/02/05 23:01:27 @@ -480,9 +480,10 @@ Rule C-Eur 1940 only - Apr 1 2:00s 1:0 Rule C-Eur 1942 only - Nov 2 2:00s 0 - Rule C-Eur 1943 only - Mar 29 2:00s 1:00 S Rule C-Eur 1943 only - Oct 4 2:00s 0 - -Rule C-Eur 1944 only - Apr 3 2:00s 1:00 S +Rule C-Eur 1944 1945 - Apr Mon>=1 2:00s 1:00 S # Whitman gives 1944 Oct 7; go with Shanks & Pottenger. Rule C-Eur 1944 only - Oct 2 2:00s 0 - +Rule C-Eur 1945 only - Sep 16 2:00 0 - Rule C-Eur 1977 1980 - Apr Sun>=1 2:00s 1:00 S Rule C-Eur 1977 only - Sep lastSun 2:00s 0 - Rule C-Eur 1978 only - Oct 1 2:00s 0 - @@ -1105,21 +1106,26 @@ Zone Europe/Paris 0:09:21 - LMT 1891 Mar # Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S -Rule Germany 1945 only - Apr 2 2:00s 1:00 S -Rule Germany 1945 only - May 24 2:00 2:00 M # Midsummer -Rule Germany 1945 only - Sep 24 3:00 1:00 S -Rule Germany 1945 only - Nov 18 2:00s 0 - Rule Germany 1946 only - Apr 14 2:00s 1:00 S Rule Germany 1946 only - Oct 7 2:00s 0 - Rule Germany 1947 1949 - Oct Sun>=1 2:00s 0 - -Rule Germany 1947 only - Apr 6 2:00s 1:00 S +# http://www.ptb.de/de/org/4/44/441/salt.htm says the following transition +# occurred at 3:00 MEZ, not the 2:00 MEZ given in Shanks & Pottenger. +# Go with the PTB. +Rule Germany 1947 only - Apr 6 3:00s 1:00 S Rule Germany 1947 only - May 11 2:00s 2:00 M Rule Germany 1947 only - Jun 29 3:00 1:00 S Rule Germany 1948 only - Apr 18 2:00s 1:00 S Rule Germany 1949 only - Apr 10 2:00s 1:00 S + +Rule SovietZone 1945 only - May 24 2:00 2:00 M # Midsummer +Rule SovietZone 1945 only - Sep 24 3:00 1:00 S +Rule SovietZone 1945 only - Nov 18 2:00s 0 - + # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Europe/Berlin 0:53:28 - LMT 1893 Apr - 1:00 C-Eur CE%sT 1945 Apr 2 2:00 + 1:00 C-Eur CE%sT 1945 May 24 2:00 + 1:00 SovietZone CE%sT 1946 1:00 Germany CE%sT 1980 1:00 EU CE%sT
On Feb 5, 2008 3:03 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
It seems to me that the political issue here might be addressed better simply by treating Berlin more like other occupied cities. If you look at the rules for Paris, you'll see that it switches from "France" to "C-Eur" rules during German occupation. For Berlin, it would make sense for it to switch from "C-Eur" to Soviet rules when the Soviets imposed their own DST rules.
This is what I don't understand: All of France, and Paris, was occupied. It makes sense to apply the occupier's rules that were in effect there during the occupation. In Berlin there were multiple occupiers. The eastern sector [2] was smaller and less populous than the three western ones together [1]. The TZ's Europe/Berlin time zone is used for Germany as a whole, and a larger portion of the country (by both area and population) was in the West. Should the TZ rules not reflect the transitions in the larger part of the territory, for historical data where the TZ database won't split the time zone to describe each of the parts? [1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/West-Berlin [2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ost-Berlin markus
"Markus Scherer" <markus.icu@gmail.com> writes:
All of France, and Paris, was occupied. It makes sense to apply the occupier's rules that were in effect there during the occupation.
Our sources report that Vichy France used different DST rules than German-occupied France did. The "France" rules are for Vichy France. Europe/Paris uses the occupied-Europe rules; Europe/Monaco (not part of Vichy, but reportedly used Vichy rules) uses the French rules.
In Berlin there were multiple occupiers. The eastern sector [2] was smaller and less populous than the three western ones together [1].
The tz database uses a single latitude/longitude coordinate to identify a city by its center; the current format does not have the capability to represent the entire city outline. So the question, from the tz point of view, is: what is the center of Berlin? If it's in east Berlin the tz database uses the rules appropriate for that location. Currently the database simply accepts Shank & Pottenger's definition for the center of Berlin (as being in east Germany) but if that's incorrect then we can fix it.
Should the TZ rules not reflect the transitions in the larger part of the territory, for historical data where the TZ database won't split the time zone to describe each of the parts?
Not the way it's currently constructed. It currently specifies one location for each zone, and gives accurate data for that location.
On Friday, February 8 2008, "Paul Eggert" wrote:
So the question, from the tz point of view, is: what is the center of Berlin? If it's in east Berlin the tz database uses the rules appropriate for that location. Currently the database simply accepts Shank & Pottenger's definition for the center of Berlin (as being in east Germany) but if that's incorrect then we can fix it.
Does the TZ database's "every country gets its one zone" rule post-date German Reunification? Otherwise, I'd have thought there would have been separate zones for West Germany (Europe/Frankfurt?) and East Germany. -- Jonathan Lennox lennox at cs dot columbia dot edu
participants (4)
-
Jonathan Lennox -
Markus Scherer -
Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] -
Paul Eggert