Talk:Gregor

I'd argue that Gregor's nationality isn't German; Kafka wrote IN the German language, yeah, but he was born and lived much of is life in Prague. At the time that was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, of which German was one of the official and most commonly-spoken languages. (And Kafka wasn't the only writer from that time and place who wrote in German.)

Also, in the Metamorphosis the protagonist's surname is Samsa. That's not a German name; it's Czech and/or Hungarian.

Nowadays Prague is the capital of the Czech-speaking Czech Republic. So Kafka's country doesn't really exist anymore. But it definitely wasn't part of Germany, either then or now. I'd say that if we're going to assign Gregor a nationality we should say he's Czech. Though I suppose you could also make some kind of argument for Austrian or Hungarian given those are what the Austro-Hungarian empire broke up into and that German is the official language of Austria? But trying to claim that he's German because the Metamorphosis was written in German would be the same logic as saying that Ishmael should count as English because Moby Dick is written in English. Which is obviously wrong, and I imagine most Americans would rightly object!

Hi! Thank you for your concern. The wiki has received this kind of inquiry about Gregor and Sinclair's listed nationalities several times now. While the wiki has its own reasoning for the choice, described in the reference attached to the citation, that was widely agreed upon by the staff and intended to align straightforwardly from what Limbus seems to offer from its own character (and was in no way intended to disrespect Kafka or his own nationality), we understand there is also a reason people keep asking about this. As such, rather than continue to try to tackle a topic there might not even be a right answer to, we've decided to just remove the Sinner nationalities from the pages. It seems like most fans can come to their own conclusions about their nationalities anyhow, and it may have been somewhat inappropriate for a wiki to claim that Gregor's nationality was one thing or another in the first place given that nothing is strictly canon. Ultimately, we'd probably get questions and complaints if we changed it to something other than German, too, so this seems to be the best way to handle it. Thank you for taking the time to write about Kafka's history, I apologize if this solution just makes it seems like you're being dismissed; we really appreciate everyone who comes directly to the wiki looking for change rather than just complaining about it being wrong elsewhere. Thank you. Have a good one! ac (talk) 22:42, 4 August 2025 (UTC)