Sorbian settlement area


The Sorbian settlement area commonly makes reference to the area in the east of Saxony and the South of Brandenburg in which the West Slavic people of the Sorbs live autochthonously. In colloquial German, it is called Sorbenland ; before 1945 also – sometimes pejoratively – called Wendei.
This area was reduced constantly during the centuries due to assimilation, Germanization and strip mining lignite. Additionally, the identification as Sorb is free under federal and state law and cannot be verified. Therefore, different approaches on defining who belongs to the Sorbian people exist. Identifying Sorbs are not in the majority in most of the Sorbian settlement area, but rather a – in part very small – minority.

Officially recognized settlement area

The officially recognized settlement area, so called "angestammtes Siedlungsgebiet" in German, is defined in laws and regulations of the States of Saxony and Brandenburg.
In Saxony it is permanently defined by the Gesetz über die Rechte der Sorben im Freistaat Sachsen. It is based on the statistics by Arnošt Muka from the 1880s in order to preserve and protect the settlement area in its historical dimensions. In some eastern parts of the settlement area, Sorbian is nowadays almost absent from public life.
The Gesetz über die Ausgestaltung der Rechte der Sorben/Wenden im Land Brandenburg required municipalities considering themselves part of the settlement area to prove the continuation of linguistic and cultural presence of Sorbian tradition. This requirement was harshly criticized by minority rights activists and representatives of the Sorbs as the accession to the settlement area depended on the good will of the municipalities and thus undermining the principle of minority rights protection. Additionally, they protested that, due to the stricter assimilation politics and oppression of the Sorbs in Prussia, the continuing linguistical and cultural tradition is hard to attest. After being amended in 2014, the corroborating Sorbian linguistic or cultural tradition is sufficient. The accession to the settlement area can also be requested by the Council for Sorbian/Wendish Affaires.
The municipalities and local clubs in the settlement area are responsible for promotion and development of the Sorbian language and culture. They ought to install bilingual street name signs, offer bilingual websites, and guarantee public presence of the language. Town and guide signs are already mandatorily bilingual. Nonetheless, outside the core settlement area, those requirements are rarely fulfilled. Since the New Law on Sorbs and Wends came into operation in Brandenburg in 2014, all municipalities in the settlement area officially have German-Lower Sorbian double name.
The area comprises the following municipalities and quarters:

Historical settlement area

The historical settlement area depends on the century and which West Slavs are considered Sorbs.

Early and medieval history

In the 6th century CE, West Slavic tribes, called Lusatian Serbians, settled in the modern day region of Saxony and Southern Brandenburg. A lot of place names in Saxony are of Sorbian providence, p.e., Dresden, Leipzig, Meißen, Chemnitz or Torgau. German kings began conquering the area in the 10th century. About a century later, the West Slavic language of the local population started to develop into Sorbian. From then on, little evidence of the Sorbian language can be found. One example comes from Martin Luther in early 16th century, who expressed negative opinions about the Sorbian population of the villages around Wittenberg. Another lead is that there were prohibitions on the Sorbian language in some cities. In the northeast, the Sorbian settlement area bordered the Polish one, in the region of Crossen and Sorau. The Sorbian language was also spoken in some villages east of the rivers Bóbr and Oder until the 17th century CE.

19th century

The first systematic research on the size of the Sorbian settlement area was done by Jan Arnošt Smoler and later in more detail by Arnošt Muka. While Smoler was more interested in collecting folkloric tales, Muka travelled to the municipalities to receive first-hand information about the use of the Sorbian language. Apart from detailed statistics, he wrote down reports about his conversations with locals of those municipalities. Muka found round about 166,000 Sorbs, but also documented the rapid Germanization of Sorbian towns, especially in Lower Lusatia.

Core settlement area

The "Sorbian core settlement area" references the area in which the Sorbian language is still spoken on a daily basis.
This applies to the mostly catholic Upper Lusatia in between Bautzen, Kamenz and Hoyerswerda, more closely the five municipalities of am Klosterwasser and Radibor. In those areas, more than half of the population speaks Upper Sorbian. Upper Sorbian speakers also make up more than a third of the inhabitants of Göda, Neschwitz, Puschwitz and the city of Wittichenau.
For Lower Lusatia, it encompasses the municipalities north of Cottbus. However, the Sorbian language is spoken by not more than 15 to 30 percent of the population in those municipalities. Consequently, it is less present in everyday life than in Upper Lusatia.

Literature

  • Peter Kunze, Andreas Bensch: Die Sorben / Wenden in der Niederlausitz. Ein geschichtlicher Überblick . In: Wobrazki ze Serbow. 2., reviewed edition. Domowina, Bautzen 2000. ISBN 3-7420-1668-7.
  • Gertraud Eva Schrage: Die Oberlausitz bis zum Jahr 1346 . In: Joachim Bahlke : Geschichte der Oberlausitz . Revised 2nd edition, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2004. ISBN 978-3-935693-46-2, S. 55–97.
  • Arnošt Muka: Statistika łužiskich Serbow . Selbstverlag, Budyšin 1884–1886; 5th edition with the title Serbski zemjepisny słowničk . Budyšin 1927; reprint: Domowina, Bautzen 1979.