Lusatia

Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz or Hornja Łužica) is today part of the German state of Saxony, except for a small part east of the Neisse River around Lubań, which now belongs to the Polish Lower Silesian voivodeship. It consists of hilly countryside rising in the South to the Lusatian Highlands near the Czech border, and then even higher to form the Zittau Hills, the small northern part of the Lusatian Mountains (Lužické hory/Lausitzer Gebirge) in the Czech Republic.

Upper Lusatia is characterized by fertile soil and undulating hills as well as by historic towns and cities such as Bautzen, Görlitz, Zittau, Löbau, Kamenz, Lubań, Bischofswerda, Herrnhut, Hoyerswerda, and Bad Muskau. Many villages in the very south of Upper Lusatia contain a typical attraction of the region, the so-called Umgebindehäuser, half-timbered-houses representing a combination of Franconian and Slavic style. Among those villages are Niedercunnersdorf, Obercunnersdorf, Wehrsdorf, Jonsdorf, Sohland an der Spree with Taubenheim, Oppach, Varnsdorf or Ebersbach.

Map of the Lusatian Lake District (Lausitzer Seenland, Łužyska jazorina, Łužiska jězorina)

Most of the area belonging to the German state of Brandenburg today is called Lower Lusatia (Niederlausitz or Dolna Łužyca) and is characterized by forests and meadows. In the course of much of the 19th and the entire 20th century, it was shaped by the lignite industry and extensive open-pit mining. Important towns include Cottbus, Eisenhüttenstadt, Lübben, Lübbenau, Spremberg, Finsterwalde, Senftenberg (Zły Komorow), and Żary, which is now considered the capital of Polish Lusatia.[1]

Between Upper and Lower Lusatia is a region called the Grenzwall, literally meaning "border dyke", although it is in fact a morainic ridge. In the Middle Ages this area had dense forests, so it represented a major obstacle to civilian and military traffic. Some of the region's villages were damaged or destroyed by the open-pit lignite mining industry during the DDR era. Some, now exhausted, former open-pit mines are now being converted into artificial lakes, with the hope of attracting holiday-makers, and the area is now being referred to as the Lusatian Lake District (Lausitzer Seenland).

Lake Senftenberg

The Lusatian Lake District (German: Lausitzer Seenland, Lower Sorbian: Łužyska jazorina, Upper Sorbian: Łužiska jězorina) will become Europe's largest artificial lake district. Some of the biggest lakes are Lake Senftenberg (Senftenberger See / Złokomorowski jazor) and Bluno Southern Lake (Blunoer Südsee / Južny Blunjanski jězor).

Logo of the Upper Lusatian Heath and Pond Landscape Biosphere Reserve

The Upper Lusatian Heath and Pond Landscape (German: Oberlausitzer Heide- und Teichlandschaft, Upper Sorbian: Hornjołužiska hola a hatowa krajina) is the region richest in ponds in Germany, and together with the Lower Lusatian Pond Landscape forms the biggest pond landscape in Central Europe.

According to the earliest records, the area was settled by culturally Celtic tribes. Later, around 100 BC, the Germanic Semnones settled in that area. The name of the region may be derived from that of the Ligians. From around 600 onwards, West Slavic tribes known as the Milceni and Lusici settled permanently in the region.

In the 10th century, the region came under the influence of the Kingdom of Germany, starting with the 928 eastern campaigns of King Henry the Fowler. Until 963 the Lusatian tribes were subdued by the Saxon margrave Gero and upon his death two years later, the March of Lusatia was established on the territory of today's Lower Lusatia and remained with the Holy Roman Empire, while the adjacent Northern March again got lost in the Slavic uprising of 983. The later Upper Lusatian region of the Milceni lands up to the Silesian border at the Kwisa river at first was part of the Margraviate of Meissen under Margrave Eckard I.

Poland under Bolesław I the Brave with Lusatia and marked battles of the German–Polish War (1003–1018)

At the same time the Polan duke of the later Kingdom of Poland raised claims to the Lusatian lands and upon the death of Emperor Otto III in 1002, Margrave Gero II lost Lusatia to the Polish Duke Boleslaw I the Brave, who took the region in his conquests, acknowledged by Henry II first in the same year in Merseburg and later in the 1018 Peace of Bautzen, Lusatia became part of his territory; however, Germans and Poles continued to struggle over the administration of the region. It was regained in a 1031 campaign by Emperor Conrad II in favour of the Saxon German rulers of the Meissen House of Wettin and the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg, who purchased the March of (Lower) Lusatia in 1303.

In 1367 the Brandenburg elector Otto V of Wittelsbach finally sold Lower Lusatia to King Karel of Bohemia, thereby becoming a Bohemian crown land.

The siege and capture of Bautzen by John George I, Elector of Saxony, in September 1620

As Margrave Egbert II of Meissen supported anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden during the Investiture Controversy, King Henry IV of Germany in 1076 awarded the Milceni lands of Upper Lusatia as a fief to the Bohemian duke Vratislav II. After Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had elevated Duke Vladislaus II to the rank of a King of Bohemia in 1158, the Upper Lusatian lands around Bautzen evolved into a Bohemian crown land. Around 1200, large numbers of German settlers came to Lusatia in the course of the Ostsiedlung, settling in the forested areas yet not inhabited by the Slavs. For centuries, from as early as the Middle Ages, trade flourished, and several important trade routes ran through Lusatia, connecting German states in the west, Poland in the east and Bohemia in the south.[3] In 1319, the region was divided between the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Duchy of Jawor, the southwesternmost duchy of fragmented Piast-ruled Poland, while northernmost parts also passed to the Margraviate of Brandenburg in the following years.[4] From 1368, it was entirely part of the Bohemian Crown.

In 1346 six Upper Lusatian cities formed the Lusatian League to resist the constant attacks conducted by robber barons. The association supported King Sigismund in the Hussite Wars leading to armed attacks and devastation. The cities were represented in the (Upper) Lusatian Landtag assembly, where they met with the fierce opposition of the noble state countries. In 1469 the region passed to Hungary, and in 1490 it returned to the Bohemian Crown, then under the rule of Polish Prince Vladislaus II.[5]

Following the Lutheran Reformation, the greater part of Lusatia became Protestant except for the area between Bautzen, Kamenz and Hoyerswerda. The Lusatias remained under Bohemian rule – from 1526 onwards under the rule of the House of Habsburg – until the Thirty Years' War.

Map of the Lusatias by J.B. Homann, about 1715

According to the 1635 Peace of Prague, most of Lusatia became a province of the Electorate of Saxony, except for the region around Cottbus possessed by Brandenburg. After the Saxon elector Augustus the Strong was elected king of Poland in 1697, Lusatia became strategically important as the elector-kings sought to create a land connection between their Saxon homelands and the Polish territories. Two main routes connecting Warsaw and Dresden ran through the region in the 18th century and Kings Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland often traveled the routes.[6] Numerous Polish dignitaries also traveled through Lusatia on several occasions, and some Polish nobles owned estates in Lusatia.[7] A distinct remnant of the region's ties to Poland are the 18th-century mileposts decorated with the coat of arms of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth located in various towns in the region. Polish-Sorbian contacts increased in that period. With the Age of Enlightenment, the Sorbian national revival began and resistance to Germanization emerged.[8]

Herrnhut, between Löbau and Zittau, founded in 1722 by religious refugees from Moravia on the estate of Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf became the starting point of the organized Protestant missionary movement in 1732 and missionaries went out from the Moravian Church in Herrnhut to all corners of the world to share the Gospel.

The newly established Kingdom of Saxony, however, sided with Napoleon; therefore, at the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Lusatia was divided, with Lower Lusatia and the northeastern part of Upper Lusatia around Hoyerswerda, Rothenburg, Görlitz, and Lauban awarded to Prussia. Only the southwestern part of Upper Lusatia, which included Löbau, Kamenz, Bautzen, and Zittau, remained part of Saxony.

The Lusatians in Prussia demanded that their land become a distinct administrative unit, but Lower Lusatia was incorporated into the Province of Brandenburg, while the Upper Lusatian territories were attached to the Province of Silesia instead.

The 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed an era of cultural revival for Slavic Lusatians. The modern languages of Upper and Lower Lusatian (or Sorbian) emerged, national literature flourished, and many national organizations such as Maćica Serbska and Domowina were founded.

In the interbellum, the German government carried out a massive campaign of changing of place names in Lusatia in order to erase traces of Slavic origin, and while most of the historic names were restored after World War II, some were retained.

This era came to an end during the Nazi regime in Germany, when all Sorbian organizations were abolished and forbidden, newspapers and magazines closed, and any use of the Sorbian languages was prohibited. During World War II, some Sorbian activists were arrested, executed, exiled or sent as political prisoners to concentration camps. From 1942 to 1944 the underground Lusatian National Committee was formed and was active in German-occupied Warsaw.

During the war, the Germans established and operated several prisoner-of-war camps, including Oflag III-C, Oflag IV-D, Oflag 8, Stalag III-B, Stalag IV-A and Stalag VIII-A, with multiple forced labour subcamps in the region. Prisoners included Polish POWs and civilians, and French, Belgian, British, Australian, New Zealander, Canadian, South African, Dutch, Italian, Soviet, Serbian, Slovak and American POWs.[9]

Memorial to Soviet and Polish troops fallen in the Battle of Bautzen (1945)

During the war, the Poles postulated that after the defeat of Germany, the Sorbs should be allowed free national development either within the borders of Poland or Czechoslovakia, or as an independent Sorbian state in alliance with Poland.[10]

The Eastern Front reached Lusatia in early 1945, with Soviet and Polish troops defeating the Germans and capturing the region. In Horka, on April 26, 1945, the Germans carried out a massacre of a field hospital column of the 9th Polish Armored Division, killing some 300 POWs, mostly wounded soldiers and medical personnel (see German atrocities committed against Polish prisoners of war).[11]

The flag of the Lusatian National movement

After World War II according to the Potsdam Agreement, Lusatia was divided between Allied-occupied Germany (Soviet occupation zone) and the Republic of Poland along the Oder–Neisse line. Poland's communist government expelled all remaining Germans and Sorbs from the area east of the Neisse river in 1945 and 1946 in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. The Lusatian National Committee in Prague claimed the right to self-government and separation from Germany and the creation of a Lusatian Free State or attachment to Czechoslovakia. The majority of the Sorbian intelligentsia was organized in the Domowina, though, and did not wish to split from Germany. Claims asserted by the Lusatian National movement were postulates of joining Lusatia to Poland or Czechoslovakia. Between 1945 and 1947 they produced about ten memorials[12] to the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; however, this did not bring any results. On 30 April 1946, the Lusatian National Committee also submitted a petition to the Polish Government, signed by Paweł Cyż – the minister and an official Sorbian delegate in Poland. There was also a project to proclaim a Lusatian Free State, whose Prime Minister was intended to be the Polish archaeologist of Lusatian origin, Wojciech Kóčka.

In 1945, the northeastern part of Upper Lusatia west of the Neisse rejoined Saxony and in 1952, when the state was divided into three administrative areas (Bezirke), the Upper Lusatian region became part of the Dresden administrative region. After the East German Revolution of 1989, the state of Saxony was reestablished in 1990. Lower Lusatia remained with Brandenburg, from 1952 until 1990 in the Bezirk of Cottbus.

In 1950, the Sorbs obtained language and cultural autonomy within the then–East German state of Saxony. Lusatian schools and magazines were launched and the Domowina association was revived, although under increasing political control of the ruling Communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). At the same time, the large German-speaking majority of the Upper Lusatian population kept up a considerable degree of local, 'Upper Lusatian' patriotism of its own. An attempt to establish a Lusatian Land within the Federal Republic of Germany failed after German reunification in 1990. The constitutions of Saxony and Brandenburg guarantee cultural rights, but not autonomy, to the Sorbs.

The bilingual part of Lusatia, where the Sorbs make more than 10% of the population

Bilingual station of Forst (Lausitz)

More than 80,000 of the Sorbian Slavic minority continue to live in the region. Historically, their ancestors are West-Slavic-speaking tribes such as the Milceni, who settled in the region between the Elbe and the Saale. Many still speak their language (though numbers are dwindling and especially Lower Sorbian is considered endangered), and road signs are usually bilingual. However, the number of all the inhabitants of this part of eastern Saxony is declining rapidly – by 20% in the last 10 to 15 years. Sorbs make efforts to protect their traditional culture manifested in the traditional folk costumes and the style of village houses. The coal industry in the region (like the Schwarze Pumpe power station needing vast areas of land) destroyed dozens of Lusatian villages in the past and threatens some of them even now. The Sorbian language is taught at many primary and some secondary schools and at two universities (Leipzig and Prague). Project "Witaj" ("welcome!") is a project of eight preschools where Sorbian is currently the main language for a few hundred Lusatian children.

There is a daily newspaper in the Sorbian language (Serbske Nowiny); a Sorbian radio station (Serbski Rozhłós) uses local frequencies of two otherwise German-speaking radio stations for several hours a day. There are very limited programmes on television (once a month) in Sorbian on two regional television stations (RBB and MDR TV).

In 2020, despite the loss of the Sorbian language in most of Lusatia, there are some Sorbian traditions and habits that still live on to this day. In February, many people (mostly people from villages, regardless of German or Sorbian ancestry) will still engage in the Sorbian tradition of Zampern (a festive procession). Some Sorbian dishes like boiled potatoes with linseed oil and curd (German: Quark mit Leineöl)[13] are still prevalent and, today, are eaten in other parts of Germany (like Berlin or western Saxony) too. Spreewälder Gurken (pickled cucumbers potted by using a special mixture of herbs and spices) are often associated with the Sorbs even though the cucumbers themselves were introduced by Dutch migrants, who started to pickle them for higher durability. Soon Sorbs adopted the pickling and might have changed the recipes slightly over time.[14]

The traditional Sorbian costumes are still to be worn in the Spreewald region even though mainly in the tourism industry. Recently, some women started to revive traditional clothes by using them as wedding dresses, even though this practise differs from original traditions.

Percentage of Sorbs:

• Cottbus (Chóśebuz) (Province of Brandenburg) 55.8%
• Hoyerswerda (Wojerecy) (Province of Silesia) 37.8%
• Bautzen (Budyšin) (Kingdom of Saxony) 17.7%
• Rothenburg, Oberlausitz (Rózbork) (Province of Silesia) 17.2%
• Kamenz (Kamjenc) (Kingdom of Saxony) 7.1%

Total number: 93,032[15]

The percentage of Serbs (Sorbs) in Lusatia has decreased since the 1900 census due to intermarriage, germanization, cultural assimilation related to industrialization and urbanization, Nazi suppression and discrimination, ethnocide and the settlement of expelled Germans after World War II, mainly from Lower Silesia and Northern Bohemia.