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Sorb People (Brandenburg and Saxony, Germany)

Sorben, Wenden

Last modified: 2004-12-29 by santiago dotor
Keywords: germany | sorbs | wends | brandenburg | saxony | lausitz | luzice | domowina | law |
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[Sorb People (Germany)] 3:5
by Carsten Linke
Flag adopted 23rd March 1848, abolished 1935, readopted 17 May 1945

See also:

Introduction

There is a tiny nation in Central Europe called Sorbs, which has no contemporary relation to the Balcanic Serbs (they are both Slavic nations, of course). Germans call this nation Sorbs (Sorben) or Wends (Wenden). With 150,000 souls, they are the smallest Slavic nation in existence. They live in the region of Germany called Lausitz (Luzice), on the rivers Neisse (Nysa) and Spree. Their region encloses the south-east of Brandenburg state and eastern Saxony. The most important cities are Cottbus, Lübben and Bautzen. They are the descendants of the Western Slavs who in 6th-10th centuries A.D. controlled what is today north-eastern Germany. I understand that their cultural life is quite active, they have their own press, schools and a political organization (Domovina).

Greg D., 29 August 1995 and
Thomas Binder, 4 August 1998

I did some report on the Sorbs in December 1993. I went to Bautzen (Budysin) and I interviewed people in the Domowina (the general organisation of Sorbs), the Sorb programme in the MDR Radio Station and the Serbski Institut. (...) So my information:

  • The Sorbs did also suffer of the totalitarian regime of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Budysin was the place of an infamous jail. Of course the GDR had a very politically correct discourse on the minorities, just like in former USSR.
  • Back to democracy the Sorbs convened and refounded the Domowina as a true cultural gathering of the Sorbs.
  • A man in the Domowina building showed me a 1946 map with Lusatia (the land of Sorbs) annexated to Czechoslovakia. It seemed some Americans had these ideas of unification of the Western Slavs (but not the Poles).

Jean-François Blanc, 15 November 1999

The modern name for the Wends is Sorbs (Vendes also included some other West Slav people, but these are now extinct/assimilated in Germany). The Sorbs live in Southeast Germany (Saxony mostly) nowadays. The Saxons came from [Lower] Saxony too — roughly the same area as is now Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony in Germany, if I understand it correctly — present day Saxony on the other hand, was not Saxon land in those days.

The king of Sweden had the title King of the Wends until 1973 (...) when our present king succeeded to the throne and thought this part of the title was out of fashion. Swedish kings had borne this title since some time in the middle ages. This had also led to the arms of the Wends (Gules a dragon Or) being used in official Swedish decorations. The origin for this part of the title of the Swedish king is to be found in the 1540's, when King Gustaf I took up this title; it was used by the Danish king, and King Gustaf took it as an answer to the fact that the Danish king styled himself Goters konge (king of the Gotlanders). Gotland had been Swedish in the Middle Ages, but conquered by Denmark. The Danish king took the title King of the Vendes in the second half of the 12th Century, when the Danes were crusading against the Wends and forced them to accept Danish supremacy. Although the Danish power on the north coast of present day Mecklenburg-Pomerania was taken over by German princes, the title was kept — I do not know if the Danish Queen is still styled Queen of the Wends, though.

It can be added that in the 16th century, when Gustaf I took this title, the Wends were mistaken for Vandals, which were said to have been beaten by the Goths at the Time of the great Migration, and the Goths (who were also considered to have given name to Götaland and Gotland) were supposed to have had the same origin as the Swedes... Source: Nationalencyklopedin, 1990's.

Elias Granqvist, 11 September 2000

Queen Margrethe discarded a number of her father's titles, when she succeeded in 1972. Her father, Frederik IX, was Konge til Danmark, de Venders og Goters, Hertug til Slesvig, Holsten, Stormarn, Ditmarsken, Lauenborg og Oldenborg [i.e. King of Denmark, of the Wends and Goths, Duke of Schleswig, Holstein, Stormarn, Dithsmarchen, Lauenburg and Oldenburg]. Margrethe II is Danmarks Dronning [Queen of Denmark]. (...)

Ole Andersen, 11 September 2000

The Sorb people have their own culture, language, press, schools and a political organization (Domowina). In the year 1912, the organization Domowina (in Sorb 'native country') was established in Lusatia (Lausitz). The organization was an alliance of the Sorb minorities of Lower and Upper Lusatia. The Sorb group of the Wends (Wenden) lives in Lower Lusatia (Niederlausitz). They are Protestants. In the Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz) the group of the Catholic Sorbs, the Sorben or Serben (not to be confused with the South Slavic Serbs). The Sorbs call their country Serbstwo or Serbska, 'country of the Sorbs'. The Domowina was forbidden from 1939 to 1945 and was established 1945 again.

The Sorbs people fly officially since 23th March 1848 the known flag, horizontally blue-red-white in proportion 3:5. In the year 1842, the flag was first hoisted in the village of Lohsa (near to Hoyerswerda, Oberlausitz District). This was also forbidden under the nationalsocialist regime. On 17th May 1945, the flag was hoisted officially. As soon as April 1945, at the end of World War Two, the Sorbs greeted the Polish and Soviet troops with the Sorb flag.

There is no current law on the Sorb flag. The sequence of the colors and their official use are established in the constitutions of Saxony and Brandenburg, whereby the use of the flag is officially allowed. In Saxony, the use of a Sorb coat-of-arms is also allowed. There is no coat-of-arms of the Sorbs however, only the Do