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25-567: The municipality is part of the recognized Sorbian settlement area in Saxony. Upper Sorbian has an official status next to German, all villages bear names in both languages. The settlement Kruswica , after Upper Sorbian: Krušwa ("pear"), was first mentioned in a 1400 deed. Most of the area then belonged to the Upper Lusatian Muskau state country , except for the village of Pechern ( Pěchč ), which - together with abandoned Neudorf - formed

50-567: A gens , Sclavini merely a genus , and there was no "Slavic" gens . He further states that " Wends occur particularly in political contexts: the Wends, not the Slavs, made Samo their king." Other such alleged early West Slavic states include the Principality of Moravia (8th century–833), the Principality of Nitra (8th century–833), and Great Moravia (833–c. 907). Christiansen (1997) identified

75-520: Is nowadays almost absent from public life. The Gesetz über die Ausgestaltung der Rechte der Sorben/Wenden im Land Brandenburg (Law on the definition of the rights of Sorbs/Wends in the State of Brandenburg) required municipalities considering themselves part of the settlement area to prove the continuation of linguistic and cultural presence of Sorbian (Wendish) tradition. This requirement was harshly criticized by minority rights activists and representatives of

100-563: 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

125-561: The Chronicle of Fredegar and Paul the Deacon are neither clear nor consistent in their ethnographic terminology, and whether "Wends" or "Veneti" refer to Slavic people, pre-Slavic people, or to a territory rather than a population, is a matter of scholarly debate. The early Slavic expansion reached Central Europe in the 7th century, and the West Slavic dialects diverged from common Slavic over

150-541: The Pagan sanctuaries of the closed (long) type, while the East Slavic sanctuaries had a round (most often open) shape ( see also : Peryn ). Early modern historiographers such as Penzel (1777) and Palacky (1827) have claimed Samo's Empire to be first independent Slavic state in history by taking Fredegar's Wendish account at face value. Curta (1997) argued that the text is not as straightforward: according to Fredegar, Wends were

175-594: The West Slavic languages . They separated from the common Slavic group around the 7th century, and established independent polities in Central Europe by the 8th to 9th centuries. The West Slavic languages diversified into their historically attested forms over the 10th to 14th centuries. Today, groups which speak West Slavic languages include the Poles , Czechs , Slovaks , Silesians , Kashubians , and Sorbs . From

200-473: 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 . From the 10th century on, German Kings and Emperors started conquering the area. About a century later, the West Slavic language of the local population started to develop into Sorbian. From there on, little evidence of

225-665: 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 environing Wittenberg . Another lead is that there were prohibitions on the Sorbian language in some cities (1327 in Leipzig , 1377 in Altenburg , Zwickau , and Chemnitz ). In the northeast, the settlement area bordered the Polish one, in

250-408: 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

275-536: 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

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300-572: The States of Saxony and Brandenburg. In Saxony it is permanently defined by the Gesetz über die Rechte der Sorben im Freistaat Sachsen (Law on the rights of the Sorbs in the Free State of Saxony). 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 ( Landkreis Görlitz ), Sorbian

325-576: The West Slavic group can be divided into three subgroups: Lechitic , including Polish , Silesian , Kashubian , and the extinct Polabian and Pomeranian languages ; Sorbian in the region of Lusatia ; and Czecho–Slovak in the Czech lands . In the Early Middle Ages , the name " Wends " (probably derived from the Roman-era Veneti ) may have applied to Slavic peoples. However, sources such as

350-639: The area in the east of Saxony and the South of Brandenburg in which the West Slavic people of the Sorbs (in Brandenburg also called "Wends") live autochthonously . In colloquial German, it is called Sorbenland (Land of the Sorbs); before 1945 also – sometimes pejoratively – called Wendei . This area was reduced constantly during the centuries due to assimilation , Germanization and strip mining lignite. Additionally,

375-471: The city of Wittichenau . For Lower Lusatia, it encompasses the municipalities north of Cottbus (e.g., Drachhausen , Dissen-Striesow , Jänschwalde ). 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. West Slavs The West Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak

400-472: The core settlement area (see below), 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: The historical settlement area depends on the century and which West Slavs are considered Sorbs. In

425-738: The domination of the Holy Roman Empire after the Wendish Crusade in the Middle Ages and had been strongly assimilated by Germans at the end of the 19th century. The Polabian language survived until the beginning of the 19th century in what is now the German state of Lower Saxony . Various attempts have been made to group the West Slavs into subgroups according to various criteria, including geography, historical tribes, and linguistics. In 845

450-838: The following West Slav tribes in the 11th century from "the coastlands and hinterland from the aby of Kiel to the Vistula, including the islands of Fehmarn, Poel, Rügen, Usedom and Wollin", namely the Wagrians , Obodrites (or Abotrites), the Polabians , the Liutizians or Wilzians, the Rugians or Rani, the Sorbs, the Lusatians, the Poles, and the Pomeranians (later divided into Pomerelians and Cassubians). They came under

475-571: The following centuries. The West Slavic tribes settled on the eastern fringes of the Carolingian Empire , along the Limes Saxoniae . Prior to the Magyar invasion of Pannonia in the 890s, the West Slavic polity of Great Moravia spanned much of Central Europe between what is now Eastern Germany and Western Romania. In the high medieval period, the West Slavic tribes were again pushed to the east by

500-434: 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. The officially recognized settlement area, so called "angestammtes Siedlungsgebiet" in German, is defined in laws and regulations of

525-447: The incipient German Ostsiedlung , decisively so following the Wendish Crusade in the 11th century. The early Slavic expansion began in the 5th century, and by the 6th century the groups that would become the West, East , and South Slavic groups had probably become geographically separated. One of the distinguishing features of the West Slavic tribes was manifested in the structure of

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550-461: 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 . The "Sorbian core settlement area" references the area in which

575-609: The ninth century onwards, most West Slavs converted to Roman Catholicism , thus coming under the cultural influence of the Latin Church , adopting the Latin alphabet , and tending to be more closely integrated into cultural and intellectual developments in western Europe than the East Slavs , who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity and adopted the Cyrillic alphabet . Linguistically,

600-404: 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. The first systematic research on the size of the Sorbian settlement area was done by Jan Arnošt Smoler (1843) and later in more detail by Arnošt Muka (1884/85). While Smoler was more interested in collecting folkloric tales, Muka travelled to

625-668: The westernmost part of the Silesian Duchy of Żagań . At Podrosche ( Podroždź ) is a road border crossing to the Polish village of Przewóz . This Görlitz location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Sorbian settlement area The Sorbian settlement area ( Lower Sorbian : Serbski sedleński rum [ˈsɛrpskʲi ˈsɛdlɛnʲskʲi ˈrum] , Upper Sorbian : Serbski sydlenski rum [ˈsɛʁpskʲi ˈsɨdlɛnskʲi ˈʁum] , German : Sorbisches Siedlungsgebiet ; in Brandenburg officially Siedlungsgebiet der Sorben/Wenden ) commonly makes reference to

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