Sorbs - the minority ethnic groups of the now existing, which includes a group of Slavic peoples.At the same time, he is a direct descendant of one of the most ancient peoples of Europe - Polabian Slavs, along with the Serbs, the Croats and other Slavs inhabiting the Balkans today.But the common origin of Lusatian Serbs and their counterparts can be determined only with the help of DNA analysis.Why are these fraternal peoples are so different today?And why the Sorbs, a photo that does not show a strong separation from the German environment, so care about their national identity?This will be discussed in this article.
Polabian Slavs - the ancient Slavic ethnicity
Polabian Slavs had their own state, which founded the Union of Tribes: lutici, bodrichey and Serbs.Unions tribes - the typical way of organizing power in pagan Slavs, directly associated with religious cults cope.For objective reasons, such an organization of power could not withstand the more progressive Christian states formed on the territory of Europe.Baptism European nobility did not want to have a militant neighbor pagan.About militant disposition Slavs wrote more ancient historian Tacitus, who described these people is an example Polabian tribes Union.The first encroached on the Slavic lands Polabian More Charlemagne.But local residents managed to repel the attack of the great military leader early Middle Ages, and hold up to the 9th century, when the state union of tribes collapsed under the onslaught of the army of one of the leaders of the Holy Roman Empire - Henry I, who for religious reasons do not wish to be in the neighborhood, not only pagans, but alsoethnic group, which was a Slavic tribal alliance, as he rejected Christianity in his face.Beginning with Henry I, all subsequent German rulers were intended to total Germanization Polabian Slavs.And to their credit, they have it bad happened because lutici and bodrichi Germanized even under Henry I, and only the Serbs kept their authenticity.
early feudal state Ziva Serbia
In the 7th century century-state quest Polabian Slavs, one of the tribes belonging to the Union, met with the creation of the state Ziva Serbia, which is situated on the southern expanse of East Germany.During this period of the Serbs moved to the Balkans, in order to help the Byzantine ruler Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the war against the Avar Kaganate, at the time representing a real threat not only to Byzantium, but for the whole of Europe.Serbs together with the Czechs staged raids on the Avar and strengthening under the Frankish King Charles.Subsequently founded the Serbian people had moved in the Balkans state known as Serbia today.
In the 10th century militant Saxon king Henry Fowler put an end to the Elbe Serbia, capturing her ground and attach them to the state of Saxony.As a result of this nation, the Serbs separated.
State Obodrits-bodrichey
In the 11th century, thanks to the successfully conducted an uprising, the Germans were driven out of the Polabian lands and restored the Serbian state, called the Principality Obodrits-bodrichey.This country was inhabited and the Sorbs, a country which was the early feudal power with a confident vertical princely power.During the reign of Prince Golshtaka principality managed to unite all the Polabian lands, including modern Mecklenburg, Shlezvik-Holstein and the city Ljubica, German Lubeck.
Golshtak for Polabian Serbs was like Prince Vladimir of Rus.He knew that the claims of the German states in the Polabian lands have a religious motivated, but because of its Power is destined to exist until the next crusade, unless the Serbs, whose religion - the traditional pagan cults, do not accept Christianity.Golshtak addressed to the already baptized at the time and the Czechs agreed to baptism Polabian lands.Prince zealously planted Catholicism among his subjects and is very successful in this.It should be noted that the Christianization of much resistance, such as in Norway or Ireland, have not been Polabian Serbs.This is due to the fact that the main religious center of pagan Polabian - the temple of the supreme god Svetovid located on an island in the Baltic Sea - was destroyed long before the formation of the principality Obodrits-bodrichey Danes.Therefore, everything that linked the Serbs with their pagan past, were rituals and tradition, repeated from generation to generation, without understanding their essence and nature.
Formation of ethnic Sorbs
Having their own state, the Sorbs (home to the majority of their fellow citizens) calling each other Serbs or sorbitol.The Germans called them Wendy.In the 13th century, in spite of the Christianization of the state-Obodrits bodrichey it was defeated Franco-German crusaders, and the land was divided into Polabian margraviate who inhabited by German knights and peasants of the clergy.This behavior of the German crusaders because the capture of Jerusalem, as the purpose of the Crusades was important except for the Pope and his entourage.Themselves leaders of the Crusaders, not of Italian descent, want the guise of the cross, to expand their holdings.And they themselves knights just want loot a fortune at the other, less powerful militarily States.
After the liquidation of the Principality Obodrits-bodrichey Sorbs finally settled down in a puddle, which gave the name to this ethnic group.By the Sorbs, with an ethnographic point of view, are the Serbs who remained in central Europe after the Balkan migration, living in lands located in the current north of Bavaria and southern Saxony.
In 1076 the peace treaty with the Czech Republic Henry IV granted her territory, which is inhabited by the Sorbs, also home to the Saxon knights with his peasants.Stay Sorbs under Czech rule predetermined the further vector of its development on a different path than that of the Balkan Serbs.Czechs, like the Sorbs, Slavic people, who, in fact, did not apply for the Lusatian land, and received them as a gift of peace with the German state.It is therefore not surprising that the Sorbs took accession to the Czech Republic as a benefit, and therefore between the two nations began an active cultural exchange.Czechs baptized a Catholic Sorbs, the Czechs Sorbs adopted many elements of the national costume and traditional dishes, such as soup of meatballs with boiled eggs.Influence Czechs touched and language.Therefore, the current Sorbian language belongs to the West Slavic group.At the same time the original language Polabian Serbs, Slavic-Serbian, refers to the current South Slavic language group.
Effect of Habsburg and a new wave of Germanization
relations between the Czech Republic and Germany radically changed since the coming to power of the Habsburg dynasty that helped move the Czech territory, which is inhabited by the Sorbs (also home to the Germans), the German nobility.Germans willingly migrated to new lands, because they provide a wide preferences there.This policy of the Czech Republic revived germanization Sorb, which is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain their identity.In order to take a better place in society, Polabian Serbs had to leave their community and fully merge with a major German population.
Lausitz as part of German lands
In the 17th century Lusatia was ceded to Saxony.Monarchs of the State were ardent supporters of absolutism, comparing himself with the great monarchs and autocrats Europe.Even after the accomplishment of the English and the French bourgeois revolutions of the German states, Saxony and in particular, remained faithful to the classical tradition of royalism.
situation has not changed even after the formation of the German Empire in 1871.The German lands were united under a single origin and authenticity of the great German nation in all German states.In this concept, of course, did not fit the Slavic group of people who by their very existence reminds that the Germans are not authentic nation on its eastern lands.
Lusatia in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic
After German reunification Sorb culture was in decline.In Puddle prohibited instruction in their native language, the use of written language in official documents, on city signs in public places.Lusatian folk festivals were considered working days.Polabian Serbs were subjected to employment discrimination.Get workplace average luzhichanin could only if purely spoke German with a Saxon or a Bavarian accent.Most of the local Serbs, whose mother tongue was Sorbian, spoke German with an unusual ear for average German accent.Therefore luzhichaninu could deny employment because of not only satisfying the employer's speech.
defeat in World War I and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic, founded on democratic principles, oddly enough, it did not improve the situation, in which there were Sorbs.Photos of people who lived in a puddle at the time, clearly demonstrate the effects of centuries of Germanization.Public figures Sorbs have repeatedly petitioned the League of Nations to grant his people the status of national minorities in the German state, but such petitions are not met.Apparently, the international community did not want to further infringe on the national consciousness of the Germans, already it was a humiliation imposed reparations, payment of which fell on the shoulders of ordinary citizens.However, to avoid another explosion of chauvinistic sentiment in Germany is still not possible, and the non-recognition Sorb minority at the time, perhaps even played into the hands of this ethnic group.
Sorbs under the rule of the Nazis
Sorbs are the only Slavic people, who managed to escape ethnic cleansing during the existence of the Third Reich.Apparently, this was promoted by the German Nazis pomeshannost on the theory of the great ancient civilizations and the occult role of the German nation in the modern world.The Nazis believed the German people a direct descendant of the great Aryan - people inhabiting German ground in ancient times.Digging deep into the history of the German Nazi scientists could not hide or ignore the existence of the union of tribes Polabian Slavs, so Goebbels propaganda machine has recognized the peoples living in the Middle Ages to the east of the Elbe, the Germans.This number includes the territory and who for centuries inhabited by the Sorbs, home to the Czechs, who, according to the Nazis, were not subject to Germanization, unlike authentic zhitelely Czech lands.
According to Hitler, the Sorbs were Germans who speak Sorbian, ie the Sorbian language.For this reason Polabian Slavs who did not openly oppose the power of the National Socialists, enjoy equal rights with the Germans.Moreover, the Sorbs, this confirms the picture could even wear their national dress.But these concessions is still regarded as remnants.So, by and large, on the existence of the Reich Sorbs lost their right to national identity in fear of identity as a resistance movement and not raised in the national spirit of their children.
Sorbs after World War II
After joining the puddle Red Army Soviet leadership acknowledged in Sorbs fraternal Slavic nation and in every way to promote their national self-determination.At the same time, despite numerous petitions Polabian Serbs have not given autonomy within the GDR, but the people identified as being the national minorities living in East Germany.In his writings, Lev Gumilyov Sorbs relic called the Slavic peoples.
Sorbs today
After German reunification in 1989, the establishment of a separate Sorbian-Serbian lands in the Federal Republic of Germany once again become relevant.Active stance in support of the Central European Slavs expressed Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.But the government did not want the new Germany to provide the Sorbs are so broad autonomy, apparently fearing further its exposure to the Soviet military-political direction.However Polabian Slavs have acquired the right to educate their children in their native language, use the Sorbian language as an official in the lands they live publicly celebrate their national holidays and to express their national identity in other ways.
But modern Sorbs, whose religion is not one, self-identify themselves differently.Prolonged stay under Czech influence in the period of the Hussite wars left its mark on the history of this ethnic group.Today the territory of the Sorbs is divided into Lower and Upper Lusatia.The Serbs in the territory of each of these has its own particular language and traditions, and most importantly, mostly Catholic Upper Lusatia and Lower - completely Protestant.
At the same time, the population of both territories identify each other as Polabian Slavs - a prominent ethnic group and belongs to the group of Slavic peoples.And every luzhichanin says his nationality - Serb.
