Sorbs a resilient minority in modern Germany (Feature)

By Nikolai Frank Dec 15, 2009, 11:49 GMT

Bautzen, Germany ­ An indigenous Slavic minority at home in Germany, the Sorbs are a relic of another Europe.

Like the other officially recognized minorities in the country ­ the Danes, the Frisians and the Roma and Sinti ­ this tiny stateless nation of some 60,000 is struggling to preserve traditional ways of life amid the pressures of assimilation in modern cosmopolitan Germany.

Yet this belies the wealth of their history and the vibrancy of their community today.

Bautzen, known as Budysin to Sorbs, is their historic capital. A picturesque town nestled upstream from Berlin on the Spree river in a hilly corner of eastern Germany, it is just a few miles from both the Czech and Polish borders.

Like their western Slavic neighbours, the Sorbs have lived in these parts alongside Germans for over a millennium. Though fewer in number, they retained their culture and language thanks to the Reformation in the 16th century, which saw the Bible translated into Sorbian.

Today, the Sorbs are a nation split not only between the two federal states of Saxony and Brandenburg - with their separate legal systems and bureaucracies - as well as between Protestants and Catholics.

There is also a linguistic divide between speakers of Upper Sorbian, who live in Upper Lusatia in Saxony, and those who speak Lower Sorbian, based mainly in Lower Lusatia, Brandenburg.

The two are not dialects but distinct languages, with Upper Sorbian, spoken by the majority, closer to Czech and Lower Sorbian not dissimilar to Polish.

But many Sorbs insist these differences do not hinder their sense of nationality. 'We are on the same path, but we don't have to feel exactly the same,' says Beate Bresan, who leads the Sorbian language centre, Witaj, in Bautzen.

These words seem uncannily to describe not only the relationship between Upper and Lower Sorbs but that between Sorbs and Germans in general. For Sorbs, their bilingualism and multiple sense of belonging is an asset, not a drawback. They are also proud Europeans. The villages scattered to the west of Bautzen constitute the rural heartland of this Slavic people. Up to 90 per cent of the residents are native-speaking Sorbian speakers and mostly devout Catholics. To people who grow up here, it does not make much sense to be described as a minority.

'You stick out more here if you're not a Sorb or if you don't go to church,' says David Statnik, a young father who lives in the village of Ralbitz and is active in the Sorbian youth movement. 'We know that, officially, we are a minority in Germany, but around here it's the Germans who are in the minority. And we treat them well: we don't chase them out with sticks.'

The tolerance is not always mutual. While racist incidents are rare, there is some tension at youth gatherings such as nightclubs and football matches.

But the Sorbs have seen worse. A brief period of tolerance during the Weimar Republic was snuffed out by the Nazis, who deported their priests and intellectuals to far-flung corners of their empire. Unlike other minorities in Germany at the time, however, the Sorbs did not face systematic extermination.

After World War II, the Communist leadership in East Germany (GDR) was initially suspicious of Sorbian nationalism, yet legislation was soon passed enshrining their rights as a minority.

In the GDR, schools in predominantly Sorb areas were allowed to teach in their mother tongue. Sorbian newspapers and literature flourished.

This came at a price, however: Sorbian cultural institutions, as well as the Sorbian clergy, were to a great extent steered by the state apparatus and monitored by the secret police.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany a year later, Sorbs gained political and economic freedoms. Today, Saxony boasts a Sorbian premier, Stanislaw Tillich, and four Sorbian members of the regional parliament. A Sorb sits in the federal parliament in Berlin.

Yet with the advent of the free market, many Sorbs left for greater opportunities in the western German states. At the same time, a blip in birth rates has caused pupil numbers to drop drastically, forcing a number of Sorbian schools to close.

Today Sorbian cultural institutions, aware that they cannot ensure their survival as a nation without external help, are constantly battling for federal funding. With their language classified as endangered by UNESCO and the European Council, the Sorbs fear for their future.

We still have a chance to counter this threat,' believes Heiko Kosel, one of the four Sorbian members of the Saxon state parliament. But what would the world think of Germany if the last Sorbian speaker died?'