Lusatia
Lusatia (Latin; German: Lausitz) is an ancient historical region in eastern Germany.
Lusatia is located within the German states of Saxony, Brandenburg and a small part of Silesia. Lusatia's central rivers are the Spree and the Lusatian Neisse. The Lusatian Mountains (part of the Sudetens), separate Lusatia from Bohemia (Czech Republic) in the south. Lusatia is traditionally divided into Upper Lusatia (the hilly southern part) and Lower Lusatia (the flat northern part). The oldest town in Upper Lusatia is Löbau, which entered into a league with the other five oldest towns there in 1346.
The areas east and west along the Spree in the German part of Lusatia are home to the Slavic Sorbs (or Wends), one of Germany's four officially recognized indigenous ethnic minorities (alongside Sinti, Frisians, and Danes). The Upper Sorbs inhabit Saxon Upper Lusatia, and the Lower Sorbs Brandenburg's Lower Lusatia. Upper and Lower Sorbian are spoken in the German parts of Upper and Lower Lusatia respectively, and the signage there is mostly bilingual. The customs and dress of the Wends still differs from their German neighbours.
In 1904 the Wendish population of Upper Lusatia was about 130,000.[1]
1945
After over 1000 years, German and Sorbian-speakers were expelled from their native homelands in the regions east of the Lusatian Neisse river in and after 1945, when the eastern part of Lusatia fell into the Soviet Zone of Occupation. They in turn, illegally gave this area, with others, to their Communist puppet-State of Poland, with whom it remains today, who resettled it with Poles.
Lusatia is the theme of the Sorbian national anthem Rjana Łužica (Rědna Łužyca). The Lusatian lake district (Lausitzer Seenland) is Europe's largest artificial lake district.
Municipalities
In the town of Herrnhut is a Moravian Church, which also contains an ethnological museum. The village was founded in 1722 by several families from Moravia who had belonged to the Moravian Brotherhood (Herrnhuter), and had quitted their country on account of their religion. The site of the town was presented to the exiles by Count Zinzendorf (d.1760), the landed proprietor. In 1904 it still only had 1200 inhabitants.[2]
The largest Lusatian city is Cottbus (on the river Spree, with the Brantiz Palais, the seat of Count Puckler). Other notable towns are the former members of the Lusatian League including Löbau, Görlitz (on the Neisse), Bautzen (capital of Saxon Upper Lusatia, where there is also a Wendish Museum), Zittau (on the river Mandau near its confluence with the Neisse; the birthplace of Heinrich August Marschner (1795–1861), the most important composer of German opera between Weber and Richard Wagner.[3][4]), Lubben, Kamenz (the birthplace of Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781), a philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and a representative of the Enlightenment era, to whom a colossal bust, by Knauer, was erected near the Wendish Church in 1863. Six miles SE is the Cistercian Monastery of Marienstern, founded in 1264.[5]), Guben (on the Neisse), Hoyerswerda, Senftenberg, Eisenhüttenstadt, Żary and Spremberg. The closest international airport to Lusatia is Dresden Airport in Klotzsche.
Sources
- ↑ Baedeker, Karl, Northern Germany, Leipzig & London, 1904, p.216.
- ↑ Baedeker, 1904, p.216.
- ↑ "Marschner's Hans Heiling From Vienna", WQXR, 26 November 2015
- ↑ "Heinrich Marschner" by John Mucci and John Lanigan-O'Keeffe, OperaGlass, Stanford University
- ↑ Baedeker, 1904, p.218.