British Library Slavonic and East European Collections
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 The
Upper and Lower Lusatian official emblems |
The British Library Slavonic and East European Section acquires
material across the spectrum of the humanities and social sciences.
It is responsible for obtaining and making available material published
in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and for material
in the languages of those countries published anywhere in the world.
This page provides an overview of the Lusatian (Sorbian) collections,
illustrated by specific examples.
Contents
A history of Lusatia | An
overview of the Lusatian (Sorbian) collections | Catalogues
and other resources about Lusatian (Sorbian) |
Lusatian (Sorbian) material elsewhere in
the British Library
The
Czech Collections page
Lusatian Sorbs, also known as Lusatians, Sorbs or Wends, are perhaps
the least known of the Slavonic peoples and, because of their name,
are often confused with the Yugoslav Serbs. Lusatians are the last
survivors of the once numerous Slavonic tribes who inhabited a large
area between the rivers Elbe and Oder. They now form only a pocket
of Slavonic speaking peoples occupying the south-east corner of
Germany. In the south, Lusatia borders on to the Czech Republic
while its Eastern frontier is provided by the Oder/Niesse river
which forms Germany's boundary with Poland.
Lusatian Sorbs are linguistically and culturally related to their
two Slavonic neighbours and there are also historical links with
both countries. Throughout the twelve centuries of its existence,
the history of the Sorbian nation is that of domination by its more
powerful German neighbours penetrating eastwards into Lusatian territory.
Germans were the first to introduce Christianity to the Lusatians,
but major inroads were not made until the Cyrillo-Methodian and
especially Polish missions when Lusatia was briefly united with
Poland in the 11th century. From that time until the Thirty Years
War, Lusatia came under the control of the Czech Crown. In the 13th
century, the area was divided into Lower Lusatia (capital Chosebuz,
Cottbus in German) and Upper Lusatia (capital Budysin, Bautzen in
German). This separation was further cemented by the Reformation
when most of Lower Lusatia, together with the German population,
adopted Lutheranism, while Upper Lusatia remained Catholic. In 1635
the Peace of Prague ceded both Upper and Lower Lusatia to Saxony.
In 1815, the Congress of Vienna ceded Lower Lusatia together with
the greater part of Upper Lusatia, to Prussia. Unremitting Germanisiation,
which began with Frankish and Saxon invasions in the 6th century,
continued to reduce the Slavonic speaking Sorbs to about 120,000
before World War II.
Collections
In the following text, codes which appear in brackets after references
([Ac.855.ba]) indicate British Library shelfmarks
The birth of Sorbian literature came with the Reformation and the
need for the translation of religious texts. Lusatia's political
division was reflected in the development of its language which
grew into two standardised forms. The number of books printed was
very small and many translations remained in manuscript including
the first Lower Lusation translation of the New Testament
(1548) by M. Jakubica. The first Lower Lusatian printed book is
Albin Moller's Zpevnik a katechism (Hymnal and catechism)
(1574) of which only one copy is known to have survived. The British
Library has a facsimile copy published in Berlin in 1959 [Ac.855.ba].
Moller was also interested in astronomy and the Library has a German
edition of his Schreib Calendar... auf das Jahr... (1584)
[8610.bb.62(2)] as well as later ones from 1605,
1606 and 1616 [1608/635]. The first Upper Lusatian
printed book was a translation of Luther's Little Catechism
of Warichius in 1595 (reprinted in 1597).
The earliest Sorbian printed text in the British Library dates
from 1603 and is the Lord's Prayer contained in Hieronymus
Megiser's Specimen quinquaginta (Frankfurt, 1603)
[G.20009], a collection of the Lord's Prayer in 50 languages.
Sorbian also appears as one of the languages in the earliest multilingual
dictionary - Megiser's Thesaurus polyglottus (Frankfurt,
1603) [826.a.10,11]. The Thirty Years War put an
end to the infant printing activity and publishing was resumed only
towards the end of the 17th century. Sorbian early printed books
are very rare. Only some twenty titles were issued by 1700 and these
were mostly of religious character. Very few secular works were
printed but some manuscripts that have survived, were published
by later scholars.
Study of the Sorbian language began in the 17th century and the
British Library has the earliest Upper Lusatian grammar; Principia
lingua Wendicae by the Jesuit J. X. Ticinus, published in Prague
in 1679 [G.16748] and Abraham Frencel's celebrated
dictionary De originibus linguae Sorabicae (1694) [68.a.15(1)]
and [1333.e.22]. There is also Wendische grammatica
by G. Matthaeus and Vocabularium latino-serbicum [1568/3568]
by the Catholic author J.H.Swetlik, both from 1721. Between 1688
and 1711, Swetlik took on the task of translating the Vulgate for
the Catholics but it was never printed. Translations of biblical
texts, carried out by Protestant theologians, had an enormous influence
on the development of both Lusatian languages. M. Frencel's Upper
Lusatian translation of ss. Matthew and Mark
was printed in 1670 and was followed in 1706 by his complete New
Testament. In 1728 this was incorporated into a complete Bible
[1410.c.4] which is held by the British Library
together with its revised editions of 1742 [3061.c.1] and
1797 [3061.dd.9]. The first Lower Lusatian New
Testament was printed in 1709 [C.110.e.14] and,
like the Upper Lusatian version, was printed in parallel German
and Lusatian columns with the title page in German. The Lower Lusatian
Old Testament did not follow until 1796 [3061.e.6].
Both are in the British Library collections.
Panslavism, which under the influence of the French Revolution
and German romanticism, started as a movement among intellectuals,
scholars and poets in various Slavonic countries, also awakened
an awareness of a Sorbian national identity and greatly influenced
Sorbian literary development. Poetry in Sorbian began to flourish
and was mostly published in periodicals that started to appear in
the second half of the 19th century. The British Library has the
first collected works of the major Upper Lusatian poet of the time,
Handrij Zejler, published in 1883-1891 [012265.h.4].
During his own lifetime, Zejler's work appeared mostly in journals,
but the Library holds his Lusatian grammar entitled Kurzgefasste
Grammatik der sorbenwendischen Sprache nach dem Budissiner Dialekte
(1830) [12976.d.24]. The greatest 19th-century
Sorbian poet, Jakub Bart-Cisinski, also came form Upper Lusatia
but, unlike Zejler, was a Catholic. The Library holds his first
collection of poems, Kniha sonettow, published in Budysin
in 1884 [1578/5548] as well as first editions of
his later works published at the end of the 19th and beginning of
the 20th centuries. The Lusatian literary revival of the 1920s and
1930s is represented in the Library by many publications including
several monographic series.
The British Library has the longest running Sorbian journal, Casopis
Macicy Serbskeje (1848-1918) [Ac.8954] which
played an important role in the development of national cultural
traditions, language and literature. Its publisher, Macica Serbska,
was a patriotic learned society, founded in 1845, on the lines of
similar bodies in other Slavonic countries, and the British Library
holds most of its other publications. There is also J. Wjacslawk's
catalogue [Ac.8954/2] from 1924 of the Macica's
library. The Treaty of Versailles after World War I crushed any
hopes of Lusatian independence, which confirmed its territorial
inclusion in the Weimar Republic. Brutal germanisation came to a
head under the Nazi regime when Domowina (the "Homeland"), a Lusatian
national organisation established in 1912, was closed down and the
contents of its library dispersed.
After 1945, Lusatian territory became part of East Germany and
the GDR's constitution ensured equality of rights for the Sorbian
minority. School instruction in the Sorbian languages was secured
as well as provisions for broadcasting and publishing. Domowina
resumed its work including publishing; the number of journals and
books issued increased, covering not only Lusatian authors but also
maintaining an active translating activity. The Serbski Institute
in Budysin was founded for the study of Sorbian language, literature
and culture. The British Library has a complete run of the Institute's
publications including studies and reprints of rare early books
and manuscripts. During the 1960s, the British Library negotiated
an exchange programme to ensure a regular supply of Lusatian publications
in addition to new, secondhand and antiquarian purchasing.
Economic changes that have swept the former GDR since 1990 have,
inevitably, put the Sorbian minority under an increased pressure
to assimilate with the German population. The democratisation process,
on the other hand, provides a greater freedom for the expression
of activities often based on religious traditions. A lively publishing
programme is still being maintained and the British Library continues
to acquire a representative selection of material to ensure the
continuity of what is estimated to be one of the best collections
of Lusatian publications world-wide.
Catalogues and other resources about
Lusatian (Sorbian)
