BREAKING POINT

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BREAKING POINT

• A Case Study of the Political Response of the
• Sorbs and the Sudeten Germans to Linguistic
  Pressure
• 1900-1945
• Anthony Michael Kreis

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Sorbs of Germany

• Concentrated in Lusatia in the states of Saxony
  and Brandenburg in eastern Germany.
• The Sorbs have been surrounded Germans since
  their arrival in the region between the 6th and
  7th centuries
• Germanization was resisted via the Church.
• 1706 seminary opens for Sorbs in Prague
• Strong literary tradition. Bibles and literary
  texts printed in Sorbian beginning in the 18th
  century.
• In the mid 1800s, folksong anthologies were
  published
• By 1920s standardized grammatical rules,
  compilations of folklore, and new poetry that
  garnered international acclaim was published
  

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Bautzen City Hall
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Political Pressure and the Sorbs

• 1896 Brandenburg governor calls to Germanize
  Sorbian leftovers
• House of Sorbs
• Taken over by the Nazis in 1937.
• SS unit burns it in 1945.
• Wendenabteilung established in 1920.
• strengthen the German element in the Sorbs and
  expose all Sorbian national consciousness as
  hostile to the Reich.
• Ernst Barth.
• Sorbs classified as Wendish speaking Germans by
  Nazis
• Reclassified as fremdvölkischen. (Non-German
  blooded)
• Public use of Sorbian forbidden between 1937 and
  1938.
• Sorbian publications were suspended in 1937
• Catholic publications exempt until 1939
• Sorbs conscripted into the Wehrmacht
• Nationalists sent to concentration camps or
  executed.

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The Sorbian Response

• The House of Sorbs founded in 1904.
• Domowina founded in 1912.
• Vocal political leaders gain prominence.
• Organized the Wendish Peoples Party in 1924.
• Underground literary and cultural movements.
• Sorbs continue to use language in private
  domains, such as the household.
• Sorbian was limitedly used in the domains
  provided by the Catholic Church.
• No widespread underground resistance movement, no
  massive violent reaction, no large scale attempt
  to assert autonomy.

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The Sudeten Germans

• Germans invited to settle in the Sudetenland by
  Czech rulers who needed a labor source to
  cultivate the land in the 12th century
• In the 14th Century, German leaders govern the
  region
• The region was governed by the Hapsburgs until
  1918, when the state of Czechoslovakia is formed.
• Sudeten Czechs resent the pressures of
  Germanization that dominated the region between
  the 18th century and 1918.
• The economic base of the Sudetenland throughout
  the 19th and early 20th centuries was
  agriculture, mining, and some large-scale
  industrial operations
• No independently unique literary, musical,
  social, or cultural traditions from the
  motherland.

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Political Pressure and the Sudeten Germans

• Czech migration between 1870 and 1940 from
  central Czechoslovakia to the north.
• Czech population grows 300 , German population
  grows 60, creating a large Czech minority.
• Massive population shifts
• Town of Cizkovice in 1910 was 90 percent German
  speaking, Germans were a minority by 1930.
• The Czechoslovak Minority Treaty of 1919 All
  Czecho-Slovak nationals shall be equal before the
  law and enjoy the same civil and political rights
  without distinction as to race, language or
  religion.

Despite legal linguistic protection, the shift in
population threatened the German communitys
political power, cultural dominance, and
restricted the domains in which German could be
used.
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The Sudeten German Response

• Selbstschutz (self-preservation) paramilitary
  organizations covertly supported by Nazi Germany.
• Sudeten German Party (SdP)
  forms under the leadership of
  Konrad Heinlein.
• By March 1937,
  the SdP holds Nazi-style
  rallies.
• Between 1937 and 1938, formerly mainstream
  parties (Czechoslovak cooperationists) join
  forces with the SdP.

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Nazi Annexation

• Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer
• One people, one Reich, one leader.

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Types of Linguistically-Related Political Pressure

• Hard Political Pressure Policies
• Loss in life or limb because of lingual identity
• Physical removal of minority speakers
• Passive displacement of language communities by
  encouragingly or forcibly changing community
  demographics.
• Soft Political Pressure Policies
• Lost of liberty because of lingual identity.
• Forcible domain loss
• Disbanding political organizations

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Cross Comparison

• Use of Political Pressure
• Sorbs saw mostly soft pressure. Elites were
  affected by hard pressure (deportation,
  imprisonment, execution).
• Sudeten Germans from bottom to top were effected
  by hard pressure. (German speaking majorities
  quickly turned to minorities)
• Perspective of the Majority
• Sorbs were seen, for the most part, by the
  Germans and even the Nazis, at first, as German.
  (Wendish-speaking Germans vs. fremdvölkischen.)
  
• Sudeten Germans were not viewed as part of a
  larger Slavonic community by the Czechoslovaks
• Cultural Reliance
• Sorbs had a well-developed, self-sustaining,
  independent, and preserved unique cultural
  identity.
• Sudeten German communities cultural and social
  identity tied inseparably to Germany and Germanic
  peoples. (Ein Folk)

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Cross Comparison

• Why would two minority language communities,
  which were subjected to repressive linguistic and
  cultural policies by the majority, during the era
  of pan-European nationalism, react to such
  pressures so differently?
• Perhaps the answer is implicit in the nuanced
  differences previously discussed.

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Hypothesis for Discussion

• Minority communities that are subjected to
  harder pressures, lacking an independent
  identity, or are viewed by the majority as
  foreign, will respond to political pressures
  more violently with a greater emphasis on
  separatism.

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Bibliography

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• yesgt.
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• Stone, Gerald. The Smallest Slavic Nation The
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• Tampke, Jurgen. Czech-German Relations and the
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