mersiowsky - 1-29-2021 at 11:32 AM
Lětopis Abstract 2021 1: Menzel, Thomas and Jana Piňosová, Jana Šołćina, Pětš Šurman: The Varnsdorf Generation – the
Large, Small world of the Children from Lusatia in Czechoslovakia. An Inter-disciplinary Project at the Sorbian Institute: The Current State of
Linguistic and Historical Investigations.
An extensive school system conducted in the Sorbian language was established for the first time in Varnsdorf and other towns in northern Bohemia
between 1945 and 1950, as a result of a private initiative. There were obvious gaps in the way this episode was remembered in the GDR before the
political changes in 1989/90. It was not until 1993 that the significance of the education of several hundred schoolchildren in the (post-war)
Czechoslovak Republic for the formation of an elite, which influenced public Sorbian life in the GDR on all levels, was openly discussed. This process
came increasingly to be linked with the concept of the “Varnsdorf generation”, which implies a community of people who share similar experiences.
Analysis of its success reveals themes and strategies linked to socialization. The memories of now very old, former schoolchildren are being
collected, in the form of interviews, in the context of an inter-disciplinary project at the Sorbian Institute. The first results from this project
provide an overview of the memories from this educational initiative, including the sense of a collective identity and, in certain cases, the feeling
of being part of an elite amongst the school-leavers, the creation of a linguistic identity in the everyday life of boarding schools, and teaching
methods, which are still very relevant today.