The Wendish Research Exchange - Malinkowa, Trudla: The Sorbian Marriage Inviter, Jan Kmoch from Quatitz

Lětopis Abstract 2014 1: Malinkowa, Trudla: The Sorbian Marriage Inviter, Jan Kmoch from Quatitz

Jan (Johann) Kmoch was born in 1812, the only child of a cottager in Zschorna in the parish of Hochkirch. He worked initially as a tailor. He married in 1832, and moved between 1835 and 1837 with his family to a small farm in Quatitz. Kmoch was the most famous Sorbian wedding messenger (Hochzeitsbitter, Braška) of his time. He was in charge of around 2,000 wedding ceremonies from around 1840 to 1870, mostly Protestant, but occasionally also Catholic weddings, among them those of many large family parties from the larger farms. Kmoch’s engagement and wedding addresses have been preserved in transcriptions made by Arnošt Muka and were published in 1923, with minor alterations, in a collection of wedding addresses. Kmoch’s original notes, as well as his outfit as a wedding messenger, have been lost. One photograph has survived. In addition, two artists made portraits of him in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Bautzen publisher, Louis Buchheim, in a lithograph and the Schleife pastor, Julius Eduard Wjelan, in an oil painting. By doing so, they created a lasting memorial to the marriage inviter, Jan Kmoch.