Nearly all information for this article was taken from Die Ortsname der Oberlausitz (Place Names of Upper Lusatia) by Jan Meschang. (Please note that throughout this article the German Umlaut is used. This simply means that quite often the diacritical mark (“) appears over the vowels a, o and u to indicate umlauts. It would […]
The practice of assuming other surnames (aliases) by some of our Wendish or Sorbian ancestors in Lusatia makes research rather difficult at times. An example of an entry in the records that indicates an alias is “Jakob Dzick genannt Mitschke.” It simply means that Jakob Dzick assumed the surename Mitschke. In this case the surname
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Besides written records, onomastics ( the science and study of the origins and forms of proper names of persons and places) may be used to study and interpret the historical, linguistic and cultural development of an area. Slavic tribes living in isolation fostered dialects, whose particularisms were reflected in names. As tribes moved to new
There is some evidence that the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius (born in Thessalonica in the 820s), the Apostles to the Slavs, reached the Bautzen area. Their mission of evangelization, in the latter part of the ninth century, took them to Great Moravia, which, at that time, included Bohemia and other central European territory.
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Archaeological discoveries in Lusatia and surrounding territory have produced many artifacts and much valuable information of the early Sorbian tribes and their culture. It appears certain that additional discoveries will yield many more artifacts and information. Sites of old medieval fortifications appear to have the greatest potential. Prior to the Frankish conflicts the Sorbian tribes
The villages in which our ancestors lived in Lusatia were sites of manors. These manors, or landed-estates, were in possession of noblemen for many generations. The manorial system in Lusatia began as soon as the Sorbs lost their independence. Armed attacks against the Sorbs started in 806 under Charles the Great (Charlemagne) of the Franks
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The Sorbs, as they always wanted to be called, or Wends, as the Germans, called them, descended from the Slavs. Numerically, the Slavs are the largest linguistic group in Europe, numbering some two hundred million people. The geographical origin of the Slavs has always been problematic. Their history pre-dates the Christian era. Roman historians, Pliny
Mato Kosyk was born in Werben in 1853 and died in America in 1940. At first a railway worker and later a Lutheran pastor, he became a leading Lower Wendish poet. He immigrated to America and concerned himself until his death with the Wendish immigrants to the country. He penned the famous Lower Wendish epics
The Spreewald Wedding Read More »
As a child I remember Uncle Adolph Hohle from Houston and his next door neighbor and half-brother Ernest Bamsch, coming to visit their respective half and step-brother, C. B. (Ben) Hohle (my father), the son of Maria nee Bamsch Hohle at The Grove, Texas. On numerous of these summer visits they would bring along their
A translation from the original Wendish by Rev. Dr. Elmer M. Hohle of Rev. Jan Kilian’s liturgical Collects for the Epistle and the Gospel for the Lutheran church’s ecclesiastical observance on October 31. It has been a longstanding wish of Pastor Hohle that he be granted permission to pray this prayer in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church
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