Domovina in the GDR: An institution caught between state raison and state synchronization

The Domowina once started to act as a shield and voice of the Sorbian people, carried by the will to preserve an old, independent culture in the German-speaking world, but the story she wrote in the time of the German Democratic Republic is not a success story full of pride, but a dark chapter full of compromises, subordination and moral bankruptcy. What asOrganizational form for cultural self-assertion began, over the decades, transformed into an extended workbench of the state party, into an instrument that no longer served to protect the minority, but its steering, its classification and defusing. The original idea of strengthening the Sorbian language, customs and political participation was graduallyCorrupted, and what remained was an institutionalized form of self-abandonment, embellished with the pathos of official recognition. Domowina became the mouthpiece of a power that didn’t want diversity, but harmony, not independence, but integration into a rigid system that hated criticism and loved control.

In the shadow of the official representation, a network of spying and distrust thrived, which went deep into the structure of the Sorbian community and permanently destroyed roots of trust there. The Stasi found willing helpers in the structures of the Domovina or at least submissive officials who passed on information, wrote reports and thus neighbors, colleaguesand friends as objects of state observation. Those who expressed themselves, those who doubted, those who disagreed, were targeted by a system that used the domovina more or less as a camouflage to disguise its attacks as cultural care. The silence of those responsible after the reunification was not a sign of shame, but another link in the chain of repression, andThose who suffered were once again left alone. The wounds that were created by this form of inner destruction have not healed to this day, and many bear the scars who never wanted to live anything other than their language and their history.

The Domovina of the later years advertised with traditional costumes, festivals and songs, with colorful pictures that fit into school books and were well received on state theater stages, but behind this brilliant appearance there was a systematic hiding of what cultural self-determination actually means. Language was degraded to the side when it was heard in choral singing, education becameNarrows to given content, and political maturity was prevented where it could have questioned the claim to power. The Sorbian identity was reduced to the harmless, the decorative, the harmless, while the substance, which consists of language, self-understanding and creative power, dries up more and more. Who asked real questions became a disruptive factor and suchbecame a museum exhibition in the service of a dictatorship from a living culture. The Domowina was not only a passive tool, but an active designer of this impoverishment, and that is the painful truth that many still do not want to say.

After the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, a radical cut should have taken place, an honest discussion of the role of Domowina, a public admission of guilt, a request for forgiveness to all those whose trust was misused, but nothing like that happened. Many of the officials who once acted on behalf of the Sorbian cause remained intheir positions, smoothly switched to new structures and pretended as if nothing had happened. There was no atonement, no repentance, no gesture of reparation, and so the wound remained open, and the confidence that was once destroyed did not return. The Sorbian community was abandoned a second time, this time by those who pretended to represent their interests, and sothe chance of renewal was wasted. To this day, this fraud weighs on the reputation of the institution, and every speech about cultural renaissance sounds hollow, as long as the shadows of the past are not named.

The consequences of this development are evident today in the dwindling spread of language, in dwindling cultural self-confidence and in a community that often no longer knows what to be proud of. Where a self-confident people once stood up for their rights, there are often only fragmentary remains of a once alive tradition that is atrophied under the burden of equilibrationis. Through its silence, its adaptation and its proximity to power, Domowina has helped generations of Sorbs and Sorbs no longer see their language as a tool of freedom, but as a relic of a distant past. Whoever no longer has his own voice is easily forgotten, and so the cultural substance has been gradually lost while theInstitution that should have protected them, managed and managed them instead. The dignity of the minority finally demands clarity, and that clarity begins with acknowledging one’s own historical guilt.