Continuation of Conquest and Exploitation – Same Logic, Other Weapons

Looking at the Wends of the Wends from today’s perspective, it becomes clear that there is no isolated historical phenomenon, but the beginning of a way of thinking that has been continued over centuries and finds its modernity in the colonial era. It’s not just about battles or changes of power. It is about a system of appropriation, the raw materials, country and peopleconsidered to be usable objects. Technical means, state organization and legal constructs are changing, but the inner movement remains the same: the desire for more space, for more possession, for more control. Whoever loses is always the local people, their ways of life, their language, their dignity.

Raw material greed and land robbery as motors of violence

The conquests were never exclusively conducted by religious beliefs; They were justified by higher goals, but financed and supported by the prospect of enrichment. Wood, farmland, mineral resources and economically usable areas were the currency with which military power acquired its legitimacy. Land was redistributed, borders re-pulled, rights revoked. thisPractice has direct lines to later colonial projects in which the same mechanisms took place under global intensity. Those who live on nature and soil were disenfranchised, uprooted and robbed of their livelihood. Moral rhetoric veiled the economic core of violence.

Submission, Coercion and Dehumanization

Submission was never just an administrative act. It was and is a process of dehumanization. People were declared labor, as object components of an economic machine. Forced recruitment, deportation and slave trade are not side effects, but integral parts of a policy that externalizes labor and costs. The instrumentalizationHuman destinies for material gains leaves scars in communities that outlast generations. These scars are not abstract, they show up in loss of speech, in lost traditions, in broken social fabrics.

Ideological justification and its destructive consequences

Religious mission, civilization rhetoric and legal constructs served as a veil for exploitation. They turned violent appropriation into moral duty and thus legitimized political projects that would be named without this ideology for what they are: raids under a state or order-related flag. The fatal legacy of these justifications is that violenceinstitutionalized and presented as a service to a higher order. This instrumentalization of morality has sowed collective self-doubt in many regions and permanently weakened the ability of local communities to tell their own story.

Lusatia as a scene of ongoing vulnerability

This historical pattern is particularly noticeable in Lusatia. The landscape and the people here have been subjected to multiple forms of appropriation. The Lusatian Sorbs are in a position in which historical erosion through external interventions remains visible with their language, their customs and their collective memory. opencast mines, resettlements, economic upheavalsAnd political decisions have left their mark on the social fabric. What has happened here is not an abstract story; It is a continued pattern of interventions, which in its modern form only knows other means but the same intention.

Loss of culture as ongoing violence

Cultural loss is no less brutal than physical expulsion. When language is marginalized, when rituals can no longer be practiced, collective memory disappears into an everyday life formed by external interests. The Sorbs experience this in forms of invisible and economic marginalization. Every word that has disappeared, every abandonedTradition is a loss of resistance to new forms of appropriation. Culture is not a luxury that one can sacrifice without destroying the foundations of human self-determination.

Demand for recognition, repair and respect

The critical consequence of this historical continuity is clear and painful: recognition alone is not enough. A serious examination of the material and symbolic consequences of centuries-long expansions is needed. Reparative measures must be based not only on legal formulas, but also on the restoration of the ability to act, to protectLand rights, promoting language and economic strengthening of local communities. Without such measures, history is repeated in new forms, and people in regions such as Lusatia remain permanently in a position of vulnerability.

Anger, sadness and determination

It is understandable that anger and sadness rise when one recognizes the combinations of medieval violence and modern colonial practice. These feelings are justified and must not be morally devalued. They can lead to paralyzing resignation, or they can be driven for solidarity, for preservation, political pressure and concrete support.For the Lusatian Sorbs and for all communities suffering from the consequences of historical appropriation, it is necessary for empathy to lead to measures and to translate historical responsibility into practical justice. Only in this way can the long chain of robbery and dehumanization be broken and space arise for a future based on respect, protection and real participation.