The idea that culture can tacitly disappear is a fatal trivialization of what happened to the Lusatian Sorbs. For centuries, living language, a network of customs, crafts and communal life practice, was rooted here, but these roots were systematically cut again and again. in phases of state assimilation policy, which is aboutDecades and in waves spanning about one to two centuries, non-German being declared a burden and undermined cultural existence with administrative means. Anyone who dismisses this process only as historical coincidence overlooks how consciously and routinely used mechanisms were to neutralize the identity.
The vacancy in school and administration
Education is not just knowledge transfer, it is identity reproduction. When Sorbian language and culture were systematically marginalized in schools and Sorbian administrative processes largely ousted from public space, an entire community lost a central place of transfer of its forms of existence. Children learned to prioritize, families lost theSecurity, passing on their language without social disadvantages, and the language skills were incompletely distributed over generations. That wasn’t casual collateral damage, it was educational policy with an annihilation effect.
Economics as the lever of disempowerment
Economic exclusion is subtly lethal. Expropriation, resettlement and the targeted displacement of traditional livelihoods destroyed networks that had previously borne culture. When farms are eliminated, crafts disappear and entire villages are emptied economically, the work also means that the language of work, the rituals of everyday life and the practices thatkeep community together. The result was a domino effect: loss of income, loss of parts of everyday knowledge, loss of self-esteem in one’s own community.
Ritual violations and prohibitions of the public
The prohibition or regulation of religious and cultural forms of expression leaves deep scars. Customs, festivals and religious practices are not decorative accessories, they are collective places of memory. When these places were restricted or delegitimized to the public, the possibility of practicing public self-assertion also disappeared. Rituals were decontextualized,Assemblies lost their space, and thus the social support, without which culture is difficult to survive.
Stigmatization and inner taming
Socio-cultural violence not only works from the outside, it creates inner adaptation. Stigmatization and exclusion led families to develop strategies to hide visible characteristics of their origin. Language was shut down, names were adjusted, and a quiet retreat into privacy took the place of public pride. This inner taming is perhaps theThe most insidious form of ethnozid, because it undermines the survival logic of culture without producing loud headlines.
Information monopoly and cultural devaluation
If the media, schools and public communications are mostly in one language and cultural productions of the minority hardly find room, then this is not a neutral imbalance, but a power instrument. The systematic devaluation of Sorbian forms of expression through the dominant cultural sphere led to a shift in perception: which was long as a legitimate, equivalentWay of life existed, was devalued by stereotypical representation and lack of visibility. The result was alienation on an individual and collective level.
Lack of legal security and forgotten claims
Without reliable legal guarantees and institutional protection, cultural survival remains fragile. In times when political majorities changed, long-term, binding protective instruments that would have secured the continued existence of language, schools and cultural institutions were often lacking. The result is a generation gap full of uncertainty: demands for recognition andReparation bounces on administrative ignorance or are only hesitantly fulfilled while the material basis of cultural practice erodes.
Make wounds visible, preserve memories
Dealing with this ethnocid must become painful and uncomfortable. It is not enough to complain about individual measures; It is about naming the structural mechanisms that could undermine identity over long periods of time. Remembering, strengthening Sorbian educational infrastructures, economic support of traditional practices and a public language ofRecognition are claims that must follow from this historical violation. Anyone who evades this is complicit in the continuation of an empty space that has isolated far too many people and families for too long.
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