Sorbs (Wends)
Sorbian Americans are among the least- known nationalities to have immigrated to America. On the one hand, their numbers in Europe were never large. The numbers that left the homeland were likewise diminutive.
Even today, many Germans in Europe are unaware that this minority exists within its boundaries. In the United States, most people have never heard of the Sorbs, or Wends, as they are known in the United States, because they immigrated primarily only to Texas. On the other hand, many Sorbs were so thoroughly assimilated into the larger German immigrant culture in Texas within the first 150 years that they forgot they were of Slavic heritage. Today, the Sorbian legacy is remembered by a few Texas institutions founded by Sorbs, as well as in the use of traditional Slavic family names employing many consonants and few vowels (e.g., Tschatschula, Miertschin).Sorbs have lived in a compact area in eastern Europe for over 1,500 years. First mentioned by the Frankish chronicler Fre- degar in 631, they occupied a territory bounded in the west by the Elbe and Saale rivers, in the south by the low mountain ranges, in the east by the Oder and Neisse rivers, and in the north by an imaginary line contiguous with the area around todays Berlin. Within this area, two Slavic tribes, the Lusizi and the Milceni, gradually separated from about twenty-seven other Slavic groups, and have maintained their existence into the twenty-first century.
The social structure of these tribes— large families grouped in a kind of military democracy—did not allow for hierarchical governments to develop. As a result, they never possessed a national structure. The invading Franks from the west thus found them easy prey. Henry I conquered them in 929. The subsequently founded bishopric of Meissen began their Christianization, placing them under the authority of the German church.
In ensuing centuries, a region that had once been populated by about 300,000 Slavic speakers came to be infiltrated by Frankish colonists who joined the Sorbs in working the land through the end of the Middle Ages. To the degree that Sorbs were predominant in respective areas, their language and culture thrived and survived.The Reformation contributed to the strengthening of ethnic consciousness and intellectual pursuits in this sixty-by- twenty-five-mile region, geographically known as Lusatia. On the one hand, sermons and singing in the language of the worshippers reinforced the use of Sorbian. On the other hand, this emphasis on a literate religious life encouraged the development of Sorbian as a written language, leading to the emergence of a literature and an intelligentsia. The Sorbian language continued to provide the basis for a national consciousness in the absence of national structure.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, a revitalized focus on language, folk customs, and history strengthened ethnic consciousness to help the Sorbs/Wends continue to celebrate their heritage through subsequent eras of repression. An emphasis on poetry and other literary genres was championed by Handrij Zejler (1804—1872), Jakub Bart-Cisinski (1856—1909), and Mato Kosyk (1853-1940). Folk-singing festivals continued the ancient traditions of community singing that once predominated in the women’s spinning circles. Translation of traditional Latin and German hymnody into Sorbian and new compositions of Sorbian hymns fostered a continuing source for oral music. The Sorbian theater movement also began in the nineteenth century, at first translating important dramas for presentation and then creating independent contemporary repertoire.
As a minority group, the Sorbs experienced differing treatments in the twentieth century under the Weimar Republic, National Socialism, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and the twenty-first-century German government. In general, it may be said that germanization has continued unabated.
The worst proscriptions occurred under Nazi rule when the main national body, the Domowina, was disbanded, printed materials confiscated, and leaders arrested. Under the GDR, the Domowina was restored and attempts were made to demonstrate the new government’s commitment to diversity. The territorial governments in which Lusatia is located in 2005 are embroiled in controversies with the Sorbs on the issue of whether the constitutions require bilingual schools in Sorbian-speaking areas.The two surviving languages of the Sorbs are related, yet distinct. Upper Sorbian in the southern highland part of Lusatia is related to Czech and Slovak. Lower Sorbian, in the northern lowland part of Lusatia is related to Polish. Both are considered modern standard languages with access to relevant reference works such as dictionaries, grammar books, textbooks, etc. There are approximately thirty schools, which offer differing degrees of bilingual teaching. The University of Leipzig has a division for Sorbian language study. Approximately 30,000 people are assumed to speak both languages in 2005.
The name for this minority group has at times been Wend and at times Sorb. Roman historians referred to all Slavic tribes between the Carpathians and the Baltic Sea as Venedi (Veneti). Translated into German, this word later came to be written as Wenden, applying to all Slavs in eastern and central Germany. The other designation came from the Latin word Surbi, first evidenced in a document from 631 C.E. This term, in itself, has roots in the Slavonic Serbja (Upper Sorbian) or Serby (Lower Sorbian). The use of these terms has varied in regions and in history. When residents of Lusatia immigrated to Australia and the United States in the nineteenth century, they knew themselves as Wends, and this is how they are known in the diaspora in the twenty-first century. However, in scholarly or political writing in Europe, the preferable terms are Sorb and Sorbian.
Due to a variety of factors, residents of Lusatia immigrated in the mid- to late nineteenth century to South Africa, Canada, Australia, and the United States.
The total numbers of those immigrating was never large, perhaps not more than 3,000. The reasons for immigration were largely social and economic. The largest group, the Texas colonists, had strong religious interests, but these did not predominate. In most cases, the immigrations were of smaller groups, sometimes only several families. Additionally, at times a mixture of Germans immigrated with the Wends, contributing to dissolution of Wendish cultural strength in the settlements. In almost all cases, the Wendish heritage disappeared within a few generations, with the exception of the settlements in Australia and Texas. Even in Australia, the leadership of the larger groups was German, not Wendish, leading to the cessation of language development, one of the important builders of ethnic consciousness. The ethnic consciousness in the immigration to Texas lasted much longer, and has left a stronger imprint in Texas in the twenty- first century.There were several initial family groups and one group of thirty-five Wends who immigrated to Texas between 1849 and 1853. They knew of one another and made contact with one another in the New World. They were interested in land ownership and most of them, being bilingual, assimilated quickly into existing German communities. After learning about the settlers, an even larger group with numbers approaching 600 emigrated on the ship Ben Nevis from Liverpool, England, in 1854.
This group was organized by lay leaders who were struggling with the financial impact of the decline of the feudal system and were dissenters from the state church. Most of them objected to the forced integration of Lutherans and Calvinists by Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia in 1830. His son and successor, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, allowed for the formation of independent congregations in 1840, and 100 people in the communities of Klitten and Weigersdorf did precisely that. They then called Jan Kilian, a well-known but disaffected pastor in the state church, to be their spiritual shepherd in 1848.
Kilian attempted to help the members of the congregation address social and economic problems by teaching children the arts of spinning and weaving. When this proved to be unsuccessful financially, he worked with the church leaders to organize immigration to the United States.The Wendish immigrants’ numbers were diminished before their arrival in Texas by about 50, due mostly to cholera. Fourteen were buried in Liverpool, and another 31 in Queenstown, Ireland. On October 23, 1854, they sailed for open sea and arrived seven weeks later in Galveston on December 15. The leaders, along with Pastor Kilian, journeyed to nearby New Ulm to meet with previous Wendish settlers and to secure land for the surviving 500 immigrants. They bought some 4,250 acres of land from A. C. Delaplain at one dollar per acre. Here in the community they named Serbin, they struggled to clear land, plant crops, and build orchards. They faced many challenges, including having made a poor choice of lowland, small acreages unsuitable for grazing, and little acquaintance with climate, crops, and work animals common to Texas.
During the first seventy-five years of their history as a colony, the settlers in Serbin experienced a great deal of conflict, yet their use of a common Wendish language and their Lutheran faith was the source of their ethnic consciousness. Serbin was the only place in the world, outside Lusatia, where Wendish was not only the language of the home, but the public language of the church and community. Children studied Wendish in school and, until 1881, used it as the language for confirmation instruction. This unity was gradually broken through schism and assimilation with German settlers who represented the dominant language group in their area. Schisms arose for two reasons. The first had to do with a style of piety involving small-group Bible study and prayer (Stun- denchristen), a concept with European roots that worked well among scattered parishioners in the New World.
This finally led to the formation of a short-lived second Lutheran congregation established in 1860. The second schism revolved around language, the use of German or Wendish, and was resolved in 1870 with a split in the congregation and the establishment of two churches, St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s (which was rebuilt in 1871 and continues in use in 2005). St. Peter’s was closed in 1914. Kilian’s son, Herman, continued as the pastor of the surviving St. Paul’s congregation until his own death in 1920. Wendish services ceased with him. His successor, the Reverend Herman Schmidt, also a Wend, used the language only in private devotions and conversation.The Wendish community in Texas, unlike counterparts in Australia, Canada, and South Africa, continued to claim its heritage for a variety of reasons. The strong commitment to the use of the Wendish language led by Kilian in the early years was supported by new immigrants to Texas from the homeland. The number of immigrants who arrived after 1865 at least equaled the number in the original migration. The new Wends often married into existing families, providing an infusion of European heritage into New World families. As the settlers moved away from the poor farming conditions in Serbin to more promising opportunities elsewhere, they brought their strength to communities like Fedor, Mannheim, Thorndale, Lincoln, Loebau, Dime Box, The Grove, Copperas Cove, Cisco, and Austin.
In addition to the Texas migration, reference must be made to Mato Kosyk
(1853—1940) and a small group of Wends he discovered while attending a church conference in Sterling, Nebraska, in 1891. Kosyk emigrated from Lusatia in 1883 at the age of thirty. He studied at seminaries in Springfield and Chicago, was ordained in Iowa, and served congregations in Iowa, Nebraska, and Oklahoma until his retirement in 1913. During all these years, he expressed his homesickness and personal tragedies through poetry written in Lower Sorbian, which he sent home to be published in Lusatia. He is unknown to Americans, except as a faithful pastor and cofounder of the German-Nebraska Synod, an act performed on the day he discovered fellow Wends in Sterling. In 2003, however, he was honored in Europe on the 150th anniversary of his birth (June 18), with the publication of a six-volume critical edition of his works, as the greatest Lower Sorbian poet who ever lived.
Two institutions in Texas perpetuate the heritage of the Wends. One is the Texas Wendish Heritage Society, located in Serbin, Texas. Founded in 1977, it maintains a museum (the largest outside Bautzen, Germany) and a library. The other institution is Concordia University at Austin. It was founded in 1926 by thirteen Lutheran congregations in central Texas, the majority membership of which was of Wendish descent. The university regards itself as the only university in the world founded largely by people of Wendish ancestry and continues to have strong percentages of Wends among its student body, faculty, and staff.
David Zersen
References and Further Reading
Malinkowa, Trudla. Ufer der Hoffnung: Sorbische Auswanderer nach Uebersee. Bautzen: Domowina Verlag, 1999.
Nielsen, George R. In Search of a Home: Nineteenth Century Wendish Immigration. College Station: Texas A & M University, 1989.
------. Johann Kilian. Serbin: Texas Wendish Heritage Society, 2003.
Schiemann, Maria, ed. The Sorbs in Germany. Goerlitz: MAXROI Graphics, 1998.
Stone, Gerald. The Smallest Slavonic Nation. London: Athlone, 1972.
Wukasch, Charles. The History of the Wends. Austin, TX: Concordia University, 2004.
Zersen, David. “An American Birthday Remembrance on Mato Kosyks 150th.” Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly 75, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 49-64.