mersiowsky - 8-27-2021 at 09:34 AM
Lětopis Abstract 2021 2: Robert Lorenz: Three-Country-Corner. On Upper Lusatia as an Interrelated Region Using the Example of the Upper
Lusatian Football Club of Neugersdorf.
This article uses the example of the Neugersdorf football club as part of a micro-ethnographic field study designed to investigate the state of
amateur football in Upper Lusatia after 1990. The game and the club are seen as the place to negotiate the consequences of the transformation process,
with which this border region and the industrial community of Neugersdorf, which has been a traditional part of it, finds itself confronted after
German reunification. Against this difficult background, those responsible in the club have succeeded in putting the club into the position of being
the most successful amateur football club in Upper Lusatia by occupying a place in the highest German amateur league for a number of seasons after
2010. Part of their successful strategy consisted in integrating experienced, well-trained footballers from neighboring Northern Bohemia into the
club. In the context of the field studies and four interviews within the club, the study pursues the question as to whether those involved in this
process of internationalization began to revise their view of their club, of the border region and of their German-Czech surroundings, and also
whether a new regional concept is starting to develop, which crosses frontiers. The findings of the investigation in this respect make clear that for
the people involved sober cost-benefit calculations represent the most important element in confronting the challenges of being situated in this
peripheral border area, and out-of-date perceptions of foreignness are only slowly being undermined by common everyday experiences. This observation
leads in the conclusion of the study to questioning in this discussion the dominant metaphor of (Upper) Lusatia as providing a bridge. In its place,
the concept of an interrelated region is considered more fruitful for a scientific analysis, and five theses are presented for further discussion
within Sorbian studies on this German-Slav area of contact.