Pech, Edmund and Peter Kunze: The Development of the Sorbian School System in Upper Lusatia from its Beginnings to the Present Day
Letopis Abstract 2009 1: Pech, Edmund and Peter Kunze: The Development of the Sorbian School System in Upper Lusatia from its Beginnings to the
Present Day
The first basic schools in the Sorbian villages of Upper Lusatia were already established in the 15th and 16th centuries. The school system
experienced a strong upturn in the 18th century as a result of the production of Sorbian schoolbooks and the foundation of an institute for the
training of Sorbian teachers. The 1815 Congress of Vienna destroyed the internal unity of Upper Lusatia. The north-eastern part was ceded to Prussia;
the bilingual areas around Bautzen and Kamenz remained with Saxony. After the foundation of the German Reich in 1871 in particular the Sorbian
language was meant to be forced out of the school curriculum. This was above all rigorously enforced in Prussia. In the first part of the 20th century
an intensification of German nationalist sentiment led to a sharp decline of the Sorbian language. During the National Socialist period the Sorbian
language was banned completely from the classroom and numerous teachers were forced to leave their homeland. After 1945 Sorbian was able to be
officially reintroduced as a school subject as part of the process of putting right earlier injustice. In the Catholic Sorbian area, the whole of the
school curriculum was delivered in Sorbian. In a reunified Germany support for the Sorbian language in the school curriculum was continued and in
certain areas extended.
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