Pollack, Friedrich: “With All the Particular Features of the Nation of the Wends”- On the Construction of Ethnic Otherness in Early Modern Scientific
Lětopis Abstract 2012 1: Pollack, Friedrich: “With All the Particular Features of the Nation of the Wends”- On the Construction of Ethnic
Otherness in Early Modern Scientific
Until late in the 17th Century it appears that hardly any special attention was given to the Sorbs as a separate ethnic community by their
contemporaries. This only started to change when in the third part of the 17th Century early modern scientific studies of the Sorbs started to
develop, in the first instance carried out largely by Sorbian priests such as Michael Frentzel. They were the first ones to concern themselves with
the creation of consistent forms of the literary languages, based on intensive linguistic research. They were driven by the need to provide Sorbian
parishes at last with the most important religious, liturgical and devotional writings, around 150 years after the Reformation. The result of the
ensuing upturn in the Sorbian religious book market was that large areas of the educated world now became aware of the Sorbs. From the beginning of
the 18th Century representatives of regional historical research, for example Christian Knauth from Görlitz, began to recognize the independent status
of Sorbian history and presented their investigations in what were sometimes very comprehensive monographs. Linked to this there immediately developed
a strong interest in the customs and traditions of the Sorbs of the time, which led to the first ethnographic studies, not least as well to the
earliest illustrated accounts of Sorbian culture.
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