Šěn, Franc: Měsacne Pismo k rozwučenju a k wokřewjenju – The First Printed Sorbian Journal
Lětopis Abstract 2010 2: Šěn, Franc: Měsacne Pismo k rozwučenju a k wokřewjenju – The First Printed Sorbian Journal
The subject of this article is the only number of the Sorbian “Monthly Journal for Instruction and Leisure” to appear in Bautzen in August 1790. The
appearance of the journal is considered against the background of the development of the Lusatian press and the conditions relating to the provision
of Sorbian religious literature. The Leipzig publisher, Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf, played a large part in this, when he extended his business
to Bautzen and Görlitz at the end of 1788. His plan to publish an annual Sorbian Calendar led to friction with the Bautzen printer, Monse. Two
probationary students of theology, Karl Gottlob Schirach and Johann August Janke, exploited the situation to bring out a secular journal in Sorbian
for the rural population. The preface setting out its program and the individual articles are presented here: a sample from a religious textbook, the
translation of a moral tale, a natural history essay and a serialized story against believing in ghosts. The ban on the journal was linked with the
outbreak of the peasant revolt in the Electorate of Saxony and the resulting stricter censorship regulations. Further documentation is provided by a
copy of the text of the journal, reproduced for the first time.
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