The Wendish Research Exchange - Lorenz, Robert: Three-Country-Corner. On Upper Lusatia as an Interrelated Region Using the Example of the Upper Lusatian...

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the most important element in confronting the challenges of being situated in this peripheral border area, and out-of-date perceptions of foreignness are only slowly being undermined by common everyday experiences.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.