Qualla: Sorbian Settlement Area

Sorbian Settlement Area: Introduction

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephan M. Höhne, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ask how many Sorbs live in eastern Saxony and southern Brandenburg and nobody can tell you. German law makes the answer a matter of personal declaration: identifying as Sorbian is free, and no authority may verify or record it. So the homeland of Germany's indigenous Slavic minority is measured not by headcount but by statute and by road signs. Drive east from Dresden or north from Cottbus and the place names start doubling on the boards at the edge of town, Bautzen with Budyšin, Cottbus with Chóśebuz, Kamenz with Kamjenc. You have crossed into the Sorbian settlement area, called Sorbenland in everyday German, and known to its own people by the languages spoken inside it: Upper Sorbian in the south, Lower Sorbian in the north, and in Brandenburg the older name Wends alongside Sorbs.

Read more: Sorbian Settlement Area on Qualla

Image: Stephan M. Höhne | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sorbian Settlement Area: Two Names on Every Sign

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J budissin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Saxony and Brandenburg each define the area by law, and they went about it very differently. Saxony fixed its boundary permanently, deliberately using statistics gathered in the 1880s so that the settlement area would be preserved in its historical dimensions rather than its shru...

Read more: Sorbian Settlement Area on Qualla

Image: J budissin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sorbian Settlement Area: How the Map Shrank

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miloš Harangozo (me), CC BY-SA 4.0. German kings began conquering this country in the tenth century. About a hundred years later the West Slavic speech of the people already living here started to become what we now call Sorbian, and from that point the written record goes almost silent. What survives is mostly evi...

Read more: Sorbian Settlement Area on Qualla

Image: Miloš Harangozo (me) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sorbian Settlement Area: What Muka Found on Foot

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit scanned by de:User:Wuměłca on request of Dundak, Public domain. The first serious attempt to draw the boundary came from Sorbs themselves. Jan Arnošt Smoler mapped the area in 1843, though his real interest was collecting folkloric tales. Four decades later Arnošt Muka did the harder work. He travelled from municipality to municipality asking...

Read more: Sorbian Settlement Area on Qualla

Image: scanned by de:User:Wuměłca on request of Dundak | Public domain

Sorbian Settlement Area: 1937

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1912 the Sorbs founded the Domowina, an umbrella organization for their societies, with its seat in Bautzen. Twenty-five years later the Nazi state banned it, along with the cultural society Maćica Serbska and the Sorbian press, pushed the language out of public life entirely,...

Read more: Sorbian Settlement Area on Qualla

Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sorbian Settlement Area: Where It Is Still Spoken Every Day

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Inside the official area sits a smaller one that matters more: the core settlement area, where Sorbian remains a daily language. It centres on the largely Catholic countryside of Upper Lusatia between Bautzen, Kamenz and Hoyerswerda. In Radibor and the five municipalities of the ...

Read more: Sorbian Settlement Area on Qualla

Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0