Das Internationale Jahr der indigenen Sprachen in seiner Bedeutun g für Deutsche und Sorben
The International Year of Indigenous Languages and its Significance for Germans and Sorbs

Summary/Abstract: This year sees a worldwide appeal being made to give particular attention to the still existing languages of the original autochthonous inhabitants of territories. The Slavs settled in the uninhabited areas of the present-day German language region east of the rivers Elbe and Saale in the early Middle Ages. For about five centuries they shaped the cultural and economic image of the country. Even under German supremacy from the 10th to the 12th century the Slavs formed the majority of the population. Slavonic dialects of Old Polabian in the north and of Old Sorbian in the south formed the basis for interethnic communication as the indigenous Slavonic language of the time. Cohabitation with a German minority of ruling representatives was superseded by the increasing assimilation of the Slavs by a growing German majority following land development and the influx of new German settlers from the end of the 12th century. Centuries of mutual tolerance were followed by a long period of deprecation of Slav culture, the effects of which stretch into the present. It is therefore important for academic research to correct an obsolete image of the Slavs.

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