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After the Second World War the Sorbian national movement in Lower Lusatia was revived in Brandenburg much later than in Upper Lusatia which belonged to Saxony. Important reasons for this were the rigorous Germanization since 1871 and the persecution of Sorbian patriots during the Nazi period. From 1946 a number of young Sorbs tried, helped by the central organization of the Domowina in Bautzen, to create similar organizational structures for national activities in Lower Lusatia. Their detailed reports, which are kept in the Sorbian Cultural Archive, illustrate the difficult situation of the Lower Sorbs caught between the Soviet occupation authorities and the German administration and their policy. It was not until the passing of the Saxon Sorbian Law (March 1948) that cultural activities by the Domowina were officially permitted as well in the state of Brandenburg – especially in the Cottbus area.
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The author analyses the way in which Upper and Lower Sorbian lexical, semantic and morphological parallels are treated in the Etymological Dictionary of the White Russian Language (Minsk 1978 etc.). Since these connections are not presented logically in the above-mentioned dictionary, she regards it as a relevant and worthwhile task, to search both in the index of the etymological dictionary itself as well as to go beyond it and look systematically for possible Sorbian-White Russian linguistic correspondences. On the basis of the Sorbian material discovered she suggests new etymological interpretations for a number of White Russian lexemes.
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In Upper Sorbian, as in all other Slavonic languages, an increased tendency towards internationalization of its vocabulary since the second half of the 20th century can be discerned, especially since the 1990s. The author examines the internationalisms registered in the “Deutsch-Obersorbisches Wörterbuch neuer Lexik” (Bautzen 2006) under selected aspects, amongst other things from the point of view of the source languages and their adaptation in the area of word-formation. Internationalisms are for the most part taken as borrowings by Upper Sorbian after the orthography and morphology have been adapted. Some of them are combined with native affixes (e.g. -osć, -nik, -owc), so that sometimes doublets such as eutrofija – eutrofnosć, globalizacija – globalizowanje can be created. While native prefixes can combine perfectly well with foreign lexemes, the combination of foreign prefixes with native bases only happens exceptionally.
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The first basic schools in the Sorbian villages of Upper Lusatia were already established in the 15th and 16th centuries. The school system experienced a strong upturn in the 18th century as a result of the production of Sorbian schoolbooks and the foundation of an institute for the training of Sorbian teachers. The 1815 Congress of Vienna destroyed the internal unity of Upper Lusatia. The north-eastern part was ceded to Prussia; the bilingual areas around Bautzen and Kamenz remained with Saxony. After the foundation of the German Reich in 1871 in particular the Sorbian language was meant to be forced out of the school curriculum. This was above all rigorously enforced in Prussia. In the first part of the 20th century an intensification of German nationalist sentiment led to a sharp decline of the Sorbian language. During the National Socialist period the Sorbian language was banned completely from the classroom and numerous teachers were forced to leave their homeland. After 1945 Sorbian was able to be officially reintroduced as a school subject as part of the process of putting right earlier injustice. In the Catholic Sorbian area the whole of the school curriculum was delivered in Sorbian. In a reunified Germany support for the Sorbian language in the school curriculum was continued and in certain areas extended.
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In the context of a comparative international research project on loan words (“Loan Word Typology”) the stock of indigenous and borrowed equivalents was also established in Lower Sorbian using 1460 terms as a basis. The proportion of loan words established in the section of the Lower Sorbian vocabulary examined is calculated as 22.4 %. The largest part of this (18.7 % of the vocabulary) comes from German – a result which is not surprising given the longstanding linguistic contact between Lower Sorbian and German. The second most important donor is Upper Sorbian, from which words were increasingly adopted particularly from the middle of the 19th century, above all out of purist motives, i.e. with the aim of displacing German loan words. This piece provides, amongst other things, a survey of different historical contact situations and of the very different proportions of loan words in different semantic fields. It describes the distinctive features of the Lower Sorbian vocabulary which are a result of the competition between the two most important donor languages, German and Upper Sorbian.
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A particular feature of the Protestant community at the turn of the 18th century was its numerous crossborder contacts. This intensive exchange of ideas reflected the splits between the large Christian faiths and at the same time the emergence of new religious movements. Both parts of Lusatia were affected fundamentally by these intellectual developments. The author illustrates international religious policy between Great Britain and Brandenburg-Prussia and gives a detailed account of the Sorbian example. The interest in Lusatia in the early modern period was linked on the one hand to the specific ethnic preconditions, and on the other hand to the religious and cultural situation. This area provided a bridge in central Europe, in which questions of language, religion and ethnic identity aroused particular attention around 1700.
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Orthodoxy and Islam share a companionable existence in Russia. But challenges loom for both faiths.
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Saakashvili’s crackdown is not as astonishing as some of Georgia’s friends believe, but is no less disquieting.
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The article analyses the pre-ultimate volume of poetry by Andrzej Sosnowski. In her analysis of Sosnowski's works the author employs the categories of polyphony, materiality and performativity. Sosnowski's poetry is read as a kind of performance or carnival show whose interpretative context is the poet's own "performeresque” practice.
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The article aims to analyse assorted texts by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz in the context of postcolonial theory. The author analyses the language used by Witkacy to talk about Oriental Others in the letters written during his trip and immediately following its conclusion and in reportage. It also shows how the author, on the one hand, challenges the usurpations of Orientalistic discourse and, on the other, willingly repeats colonial gestures, yet engages in the latter only when these gestures have no real consequences.
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