2004 TRIP TO THE LAUSITZ 2004

Home of the Sorbs/Wends

          Following the Dance Festival in Berlin, a group of our delegation traveled to Cottbus on the invitation of Sabine Sieg, who, with her husband, had taught our workshop at the Museum of Sorbish Cultrue in Giddings, Texas.

          We traveled through the Spree Forest on long boats being poled through the narrow waterways, attended a Sorbish concert and various lectures on Sorbish culture, joined a folk dance group at their dance meeting, and visited some of the Sorbish villages being eradicated to make way for open-air brown coal mining operations.  It was devastating to see thriving villages, their gardens full of vegetables, the trees laden down with fruit, the cemeteries dug up, sturdy houses in excellent repair being torn down, and a society destroyed.

          Being a small minority in Germany, this ethnic group depends upon a coherent village structure to preserve their language and way of life.

Information and Photographs Courtesy Karin Gottier