Documentary: No Requiem for the Sorbs

Grit Lemke, you made a documentary about Sorbian identity, “Here’s called Hanka.” In it, the writer Jurij Koch says: It is a miracle that we have survived for 1,600 years. Was that a surprising thought for you?

That was a basic motif when I started the film. I had something like a requiem in my head, almost a film about dying. In Lower Lusatia, unlike in Upper Lusatia, there are no longer many native speakers. The last generation for whom Sorbian was an everyday language is dying out. They speak a village Sorbian – sometimes also called consumer Sorbian – which you don’t learn at school. A mixture of German and Lower Sorbian. We shot a lot with these old people to say: Look at this, it’s going to be gone soon. But that didn’t make it into the film.

The film is not a requiem at all; it also has something cheerful and optimistic about it.

Because a lot of new things happened while I was working on it. That young people, like the artist Hella, deal with this heritage, with the language and acquire it in their own way. A young Sorbian subculture is emerging and that changed the direction of the film. At some point I knew: This won’t be a requiem at all, but rather something that continues.

The film begins with a long tracking shot across a green field until the huge cooling towers of a power plant appear in the background. This sets a tone: the endangered homeland in the brown coal region, the conflict between nature and jobs. This was and is also happening in other regions, but in Lusatia it has a different dimension, because it is about the existence of a people.

My concern is with the question of what is in danger of disappearing. There were also upheavals because of mining in North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland, but no one there lost their native language or their culture. It was about the village, about the farm, but not about the entire homeland. For the Sorbs, this village environment is home. When the village is gone, the village community is gone, and then the language is lost after the resettlement.

The Sorbs have been hit by history in many ways: by the oppression and bans during the Nazi era, by the loss of cultural landscapes because of lignite, by the emigration of many young people after the fall of the Wall in 1989/90.

The Sorbs have been oppressed for at least 1,000 years. After the Germans arrived in Lusatia, it took less than 100 years until the Wendish language was banned for the first time. This didn’t just start with National Socialism. The church also played a role. Luther hated the Sorbs and once described them as the worst of all nations. The Sorbs were really oppressed in Prussia, but not in Saxony. Which perhaps had something to do with the fact that the Saxon king was also king of Poland. The Prussians never tolerated the Sorbian language; it was a severe form of Germanization. Even in the early days of the GDR, in the 1950s, the Protestant Church expelled Sorbian pastors from Lusatia and relocated them elsewhere.

The film is primarily about Hanka, whose real name is Anna, a young woman who studies law, marries a Sorbian and learns his language. Is this a typical story or rather the exception, the special thing that you want to show?

There is a certain renaissance. Hanka comes to this Sorbian family, lives there, and learns the language there. How else is this supposed to work? That’s why she doesn’t speak school Sorbian, but the local dialect. It is an example of something growing back. I also talk about young Sorbs who are concerned with anti-fascism and feminism. There is Sorbian queerness, of course. Young Sorbs make music, films and art and thus approach their identity. My protagonists are part of it.

Hanka’s wedding runs through the entire film. On the one hand it’s a crazy party, but on the other hand it’s filled with great dignity. How much of it do you find in everyday life?

This wedding is also a political statement, with this commitment to Sorbian. In addition, Lower Sorbian and Upper Sorbian celebrated together. This is quite unusual because, despite all the similarities, they are two different cultures with different languages. One is very Protestant, the other is primarily Catholic. This commonality is perhaps part of a new self-confidence. As far as everyday life is concerned, this is more common in Upper Lusatia than in Lower Lusatia. At first glance you might think that a lot of things are dying. But if you look closer, then there is something there, there is also a future.

The people in your film reveal a lot of personal things. How do you do this at a time when anyone who goes out in public has to expect attacks and insults?

I think the crux of the matter is that the film is not told from a German perspective, but from a Sorbian one. I have been part of this community for many years. I already knew everyone who appears in the film, for example through professional and voluntary work. That’s where trust emerged. Also trust that it will not be the usual outside view of Sorbs.

You mean: no exotic look at folklore?

Yes, because that is always a colonial view of a so-called minority, some of which now see themselves as an indigenous people. What is also important: We spoke to the people the way I normally communicate with them, partly Sorbian, partly German. This creates a different conversation than the one you would only have to have with a German team in German.

You learned Sorbian as an adult. How has that changed your view of home?

That changed my whole life. I realize that there are a lot of things I didn’t know that have to do with me. I understand better the colonialism that the Sorbs were subjected to for a long time. The relationship to a culture changes when you understand and speak the language. You completely change your perspective. And then you notice how present the language is, in family names, place names, geographical names. I now think that if Lusatia is to be a bilingual region, everyone there would have to learn Sorbian and German.

What does home mean to you? The term is politically controversial.

It’s been hijacked by the right-wingers, but it doesn’t belong to them. For me it is a vessel into which I put something. It has concerned me in my work for a very long time, as something vulnerable, fragile, threatened. Since my childhood I have experienced how my homeland is being destroyed. Villages are being demolished, the land is gone. Home should actually provide protection, but I feel like I have to protect my home.

In parts of the left, the concept of homeland is rejected as conservative or reactionary.

That’s stupid. Because that’s playing into the right’s pocket. Home is an anthropological constant; every person needs it. You can’t seriously tell people who come from Syria or Ukraine, whose homeland was destroyed in the war, that home is a fascist concept. This is cynical and ultimately spoken from a colonial position.

In the film there is a short sequence of a right-wing march in Cottbus, with a large banner saying “Our People First.” How do the Sorbs observe the right-wing trend, the strengthening of the AfD, and its threatened electoral successes in Saxony and Brandenburg?

The mood in Lusatia is anti-Sorbian and it is no wonder that there is so much xenophobia there. The case of the two young Brandenburg teachers who opposed right-wing activities at their school and ultimately had to leave the region took place in Burg, in the Spreewald. Sorbian young people are beaten up, not until Easter again, Sorbian Catholic crosses are sawed off, Sorbian street signs are covered with Nazi symbols. Always only the Sorbian lines, never the German ones. I try to show the connection between social uprooting and a rejection of everything foreign. Even the stranger in oneself. And that exists, because those Lusatians who see themselves as German also have a Slavic heritage. You just have to listen to the dialect and look at the family names. Anyone who rejects all of this is engaging in self-denial, which turns into self-hatred and perhaps also hatred of others.

What was the most surprising realization for you while working on this film?

There were surprising findings about the Germans. From the very first second, this film was a battle. I haven’t seen anything so extreme in other projects, this narrow-mindedness and ignorance. You can get angry then. Ignac, Hanka’s husband, also has this anger within him, and I can understand him well now.

After your film about the songwriter Gerhard Gundermann and the book “Children of Hoy,” “Here’s called Hanka” is another preoccupation with Lusatia. Why is this region such a rich source of new stories?

Because it contains all the major conflicts of our time. You can observe them there like in a magnifying glass. The ecological catastrophe, the contradiction between the hunger for energy and the destruction of a magnificent nature, we have had this in Lusatia for 100 years. Then there is the ethnic question, i.e. German colonialism against an indigenous people with a long tradition. The great utopias of the 20th century and their failure, the turnaround with all its new upheavals. You can find all of this in a manageable framework in Lusatia.