4/11/2009

Easter Egg-Traditions of the Sorbs





A post in the Blog of a friend (in German), reminded me, that I should not forget to write about the easter traditions of the Sorbs.
The Sorbs are maybe the only real ethnic minority in Germany. There are others, too.. like for example Danish people in the north, but they all have a neighboring home country and also the support of these countries.
The Sorbs are a Slavic tribe, which came many year-hundreds before and settled along the rivers of Spree and Oder and these settlement areas are their country, which is called Lusatia.
According to the places they were living in, they were called Upper and Lower Sorbs ... . Nowadays, Lusatia is part of the German 'Länder' Brandenburg and Saxony. In East German times there was done a lot to preserve the cultural identity and languages of the Sorbs, since the Wall broke down in 1989, it became more difficult for them to keep their language alive, as many things are endangered by less financial support for schools, translation of signs and other cultural programs. However, their ways of how to decorate eggs, became part of german Easter traditions as well and every year thousands of excited school children (and grown up people, too ;) work in the different techniques with wax, needle and color to decorate the eggs in the most colorful ways...




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