“Naš puć” (Our Way)
A Youth Magazine and its Sorbian Editors in the Czech Border Region 1947-1949
In the fall of 1947, a group of Sorbian school students in Varnsdorf in the Czech Republic launched a bold initiative to voice their political views. They began publishing a magazine, which became an appeal to young Sorbs – to join forces and help build a new society.
Introduction
In November 1947, the moment finally arrived. A group of young editors presented the first issue of the magazine they had been working on for weeks, which they called Naš puć. Wěstnik serbskeje młodźiny we Warnoćicach (Our Way. A newsletter of the Sorbian youth in Varnsdorf). The target group was young people of
Sorbian
who had come to the Czech town of after 1945 to start work or take up vocational training. The aspiration that unified and spurred the initially all-male editorial team in launching the magazine was underlined in the title: Naš puć was to be a guide that showed young Sorbians the path to their future. And from the very outset, the editors made it clear what kind of future they envisioned.
Sorb
also:
The Sorbs are one of the four recognized national minorities in Germany and live in Upper and Lower Lusatia in present-day Saxony and Brandenburg. Historically, they were usually referred to as “Wends” in German, and today are officially known as “Sorbs” or “Wends” in Lower Lusatia. The Sorbs have a rich cultural tradition and their own language, which is one of the West Slavic languages. The language is divided into Upper Sorbian, which is mainly spoken in Upper Lusatia, and Lower Sorbian, which is spoken in Lower Lusatia. Language and culture are actively promoted, particularly by schools, cultural institutions and organizations such as Domowina, the Lusatian Sorbian association.
origin from Sorbs
Lusatia
pol. Łużyce, lat. Lusatia, lat. Lusania, ces. Lužice
Lusatia is a historical landscape that goes back to the margraviate of Lower Lusatia and Upper Lusatia. It stretches between the Spreewald Forest in the north and the Lusatian Mountains in the south. The majority of Lusatia is located in the German federal states of Brandenburg and Saxony, with parts of Lower and Upper Lusatia also located in Poland.
During the first half of the 20th century, parts of the indigenous Slavic population (the Sorbs) aspired to autonomy, varying between a free state within the German Reich and annexation as a separate part of Czechoslovakia. Today, the Sorbian population lives in the German part of Lusatia only, where they have linguistic autonomy.
Varnsdorf
deu. Warnsdorf, . Warnoćicy
Varnsdorf (population 2023: 14,716) is a small city in the north of the Czech Republic, directly on the German border. The place was first mentioned in 1352. The weaving industry that developed here from the 18th century onwards brought Varnsdorf a certain prosperity and also led to the establishment of related industries in the second half of the 19th century. Shortly after merging with several villages in the surrounding area in 1849, the new commune was granted town status in 1868. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, the town was part of Czechoslovakia. In 1938, it was annexed by Germany along with the entire Sudetenland. After the Second World War in 1945, the majority German population was expelled from Varnsdorf, which was now once again part of Czechoslovakia. From 1946 to 1949, the Sorbian population remained in the town, but was resettled back to Lusatia.
The editors
The editorial team had set up camp in the “Luttna“, a building on Štefánikova Street in Varnsdorf, which had only recently been converted into a boarding school for Sorbian youth. The editors – four men aged between 17 and 19 – were residents there. They published a total of ten issues from these premises. A new team formed in May 1948 and a further five issues were published by the end of the school year. After the summer break, a group of eight editors took over, including three young women, who took on the roles of secretary and technical editor. In total, around twenty young people worked on the publication of the magazine. The two illustrators, who created a page of caricatures and comics for each issue, formed a permanent team. All participants were members of the Sorbian community in Varnsdorf, which at the time comprised several hundred people – most of whom were young and living temporarily in the northern Bohemian town. Just like the group who published the magazine, they had come here to earn money or attend school.
A distinguishing feature of all the editorial teams was that a surprising number of the members came from , a small village near Bautzen. The young men who made up the first editorial team were all from there, apart from the editor-in-chief. The reason for this high representation of people from Briesing was probably the fact that they had grown up with a strong role model for political engagement: Arnošt Bart (1870-1956), a go-getting politician, former member of the Saxon state parliament and founder of Domowina, the umbrella organization of Sorbian associations. Because of his commitment to Sorbian autonomy, including at the
Paris Peace Conference
Briesing
deu. Briesink, deu. Bresinke, deu. Brysincka, deu. Brising, deu. Bresinka, deu. Breßen magnum, deu. Bresin
Brězynka (Upper Sorbian) – Briesing (German) is a village (population 2022: 111) in the Saxon district of Bautzen in eastern Germany; it has been part of the municipality of Malschwitz since 1994. It is located in Upper Lusatia, in the Sorbian settlement area.
Paris Peace Conference
also:
In the Paris Peace Conference, which took place from January 18, 1919 to January 21, 1920, the victorious powers of World War I worked out the peace treaties with the defeated Central Powers (German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Ottoman Empire). However, the latter were excluded from the direct treaty negotiations, in which the so-called “Council of Four” with Great Britain, France, Italy and the USA took a leading role as the most important allied states. The Paris Peace Conference resulted in a series of peace treaties (Treaties of Paris), including the Treaty of Versailles, which had already been signed with the German Reich on June 28, 1919.
in 1919, Bart was monitored and persecuted during the Weimar Republic and under National Socialism. By the time the magazine appeared, he had reached an advanced age, but he was sympathetic to its cause. In an article printed in the issue of 15 March 1948, he emphasized the importance of the magazine's vision, urging its readers to recognize the signs of the times and to join in on the mission to construct a new society.Council of Four, Peace Conference
The editorial team also found other sources of goodwill and support, for example the Czech associations that financed Sorbian schools and boarding schools. A number of fellow Sorbian residents of Varnsdorf also helped with the production of the magazine, including employees of a printing company, who provided matrices and paper and printed the cover pages. A local teacher proofread the texts written in Sorbian, which were then typed up by students at the commercial school. The national committee of Varnsdorf, which now had a strong communist leaning, provided an office space. Here, the young magazine makers used a
hectograph
Hectograph
also:
A hectograph is an early device for duplicating written documents. The content to be copied or the document to be duplicated was transferred to other sheets using a soft-coated template (matrix) coated with an ink that rubbed off. Hectographs were relatively inexpensive and easy to use. They were mainly used to create leaflets, school newspapers or other forms of grey literature.
to produce over 200 copies of each issue, which they then bound on site.Jellygraph, Gelantin duplicator
The program
According to a statement by the editors in the first issue, the task of Naš puć was to guide all the young Sorbian residents of Varnsdorf to the ‘right‘ path. Because, they wrote, “the majority of our young people do not yet know the right path. They don't know which path to take, even thoughit's so clear!“1 According to the magazine, this “right path“ was that of “progressive Slavism, i.e., the path of democracy, socialism and peace“2. Intended as a companion and guide, the magazine’s aim was to ensure that the young Sorbian students and workers in Varnsdorf walked this path together. From the very beginning, the editors urged their readers to become members of the local Sorbian communist youth organization. They promised to use the magazine as a platform to inform, educate and entertain young people on the subject of current social and political developments.
Political content was a common thread in all issues of the magazine. Reports, features and educational articles revolved around the topics of youth, work and progress, while issues that affected young people personally in their everyday lives were rarely included. The editorial team provided detailed information on communist positions in particular. In this way, readers learned how important the “group“ was as an organizational unit for the social order to be established and how “self-criticism“ worked – a communication method developed in the early . Numerous front pages were reserved for tributes honoring communist leaders or politically relevant anniversaries. Only occasionally was propagandistic content interrupted by lighter material – short reports on soccer matches in Varnsdorf, caricatures depicting everyday school life in the border region, or brief, funny anecdotes about love affairs or drunken antics.
Soviet Union
deu. Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken, deu. Sowjetunion, rus. Sovetskiy Soyuz, rus. Советский Союз, . Совет Ушем, . Советонь Соткс, rus. Sovetskij Soûz, . Советий Союз, yid. ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, yid. סאוועטן פארבאנד, yid. sovətn farband, yid. sovʿtn-farband, yid. sovətn-farband, . Советтер Союзу, . Совет Союзы, . Советон Цæдис, . Совет Эвилели
The Soviet Union (SU or USSR) was a state in Eastern Europe, Central and Northern Asia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It emerged from the so-called Soviet Russia, the successor state of the Russian Empire. The Russian Soviet Republic formed the core of the union and at the same time its largest part, with further constituent republics added. Their number varied over time and was related to the occupation of other countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Soviet republics that existed only for a short time (Karelo-Finlandia) or the division or merger of Soviet republics. In addition, there were numerous autonomous republics or other territorial units with an autonomy status that was essentially limited to linguistic autonomy for minorities.
Before its formal dissolution, the USSR consisted of 15 Soviet republics with a population of approximately 290 million people. At around 22.4 million km², it was the largest territorial state in the world at the time. The Soviet Union was a socialist soviet republic with a one-party system and an absence of separation of powers.
The pro-communist orientation of the magazine and the young editors' commitment to communism appears to have not always met with approval. This is indicated by several articles. For example, in one, the editors reacted to an accusation that communism was incompatible with religion – a topic that must have been important for the strongly religious Sorbians, the magazine's target group. An article on this topic appeared in March 1948. The author denied that communism was suppressing the church and religion and argued that this idea had been spread by Western propaganda in order to divide the world into two camps. His source was Cyril Garbett (1875-1955), not a communist figurehead, but Archbishop of York.3
Whether the article was successful in dispelling doubts about the compatibility of religion and communism remains questionable. But the more obvious goal of the magazine – the politicization of young people – seems to have met with less resistance. It served as a forum for young people to address their peers, albeit almost exclusively in a politically propagandistic tone. In other words, the messages mostly came in the form of appeals, as the following example shows: “Young people, brothers and sisters, we are the future of the Sorbs! The next generations should not complain that we were asleep, that we missed everything!“4 In addition to emphatic but generalized sentiments like this, other appeals could be very specific. For example, one Sorbian youth functionary lamented the lack of activity of the youth organization and appealed “to the sense of honor and national conscience of each and every one of us to spend at least 14 days during the vacation in the service of the national organization Domowina – in the service of the Sorbian people – at whose expense we are all able to study year round free of charge and without worries“5.
Whether the article was successful in dispelling doubts about the compatibility of religion and communism remains questionable. But the more obvious goal of the magazine – the politicization of young people – seems to have met with less resistance. It served as a forum for young people to address their peers, albeit almost exclusively in a politically propagandistic tone. In other words, the messages mostly came in the form of appeals, as the following example shows: “Young people, brothers and sisters, we are the future of the Sorbs! The next generations should not complain that we were asleep, that we missed everything!“4 In addition to emphatic but generalized sentiments like this, other appeals could be very specific. For example, one Sorbian youth functionary lamented the lack of activity of the youth organization and appealed “to the sense of honor and national conscience of each and every one of us to spend at least 14 days during the vacation in the service of the national organization Domowina – in the service of the Sorbian people – at whose expense we are all able to study year round free of charge and without worries“5.
This kind of political appropriation of young people, combined with an appeal to their responsibility for the future, was nothing new for the Sorbian youth. It was a common feature of communist politics. The image of young people as the guarantors of the future was also an established part of the conservative Sorbian sense of national identity. The editors of Naš puć were able to link the communist-influenced image to the existing conservative idea without any problems. They saw themselves as trailblazers, as pioneers who, despite all adversity, retained their courage and orientation in order to pave the way for others. And omnipresent on the pages of their magazine was the idea that young people were a fresh source of strength from which a new society would emerge.
Why politics?
It was no coincidence that politics dominated the pages of Naš puć rather than more youth-specific topics. The magazine was founded as an attempt to actively deal with the situation in which the Sorbian youth in Varnsdorf found themselves. Their adopted home in northern Bohemia, their work and educational opportunities there, which they owed to the benevolence of Slavophile policies and which they saw as a blessing, seemed to be in danger.
The background to this was a conflict that was smoldering at this time between the supporters and opponents of Sorbian autonomy. What had led to this? With the increasing consolidation of the Soviet occupying power in the eastern part of Germany, the benefits that had been granted to the Sorbian population immediately after the end of the war in 1945 were crumbling. The Sorbian associations came under pressure to subordinate their affairs to Soviet occupation policy. This meant, above all, giving up the political struggle for the autonomy of the Sorbian settlement area, which the functionaries of the Sorbian and pro-Sorbian Czech associations in Bautzen and Prague had waged together in 1945, and instead relying on the prospect of minority protection in the future GDR. But while the Domowina, the representative body of the Sorbs in Lusatia, in particular, renounced its demand for autonomy, others insisted on bringing the question of Sorbian autonomy to the forthcoming peace conference. The former Sorbian-Czech coalition, which had formed in Prague and Bautzen in May 1945 to promote the national emancipation of the Sorbs, collapsed.
In this conflict, the young Sorbians of Varnsdorf found themselves in danger of being caught between the fronts. Their education in was being financed by the supporters of Sorbian autonomy. Permission to attend school in Czechoslovakia lay in the hands of the Domowina. All sides courted the loyalty of the Sorbian youth. In addition, the Communist Party (KPČ) was also paving the way for a faction loyal to the Soviet Union to gain absolute power in Czechoslovakia. The Czech associations, which promoted the Sorbs as the “smallest Slavic brother” in the fight for national emancipation, were a thorn in its side. The Party discredited the traditional bourgeois associations as “reactionary”, while presenting itself as a “progressive” force. These escalating power struggles created enormous pressure, which was keenly felt by the young Sorbs in Varnsdorf. In this politically tense situation, the editors chose to take a bold step forward by publishing the magazine, adding their voice to the communists’ battle song.
Czechoslovakia
ces. Československo, rus. Чехо-Словакия, . Čehoslovakìâ, deu. Tschechoslowakei, rus. Чехословакия, ces. Česko-Slovensko, slk. Česko-Slovensko, . Česʹkoslovenʹsko, eng. Czecho-Slovakia, deu. Tschecho-Slowakei, slk. Československo, . Чехословакія, . Чеськословеньско, yid. טשעכאָסלאָוואקיע, yid. טשעכאָסלאָוואקײַ, pol. Czecho-Słowacja, pol. Czechosłowacja, rus. Čechoslovakija, rus. Čecho-Slovakija, deu. Čeho-Slovakiâ, deu. Čehoslovakiâ, ukr. Tschechoslowatschtschina, ukr. Čechoslovaččyna, ukr. Čeho-Slovaččina, ukr. Čehoslovaččina, ukr. Чехо-Словаччина, ukr. Чехословаччина, . Čechoslovakija
Czechoslovakia was a state existing between 1918 and 1992 with changing borders, names, and political systems. Its former territories are now part of the modern-day states of Czechia, Slovakia, and Ukraine (Carpathian Ukraine, occupied by Hungary in 1939 and transferred to the Soviet Union in 1945). After 1945, Czechoslovakia came under increasing political influence from the Soviet Union. After the communist party seized power in 1948, the country finally became part of the so-called Eastern Bloc, a satellite state of the Soviet Union, and a member of the Warsaw Pact from 1955. Between 1960 and 1990, the communist country was officially known as the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (abbreviated to ČSSR). The democratic political change was initiated in 1989 with the Velvet Revolution and culminated in 1992 with the founding of the independent Czech and Slovak Republics.
Resonance
With print runs of around 200 copies, the magazine reached a broader readership. The political, i.e. pro-communist content of the magazine was certainly provocative, and reactions ranged from praise for the editors to attempts at sabotage, which they duly reported on. But the special appeal of the magazine lay elsewhere. The Sorbian-speaking readers appreciated the magazine for linguistic reasons: firstly, it featured articles written in the Sorbian language and, secondly, in every issue the young editors conveyed the hope that the language also had a future. To understand the significance of this, it is important to know that Sorbian-language media and the use of the Sorbian language in public life were banned under National Socialism. Naš puć was one of the first Sorbian media productions to appear after the forced break of more than six years.
When the Sorbian school system in Varnsdorf came to an end, the magazine was discontinued. The last issue was published in April 1949. Years later, those involved would still remember the Naš puć adventure. In 1965, they published a commemorative edition – this time in Bautzen in Upper Lusatia. The interest shown by the GDR's State Security in the circumstances and background of the magazine years later shows just how effective the hectograph-produced youth magazine was. Today, the magazine is an important historical source. It provides a valuable insight into the lives of young people in the post-war period and shows both what they were capable of achieving and where the limits of their actions were.
English translation: William Connor
