Reciprocity in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Set in motion by developments in the late Age of Enlightenment, as also held true for other Slavic peoples, beginning in the last third of the eighteenth century a process of the dawning of national consciousness - described in the literature as the "national renaissance" - began to evolve amongst the Lusatian Sorbs, a Slavic minority in eastern Germany whose members numbered approx. 250,000 at the onset of the nineteenth century. From its emergence up until it reached its interim summit in the mid-nineteenth century, this process passed through various stages. The first stage, which lasted roughly until the second decade of the nineteenth century and was strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, was dominated by general efforts to impart a wide range of knowledge to the Sorbian people on the basis of their native language. During this period, the Sorbian national development received strong impulses and support in particular on the part of the Germans. The second phase of the national renaissance then began in the second decade of the nineteenth century under the increased influence of Romanticism. Academic interests and cultural objectives were now consciously placed in the service of the Sorbian people. The establishment and cultivation of contact with Slavic scholars, who visited the Sorbs and provided them with stimuli for their cultural work, was intensified. The onset of the forties marked the beginning of a new, decisive phase in the Sorbian renaissance movement. A national movement emerged which was oriented towards the preservation of the Sorbian language and the development of Sorbian culture. Leading representatives of the Sorbian educated classes had correctly understood that under the political and demographic circumstances that had emerged - the dividing up of the Sorbian settlement area after 1815, when 80% of the Sorbian population was allotted to Prussia and a mere 20% remained in Saxony; the modification of late-feudal traditions of Germanization; the incomplete social structure due to the lack of a Sorbian urban bourgeoisie - the longed-for and strived-after creation of a bourgeois Sorbian nation was not possible. They logically concentrated their efforts on achieving the granting of national equal rights within the German territorial states and on further developing Sorbian culture. Although they attached crucial importance to