Bogumił Šwjela

Bust in Dissen, where Šwjela was pastor for 28 years

Krystijan Bogumił Šwjela (German Christian Gotthold Schwela , also: Schwele ; born September 5, 1873 in Schorbus near Drebkau ; † May 20, 1948 near Naumburg ) was a Protestant Sorbian clergyman in Niederlausitz . He also worked as a linguist and publicist, was chairman of Maśica Serbska and co-founder of the Sorbian umbrella organization Domowina . Šwjela campaigned for the preservation of the Sorbian language and culture in Lower Lusatia.

Life

Bogumił Šwjelas father was the Schorbuser Kantor Kito Šwjela (1836-1922). After Šwjela had completed his theology studies in Halle and Berlin in 1898, he looked for a job in Lower Lusatia for a long time. From 1904 he worked as an assistant chaplain at the Wendish Church in Cottbus, where he regularly preached in Lower Sorbian .

His ordination came at a time when the suppression of the Sorbian language and culture by the Prussian authorities was reaching its peak. Wendisch lessons at the Cottbus Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium were banned in 1888, and religious instruction in Sorbian was also abolished at the beginning of the 20th century. The older Sorbian intellectuals initially reacted paralyzed. Šwjela, who felt a part of the nationally conscious Young Sorbian movement that had been established since 1891, was intensely committed to the cultural interests of the Sorbs under these unfavorable conditions . This led to a conflict in the Cottbus parish, where the city pastor assimilated the Sorbs / Wends. Šwjela had to leave the city in 1908 because he refused to hold the sermons in German only. He then worked as a vicar in Nochten for a few years before he was given the parish office in Dissen in 1913 .

Šwjela was an author for the Lower Sorbian newspapers and magazines Pratyja, Bramborski Casnik and Woßadnik , of which he himself was the most important author. He founded the Serbska knigłownja (Sorbian Library) series, in which he mainly published poetry but also fiction, religious and popular science works by various authors. In 1906 and 1911 Šwjela published the two parts of his Lower Sorbian language teaching.

In his region, Šwjela succeeded in recruiting young Sorbs for national cultural work. He strengthened her self-confidence by maintaining and mediating contacts in the Sorbian core areas of Upper Lusatia and, after the First World War, also in Czechoslovakia .

In 1912, Šwjela was a co-founder of the Sorbian umbrella organization Domowina . He suggested the name for the association and was also elected deputy chairman. In the interwar period, Šwjela collected the Sorbian field names from the Cottbus area and worked on a Lower Sorbian dictionary. Both works could only be printed after his death. In 1930, Šwjela was able to organize the festival for the 50th anniversary of Maśica Serbska in Vetschau / Spreewald .

Family grave in the Cottbus North Cemetery

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the pressure on the small Slavic minority in Germany increased. The ban on Domowina in 1937 initiated the phase of open persecution. Since that year, publications in the Sorbian language have not been allowed to appear. While Sorbian services were no longer held in most of the Protestant parishes, Šwjela was not intimidated. During the National Socialist era, he arranged for the Sorbian sayings to be painted again on the galleries during the renovation of the Dissen church. Until 1941 he preached in Sorbian in Dissen and Sielow , although this was forbidden. Therefore he was forced to retire and banished from Niederlausitz to Rudolstadt . Even in his exile in Rudolstadt, Šwjela was committed to the Sorbian cause. Together with former companions, such as the publicist Mina Witkojc and the painter Fritz Lattke , he worked out important foundations for the revival of Lower Sorbian culture in the post-war period.

In 1946 he was involved in the re-establishment of the Lower Sorbian branch of Domowina and since 1947 he was editor of the Lower Sorbian Nowy Casnik . Before he found a new apartment in his home in Lower Lusatia and was able to continue his work there, Šwjela died of a stroke in 1948 on a train journey from Rudolstadt to Cottbus near Naumburg.

In Cottbus, Neu Schmellwitz district , a street was named after Gotthold Schwela.

Works

• Dutch language textbook. Part 1: grammar. Heidelberg 1906; Part 2: Exercise book. Cottbus 1911.
• Short textbook of the Upper Wendish language. Bautzen 1913
• Evangelska wera mjes Sslowjanami. Bautzen 1915.
• Comparative grammar of the Upper and Lower Sorbian language. Bautzen 1926
• The turning point in Lower Lusatia and the Spreewald. Bautzen 1929
• Serbske praeposicyje. Pó hugronach z ludowych hust hobźěłane a zestajane. In: Časopis Maćicy Serbskeje . 1933/34.
• German-Lower Sorbian pocket dictionary. Domowina-Verlag , Bautzen 1953.
• The field names of the Cottbus district. (= German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Publications of the Institute for Slavic Studies. Volume 17). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1958.

literature

• Což slězy nas lažy w serbstwje… / What lies behind us in Sorbian… Bogumił Šwjela / Gotthold Schwele (1873–1948) , ed. v. the Foundation for the Sorbian People and the Dissen Local History Museum, o. O. [Cottbus] 1998
• Peter Schurmann: On the history of the Sorbs (Wends) in Niederlausitz in the 20th century. A selection of documents. Cottbus 2003.

Web links

Commons : Bogumił Šwjela  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Bogumił Šwjela in the catalog of the German National Library
• Section about Gotthold Schwela in the Sorbian Chronicle of the Wendish Museum Cottbus ( Memento from February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
• Bogumił Šwjela and Kito Šwjela in the Sorbian Cultural Archives

Individual evidence

1. ↑ proven as a member of the Salia Halle and Germnania Berlin singers