Hermsdorf / Spree

Hermsdorf / Spree Hermanecy Lohsa municipality Coordinates: 51 ° 19 ′ 32 "  N , 14 ° 24 ′ 38"  E
Height :	133 m above sea level NN
Residents :	184  (December 31, 2016)
Incorporation :	January 1, 1994
Postal code :	02999
Area code :	035724

Hermsdorf / Spree , Upper Sorbian Hermanecy ^{? / i} , is a village in the south of the municipality of Lohsa . The Kleine Spree , a branch of the Spree, flows through the village . Hermsdorf is part of the official Sorbian settlement area in Upper Lusatia .

geography

The Kleine Spree near Hermsdorf

Hermsdorf is surrounded by large contiguous forests, including the Driewitz-Milkeler Heiden in the east . There are several larger and smaller ponds around the place, almost all of which are used for fish farming. The next town is Weißig about a kilometer to the west, Lippitsch in the southeast and Oppitz in the south. The Lohsa Community Center is nine kilometers away. The county road 9220 runs through the village.

The Kleine Spree originally represented the main course of the river, before it was routed via Uhyst, presumably for economic reasons. Therefore, the suffix for Hermsdorf is simply on the Spree .

history

The statue of Diana , a landmark of Hermsdorf

The place was first mentioned in 1419 as Hermanßdorff . The exact age of the place is unknown; in neighboring Lippitsch and Lohsa, however, there is evidence of settlement in the region in the Bronze Age . An atonement cross has been preserved from the Middle Ages . A manor is occupied for 1426 and a manor from 1529, which is mentioned in 1777 as the Hermsdorf manor.

In 1813, in the course of the wars of liberation, there was a battle with Napoleon on Eichberg not far from the town. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the new Saxon-Prussian border ran about 800 meters east of the town. Thus the place was on Prussian territory. Numerous boundary stones from this time have been preserved. Even after the dissolution of the state of Prussia, the numerous district and county boundaries were based on this course.

The place was not spared from the Second World War . The memorial plaques for the fallen residents on the church, as well as the numerous positions in the surrounding forests, remind of this. After the Second World War, many refugees from the former eastern regions of the empire came to Hermsdorf and thus decisively changed the population structure of the Sorbian town. Today, Sorbian is hardly spoken in everyday life. In 1979 the Hermsdorf Castle - at that time in great danger of collapsing - was blown up. Only the surviving statue of Diana , the goddess of the hunt , a copy of the "Diana of Versailles" in the Louvre in Paris , still reminds of this.

With the merger of Litschen, Steinitz, Weißkollm , Lohsa and Hermsdorf / Spree, the new municipality of Lohsa was formed on January 1, 1994.

Population and language

The Hermsdorf cemetery chapel

year	Residents
1825¹	195
1871	284
1885	280
1905	201
1925	248
1939	331
1946	296
1950	517
1964	410
1990	317
2007	216
2009	206

For his statistics on the Sorbian population in Upper Lusatia, Arnošt Muka determined a population of 280 inhabitants in the 1880s; including 279 Sorbs and one German. Since then, the number of Sorbian speakers in Hermsdorf, as everywhere in the Protestant part of the settlement area, has fallen sharply. One reason for this was the large influx of German-speaking refugees after 1945, who made up more than a third of the population. According to Ernst Tschernik , the proportion of the Sorbian-speaking population in the municipality was only 52.2% of the population in 1956.

The believing population is traditionally Evangelical Lutheran. Hermsdorf has been parish to Königswartha since the 16th century . From 1815 to 1871 the parish church of the place was therefore abroad.

Place name forms

Homestead on Kastanienweg in Hermsdorf

year	Place name form
1419	Hermanßdorff
1506	Hermannsdorff, Hermesdorff
1542	Hermesdorff, Hermßdorff
1658	Hermßdorff
1768	Hermßdorf near Milckel

swell

1. ↑ Federal Statistical Office (Ed.): Municipalities 1994 and their changes since 01.01.1948 in the new federal states . Metzler-Poeschel, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-8246-0321-7 .
2. ↑ Ernst Tschernik: The development of the Sorbian population . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1954, p. 91 .
3. ^ Ludwig Elle: Language policy in the Lausitz . Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen 1995, p. 249 .

Web links

Commons : Hermsdorf / Hermanecy  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Upper Lusatian heather and pond landscape (= values ​​of the German homeland . Volume 67). 1st edition. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2005, ISBN 978-3-412-08903-0 , p. 132.
• Hermsdorf / Spree in the Digital Historical Directory of Saxony
• Official website of the municipality of Lohsa