Mina Witkojc

Mina Witkojc, German Name: Wilhelmine Wittka, ( born May 28, 1893 in Castle, County Cottbus, † November 11, 1975 in Papitz, district Cottbus -Land) was a Lower Sorbian poet and journalist.

Life

Mina Witkojc attended until 1907 the primary school in Petersburg and then worked until 1917 in Berlin as a maid, flower arranger and in the defense industry. From 1918 to 1921 she was a day laborer in the castle.

In August 1921 she happened to meet a group of Czech and Upper Sorbian intellectuals, who was traveling in the Spreewald. This encounter, which she described in one of her first poems, meant that she endures her / Lower Sorbian nationality was aware. This led to her move to Bautzen, where she collaborated from 1923 to 1933 in the Lower Sorbian newspaper Serbski Casnik. Numerous contacts on Sorbian intellectuals emerged during their years of Bautzen, in particular to Arnost Muka and Jan CYZ.

She took in 1926 at the European minority Congress in Geneva in 1930 at Pan-Slavic Sokol meeting in Yugoslavia. In the 20s and 30s, they also translated other Slavic authors into Sorbian, so Bozena Nemcova and Petr Bezruč.

In 1933, she was banned from writing by the new Nazi government. Until 1936 it remained unemployed in Bautzen. In the same year, she moved back to the old home to Burg. There they earned from 1936 to 1941 again a living as a day laborer in agriculture. Since they had very exposed through her articles and poems within the Wendish / Sorbian cultural life and beyond through contacts with other Slavic intellectuals came under suspicion of a (pan) Slavic nationalism practiced the Nazis to her what in the years from 1937 with the Sorbian cultural workers and clergyman from the Lausitz began: 1941 Mina Witkojc received a residence ban for the administrative district of Dresden, 1942, one for the administrative district of Frankfurt / Oder. So she was forced to leave the Lausitz.

In the years 1942-1945 she then lived in Erfurt, where she worked in a nursery operation, among others, as employees. In their large-scale poem " Erfurtske spomnjeśa " ( " Erfurt Memories" ), she moved in 1945 this her life so far, what with Mina Witkojc not self-reflection, but settlement with the previous work for the Sorbs meant. In her exile, she maintained close contacts with the Lower Sorbian priest Bogumil Šwjela and living in Weimar Wendish painter Fryco LATK also expelled from his homeland. In 1946, she lived as a staff member of the Domowina again in Bautzen, but moved to a temporary arrest in 1947 in Czechoslovakia. First she went to the former " Wendish Diaspora ", the area around Varnsdorf, then later to Prague, where she lived until 1954. In the Lower Lausitz nor any Sorbian activities were suppressed by the SED district leadership Cottbus at this time. So Witkojc was arrested when gluing Sorbian posters for the municipal elections because of alleged pro- Czechoslovak agitation. It was not until the middle of 1948 the authorities allowed the activity of Sorbian organizations in the Lower Lusatia.

In 1954 Mina Witkojc back in her home village castle, where she lived until shortly before her death. She went still as a co-author of an anthology, and to individual poems and articles in Nowy Casnik, the Lower Sorbian weekly paper out. In 1955 published a book of poems "K swětłu a słyńcu " ( " To the light of the Sun" ), which is partly made up for the purposes of prescribed farewell fashioned from the Slavic community spirit poems of the 20s and 30s. As an example may be mentioned that the title of her first poem of 1921 was " memory of the first meeting with Czech and Upper Sorbian brothers ", as amended in 1955 but only to " Upper Sorbian brothers " is mentioned. Your last months she spent in the retirement home of Papitz.

Importance

Mina Witkojc took in the Lower Sorbian Poetry a similar pioneering role as decades before her Jakub Bart - Cisinski for Upper Sorbian. Her poems bring a close connection to their Sorbian people and their homeland, the Spreewald, expressed. She promoted especially with her work as an editor for the Lower Sorbian newspaper " Serbski Casnik " and for the Sorbian diaries " Pratyja " the self-understanding of the Wends / Sorbs, particularly in the Prussian Lower Lusatia, where the opposite Saxony always stronger Germanization in the early 20th century had led to the almost complete loss of national ( self- ) awareness. Characteristic of her poetry is the frequent use of allegorical images of nature (sun, moon, sea ) with respect to the state of the Sorbian people. For example, compared with an island in the stormy sea as it did from Jakub Bart - Cisinski the position of the Sorbs.

Works

• Dolnoserbske Basni ( Lower Sorbian poems), Bautzen 1925
• Wěnašk błośańskich kwětkow ( A bouquet of flowers Spreewald ), Bautzen 1934
• K swětłu a słyńcu ( to light, the sun ), Berlin 1955
• Predné kłoski (First ears, co-author ), Berlin 1958
• Po drogach casnikarki ( As an editor on the go, prose collection, eds: Kito Lorenc ), Bautzen 1964, ISBN 3-7420-0281-3
• Echo from the Spreewald ( Poems, ed: Christiane Piniek, which would translate to Elke nail ), Bautzen 2001, ISBN 3-7420-1857-4
• Pśedsłowo k antologiji Jadna z nich jo šołtowka: Antologija noweje dolnoserbskeje literatury ( Preface to A Mayor of you is: an anthology of recent Lower Sorbian literature), Budyšyn 1971