Tomáš Korbel
Between Romantic Imagination and Documentary Journey. The Image of the Lusatian-Serbian Landscape in the 19th Century Through the Eyes of Central European Travellers
The image of the Lusatian-Serbian landscape, in which the Lusatian-Serbian (Slavic), Saxon (provincial) and Prussian (state) identities intermingled in the 19th century, was not uniform and varied depending on the national and social/professional affiliation of the observer. It is evident from the text that each traveller projected their own point of view into their depiction and accentuated those components that were essential for them with regard to the goals of their endeavours. In the late 1930s, Ľudovít Štúr observed the situation of the vanishing Slavic nation in Germany through the prism of Slavic reciprocity, and therefore focused his account primarily on the present, suppressing the emotional and mythical components of the narrative. He was inspired by the struggle of the Lusatian Serbs against the Germanization pressure on many levels of political, social and cultural life, comparing it with the situation of the national self-consciousness processes of the Slovak ethnic group. This also influenced the selection of places of memory that recall the former glorious Slavic past. Similarly to Štúr, the motif of the anonymous "pilgrim", a member of the Czech Tourist Club, prevails more than half a century later in the search for an ideal "Slavic" landscape. However, in view of the author's position and the current national-political needs of the Czech national movement, this has already been shifted to the level of finding common "Protestant" traditions of ancient Lusatia, which had been part of the lands of the Bohemian Crown until the Thirty Years' War. The central point of his description is thus the Protestant settlement of Hernnhut/Ochranov and its surroundings, founded by Czech exiles in the early 18th century. A completely different view of the landscape is offered by the works by German scientists and travellers, which in the 19th century varied from a neutral 'scientific and Enlightenment' approach (Johann Wolfgang Goethe) to a 'national-awakening' interest (Karl Benjamin Preusker, Alfred Moschkau) to a conscious effort to 'Germanise' and assimilate the Lusatian-Serbian landscape (Richard Andree). These changes in the view of Lusatia de facto follow Hroch's three-phase typology of the national movement.
Keywords: Upper and Lower Lusatia - Lusatian Serbs - places of memory - landscape image - travelogue - tourism - national movement - nationalism - Ľudovít Štúr - Czech Tourist Club - German reflection on Lusatia
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