Domowina and the Saxon state government held meeting about the Sorbs and structural change

15.04.2021

According to the Domowina press release from May 15, 2021, Dawid Statnik, Chairman of the Sorbian umbrella organization Domowina, and the Saxon State Minister for Regional Development, Thomas Schmidt, as well as Culture and Tourism, Barbara Klepsch, met in the Saxon State Parliament in Dresden for a top-level discussion about the implementation of the Interests of the Sorbian people in the current structural change.

In particular, it is a question of how measures according to Paragraph 17, Number 31 of the Structural Strengthening Act passed by the German Bundestag last summer can be implemented, in which the Sorbian interests were expressly taken into account. The two Sorbian state parliament members Marko Schiemann and Aloysius Mikwauschk (both CDU), Dr. Stephan Rohde, State Government Commissioner for Structural Change in Lusatia and the Leipzig Region, Dr. Madlena Mahling, advisor for Sorbian affairs at the Saxon State Ministry for Science, Culture and Tourism, and Gordian Meyer-Plath, responsible for structural change in the ministry.

The starting point of the discussion was a letter from Domowina to the Prime Minister and the two ministries in which the Sorbian umbrella organization asked the state government to take the interests of the Sorbian people into appropriate account in the process of structural change. For this purpose, Domowina chairman Dawid Statnik and the director of the Foundation for the Sorbian People, Jan Budar, have compiled a list of possible measures in coordination with the representatives of Sorbian bodies and other actors. The focus is on promoting language, identifying with Sorbian life and creating new jobs.

The aim of the initiative is that Saxony also advocates the consideration and appropriate financial support for Sorbian issues in the context of structural change. This was preceded by a four-year discussion in a working group initiated by Domowina with the involvement of experts and municipal representatives, in which around 40 ideas were developed that have become the basis of the current proposal by Domowina and the foundation.

After the conversation, Domowina chairman Dawid Statnik said:

“The ministers have reported on the previous activities of the state government in the interests of Sorbian structural change. The proposals that we had put on the table found their way into the decisive federal-state coordination bodies. We expect concrete results this year. For us, this is an interim result that we can only welcome in the interests of the entire region.

Sorbian is the unique selling point of Lusatia. If the structural change accompanying the coal phase-out is to succeed by 2038, then the infrastructure of this unique selling point will also have to be sustainably strengthened. We hold talks here on an equal footing, the days of supplicants are over. This also has something to do with a positive process of cognition in politics, which today knows: Sorbian is not a pretty, weak little plant on the edge that has to be watered separately, but a common future potential in the middle of society, which is in the interest of perspectives the whole region is to unfold.

In doing so, we will now also assume our responsibility with all civil society and institutional actors of the Sorbian people in a self-determined manner and further concretize the proposed measures in a grassroots democratic consensus and support them in such a way that the funds entrusted to us can be used effectively to boost the Sorbian language in particular. "